“Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism”, by P. J. O’Rourke

 

320 pages, Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN-13: 978-0871139191

Whenever I see P. J. O’Rourke’s name on anything, my first inclination is to buy first without bothering to find out just what it is about, which is what I did with Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism, which covers various American efforts to police the world, beginning with Kosovo in 1999 and concluding shortly after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. If it was intended to be a travel diary, the book is fine, as he writes about what he saw and heard and experienced during his travels; otherwise, it is a rather disorganized hodgepodge of articles and ruminations. He never disappoints when it comes to making fun of peace protesters – they tend to be a stupid bunch, after all – but he is hilarious when making fun of Nobel Prize winners and their illiterate and easily disprovable political assertions about poverty. O’Rourke doesn’t end there, though, as he makes fun of everything from the Department of Homeland Security, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (if you can believe that), his travels in Egypt (if a bit long-windedly so), and many other topics, besides.

Overall, Peace Kills is what you would expect out of a baby-boomer reformed hippy libertarian pessimist who has participated in the downfall of pop culture: a worldly, skeptical view of our modern earthly monkey house, tinged with a libertarian sensibility informed by, if nothing else, decades of chemically induced self-abuse and what must have been many close calls with the cops, but also tempered by an older-but-wiser Celtic resignation to fate and an acceptance of the persistent limitations of the human race – a kind of successor of H. L. Mencken for the crown of Weary Worldly Cynic. O’Rourke launches into one free-form monologue after another with his readers, painting word pictures and demolishing cherished beliefs with comedic but nonetheless cogent jabs loaded with a resigned knowing, aimed at the almost limitless opportunities for ridicule presented by the currently reigning Politically Correct establishment worldview.

“Country Houses of Britain and Ireland”, by Tom Quinn, photographs by Paul Riddle

 

240 pages, New Holland Publishers, ISBN-13: 978-1843308997

Country Houses of Britain and Ireland is what it says it is: an exploration of several grand estates across Britain and Ireland. Paul Riddle’s captivating photography brings to life the uniqueness of each country house and complements Tom Quinn’s enthusiastic and informative text perfectly; together, author and photographer explore the historical background of the families connected to each house and guides the reader around each sumptuous abode, focusing on architecture, furnishings, artefacts and gardens. Naturally, since there must be thousands of these things dotting the countryside, the authors have had to be selective with their choices, but they have managed to provide a diverse cross-section of aristocratic dwellings from a range of periods, from Owlpen Manor – a Tudor Grade I manor house of the Mander family in the village of Owlpen in Gloucestershire – to the beautiful Knebworth House – an English country house in Hertfordshire. The British Isles have a wealth of country houses, and this delightful book is a celebration of over 50 of the best examples, with informative text accompanied by breathtaking photography that covers the finest examples of the country house in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“A Handbook of Fighter Aircraft”, by Francis Crosby

 

256 pages, Hermes House, ISBN-13: 978-1843094449

A Handbook of Fighter Aircraft was written by Francis Crosby, a staffer at by Britain’s Imperial War Museum, and is what it is: an illustrated guide to over 170 of history’s most significant fighters, complete with their evolution and the historical background to the rise of fighter aircraft and their impact on warfare. Just so as were on the right page here, this is more than just a glorified picture book filled with jets that make things go BOOM!, but a serious history of one of warfare’s most lethal weapons. Thus, to begin with, Crosby gives us several short chapters that cover a range of subjects, such as the birth of modern fighters, fighter aircraft technology up to 1945, fighter armament over the course of both World Wars, the Battle of Britain, night fighters, fighters at war throughout the Cold War, and so on. Moving on, the book is divided into two broad sections: “A-Z of World War Fighter Aircraft, 1914-45” and “A-Z of Modern Fighter Aircraft, 1945 to the Present Day” (that would be 2002, when my edition was published).

And so, for the first half covering the years 1914-45, we have entries on over ninety aircraft, including: the Albatros D.V fighters; the Bristol Bulldog; the Boeing P-12/F4B; the Boeing P-26 Peashooter; the Avia B-534; the Bristol Blenheim; the Dornier Do 17 Fliegender Bleistift; the Curtiss P-36 Hawk; the Bristol Type 156 Beaufighter; the Brewster F2A Buffalo; the Westland Whirlwind; the Bell P-39 Airacobra; the Mitsubishi Ki-46; the Petlyakov Pe-3; the Heinkel He 219 Uhu; the Gloster Meteor jet; and many, many more, besides. For the second half covering the years 1945 to 2002, we have entries on over 80 aircraft, including: the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15; the North American F-86 Sabre; the Hawker Sea Hawk; the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19; the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger; the Douglas F4D Skyray; the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter; the HAL HF-24 Marut; the Tupolev Tu-28; the Hawker Siddeley Harrier; the Grumman F-14 Tomcat; the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle; the Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard; the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon; the Mikoyan MiG-29; the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet; and this is just a small taste.

