Robert Edsel Saving
Italy. ©2013 Edsel earlier book, The Monuments Men, which I haven’t read, was made into a George Clooney
movie which I saw last night. The movie
was a great disappointment, particularly after just reading Saving Italy, Edsel’s book on the monuments
men’s activities from Sicily to Naples and on to the north. It features Deane Keller, an art teacher from
Yale, and Frederick Hartt, the art historian who wrote the text I used in
graduate school. It was incredible to
learn the details of the travels during WW II of the artworks I so admired
during my many trips to Italy. Edsel has
done an amazing amount of research to document the efforts of the SS to
expropriate massive amounts of Italian art and the efforts of the monuments men
and Italian curators and art historians to track them down and protect them. If it’s a choice between the movie and the book,
read the book. I listened to the audio
version from the library on my new Kindle HD.
June 2014
.
Laura Hillenbrand. Unbroken. ©2010 When I
pulled this off of the return cart at the library, I put it in my bag because
it was written by the author of Seabiscuit,
whom I greatly admire – the author, I mean.
Seabiscuit is a horse. I must be
the only person alive who can read who didn’t know the story of Louie Zamperini,
the WW II bombardier who went missing in action when his B-24, the Green
Hornet, went down in the Pacific. The
book was on the best seller list for 165 weeks.
Zamperini, his pilot and one surviving crew member floated on a life raft
for 47 days until they were picked up by the Japanese off the coast of
Kwajalein. From there they entered hell
on earth until their POW camps were liberated at war’s end.
Zamperini had been a track star at USC and competed in the 1936
Olympics. The track community thought he
would be the first to run a four minute mile, but then the war came. After the war, like a very high percentage of
former POW’s, he had serious psychological problems and became an alcoholic
until his wife dragged him to a Billy Graham revival. Louie shaped up and had a long career counseling
youths who had been in trouble with the law.
He was still at it at age 92.
During his career he carried the Olympic torch five times and he
eventually got back to Japan to meet with his captors. His main nemesis in the camps, Mutsu
Watanabe, known to the prisoners as “The Bird,” was 7th out of 40 on the
original list of war criminals, but he escaped detection until amnesty was
declared seven years after the war. He
had a successful insurance business in Tokyo.
He refused to meet with Zamperini.
The book is soon to be a movie directed by Angelina Jolie. June 2014
.
David O.
Stewart. American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America.
©2011 In the
introduction I learned that Stewart is a lawyer turned writer who lives nearby
in Garrett Park, MD. Ever since I
struggled in college to write a paper on the election of 1800 I have wanted to
know more about what happened to Burr afterwards. As Vice President he was much admired for his
role as the presiding officer in the Senate, but he was not asked to come back
for a second term. Perhaps killing
Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1803 was the main reason, but there was also
that thing about not stepping back in 1800 when the election was tied and went
to the House of Representatives.
Jefferson never forgave him. Burr
was a brilliant lawyer, an excellent judge and a charismatic leader. Unfortunately he used his talents to plan a
private invasion of Spanish lands in North America and invited America's
Western territories to secede from the Union and join him. As a lawyer, Stewart seems to have been the
perfect person to tell this story and put Burr’s trial for treason in
perspective. I really liked this book and
I will be looking for Stewart’s other historical works, of which there are
several. I’ll also be looking for Gore
Vidal’s Burr. June 2014
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