Read Books This will provide a list of the books I've read with a brief review. Users are blocked, contact me for access. I welcome discussions, but I'm tired of spam.

Pappy Boyington was an alcoholic, he couldn’t hold a job, he was irresponsible, and he was the best pilot and an outstanding leader of the Black Sheep Squadron. No one was on the fence, he was either loved and admired or hated. Many people credited him with saving their lives or making their careers work. What drove this dichotomy?

As a youth, Gregory Boyington was drawn to flying. As a child, he scrambled to get $5 from his parents so he could have his first flight. Learning to fly wasn’t readily in his future, though. He found an opportunity with the Marines to learn to fly.

Before the US became involved in World War II, Boyington found another opportunity to further his own goals, of flying and experiencing combat. He resigned his commission to join the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company and support China’s resistance to the Japanese invasion. He became a member of the Flying Tigers.

The squadron leader was an experienced pilot who understood the real characteristics of the Zero and of the US aircraft. He bucked traditional teaching and taught unique combat strategies. These impressed Pappy in his future career and laid the foudation for his own teaching.

With the Flying Tigers, he impressed his peers with his flying, but destroyed any opportunity he could have by his drinking and fighting. He only had one friend, and no opportunities. Although threatened if he resigned, he did anyway. He expected to resume his career with the Marines. The CO was determined to force him into the Navy, and preferably apart from flying. Boyington frantically contacted congressmen and friends in the Marines until he got his wish.

When Boyington rejoined the Marines, he got his commission and his squadron, only there weren’t any pilots or planes. He managed to collect a number of unattached pilots and eventually received the Corsair, a new plane intended for the Navy, but unsuitable for aircraft carriers.

Pappy started to shine for the first time in his life. He impressed the new pilots with his knowledge, he pushed their training to the point of their skills becoming reflex. He forged the unit into the best fighting air unit in the world. He approached his job, not as an officer, but as a coach and mentor. He didn’t follow the dogmatic approach of the military, but forged his own path.

He won the respect of his pilots when he earned enough kills in his first outing to become an ace in a single fight. One month later, he turned an ambush around on Japanese pilots and shot down three Zeros in 60 seconds.

When he started to approach Rickenbacker’s record, he started to become careless, pushing too hard. He was shot down and spent the last 20 months of the war in a Japanese POW camp.

Not knowing whether he lived or died affected everyone in the US. Many pilots lost some hope. Newspapers that had followed him printed his demise. His squadron, although distraught, redoubled their own efforts, doing as much damage to the Japanese as he could. He was awarded the Medal of Honor during his captivity. He learned of it through a new prisoner. Upon hearing it, he commented that he’d gladly trade it for a hamburger.

Even in captivity, he never lost his spirit, nor his will to live. He inspired others to fight to live. One pilot commented that just knowing Pappy was in the prison camp make him certain they would all survive.

Pappy was able to keep the good and bad separate. He never lumped all Japanese into one camp as evil. He befriended one of his captors, and found many Japanese civilians were willing to help prisoners during the war when they would face death when found out. After the war, he commented that what we did to the Japanese Americans was unthinkable.

Three of his pilots achieved ace status during WWII. Some earned it again in Korea. Almost all of them did well after the war.

Pappy reverted to his drinking and failure after the war. He tried, but was unable to overcome his demons. Not able to keep a job, nor a marriage, he had few friends. But the Black Sheep never gave up on him. They always saw him as a hero and mentor.

Pappy Boyington died in 1988. A hero.

I enjoyed the book thoroughly. I’ve always wondered how much of the tv show was accurate. Very little, but I enjoyed finding out. The book has inspired me to read the biography of some of his pilots as well.

Bill Bryson is a wealth of information on the English language.  In this book, he describes the origin of our language and traces its evolution through interactions with different cultures.  It can be fascinating how he describes the relationship between neighboring villages and their particular dialects, or how French and Anglic terms evolved for the same words.

However, I didn’t feel there was really enough information for a full book.  When Bill Bryson gets into details of particular words, rather than give a few examples of their changes, he will continue for 20 or 30.  At times it felt as if his editor were pushing him to expand a magazine article into a full book.

By the end of the book, I felt as if I had read everything.  New information came slowly and the majority of the text was lists of words and interesting facts.  I think it would have been more suited to an etymological dictionary.  Mix in a number of errors and I cannot recommend this book.

Gettysburg, by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen

This book is set during the US Civil War, specifically in the last days of June and first days of July, 1863. It is about the officers and how they interact. The men of both sides were well acquainted with each other, and in many cases, had served with one or more of the leaders on the other side. Even the individual solders would face friends, and sometimes relatives across the battlefield.

Both authors hold PhD.s in history, William Forstchen has authored numerous books of historical fiction and science fiction. The authors hold the position that history can best be understood by examining alternatives to what happened in history, looking at the events and the people to hypothesize what might have been. This book examines what would have happened if Robert E. Lee had taken a different tactic at Gettysburg.

The book is primarily told in dialog form. In this manner, we get to know the generals on a personal level. We get a feel for how they think and how they interact with each other, and with their enemies.

