A Chain of Thunder by Jeff Shaara

After leading three groups to Vicksburg to understand the pivotal Civil War Battle of the West, I knew of the battlements, the map of movements and the primary characters.  My research provided me with a good shell of understanding that lacked the emotional feeling of the individuals caught in this critical war – people put in to places of danger, horror, and  stress that are difficult to imagine.  What I needed was this book

Shaara did a wonderful amount of research to help us glimpse the sense of confusion and helplessness that surrounded the events.  We do see Grant and Sherman who are the primary characters from our historical view of the war, but only in context to their men and movements, to the setting and the conflict.  We see through their chapters the uncertainty that surrounded them and the determination to move through the uncertainty to accomplish their goals.  We also see the resulting loss of life when the decisions were ill-advised.

Through private Bauer we get a sense of the isolation of each soldier – no need to know, just to do.  They had no sense of the strategy, they were just told to march, dig, shoot, bury, and respect their officers.  It is a poignant viewpoint that has the conflicting feelings of killing and the recognition that these are neighbors – Americans that they are killing.  Through various interactions between rebels and Yankees there is a connection made between individuals – during burying details, and shore truces, but  it only complicates the matters since each handshake or exchange of goods gives a face to the man  you might shoot or bayonet the next day.

On the rebel side the primary character is General Pemberton, a Pennsylvania office put in charge of Vicksburg.  He is suspicious because he is from the north and that suspicion has put him at odds with the citizens and many subordinates.  He fights for the south because of his marriage.  He is a personal friend of Jefferson Davis which puts him at odds with Joe Johnston, the man who commands this region, the man who is expected to move in to support the besieged troops at Vicksburg.  Pemberton must ultimately make the decision to surrender, but in many ways Johnston is lucky to escape the goat label in this war.

However, Pemberton is not under any circumstances a good leader.  He is stubborn in his resolve, he is loyal to his orders, and yet he has no connection to the men he leads.  In the end, the surrender is also a capitulation of his own honor and position.

From the Vicksburg side another viewpoint is expressed through the story of a young woman who lives in Vicksburg and takes shelter in the hand dug caves that serve as protection from the mortars and artillery.  She volunteers as a nurse and that puts here in a position to observe both civilian and military people – not battles and we get a glimpse at the realities of citizens under siege.

What the book lacks is a “negro” voice.  We encounter a few slaves and get some ideas of their terrible plight and rising emotions, but not enough.  Yet, except for that one desire, I would give this book a very high rating for accuracy, research, and writing.  The parallel stories are compelling and enough to make it a page turner even though you know the inevitable ending. 

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work "draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction." Gone Girl's toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.”

That is a perfect description of this amazing novel.  I started reading this with some indifference – first it is too popular and I like to find the quirky novels and books that are less well known, but there is a reason for this popularity. 

Then I began the narrative of a whining husband and a control freak wife and I found I did not like either one of them, so why read a book with no sympathetic people, except Nick’s supportive sister who has an important but minor role.

Then the story begins to unwind, going between the voice of the wife – Amy and the husband – Nick with great effect.  Neither becomes likeable and that is the unique aspect of the book.  We can enjoy both of their situations with curiosity and no sympathy.

Amy is missing – did Nick kill her.  People accuse him, believe his guilt, then sympathize only to be thrown against him again as his affair with a young woman who had been in his writing class becomes public.   Amy might be dead or she might be manipulating the situation to make Nick go to jail for her murder. 

There is so much that can be given away here, but I would not ruin the story for you.  The author sets a fast pace and the trails end up in strange locations and dead ends.  Grab the book and be prepared to keep reading.

The Chicago Tribune review ends: “With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.”

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey - Edward Achorn

This is really not the story of liquor, but rather the story of the American Association, a professional baseball league that in the 1880's provided baseball with a rebirth after gambling scandals and a new paradigm for selling tickets.

Achorn has taken on the role of historian for early baseball with this book following his story of Old Hoss Radbourn and his 1984 - 59 win season.  Here we get a broader look at an entire league that would provide major league baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, and Brooklyn Dodgers, but in 1883, the season they established themselves and their popularity it was because audacious owners like the quirky Chris Von Der Ahe in St Louis defied the tradition.

