Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Who am I to pan the "Greatest novel ever written"? However, Tolstoy should have prefaced it as Mark Twain did Huckleberry Finn, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author".

My motives for reading it were to learn more of the culture of my adopted countrymen. Culture is like an iceberg; most of it is under the surface and unseen. As I read the Russian greats of the 19th century, Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, I began to realize that much of the characteristics I see in the people around me were there long before Communism. In fact, Communism as practiced in the Soviet Union was really Socialism with Russian Characteristics.

Novels are a great way to explore the culture of a people as the author must understand it enough to paint realistic scenarios for his protagonists without appearing to do so. As well the issues of the day are well hashed over in the soliloquies of the mind of various characters.  Anna Karenina, written as a contemporary novel, is filled with insights into the character of the Russian nobility, the 1.5% as it were, in and around 1870.

 I was 2/3 of the way through the book before I took any interest in the characters and then mostly Levin and Katya. (My Maude translation calls her Kitty. Good God.) I especially found fascinating Levin's struggles to manage his estate, to motivate the relatively recently freed serfs to adapt new technology and his attempts to incorporate an understanding of their psychology into his management. In my observation, 140 years later the problem is still ongoing.

As to Anna and Vronsky, there is likely enough there to make a two hour movie (he wrote facetiously). The comedy is that if they had simply had an affair, instead of falling deeply in love, there would have been no problem as it was done all the time by the nobility. (They had nothing else to do, really). The tragedy is that her mental condition at the end which drove her to suicide is easily recognizable and treatable today. She was not the first and certainly not the last to be driven to suicide by obsessing on something imaginary which she could then not let go of.

View all my reviews

Remembering the Farm - Reading opens every door.

Author Lynda Beck Fenwick (blog HERE, Facebook page HERE) has written several blog posts and Facebook comments about the importance of education in both homesteading times and today.  She emphasizes the role of literacy and accompanying love of books in formal education and in continuing one's education throughout one's life.

That got me thinking about reading and books in my own life and the lives of my children.  Before I started school, I drove my mother crazy with questions.  I wanted to know everything and especially WHY?  Once I started school and learned to read, her life was much simpler.  By the end of Grade 2, I was reading at an adult level, which is to say, anything around the house.

Reading was a struggle for my father.  I don't recall him reading anything other than farm papers and The Bible.  He preferred to read early in the mornings when he felt at his peak.  One of the weekly farm papers ran serial fiction, one of which was called "Death and the Gentle Bull" featuring a Black Angus bull.  Dad had to read that and got hooked on the story.  We teased him ever after about "getting up early in the morning to read a murder mystery.

Mom loved to read.  I have no idea how or even if she did anything to foster my love of reading other than make sure there was lots to read.  The farm papers, Canadian Cattlemen, Country Guide, The Western Producer, Free Press Weekly, and  Family Herald (the latter two ceased publishing long ago) interested me, especially as I got older.  But Macleans and Chatelaine magazines interested me from day one.

They were quite different then from today's versions.  Both were monthly or bi-weekly, I forget which. Macleans was more literary than news magazine and I loved the stories and articles. Chatelaine was targeted at the 1950's housewife with a great deal of human interest and educational stuff.  Especially educational stuff.  I have no idea if my parents ever had "the talk" with my younger siblings but mom knew I was getting my education from Chatelaine so she didn't worry.

My first real book was Black Beauty which I got for my 7th birthday.  I had two Robin Hoods; one by Howard Pyle and one by Henry Gilbert.  Preferred the latter as I grew older.  Kipling's The Jungle Book or All the Mowgli stories was another favourite.  I was about 11 or 12 when someone gave me Zane Grey's "Spirit of the Border" and I was HOOKED.  Read a great many of his books, graduating over the years to Ernest Haycox (the best) and Louis L'Amour.  Westerns are still my reading to relax genre.

Dad was able to buy us the World book encyclopedia in the late 1950s.  He had no money but managed to find enough for the cheapest no frills set.  The lady who sold them was someone Dad had worked for back in the 30s and I think gave them to us at cost. It was our "internet" and provided hours and hours of reading.

No idea when I joined "Book of the Month Club" but was a member for over twenty years, maybe more.  My library was starting to grow.  Used book stores and the bargain shelves helped add volumes without exorbitant cost.  Couldn't say exactly when I morphed into history but by my mid-20s for sure.  If I had it to do over, maybe I wouldn't have taken Animal Science but History instead.  though reading it is likely more fun than writing it.

Ella was also a reader.  Mostly human interest stuff, biographies, that kind of thing.  And Harlequins. And Royalty.  When our kids came along the house was full of books and we made sure that there was lots for them to read too.  Little Golden Books, Berenstein Bears and Dr Seuss.  I can likely still recite Hop on Pop or Hand Hand Finger Thumb.

Likely I am responsible for warping my kids' minds with my interpretations of their books. The Three Bears opened with "Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a house in the woods. Papa Bear pounded nails in the roof; Mama Bear watered the flowers and Baby Bear did tricks on the lawn".  I would explain to the children that I had no idea who Tricks was and that since she was never mentioned again must have been unimportant.  This horrified adult listeners but the children were oblivious.

