This review has given me real trouble. I LOVED the first book, liked the second quite a bit, and trusted that Abercrombie would give me whatever I needed to love this one, too. In a weird way that I still don’t understand, this third book in his Shattered Sea trilogy has not managed to meet my expectations, even though I’m not sure I had expectations to meet, beyond that I wanted to love it. I’m sort of devastated that it didn’t work for me. While reading, […]
World War II From a German Perspective in this Memorable True Story
This World War II story is written by an American war historian, Adam Makos. Makos finds a story so compelling, he fights his patriotic instincts and centers his story from the German perspective. A Higher Call highlights the life of Franz Stigler, a German fighter pilot ace. Framing his book around the so-called enemy, Makos wonders early in the book, can good men be found on both sides of a bad war? Franz Stigler knew as a young boy he wanted to fly planes. His […]
A Million Deaths is a Statistic
I’m a bit of an accidental war tourist. I never plan these things but somehow, I’ve been to the trenches of Verdun, the reconstructed city centre of Ypres, the Passchendaele memorial museum, the D-day beaches and their immense cemeteries, the former sites of concentration camps, the battlegrounds of Malmedy. It seems important somehow, especially for someone my age, several generations comfortably removed from any world war. Yet the sheer scale of these immense cemeteries and their endless lines of identical headstones alone makes it paradoxically […]
I am sure there are other versions of happiness, but this one is mine.
I saw Lynsey Addario on The Daily Show promoting her book: It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (2015). Jon Stewart was obviously impressed, and even though Addario is just 41, she seems to have already lived a remarkable life. On the show Addario talked about photography, getting kidnapped in Libya, and the struggle to balance her work with being a wife and mother. Because Addario’s photographs are scattered throughout this book, I’d recommend reading the hardcover book rather than the Kindle […]