They reduced tickets to 25 cents, played on Sundays, and sold beer and whiskey in the stands.  The old National League was aghast, as were the moralizers of the day, but for the working class this was the place to get away from the drudgery of work and the result was fun, excitement, and financial success.

Achorn introduces us to starts like Mullane, Stovey, Browning - giants in their time, prototypes of future superstars.  He also shows us how dirty the game could be played, throwing at batters with impunity, taking advantage of having only one umpire to scan the entire field, spikes, brawls, and scuffed up balls, but he also shows us the classic tension of a pennant race, the exhaustion of the players at the end of the season, and the soaring and crashing hopes of fans.

It is baseball as we know it in the book, even if we might not have recognized all of it in the field with no gloves, motley uniforms, pitchers working entire games and often consecutive games.  In sell outs fans sat in the outfield.

There is no judging of the talents of the men who played then in comparison to the players today, just as we cannot truly imagine what the statistics of Bonds, Clemens, Rodriguez and other steroid monsters would have been without their chemical enhancement.

All we can do is look through Achorn's writing and enjoy a pennant race played 150 years ago.  And it is still good theater.

Going Full Circle - Kate Crowley and Mike Link

We are so proud - the recognition of the Midwest Book Award for our book was really a highlight for us.  This is our story of 145 days of hiking 1555 miles around the largest freshwater lake in the world. Lake Superior with 10% of the surface freshwater in the world has its shores in two countries and along three states and one province.

Our story is about trying to stay as close to the shore as we could, the first couple to ever do this.  It is about the places and the people and nature and the rivers and water.

It is a story of a lifetime of loving this wild place and our marriage on the sailboat that I captained in the Apostle Islands and now it is the place where our retirement begins.

Find at your local bookstores or contact us to buy your own copy. 

Live by the Night - Dennis Lehane

Caught up in an interview on NPR I had to buy one of Lehane's books and discover if he was as good a writer as he was an interviewee.  Luckily the answer was yes.

Lehane has Boston as his normal beat, his hometown and its unique character provide the background for his gangster era novels and a rich source of characters.  In this book the story begins with a small time "outlaw" who works for gangsters (Joe prefers to be called an outlaw) and soon gets ratted out by one of his partners causing his arrest and imprisonment.  Joe's father is a police officer and of course creates a tension between father and son that provides a nice background to the advancement of Joe in the criminal ranks.

Prison is the testing grounds and the university for a rising criminal and after leaving prison Joe ends up in Ybor, FL where he aligns himself with Cubans, takes over the rum business, falls in love with a Cuban and grows to be a Prince of Outlaws with a heart - but not a reluctance to have someone killed.

It is the moral dilemma of Joe's life, a nice guy Gangster, a man without a conscience, but with a mind open to doing good things with bad money and his Cuban wife (technically she is married to someone else and so not a wife in legal terms) guides his beneficence.

The book creates a wonderful cast of characters who inhabit the grey areas of human right and wrong.  They in turn meet with the self-righteous KKK and the religious fanatics who think that their god makes them better than Joe and his associates.  So they commit racial crimes, intimidation, and lynching while bemoaning the criminal who sells booze.  I loved this give and take - this testing of moral high ground.

Inevitably a book like this has to end in a conflict, a loss, and retributions.  It is a mixture of lifestyles that are not conducive of positive endings and the novel will not disappoint.

Grant and Twain by Mark Perry

This fascinating and well written book brought to light a story that I had never been aware, a connection between Mark Twain and Ulysses Grant that had never even been hinted at in all my readings.  Perry did an excellent job of portraying these two men and their complex personalities.  I would have liked more of the interpersonal exchanges, but I suspect that there are too few records to go beyond what is in this book.

We meet Grant after the presidency at a time when one of his sons and an investment fraud cause the ex-president to lose his money, a time when retired presidents did not get the annual salary that comes today and because he resigned his rank to become president he also did not get his veteran's benefit either.