The public library became a favourite haunt.  When we lived in Kindersley and our youngest was a wee new babe we had a blizzard that shut down the town.  So we bundled the kids and pulling two on the toboggan, we walked through the drifts to the Library - which was actually open.  When we moved, the Regina Public Library closest to us soon knew us all by name and our tastes by heart.

Our house continued to fill with books.  More and more shelving units were added.  One NEVER discards a book.  EVER.  The kids used to say that for any topics concerning WWI or WWII they had only to go to my books for their highschool reports.  They began accumulating their own libraries and by the time they began moving out it was "20 boxes of stuff and 20 boxes of books".

My oldest daughter has similar reading tastes to her mother.  After two degrees (Human Justice and Social Work) she swears she will never read anything on purpose from which she might learn something but on occasion she lies. My son reads history like his father but likes good novels even more.  If you take any newspaper's "Top 100 novels ever written" he has likely read 75 of them.  His thinking ability is far ahead of mine.  History helps me understand what happened and why.  Novelists invent the future.

My second youngest daughter is finishing off her dissertation for a PhD in Victorian Literature.  Everything between Jane Austen (pre-Victorian and L.M. Montgomery post-Victorian.  And my youngest daughter took her history degree and a Masters in Library Tech and is now a Librarian in a highschool in London England. She specializes in reading Young Adult books as those are her students' reading material. Oh, yes, and Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis.  (By the way, LynnieC, there are several new Latin translations of Harry Potter books available).

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.     Erasmus

Prairie School by Lois Lenski

Sometimes a kids' book is not just a kids' book.  I last read Prairie School by Lois Lenski almost 60 years ago.  It was 1954 and I was a Grade 2 kid in a one-room prairie school that my father had last attended some 20 years before.  The book came in a box of books from the school board office which had to be read and returned within the month. I never forgot the book. My kids found it on E-Bay for me for Christmas one year not long ago, 1951 hardcover, exactly as I remembered it, and I read it again just now.

In the Foreword, Lois Lenski explains that in May 1948 she received a letter from Maple Leaf School, a "one-room rural school in South Dakota, just west of the Missouri river and near the North Dakota state line".  The pupils wrote to tell her how much they liked Strawberry Girl which the teacher read to them when it was cold and they gathered around the large floor register over the furnace to keep warm.  Ms. Lenski received other letters from the students of Maple Leaf School in school year 1949-50, describing the terrible winter and their life on the Dakota plains.

She determined to write their story and inspite of delays of snow storms into May, she made the trip, met the students and their families, observed during class, slept in the teacherage.  Prairie School is a composite of their stories.  Maple Leaf School became the model for "Oak Leaf School".  The community was mainly German-Russians from the Odessa region of what is now Ukraine who settled there in the early 1900s. Their language and customs are captured by Lois Lenski's dialogue and also her wonderful pencil sketches.

 Eleven kids from 6 to 13 from six families came on horseback or horse drawn cart or walked in summer and winter.  Farm work interrupted school work for the older boys. The winter of 49-50 was long and hard; the Christmas Concert was cut short because of weather; school was closed often due to weather and once the children were caught and had to stay at the school. Spring was late but never-the-less arrived and the meadowlarks sang. The book ends (for me) with sadness and a feeling as empty as the school. Oak Leaf School (and Maple Leaf School) closed at the end of the year and the kids were bused to town in the fall.  As Miss Martin, the teacher, said "You must grow up and go on to better things".

Ten years later, the one-room rural schools were closed in our school district (which, by the way, was mainly German-Russians from the Volga who came to Saskatchewan in the early 1900s) and the kids bused to town.  I was in Grade 8 by then.  Prairie School described a piece of my own childhood and reading it was like a trip back in time.

Sometimes a kids' book is not just a kids' book. Sometimes it is a reminder of how life was.  Anyone who did not grow up on the prairies and who did not go to a one-room school will find the book interesting, even though it is intended for "8 to 12 year olds", but not nearly as meaningful as for those of us who shared the experiences.

Monte Walsh by Jack Schaefer

The pages are yellowed and brittle and looking pretty ragged.  The cover is torn and held on by tape which has become yellowed and brittle and been replaced several times.  I've owned it 30 years or more and the book was published ten years before I found it in a second hand shop.  Read maybe 10 times by me and at least five times by my son, Monte Walsh is beyond a doubt the best western ever written and one of my all time favourite books.

Monte Walsh is not a typical western novel. There is no steely-eyed hero single-handedly gunning down the mysterious villain and his henchman, saving the lovely maiden and carrying her off to his newly secured ranch.  Rather, through the life of one man, Monte Walsh, a "good man with a horse", the book tells of the American West of the open range and the working cowboy. Over a 41 year period from 1872 to 1913,  it begins with the cattle drives from Texas in the 1870's through to the huge ranches financed by Eastern or British money in the 1880s to their inevitable break up by the turn of the century with the advent of fenced pastures and more intensively managed herds.