Depending on the aircraft, it might rate a one-or-two-page spread with text and several black-and-white and/or color photographs. Although fighter fans will enjoy the hundreds of pictures of Fokkers, Supermarines, Voughts, Lockheeds, Mitsubishis, Yakovlevs and Messerschmitts, I am not convinced that the double-decker A-to-Z format was the best way to organize such a diverse collection of aircraft, seeing as it does precious little to show the evolution of these fighters from one year or era to the next. For instance, jumping from the Gloster Javelin (introduced in 1956) to the Grumman F7F Tigercat (introduced in 1944) to the Grumman F9F Cougar (introduced in 1952) certainly supplies you with info on each individual aircraft, but it does nothing to illustrate the development of one aircraft to the next; having a strictly chronological arrangement would have, in my oh-so-humble opinion, produced a more useful history of the subject…anyhoo, with the organization criticism aside, A Handbook of Fighter Aircraft is still a comprehensive, well-illustrated guide to some of the greatest warplanes in history…up to 2002, at any rate.

“Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil”, by Ron Rosenbaum

 

444 pages, HarperCollins, ISBN-13: 978-0679431510

Ron Rosenbaum’s Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil is an ambitious book in which the author critiques those theorists and academics who try to come up with reasonable and rational explanations for Hitler’s unreasonable and irrational actions, i.e. whether Hitler is motivated by childhood traumas, sadistic power, sincere belief in his anti-Semitism, etc., and what Rosenbaum discovers, to his dismay, is that too many deep thinkers cannot accept evil without “the fig leaf of rectitude”…or, in other words, too many good-intentioned people unwittingly give Hitler a pass, excusing his evil in a way, by saying he was crazy, deranged, sincerely misguided, a true believer in his own vision, or what have you. That, as I said, is the ambitious premise of this book, but Rosenbaum doesn’t do much to justify it; rather, he seems to merely canvas others who have their opinions, which often are at odds with other opinions presented in the book, with no settlement or conclusions being drawn. It’s as if a bunch of intellectuals had gathered together for a late-night bull-session on the topic “Hitler: WTF?” and just sorta rambled on and on until the sun came up and the herbal tea ran out.

Rosenbaum states that he was guided by “Negative Capability” – I know, I know, me, too, so I looked it up, and it turns out that it was first used by Romantic poet John Keats in 1817 to characterize the capacity of the greatest writers – particularly Shakespeare – to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty. The term has been used by poets and philosophers to describe the ability of the individual to perceive, think and operate beyond any presupposition of a predetermined capacity of the human being. In other words, you can’t and shouldn’t be certain of anything as such certitude closes the mind; it’s best to allow a certain amount of mystery and inexpressibility in one’s understanding of things and, in so doing, you will keep an open mind. Not so bad then, right? However, Rosenbaum takes Negative Capability to mean that an understanding of some things is unattainable and that it is intellectually superior to be able stop grasping after answers. This creates a skepticism that closes the mind to explanation, and this is the lens through which he filters all these Hitler explanations.

So what is the explanation for Hitler’s evil? After 400-or-so pages, Rosembaum still doesn’t know, which kind of makes one wonder what the damn point of the book was to begin with. While Explaining Hitler does have its good moments, I found it to be uninteresting at best, with Rosembaum seemingly noncommittal and, at times, even afraid to present his own ideas about the subject. Best stick to Fest.

“Frederick the Great: King of Prussia”, by David Fraser

720 pages, Fromm, ISBN-13: 978-0880642613

I have been a fan of Fred the Deuce since I saw Sir Alec Guinness in Hitler: The Last Ten Days and, while gazing at a portrait of a man whom I mistook for George Washington, mentioned that when he (Hitler) thought back on what Frederick the Great suffered, it gave him renewed strength to continue the struggle. With that, I just had to find out who this Great Fred was; I started with Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma by Robert B. Asprey (reviewed on July 5th, 2017), moved on to The Army of Frederick the Great by Christopher Duffy (reviewed on February 25th, 2013), rounded it all out with Osprey Publishing books about his army (reviewed on September 1st, 2017), to say nothing of the several other biographies I have collected over the years that…I have yet to review. In due time, Dear Reader, in due time. And so, when I came across Frederick the Great: King of Prussia by David Fraser on my beloved Barnes & Noble overstock shelves, I snatched it up and dove right in…

…and let me tell ya, diving is the right metaphor for this book for, I have to say that, reading it felt at times like I was swimming against a current. First, a little background: David Fraser is in fact General Sir David William Fraser, GCB, OBE, who was, until his death in 2012, the son of Brigadier William Fraser (the younger son of the 19th Lord Saltoun) and Pamela Maude (widow of Billy Congreve, a Victoria Cross recipient, and daughter of actors Cyril Maude and Winifred Emery). He was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards as a second lieutenant in 1941 where he served in the European Theatre in World War II; after climbing the ladder of ranks, he became Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies from 1978 until his retirement from military service in 1980.