It was a time in Mark Twain's life when he was completing and publishing Huck Finn, the novel that would be his classic - to Hemingway, the greatest American Novel, and a time when Mark's lavish lifestyle and bad investments also had him hurting for money.

Grant learned of his throat cancer that had been caused by the many cigars he smoked - and probably smoked to great excess during the war.  Twain and Grant met and became friends - good friends.  Twain admired Grant and even as a peace advocate and a southerner their companionship was strong and without any barriers to mutual admiration.  Unlike his youth in Missouri, Twain had come to see the great evils of slavery and the false premises of rich and elite in the south.  His Huck Finn story was really the story of Jim, the slave and the float down the Mississippi was a flight for freedom - even though it was a float south.

Huck Finn was banned by many when it first came out and continues to have great controversy.  The racial language that was used is coarse and offensive, but the real language of the day was coarser and more offensive.  Twain incorporated real stories he had collected and put these in to the book as fictions.  In this book, Twain was trying to manage his book, but became engaged with Grant over the writing of Grant's memoirs.

Grant had been reticent to write about the war until this point in his life when he was doing it as a conclusion to a long and admirable life and to provide his wife with some income after he died.  He began with an agreement to publish four battle articles - Vicksburg, Shiloh, Wilderness, Appomattox to Century magazine and then they began to talk to him about putting out a book.

Twain loved the idea of the book but saw that Grant should get greater compensation and said so.  Eventually this led to Twain being the publisher.  During the writing, Grant was suffering greatly from the cancer, but like a warrior he internalized the pain and used it to propel his writing.

Grant died shortly after completing the book and the book project might have been responsible for prolonging his life.  At least one of his aids lamented that he did not know what would keep Grant alive after the writing was done.


The result was satisfying to both men and has had great reception as one of the truly classic war memoirs. The following is from Wiki - "The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is an autobiography of American President Ulysses S. Grant, focused mainly on the general's actions during the American Civil War. Written as Grant was dying in 1885, the two-volume set was published by Mark Twain shortly after Grant's death.

Twain created a unique marketing system designed to reach millions of veterans with a patriotic appeal just as Grant's death was being mourned. Ten thousand agents canvassed the North, following a script Twain had devised; many were themselves veterans who dressed in their old uniforms. They sold 350,000 two-volume sets at prices from $3.50 to $12 (depending on the binding). Each copy contained what looked like a handwritten note from Grant himself. In the end, Grant's widow Julia received about $450,000, suggesting a gross royalty before expenses of about 30%.^[1][2]

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant has been highly regarded by the general public, military historians^[3] and literary critics.^[4] Grant was a shrewd, intelligent, and effective writer. He portrayed himself in the persona of the honorable Western hero, whose strength lies in his honesty and straightforwardness. He candidly depicts his battles against both the external Confederates and his internal Army foes.^[5]"

To think that these two men of such different backgrounds could collaborate on this effort might be to sell both of them short.  Grant did what the country needed and Twain saw this.  He saw a man who did not glorify himself in war, but shared the brotherhood of the combatant with his men.  He was not an officer above his men, but an officer who shared the battle with his men and he cared.

Grant had been in the Mexican war before the Civil War and his statement on that war would have found Twain's ears to be receptive of the message, "Generally, the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.^{[7]"  (Wiki)}

Grant and Sherman by Charles Bracelen Flood

The best Civil War book I have read.  An excellent look at the unlikely paring of Sherman and Grant - both men of limited or no success prior to the Civil War, both military men who left the military and then found their way back to become the most significant figures in the war.

They came together on the western front in Shiloh, they expanded their relationship at Vicksburg, and developed a partnership and friendship that would last throughout the war.  They began in the west and both ended in the East - Grant the bulldog fighting Lee in an offensive that is one of attrition rather than movement and Grant's counterpart - Sherman moving as an offensive force against the elusive Joe Johnston.

Sweeping through the south Sherman isolated Lee and the end of the war was inevitable.  But rather than just repeating the stories and the battles, this book looks at the men and their growing relationship and complexity.  As Grant got criticism because he did not move fast against Lee - despite the positions of the armies - Sherman ultimately got criticism for his offer to Johnston to end the war.

