What are we reading?

[Gusington]

Just started Firebird - A Memoir: The Elusive Fate of Russian Democracy by Andrei Kozyrev. Seems both appropriate and totally out of date because of the Ukraine War. Not sure yet.

[ArizonaTank]

Just started reading "Company Commander" by Charles MacDonald again.

This is one of the most gritty and detailed memoirs of infantry combat in WWII.

I first read it about 35 years ago when it was required reading in one of the courses I took when I was in the U.S. Army.

I never actually got shot at in the Army, but I spent plenty of time in foxholes, CPs, and on 45 day long exercises. Reading the book again, so many years later, it strikes me as feeling so true. I think the book is probably the closest you can come to understanding what it was like for a US infantry commander in the later part of the war. In that respect, it reminds me of Ernst Junger's "Storm of Steel" from WWI.

Definitely recommend this book.   
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=company+commander+by+charles+macdonald&crid=239TVU8YH8DY8&sprefix=company+comman%2Caps%2C508&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_3_14

[Gusington]

Now reading Lenin's Tomb - The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick.

[MengJiao]

Now reading Lenin's Tomb - The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick.

  Reading the monster bio of LBJ.  I think I'll stop in the 1950s (vol 2 or so).  Things have been pretty swell narrative-wise for the Texas Hill Country in the early 20th century.

[Gusington]

^Who's the author?

[MengJiao]

^Who's the author?

   Robert A. Caro...came out in the early 1980s...its the inside story on how to get the inside story if you go all the way into the source notes and such.
   The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power  I got a beautiful copy off Amazon Vintage books paperback 1990 for maybe 10 bucks

[Tripoli]

I've just started Putin's Playbook by Rebekah Koffler  and Wilson's Creek by William Piston and Richard Hatcher

[Gusington]

 Nice, Meng. One day I aim to read Caro's The Power Broker, on Robert Moses.

[Toonces]

I'm cranking through John Prados's Islands of Destiny about the Solomons Campaign in WW2.  I started it a while back but never finished it, so now I'm giving it a second go from the beginning.  I'm still not enjoying it very much.  I don't know what happened with this book, but it badly needs an editor.  It reads like a draft of the book.

I also have a few fiction books in the mix: Metro 2033, Crime and Punishment, and The Three Musketeers.  Yeah, I'm trying to hit some of the classics, and I've always wanted to read something by Dostoevsky. 

[JasonPratt]

The Three Metroteers of 2033: Crimes and Punishments

:D

[ArizonaTank]

I just finished Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof.

This is a classic history of the infamous "Black Sox" scandal, where eight Chicago White Sox players threw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. They did it at the behest of gamblers for promise of payment.

The book is a well-written account that brings together a cast of greedy gamblers, disgruntled players, selfish owners, and a dumb criminal or two to show how major league baseball was almost destroyed by the worst gambling scandal in its history. The players were brought to trial on fraud charges but were acquitted in the end, as evidence disappeared, and witnesses changed their testimony. Therefore to restore public trust in the game, the Commissioner of Baseball, Judge Kennesaw-Mountain Landis put a lifetime ban on all eight of the players. A few of them were among the best players in history including "Shoeless Joe Jackson", whom Ty Cobb called "the greatest natural hitter" he ever saw. This life-time ban ruling reverberates today since it was the precedent that still keeps Pete Rose out of the game for his gambling mistakes.

The 1988 movie of the same name is a good synopsis of events, and is an interesting watch if you enjoy baseball and it's history.

[al_infierno]

Numbers in the Dark by Italo Calvino, it's a short story collection and I'm loving it.  The best way I can describe his works is that they're surreal and dreamlike while still being breezy and easy to read.  Some of the stories are more obvious while others take a bit of thought to figure out, but overall it's a much easier read than other "dreamlike" works like, say, Finnegan's Wake.  It also helps that most of these stories are on the short side, ranging from a couple pages to 20-30 at most.

"Conscience", "Like a Flight of Ducks", and "Love Far From Home" are probably the standouts of the collection so far.  The first is a bit absurdist, and more or less deals with the guilt of killing in a war versus killing for a personal vendetta - without giving anything away, it's both bleak and hilarious.  The second two deal in different ways with mentally compromised protagonists, the former in third-person narration and the latter in first-person.  Can't say much about these without giving anything away, but both are quite well done and fresh, even today with "mentally compromised protagonist" stories as oversaturated as they are. 

Also, "Like a Flight of Ducks" is about partisans in Italy at the end of WW2, which makes it relevant to readers here.  O0

I'm cranking through John Prados's Islands of Destiny about the Solomons Campaign in WW2.  I started it a while back but never finished it, so now I'm giving it a second go from the beginning.  I'm still not enjoying it very much.  I don't know what happened with this book, but it badly needs an editor.  It reads like a draft of the book.

I also have a few fiction books in the mix: Metro 2033, Crime and Punishment, and The Three Musketeers.  Yeah, I'm trying to hit some of the classics, and I've always wanted to read something by Dostoevsky.

Let us know what you think.  I've never tried Metro but I started C&P once and didn't make it very far before getting distracted.  I've best heard Russian lit described as "The author is miserable, the characters are miserable, and you are miserable." 

[Giappy]

"The Gathering Storm" by Winston Churchill.

I suppose if I had any sense of how to seriously study history (versus decades of random documentaries, articles and books) I would have known enough to get the perspective of one of the main participants at the outset...

I didn't know better, but better late than never.

I'm now wondering how many other great memoirs/autobiographies (at least by political leaders) I've missed.

I think I've avoided the genre because of the author's (politician's) interest in spinning things to their advantage...and with limited time for reading maybe time is better allocated to less biased (albeit drier) sources...

With all that said it's hard to beat a firsthand account.

[Toonces]

I forgot to mention that I'm working through The Gathering Storm as well.  I just got to the part where Germany invades Poland.  I am not enjoying it at all.  I'm hoping that when the shooting starts it gets better, but man alive, the foreground leading up to the war was hard to get through.

I finally gave up on Islands of Destiny.  It is just not well written and I couldn't take it anymore.  I switched to The Fleet at Flood Tide by Hornfischer.  I know he can write!

[Gusington]

Finished up Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladimir Zubok and now am into Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe by Anne Applebaum.