Gettysburg goes further to give a feel for battle of the era. We see the effects of the fog of war, and the difficulty of decisions when mens’ lives are on the line. And we are made to feel the guilt at sending men to their deaths. The battles are described in a bit too much detail for my taste. It is gruesome and bloody and seems futile at times. The authors describe the weapons, primarily the rifles used and cannons, and their affects on the troops, both as individuals and as formations.

Gettysburg provides a few photos and images of maps throughout the book that I felt the photos were very well selected. These appear to be prints from daguerreotypes, mostly of men, in formation or relaxed. Some images are of the dead, on the field or lined for identification or burial. There are also a few maps. These images are not bloody, and fairly benign. Although they do not directly relate to the story, they do set the stage for it, and I felt these pictures did add a lot. I do wish there were captions explaining a bit of what I was looking at.

I did enjoy this book ,and feel that anyone with a casual interest in the US Civil War will enjoy it, too.

Family Britain is a compilation of two books previously published as Certainties of Place and A Thicker Cut. These books are parts 3 and 4 of Tales of a New Jerusalem. Family Britain is a thorough sociological analysis of Britain from 1951-1957. There is a strong class division, the book discusses how they relate, how they spend their time and money, and issues they have with each other and with the government. During this period, Britain finally managed to come out of WWII rationing, started to rebuild its housing and began extending its road network. These were controversial, and these issues are represented well, detailing those involved and their positions.

After the stage setting, complications were compounded by a series of Comet (the first commercial jetliner and a landmark of British engineering) crashes which dashed their hopes in their jet construction, a series of strikes, the hanging of Ruth Ellis, and the rather political issue of Princess Margaret’s relationship with Captain Peter Townsend. This period saw several major events in world and British history. King George VI died in 1952 and followed by the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. The book describes how the coronation served to bring people together in small communities. The death of Stalin was in this same period. The tories came into power following the liberals, who had little of the vote. This set the stage for a lot of political issues.

I see a lot of similarities to today. We are still dealing with racial issues, and with homosexuality. Many of the arguments for and against are still the same arguments we use today. They express concerns with television, which is just coming available to the common man. The new road network enabled the British to make trips easily and this enabled the appearance of the day-tripper, a one- or two-day traveller that lead to changes in what merchants would carry and pricing.

It seemed that most international issues either did not affect the British culture, or the author chose to gloss over the issues. These include the H-Bomb development and political issues between the Soviets and Britain.

One international issue handled strongly was the war over the Suez Canal. Britain entered as a peace-keeping force following the Israeli war. The citizens were against the war, by a small margin. This was stressed when the Soviets used this issue as a smokescreen to crush the resistance in Hungary. However, when Britain was able to pull out, the support flipped to slightly in favor.

The book is fascinating, and presents enough information to really enable you to understand the issues. It almost presents too much information, I can’t imagine I’ll be able to retain a whole lot of it.

One complaint I have is that the author doesn’t make clear what the subject of a chapter or section is. Sometimes I was a couple of pages into it before I was able to really follow it. The author also has a tendency to change subject suddenly, and is difficult to follow at times. The book could have used a stronger editor.

Family Britain provides a very thorough view of British society in this dynamic period. The reader can see the influences on their society and understand the effects they produce. I did enjoy the book a lot, but cannot recommend it unless a person is particularly interested in either Britain or in sociology.

This is a good history of the Smothers Brothers. The majority of the book covers the story of their show and their fights with CBS. It does a good job of portraying the facts of the issue and does not pretend to portray the brothers (Tom) in the best of light. It clearly shows Tom going to far to create problems where compromise or moderation would have served his own goals better.

The book does a very good job of putting the events into their place in history. Clearly the Vietnam War is an important part of this, but it also draws on the general politics with LBJ and others, social movements, CBS, and the CBS battles with NBC and ABC.

The one disappointment was that some of the stories were repeated. They were in different contexts, but it seemed like whole paragraphs were copied and pasted. I would have preferred that a different perspective were provided, or different details to keep the information fresh.

The Three Stooges Scrapbook is both a biography of the Three Stooges and a summary of the Three Stooges phenomenon. It is provided in three parts, the first provides a history of each of the stooges, Healy, their manager, and a summary. The second part talks about the marketing, all the gadgets, comics, cartoons, and spin off/copycat acts. The last part is a summary of the films, both short and feature length. Each of the three sections is roughly 100 pages.

Having been a fan since I can remember, I really wanted to enjoy the book more, and I expected more out of it. I can summarize my issues into two areas.

First, the writing was poor. I felt at times I was reading a bulleted list of events through the lives of the various individuals than a biography. The writing had very little emotional content, and felt like a lecture given by someone just working to get through it.

Second was the repeated information. The biography section of the book follows each individual in his own chapter. These chapters, eight in all (Healy, six stooges, and a summary) had a lot of overlap. Each time, the same information was provided again.

Because of the duplicated information, each of the biographies does stand well on its own. The biographies are very complete (at least beyond my own knowledge) and provide a wealth of information on the individuals.

I found the second section very interesting, as I have always been interested in gadgets and collectables. I was disappointed that almost half of this section was devoted to comic books, and felt that there must be more variety in the toys and knick-knacks.

The last section provides a complete list of their videos, including release dates and synopses. This section includes films including non-stooge roles and cameos. I did enjoy the poster and film shots included.

Overall, I found the book difficult to read, but containing good information. It will be a good reference book for my library.