The Radicals in congress were angered because he offered to much leniency and for a while the press vilified Sherman for his softness on the south despite the destruction of his march to Savannah.

It is a complex combination of personalities and a look at the history of press and politics as they relate to the military.

Ultimately Grant's understated personality becomes the winning formula as he heads to the white house having worked with Sherman to keep him from self destructing.

Sherman goes to the West where he shows his inability to sympathize with people of color, while grant agonizes over the Indians and the fact that the real need is to protect the Indians from bad whites.  But still he and Sherman continue a lifetime friendship that diminishes but does not disappear after the civil war.

The book is a wonder story telling and covers the war from a very fresh, but significant angle.

Hank Greenberg - Hero of Heroes by John Rosengren

There are many layers to this book that made for fascinating reading.  As a baseball fan I enjoyed the quality of the baseball stories and the feeling for baseball in the 1930 - 1949 era.  Greenberg is a Hall of Famer, one of the pantheon of legends, now gone and almost forgotten.  But true baseball fans should celebrate his statistical prowess - his 330 home runs does not seem like much in the steroid era, but it was an amazing feat that put him in the top three for lifetime homers in his era.

But the reality of statistics has to be weighed with the shadow of war and 4 1/2 years at the point where most players have their peak he was in the military and did not touch a bat.  His career was pre-war and post war when he came back from this long lay off and put a finishing touch on his legend.

However, even that is not the true story.  What is significant is our terrible penchant for racism and bias in this free nation.  He was the first and greatest Jewish baseball player and he paid for that position by withstanding some of the most vitriolic and awful bench jockeying and fan behavior.  His exploits were always slightly tainted in the press if he had an off day, which all players do, by denigrating his Jewishness.

He was to the Jewish people what Jackie Robinson was to the African American.  Their paths crossed on the basepaths at the end of Greenberg's career and the beginning of Jackie's.  Jackie ran in to Greenberg, knocking him down.  This could have been a race riot if it had been anyone else, but Greenberg's lighter skin was tempered by what he had suffered and as a result when Jackie apologized Greenberg was forgiving and even encouraging to the young star.  They became friends, although in later years Hank was saddened that he did not do more for the "negro players" when he was active in the game.

This is a story of a many who was successful in everything he did, but not a man who was necessarily happy.  The chip he had on his shouldered could create issues, but overall he was a man who controlled his own emotions and has moved on with the dignity of accomplishment.

It is well worth reading

Book notes

Sometimes a full review is not in order, but a note or two is.  Here are some recent books I read:

Odyssey - yup the classic.  I have not read for a long time, but this really is the Bible for comic books and fantasy.  What isn't in this trip - multi-headed dragons, Cyclops, wars, sea adventures, anger of the gods - this is the blueprint for all future books of these genres and worth reading again.

Mark Twain Mysteries - Tom Sawyer Detective, A Stolen White Elephant, and A Double Barrel Mystery.  Not great stories, but Tom Sawyer Detective is one I missed and part of three publications that feature Tom (not counting Huck Finn).  It is a fun story - not a classic.  And Huck Finn is the narrator.

Mostly Mississippi - a book about a couple floating by canoe to St Paul and house boat to the gulf in 1920's.  A honeymoon float by two Eastern writes who give a hilarious account of their misadventures and the river as they saw it.

Mr. G by Alan Lightman.  The  author of Einstein's dreams has another creative mind exercise - Mr G is God and in this creative book he imagines god and his relatives wrestling with the chaos of his knew creation - the universe and the unruly humans that finish the creation epic.

Five Million Steps - Mark Devitt.  A very disappointing story about walking the Appalachian Trail.  Not in one walk, but a series of walks.  It is a book with too much of the authors personal religious feelings for me.  Parts of the books are very good, but the preachiness gets to be too much.

The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond.  The weakest of his three massive volumes.  He tells some interesting stories but tries to interpret too much from his exposure to the New Guinea people.  Some is good to reflect on, but much of it is a real stretch to relate to the world today.