And even though he published over twenty books in his lifetime, I don’t believe he ever got the knack for writing, as this plodding pile of paper proves. Fraser’s sentences are often long – sometimes too long – and often tedious. The occasional awkward expressions don’t help, either, as when he refers to “auguries” instead of “signs”, or talks about “diplomatists” rather than “diplomats”, while throughout the book he uses French phrases, terms and titles in French and does NOT give the translation; I speak no French at all – désolé, mais c’est vrai – and found the untranslated French phrases very annoying. Now, Fraser is to be commended for giving a very detailed and generally unbiased account of one the greatest military commanders of all time. Frederick the Great was not only a great military tactician but also a true son of the Age of Enlightenment: poet, author, composer (well, kinda), philosopher, adept politician and administrator, were only some of the attributes of this great man. Frederick was a champion not only for the Prussian Army but of its people, as well. Attacked on all sides and constantly outnumbered by the French, Austrians, Russians, Saxons and Swedes, Frederick’s brilliant tactics and modernization of the Prussian Army was the undoing of many of his adversaries.

What was most impressive about this great man was the fact that, for the time, Prussian subjects enjoyed freedom of the press and religion, uncorrupted governmental administration, as well an independent judiciary. He believed he was a servant to Prussia and its people – the First Servant of the State, in his words. But Fraser ultimately admits that, for all of Frederick’s professed love of justice, there was the “conflict, never resolved, between his belief in the actual advantages of monarchical autocracy (in hands like his own) and his enduring belief – equally sincere – in the rights and dignity of man”. All of this is duly recorded by Fraser, but in the most turgid style imaginable…well, not the battles; the battles rock. But be prepared for a long, long swim should you crack the spine of this 700+ page behemoth; it shan’t be a wasted swim, but you no doubt will be left panting on the shore at the end of it.

“Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy”, by Dmitri Volkogonov

 

642 pages, Grove Press, ISBN-13: 978-0802111654

Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy is billed – right at the top of the dust cover – as “The First Glasnost Biography”, meaning its supposedly the first honest look of the blood-drenched sonovabitch by the Russians during the time Gorbachev was furiously trying to save the Soviet system from collapse – and NOT trying to bring freedom and democracy to the Soviet Union, as his many Western lickspittle apologists claim to this day. But just who wrote this thing? Well, I’ll tell ya: Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov was the chief of the Red Army’s psychological warfare department who spent a whole lotta time in in secret Soviet archives gathering information on several important Soviet leaders, Stalin (obviously) among them. Despite being a committed Stalinist and Marxist–Leninist ideologue for most of his adult life, Volkogonov came to repudiate communism and the Soviet system within the last decade of his life before his death from cancer in 1995. Interesting, no? Makes one wonder if his books slamming the Reds of old are sincere or some kind of intricate counterespionage-thing he cooked up. I dunno; maybe I’m just being paranoid…unless…that’s what they WANT me to think…oh, bother; let’s move on, shall we?

I dearly wanted to like this book, but Volkogonov wasn’t a professional historian (claims to the contrary aside) and he certainly wasn’t a great writer. His work, though well-researched and meticulous, fails to either capture the general reader or to impress anyone looking for a clear analysis of causes and consequences. He has no sense of how to connect his various narratives together, how to build a sense of continuity, or how to make us feel like we are really inside the events he is describing. He leaps back and forth in time at will, without bothering to explain why, while also wasting ink on picayune details before leaping over giant topics with barely a word. As for his politics…while reading Stalin never forget that, while Volkogonov may or may-not be a reformed Stalinist, he remained an unrepentant Leninist to the last. Time and again he makes it clear that, if only the saintly Lenin had lived all would have been wonderful in the worker’s paradise. Only Stalin was a bloodthirsty monster; everyone else was a glorious revolutionary. To blithely ignore the countless crimes committed by Lenin – that Stalin excused and expanded upon – is to live with Red blinders on.

Perhaps Volkogonov’s greatest merit is to have been able to access, thanks to his position in the Red Army, the USSR’s impenetrable archives and to have revealed to the world a deluge of details and documents. Some of them are immensely controversial in their potential consequences – the statements made by Stalin before the German attack that war was inevitable; or Zhukov’s plan for a preventive strike against Germany – and for that reason alone this book deservedly appears in most bibliographies on the USSR and the Russo-German war and has provided the academic community with valuable insights for further analysis on Stalin and Stalinism. But it is probably more suited for an historian than for a general reader.