Much of the book centers around the riders of the Slash Y, of which Monte was one.  The cowboys are typical of the men who herded cattle on the open range; each with his own skills and peculiarities.  They ride for the brand, doing what is required of them and more.  The dangers and hardships they face were also typical of the times as were the fun times - the boys could party hearty, especially Monte.  Each chapter is a story in itself, tied together by people, place and time.

The book is alternates back and forth, funny, serious and sad.  The background mood seems to be rather sad even in the hilariously funny parts because it documents a way of life that came and went in just one generation, leaving behind a man who didn't fit in a world where "ranching is just another form of farming", who could not help "being what he is".

The writing style requires description by someone more schooled in such things than I.  But one of the techniques Schaefer uses so well in this book is repetition of phrases to indicate the things unchanging even in a changing world.

They came out of distance going into distance, Monte Walsh and an old leggy dun.  Afternoon sun slanted down on them, a man and a horse, complete in themselves, all that they owned together on them and in the blanket roll behind the saddle, moving together across the immensity of the big land.

****

They came along a rutted road that led out of seeming nowhere and on into the same, Monte Walsh and a young deep chested leggy dun at the easy fast jog he had taught it along with many and many other things.  Clouds rolled along the horizon and wind whipped past them, a man and a horse, complete in themselves, all that they owned or needed to own on them or in the blanket roll behind the saddle with the recent addition of a new slicker rolled and tied to it.

**** 

Together, the man and the horse, complete in themselves, all that they owned and all that they needed on them and in the saddle roll, jogged steadily along the road out of town, westward, towards the mountains and the river beyond them and the remnants of range land on beyond.

****

A man and a horse. A tall squint eyed aging man, outside any conceivable exact calculation, any age at all past the half century mark, lean and weathered like a wind-whittled mountain pine and an aging compact cow pony, dun in color, wide between the eyes, stout muscled, deep chested.

As far as authors of Westerns go, Ernest Haycox is tops in my thinking, followed by Will Henry and then Louis L'Amour, though not all his books are good.  There are a few other good writers - Frank O'Rourke, Dorothy Johnson...and Jack Schaefer. Schaefer's classic Shane is considered to be the quintessential Western novel though The Virginian by Owen Wister is the original cowboy novel having been first published in 1902. 

But no Western written beats Monte Walsh. If you only read one Western in your life, make it this one

Note: a couple of movies have been made by the same name, Monte Walsh.  They are in my opinion, trash.

The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham

Pakenham’s very thorough history of The Boer War (1899-1902) reads like a novel and I could hardly put it down.  In my mind that puts him in a class with Barbara Tuckman and other reviewers have made the same comment.

The book was written over 30 years ago (published in 1979), so the author was able to interview a great many survivors from both sides, as well as access a mass of documents that were not available when the original histories had been written, just after the war. Pakenham regretted that there was not as much material available from the Boer side as from the British.  That is understandable as their army was purely volunteer irregulars, without the massive bureaucracy of the British military machine. There were also only 50,000 Boers vs 250,000 British.

Wars are not fought in abstract but fought by people.  The book is filled with dozens if not hundreds of characters all skillfully drawn, (though sometimes hard to keep track of, without a war room of maps and pins). While it is the politicians and officers whose names we remember from history…Asquith, Balfour, Chamberlain, Lloyd George, John Buchan, Roberts, Kitchener, French, Haig, Allenby, White, Buller, Baden-Powell, Wolseley, Churchill, Rhodes …Kruger, De Wet, Cronje, de la Rey, Botha, Smuts…Pakenham writes a great deal of his narrative from the perspective of the men on the ground, both Boer and British, as well. Their view of the war was one of deprivation, boredom, sudden death and frustration with both the enemy and their own commanding officers.

There are many conflicts within a war, not just between the side dubbed “us” and the side dubbed “the enemy” or even with the weather and the terrain.  Pakenham weaves them all into the larger struggle.  In England there were The Imperialists vs. the “Pro-Boers” as they are labeled; Colonial Office vs. War Office vs. Treasury; the “African Ring" under Wolseley vs. the “Indian Ring" under Roberts. In Africa, there were too many personal conflicts to mention here.  Initially it was Milner vs. Kruger which set the stage for the war. Then it was Buller and the other field Generals vs. Roberts/Kitchener; Rhodes vs. Milner and on it went.  Plots within plots.

It was a new kind of war Pakenham described.  Perhaps rightly called “the first modern war”.  The British, used to fighting poorly armed and organized natives in Africa and India, as usual underestimated their opponents.  (Was there ever a war that was not going to “over by Christmas”?).  The British had shed their red uniforms for khaki. It was the first war fought with smokeless powder.  Soldiers and artillery were now invisible to the enemy.  High velocity, small bore, magazine loading rifles, Lee-Enfields and Mausers, had replaced the old single shot breech-loaders. A soldier could aim and fire a clip of shots in the time it used to take to fire once.  Concentration camps, used by the Spanish against the Cubans, were used by the British who rounded up women and children as part of their scorched earth tactics against the Boer guerrillas.

