Four More While on Vacation

During a recent trip to Newfoundland I finished four more books.

So, Anyway is the autobiography of John Cleese or at least his autobiography up until Monty Python forms. I found it a very well done memoir that I quite enjoyed. Cleese is an astute observer and a good writer. Potential readers should be warned that the book contains very little material on Monty Python.

Food Glorious Food: The Logistics & Economics of Nourishment on Soldiers, Civilians, and Equines in the American Civil War by Stephen Castagneto was almost a complete waste of time. While there were some interesting statistics about logistical consumption, they were buried in a turgid writing style rife with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. I borrowed it for free through Amazon’s “Kindle Unlimited” program, but it was still overpriced.Trapped Under the

Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness by Neil Swidey was a fascinating story of an industrial accident involving the final stages of Boston’s Deer Island sewer treatment plant project. Swidey, who obviously knows his stuff, provides an overview of the project, explains how the seeds of the accident were sown, then takes us, step by step, through the decisions that resulted in the accident. It was an enthralling story. If I have a criticism, its that the book, at 434 pages, was a bit too long. I think it would have been a stronger book if it was 50 to 100 pages shorter.

Snow and Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45 by Peter Caddick-Adams is an outstanding book on the Battle of the Bulge. In the 1970s and 80s, Caddick-Adams was a British infantry officer, at one point serving in the Ardennes area. He became interested in the battle and the result is one of the best Bulge books out there. He starts off with an overview of operations post D-Day, examines both Hitler’s planning for the offensive and the various Allied intelligence failures, then starts covering the battle proper. Throughout the book, the author manages to seamlessly integrate a great many interviews with veterans (on both sides) with the “big picture” of what’s happening across the entire front. C-A’s NATO service brought a new dimension to his writing about the battle. In numerous spots he mentions how his service experiences gave him insight into events. In one example he was leading an infantry platoon on a field exercise and discovered (when they unearthed a bunch of GI debris while digging in) that he had inadvertently established his platoon command post on the same spot as an American unit HQ during the Bulge. I quite enjoyed it, and its now my favorite Bulge book. A big thanks to Doug Dery for turning me on to it in his GDDM Blog on Consimworld.

54 for the year.