The British were taught “no end of lessons” as Kipling put it, but they failed to learn the crucial one – modern weaponry combined with trenches put the advantage on the side of the defenders.  That lesson was brought home at great cost in France and Belgium during The Great War.  Buller had learned how to deal with this new way of war through the series of defeats he suffered in attempting to relieve the siege of Ladysmith.  No more one-day set-piece battles.  The new war required creeping artillery barrages, more individual initiative, better use of cover, and day after day of constant pressure.  But the pro-Kitchener crowd made Buller the scapegoat for initial British reverses and he was fired at the end of the war.  Histories are written by not only the victorious side but the victorious cliques.

Pakenham redeems Buller and illustrates that his replacements as Commander in Chief, Roberts and then Kitchener made as many if not more blunders under far easier conditions. A soldier in the field must have wondered (as I expect all soldiers do) who the real enemy was, the men facing him trying to kill him or the men behind him sabotaging his ability to do his job with endless wranglings for political position and endless blunders in supplying necessary provisions.

Without even trying, Pakenham has written an anti-war, anti-imperialism book.  Not by preaching or pointing out the obvious but by simply telling it like it was.  Another useless war.  For all that it was to be a “White Man’s” war; the Africans paid the greater price in loss of life, property and rights.  For all his Machiavellian plotting, Milner’s dream of a white non-Africaner British-only South Africa came to nothing.  The Liberals won the next election, restored self government to the four colonies and the Boer/Afrikaner parties won majorities. And in the end, Africa got her revenge on Milner who was bitten by a tstse fly and died of sleeping sickness. 

For a better and shorter review,  I suggest reading Jeff Cordell's review on Amazon at the link above. This was totally a learning experience for me, as previous knowledge was based on Canadian highschool history which was sketchy at best.  

Source for map here

But Then It Was Too Late

The following is an except from the book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer.  I found it on several sites so I guess one more won't hurt. I was actually looking for Dr. Lawrence Britt's The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism when I ran across it. The link is to Amazon.com and there are several good reviews as well.

As Harper's Magazine noted when the book was published in 1955 (U. of Chicago), Milton Mayer's extraordinarily far-sighted book on the Germans is more timely today than ever. This crucial book tells how and why 'decent men' became Nazis through short biographies of 10 law-abiding citizens. An American journalist of German/Jewish descent, Mr. Mayer provides a fascinating window into the lives, thoughts and emotions of a people caught up in the rush of the Nazi movement. It is a book that should make people pause and think -- not only about the Germans, but also about themselves.

 

But Then It Was Too Late

 

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.

 

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

 

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

 

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the universe was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was "expected to" participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

 

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. "One had no time to think. There was so much going on." "Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

 

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

 

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - "Resist the beginnings" and "consider the end." But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn't, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.

 

"Your "little men," your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something - but then it was too late."

 

"Yes," I said.

 

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

 

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, "everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to you colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."

 

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

 

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to ö to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

 

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked ö if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in "43" had come immediately after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in "33". But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

 

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying "Jew swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in ö your nation, your people ö is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

 

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

 

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done ( for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

 

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or "adjust" your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

 

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

 

"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn't an anti Nazi. He was just ö a judge. In "42" or "43", early "43", I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an "Aryan" woman. This was "race injury", something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case a bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a "nonracial" offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party "processing" which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the "nonracial" charge, in the judge's opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom.

"

"And the judge?"

 

"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience ö a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That's how I heard about it.) After the "44" Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don't know."

 

I said nothing.

 

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was "defeatism." You assumed that there were lists of those who would be "dealt with" later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a "victory orgy" to "take care of" those who thought that their "treasonable attitude" had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

 

"Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it; so it was with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."

 

-- Milton Mayer

 

 

 

Anton Chekhov on Occupy Wall Street

Just look at this life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, impossible poverty all around us, overcrowding, degeneracy, lies . . . Yet in all the houses and streets, it’s quiet, peaceful; of the fifty thousand people who live in town there is not one who would cry out or become loudly indignant.  We see those who go to the market to buy food, eat during the day, sleep during the night, who talk their nonsense, get married, grow old, complacently drag their dead to the cemetery; but we don’t see or hear those who suffer and the horrors of life go on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is quiet, peaceful and only mute statistics protest: so many gone mad, so many buckets (of vodka) drunk, so many children dead of malnutrition . . . And this order is obviously necessary; obviously the happy man feels good only because the unhappy bear their burden silently and without that silence happiness would be impossible. . .

At the door of every contented happy man someone should stand with a little hammer, constantly tapping, to remind him that unhappy people exist, that however happy he may be, sooner or later life will show him its claws, some calamity will befall him – illness, poverty, loss – and nobody will hear or see, just as he doesn’t hear or see others, now. But there is nobody with a little hammer, the happy man lives on, and the petty cares of life stir him only slightly as the wind stirs and aspen – and everything is fine. . .

Wait in the name of what, I ask you? In the name of what considerations? They tell me that it can’t be done all at once, that every idea is realized gradually, in due time.  But who says that?  Where are the proofs that it is so?  You refer to the natural order of things, to the lawfulness of phenomena, but there is order and lawfulness in the fact that I, a living and thinking man, must stand in a ditch and wait until it gets over grown or silted up, when I could perhaps jump over it or build a bridge across it?  And again, wait in the name of what? Wait, when you haven’t the strength to live and yet you must live and want to live! . . .

. . . don’t settle in, don’t let yourself fall asleep! As long as you’re young, strong, energetic, don’t weary of doing good! There is no happiness and there shouldn’t be, and if there is any meaning and purpose in life, then that meaning and purpose are not at all in our happiness, but in something intelligent and great.  Do good!

 Excerpts from Gooseberries 1898

Chekhov wrote these words less than two decades before the Revolution of 1917 that changed Russia - and the whole world - forever and only 7 years before the Revolution of 1905 which began a period of reform which was - as always - too little, too late... 

Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse

"Oregon Jim Creek was frozen solid and so was Smith's right ear".  So begins Paul St. Pierre's story of Smith; first name known only to people he hates, like bankers and brand inspectors. Smith is a small time rancher some 200 miles west of Williams Lake BC on the high Chilcotin Plateau. Set in the late 1950's when a ranch "needed 100 cows" to make a decent living, Smith has 78.  And many horses.  Many many horses.

Smith is a man of moderate ambition.  He has a Quarter Horse stud which he is convinced will make a legendary cutting horse IF Ol' Antoine, a local Chilcotin, will talk to the horse in the Indian fashion (this is long before horse-whispering became the rage).  He has promised Ol' Antoine $20 dollars and given him half already.  He has been waiting several years for Ol' Antoine to do this.   Ol' Antoine has a habit of promising Smith he will break the horse "right away, maybe start tomorrow".

Ol' Antoine according to his own stories might be 137 years of age.  He claimed to have fought in the Chilcotin War of 1864 and ridden with Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces in their futile race for the Canadian border. 

Smith's other ambition is to mind his own business and stay out of other people's troubles.  However the harder he tries, the more other people's troubles find him. Gabriel Jimmyboy, who "happened to shoot where someone was standing" and has been on the run for some months, has been pursuaded by one Walter Charlie to turn himself in to the law.  Smith trusts Walter Charlie "about as far as you can bounce an anvil in a swamp" and rightly so.  Ol' Antoine is to take Gabriel Jimmyboy in and collect the $500 reward which he will give to Walter Charlie who will "hire a good lawyer" and, as court translator, with Ol' Antoine in the witness chair, will speak "the words the white man wants to hear" to get Jimmyboy off the charge.

Other than warning both Gabriel Jimmyboy and Ol'Antoine that Walter Charlie is not to be trusted, Smith steers clear of the issue.  Until court is convened in the middle of haying season and his hay crew leaves to Williams Lake.  A broken mower blade sends Smith to Williams Lake and into trouble...

Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse was a gift from my parents back in the mid-sixties and surprisingly enough is still available from Chapters-Indigo.  The book was in the last care package MayB sent me.  I have read it dozens of times. It is an old friend. Paul St. Pierre spent most of his life in the Cariboo-Chilcotin country of interior BC and knows its people well.  The story is told in dry understated humour, which still leaves me laughing out loud at times.

They used coal oil lamps and gas lanterns. The toilet stood one hundred feet from the house and was made of logs, unchinked.  It was the coldest place in all Namko, possibly in all the world.

In the preceding summer Smith had built yet another line of his endless fencing between house and toilet.  He had not yet found time to make a gate through this fence.  The fence itself had required a month of hard work. The extra day required to make the gate had not been found by him. No doubt there was such a day, but he had not found it.

Some of these features of the Home Place annoyed Norah, in a general way.  On this day her annoyance was not general but specific.  Smith had been away for two days and he had neglected to notify her when he was going, where, why or when he might be expected to come home.

The story was originally written for television.  Chief Dan George made his acting debut as Ol'Antoine and went on to fame and fortune.  A good book, especially for those who enjoy ranching tales of a simpler time.

Have you read Marx?*

Taking a book on a holiday is required.  Something to read while sitting in the sun or in the shade as the case may be.  I always take a book or two or three.  This year I was limited to one so I took one that would last the two weeks.  One I have been meaning to read but hadn't yet. A book sale find from several years ago.

The Age of Enlightenment: Basic writings of the eighteenth century philosophers Locke, Voltaire, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Condillac and others.  Selected with Introduction and Commentaries by Sir Isaiah Berlin.  First published in 1955.

It is part of a series of 6 books:
The Age of Belief - The Medieval Philosophers
The Age of Adventure - the Renaissance Philosophers
The Age of Reason - 17th century Philosophers
The Age of Enlightenment - 18th century Philosophers
The Age of Ideology - 19th century Philosophers
The Age of Analysis - 20th century Philosophers

If I can wade through this one, I may call it quits, though to be honest one can still learn a great deal from some of these thinkers (as long as there is a commentary in modern English to explain what I just read).  John Locke, who is the first philosopher dealt with is some hard slugging to get through and please don't ask me to explain.  Apparently his writings at the end of the 17th century set the stage for the others.

This book is great if you like big words and obtuse thought or are having problems falling asleep

I wonder if there is a Philosophy for Dummies book?  I don't want to know.

* Yes.  I think it is this old Adirondack Chair I am sitting on.

The Great Wall of China

This article in the Globalist has some interesting B&W pictures of the series of walls which today are collectively referred to as The Great Wall of China.  I am adding Daniel Schwartz's book to my wish list. There are other photographs at the Amazon website.

If you are truly interesting in the history of the Chinese walls and of China, I recommend reading Julia Lovell's book The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC - AD 2000.  China has been building walls for two thousand years.  Lovell's book covers each dynasty from 221 BC and the associated building of walls, complete with maps.  Fascinating reading, especially when each successive series of walls fails but the next dynasty continues on because they are unsure of what else to do.  Keeping the people in and the barbarians out was an obsession that Lovell, in the Conclusion "The Great Wall, The Great Mall and The Great Firewall" suggests continues to this day.

The product description and  Nathan Hoturoa Gray's review of the book on the Amazon site cover the topic pretty well.  Having spend some time in China in the 1990's, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and learned a great deal from it, background to what I observed.  For me it was a can't put it down kind of book.  For the true historians among you, it is well end-noted with a comprehensive bibliography.

Julia Lovell teaches Chinese history and literature at the University of Cambridge.  Her next book, due out this year, she says, is about the Opium Wars, which were a serious defining period in China;'s relationship with the outside world.  It too is on my wish list.

The Measure of All Things

The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder

Two hundred years ago, the only standard measure was time, with the day divided into two 12 hour halves, the hours into 60 minutes each and the minutes into 60 seconds each. The circle was also divided into 360 degrees with each degree further divided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds. Beyond that, every country, county, town and village seemed to have its own units of length, weight and volume. The units may even have had the same names in places but the actual amounts varied. This worked well in local markets but made trade very difficult.

In 1792, two Frenchmen, Delambre and Mechain set out from Paris to measure with extreme accurately the length of the meridian which ran from Dunkirk to Barcelona through Paris. The French Academy of Science, fired by revolutionary zeal intended to create the perfect system of measurements based on the earth itself which all people of all nations would adopt. The meter was to be exactly one 10 millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. Units of length, volume and weight would be all linked together related to the meter. The decimal system and Latin suffixes completed the new Metric system.

While the meridian had been measured some 40 or 50 years before, a new and very accurate instrument, the Borda repeating circle, meant it could be measured much more exactly. It took them seven years. The difficulties of actually doing the survey in the middle of the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, wars with Spain, Prussia and England and the rise of Napoleon merely compounded the physical difficulties. Prior to the age of satellites, distances were measured by triangulation. If the three angles of a triangle are known and the length of one side, the other two sides can be calculated. So a series of triangles stretching the length of the distance to be measured, connected by common sides can be calculated by measuring one side of one triangle.

Delambre was a pragmatist and finished his half of the meridian first. Mechain was a perfectionist and it eventually killed him. He started in Barcelona, Spain in late 1792 and was to work his way north. He got into the Pyrenees and was stopped by the war, ending up back in Barcelona for the winter of 1793-4. Not knowing to leave well enough alone, he redid one of his measurements and found it to be very different from the one before (simplified version). He buried the error and it haunted him. He felt he had failed. His depression slowed his work and he almost did not complete it. He finally went back to Barcelona to try to find the error, caught malaria and died.

Delambre had to sort out Mechain’s papers which were a deliberate mess. Mechain had suppressed and doctored a lot of data but he had done so to make himself look more precise and was very careful to keep his doctored data from affecting the final calculations. Delambre sorted it out, recalculated everything and published the data. He did not expose Mechain’s deliberate cover ups and called the Barcelona error a discovery.

The work of these two men while not very relevant to the precision of the metric system, as it turned out, did advance the cause of science and mathematics. Error was found to be a normal part of any measurements and could be split into errors in precision and accuracy. Precision is an indication of the repeatability of results while accuracy is how close the results are to the “right” answer. The statistical method of “Least Squares” was developed using their data.

The promo on the cover and the other reviews I have read make a big deal of Mechain’s error, which may have contributed to the meter being 0.2mm short. (The satellite confirmed distance is actually 10,002,290 meters). The author, and indeed Delambre, realized the error was irrelevant as setting the meter at one 10 millionth of the quarter was arbitrary to start with. What was critical was that the length be standardized and the system adopted.

The metric system replace the systems of the Ancien Regimes country by country in the 19th and 20th centuries in most cases in times of political and social upset – war, revolution, independence – when the government could forcibly “ram it down the throats” of the people. France herself where metric was invented, didn’t officially adopt it till the middle of the 19th century and for decades after the old systems were still in use in the towns and villages. Britain and several of the other Commonwealth countries adopted the metric system last.

My take-away lesson from this book is that while Canada adopted the metric system 40 years ago, it may be another 60 years or more, if ever, before it totally supplants the British Imperial System in all things. Systems of weights and measures are not just impersonal methods of uniform description. They are part of our very culture.

In a footnote, as it were, I will add that in 1884, along with the 24 hour clock and standard time zones, the brain-children of Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming, the meridian of 0º longitude was established as running through Greenwich England, leaving the Paris meridian some 2º20’ to the east.

The Romanov Dynasty

The Romanov Dynasty was to rule Imperial Russia from 1613 to 1917. It was, as they say, interesting times.  Years ago, before there was any inkling of future ties to Ukraine and Russia, I began reading Russian history, simply because the country has always fascinated me. Three excellent books introduced me to the Romanovs: 
Peter the Great by Robert K Massie;  Catherine, Empress of all the Russias by Vincent Kronin;  and
The Shadow of the Winter Palace; Russia's drift to revolution 1925 - 1917 by Edward Crankshaw.  I do need to reread the last one as it has been a while.

Having waded through 1050 pages of Tolstoy's War and Peace followed by Richard Riehn's 1812: Napoleon's Russian Campaign, I figured I needed some "lighter reading" so I tackled Imperial Legend by Alexis Troubetskoy, a biography of Alexander I who reigned as Tsar from 1801, on the assassination of his father, Paul son of Catherine the Great, until his "death" in 1825.  The book, written by a descendant of high ranking Russian nobility (one of whom was one of the Decembrists) explores the very strong circumstantial evidence that Alexander I, with the connivance of his family staged his death to escape the throne as abdication was impossible for a reigning Tsar.  He allegedly reappeared some years later in Siberia as Feodor Kuzmich, a wandering mendicant or "starets" who died in Tomsk in 1864.  The murder of his father and his indirect involvement preyed on Alexander's mind all his life and it is argued that in his desire for peace of mind and true salvation of his soul, that he "disappeared" at the peak of his power and spent the rest of his life as a hermit, in penance.

Alexander I was succeeded by his younger brother Nicholas I, followed by Alexander II and III and finally Nicholas II, whose 1967 biography, Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K Massie, I am working my way through just now.

An interesting note:  the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg where Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs and his family spent their final days before their brutal murders in 1918 bears the same name as the Ipatiev Monastery where Mikhail I, the first of the Romanov dynasty, hid out during The Time of Troubles. 

War and Peace

War and Peace has been on my "to read" list since I saw the 1956 movie starring Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn when in highschool.  It was one of those "I'll read it before I die but since I don't plan to die immediately, it can wait".  I'm still not planning to die immediately but having reached the age where one realizes one is not immortal, I have started on the "before I die" list.  I still need to live to be 107 to get through the entire list.

War and Peace (Wordsworth Classics, Maude translation approved by Tolstoy) is no light tome.  The 960 pages of dense prose in small typeface made it hard on my old eyes, I can tell you. It is really three books in one: historic novel, history and commentary essays.

The historic novel, with over 500 characters from tsars, emperors and nobles to serfs, servants and soldiers,  charts the Rostov, Bolkonsky and Bezukhov families from 1805 through 1820, in particular the romance of Natasha Rostovna and Pierre Bezukhov.  One gets an amazing feel for life among the Russian Gentry during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic wars.

The history is of the wars between Napoleon and Alexander, beginning with the Russian defeat at Austerlitz in 1805 and ending with Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812.  The Battle of Borodino, the looting and burning of Moscow and the annihilation of the French forces as they retreat into the Russian winter are described in some detail. Tolstoy, is not a historian per se but never the less very well researched on the subject, uses the context of his novel to bring out information that other historians had overlooked or glossed over.

The commentary essays are Tolstoy's thoughts primarily on history and the forces which motivate and move men and nations. Tolstoy believed that no event was the result of one man's or a few men's actions but rather the result of the accumulated interrelated actions of all people to that point.  Events are captive to history and none of the participants could have done anything different than what they did.

It is an incredible book and has renewed my interest in the Napoleonic wars.  My current reading is Richard K Riehn's 1812: Napoleon's Russian Campaign.

Cowboy Poetry

A friend and shirt-tail relative circulated an email copy of a poem known variously as Better Keep in Touch or simply Jake, the Rancher. I Googled it to see if I could find the author but no luck. Chalk one more up to that prolific writer “Anonymous”.

Cowboy poetry as the genre is known has been around for as long as men and women have worked cattle in North America but usually refers to poems written since Texas independence. For those not familiar with the genre I offer this definition which I like but if you check the website you will find some willing to argue:

“Cowboy poetry is rhymed, metered verse written by someone who has lived a significant portion of his or her life in Western North American cattle culture. The verse reflects an intimate knowledge of that way of life, and the community from which it maintains itself in tradition. Cowboy poetry may or may not in fact be anonymous in authorship but must have qualities, content, and style that permit it to be accepted into the repertoire of the cultural community as reflecting that community's aesthetics in style, form, and content. The structural style of cowboy poetry has its antecedents in the ballad style of England and the Appalachian South. It is similar to popular works of authors such as Robert W. Service and Rudyard Kipling."

I like cowboy poetry and don’t have any books here with me, so I followed Google until I found this Cowboy Poetry site and thought it worth passing on to other lovers of poetry.

Modern cowboy poets like Baxter Black have made Cowboy Poetry popular outside of cowboy circles but there were a lot of good poems written in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of my favourite poets is S. Omar Barker whose Cowboy’s Christmas Prayer is likely his best known and made him more money than any other poem.

The following is an example of real Cowboy Poetry and since it is in the public domain, I am not breaking copyright.

The Veiled Rider by Bruce Kiskaddon (1878-1950)
It was down at the home ranch, a bunch of cow pokes
Got in an old hoss that was only half broke.
They saddled him up and they hazed him around,
But none of them rode him. They stayed on the ground.
The cook he laffed at 'em and laffed mighty hard.
Then the boys they allowed that the cook wasn't barred.

But it shore did amaze 'em to see the cook crawl
Right up in the saddle, yes apron and all.
The hoss took to buckin' all over the place.
The cook's apron flew up and covered his face.
His stirrups was long and he had to pull leather,
But the cook was on top when they finished together.

One waddy he grins and remarked to the boss,
"Seems they blindfold the rider now, 'stead of the hoss."
The cook looked at the boss soter mournful and said;
"This whole crew aint wuth seven dollars a head.
I buried my face in my apron all right,
But I done it to shut out the pitiful sight.

Them pore rannies hoppin' and yappin' around
Like a bunch of fresh toad frogs that been rained down.
I will own up right now, I'm a cranky old cook,
But there's sights where really upsets me to look.
And an outfit like that would disgust any man
That had been out and cooked for a bunch of real hands."

Books I am reading

At home in Marianivka, I have two books on the go which I am half finished:
Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World by Margaret McMillan. One of the kids (sign it next time so I remember who gave me which books) gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago and I am just now getting around to reading.
The First World War by Sir Martin John Gilbert, which I have had for ages but never read. Now there is a new version in print. An excellent book from the British point of view but I am still looking for one from the French perspective. Are there any in the English language?

The following are books I brought to or bought in Turkey. I have read the first three and am almost finished the fourth.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West by Roger Crowley
Imperial Ambitions: Conversations with Noam Chomsky on the Post 9/11 World. Interviews with David Barsamian
What We Say Goes: Conversations with Noam Chomsky on US Power in a Changing World. Interviews with David Barsamian.

Today I was sitting in the park reading “What We Say Goes” and a pigeon pooped on the open book. Talk about political commentary! I’m sure it was a Republican pigeon as it consisted of only a right wing and an anus.

I’m saving The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beever for the week in Alanya. I read his history of the battle of Stalingrad and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Blood, Tears and Folly

Len Deighton is perhaps better known for his Spy novel series Game Set and Match, Hook, Line and Sinker, but he is also a self confessed amateur historian with several works on WWII. “Blood, Tears and Folly: an objective look at World War II”, was published 15 years ago. One nice thing about history books, if they are well researched they can be read any time.

Deighton’s purpose in writing the book was to “remind ourselves how badly the world’s leaders performed and how bravely they were supported by their suffering populations”. He examines the delusions and myths of the nations involved, British, Germans, Japanese and Americans, and how they set the stage for the tragic events that followed. The book “takes into account the assumptions and ambitions of its protagonists and the background from which they emerge” taking the “narrative far enough back in time to deal with some of the misconceptions that cloud our preferred version of the war”

Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam" 1984, looks at the folly of nations which she defines “Pursuit of Policy Contrary to Self-Interest." (See also http://www.stoneschool.com/Reviews/MarchOfFolly.html) “For a government’s policy or a nation’s courts of action to be considered folly,” Tuchman writes, “it must meet three criteria. First, it must be perceived in its own time as counterproductive to that group’s own self-interest, not just in hindsight. Second, a feasible alternative course of action must have been available when the policy was adopted. And third, the policy must be that of a group, not just a single individual.” Blood, Tears and Folly looks not just at the folly of nations but the folly of individual leaders from Churchill to Rommel, from Tojo to Wavell, from Stalin to MacArthur.

Deighton’s book illustrates like no other, how wars are started, fought, won and lost by human beings with emphasis on HUMAN. We tend to think of wars in terms of sports where the “best” team wins, where dazzling generalship scores the most touchdowns. Wars are rarely won by brilliant leadership but most often simply by those committing the fewest stupid mistakes or best able to master the logistics of supply. Leadership at all levels on both sides was prone to all the failings of human kind: fear, pride, greed, stupidity, indecision, obsession, paranoia.

“Battleship” admirals’ distain for airplanes and submarines; RAF refusal to consider anything but strategic bombing for fear they fell back under control of the Army or Navy. Constant underestimation of the enemy, whether German invasion planning based on a Russian collapse in four months or British military in SE Asia refusing to prepare any defenses against the Japanese because they could not “believe they could form an intelligent fighting force”.

If you think you know the history of World War II i.e. WHAT happened, "Blood Tears and Folly" will give you new insights into WHY they happened.