Morgan Entrekin, Grove/Atlantic publisher, writes a special message this Veteran’s Day:

“This fall we published to great success Karl Marlantes’s What It Is Like to Go to War, which I believe is one of the most important books on war ever written . . . On this Veterans Day I hope you will take the opportunity to read Karl’s book. As we remember the veterans or those currently serving in our families or among our friends, we might find some inspiration in Karl’s words: ‘We must be honest and open about both sides of war. The more aware we are of war’s costs, not just in death and dollars, but also in shattered minds, souls, and families, the less likely we will be to waste our most precious asset and our best weapon: our young.'” Read the full essay here.

Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand (Random House, November, 2010)

Right up front, I will suggest you read this book. I won’t say you must read this book. Shoulds often breed contempt, rebellion or a secret suspicion that said bookseller is out to make a sale. This being said, you should read this book.

It’s the true story of Louis Zamperini, a wayward boy who spent his youthful energy being the local hood until he channeled it all into running which ultimately got him a spot in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He became the beloved hometown hero.

In 1941, with history marching toward the attack on Pearl Harbor, Louis joined the Army Air Corps, shortly left it due to air sickness, then got drafted and joined the army. He ultimately ended up as s Second Lieutenant in the Air Corps. This was the beginning of events that would send him into the air in a B-24 which crashed in the Pacific. He survived only to end up as a Japanese POW without any of the rights guaranteed to POWs by the Geneva Convention. This is the story of a man literally unbroken by deprivation, a psychotic Japanese corporal named Mutsuhiro Watanabe, shark infested waters circling a damaged life raft after the plane crash. Never giving into despair, he maintained a sense of self dignity.

His innate ability to survive under any circumstances benefited many of his friends and fellow prisoners. Once he volunteered to starch the Japanese’ shirts which were soaked in rice water as the starching agent. He would filter the tiny bits of rice through the shirt threads and pass them among the other starving comrades. Hillenbrand weaves the action and the facts seamlessly with a steady clip. The facts in this novel-like book become as compelling as the sensational storyline.

Right: Louis Zamperini welcomed home by loved ones. For more photographs and another extensive interview see this Wall Street Journal article.

The B-24, cockpit, Louis’ home in the sky, was once described as “like sitting on the front porch and flying the house. Accidents, even on the homefront, were common with this massive air machine. In the Army Air Forces, there were 52,651 stateside aircraft accidents, killing 14,093 personnel.” But the B-24 didn’t kill Louis.

The author drives us reading passengers through air, land and sea in a literary way similar (to me) to Curtis Wilkie’s style in Fall of the House of Zeus. Her galloping sentences never wax into poetry or flowery prose yet they paint an unforgettable picture that entices readers of both genders, old and young. Do any of you remember back, a very long time ago, a television program called You are There? That’s how this author writes, as though we are there, right in the cockpit, in the endless Pacific, in the prisons.

Having been primarily a fiction reader during my twenty something years at Lemuria, I have recently discovered the joys of reading current nonfiction literature. If you like this book which is #1 on the bestseller’s list in this week’s Sunday paper, I would like to suggest two other “over the top” nonfiction reads, Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer (see Norma’s blogs) and John Valliant’s The Tiger. You really should read these books.

-Pat

Since reading Matterhorn I’ve caught myself flipping through every Vietnam book that comes in to the store. Some are classics like Michael Herr’s Dispatches or Malcolm McConnell’s Into the Mouth of the Cat, and there are an awful lot of less-than-classic books rehashing the same material. But James S. Robbins’ new book This Time We Win made me stop and read for a few minutes while I was working.

The full title, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive, reveals the focus of the book. The series of surprise North Vietnamese offensives that began in late January 1968 challenged the American military opinion that the Communist forces were incapable of launching a massive, coordinated attack. U.S. intelligence, interpreting enemy actions by the standards applied to American military forces, had judged the likelihood of a coordinated attack according to the relative strength of the North Vietnamese forces, rather than according to the apparent intentions of the North Vietnamese leadership.

The element of surprise couldn’t prevent massive losses for the North Vietnamese (it is estimated that some 45,000 were lost out of the attacking force of 80,000), and in the aftermath of the initial attacks, it became clearer to U.S. intelligence that the Tet Offensive was a last-ditch effort to maximize the remaining North Vietnamese military strength, and given the crippling losses inflicted on the attacking forces, there was a real possibility of military victory for the American and South Vietnamese forces. Robbins challenges the established interpretation of these events — that the American media and public, jaded by premature predictions of success, saw the Tet Offensive as just the latest and worst example in a long pattern of being lied to by military leadership, and in the critical moment of the war, media pressure was applied to stop a request for more American troops. Instead, Robbins argues that the failure ultimately was not the disillusionment of the American public, but the lack of clear policy and political will to follow the path to victory. The North Vietnamese leadership had pushed in all their chips, and won their gamble, not because of success on the field of battle, but because the demonstration of their utter and final committment to the war destroyed resolve within American political leadership.

Robbins covers this materal adeptly, linking the events overseas with the media and political reactions to form a clear narrative. Most interestingly, though, is not just his identification of this mechanism of military defeat, but how he boils it down to the component parts and applies it to other historical and contemporary events, with a particular focus on the disconnect between how Western military forces have approached the War on Terror and how insurgent forces now tailor their military efforts to induce a reluctant and wavering response from those who oppose them.

After standing for 10 minutes in the back room, flipping through This Time We Win and reading bits and pieces, I realized it was a book headed for the top of my reading pile. Come take a look at it and see if you have the same reaction.

Those of you with HBO are lucky because in a couple of weeks, The Pacific is going to air.  It’s a 10-part miniseries done by the same people who did Band of Brothers in 2001 (Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman), and so I think we can go ahead and get really excited.  Band of Brothers was fantastic.

The best part about all of this is that there’s an official companion book to this miniseries, written by Hugh Ambrose, who not only was Stephen’s son but also worked with him on many of his books.  The Pacific is a collection of five narratives, which Ambrose explains were chosen because they are representative of the vast experience that was the Pacific War.  And so we see the war from different angles, all of which are personal and vivid.  Ambrose gathered much of his information comes from diaries and photos and memoirs and other quite intimate sources, making for a book that is as comprehensive as any other out there, yet also as exciting as a first-hand account of the action.

I’m only about 60 pages into this book and already I’m overwhelmed by the simple fact of the war itself.  These stories are tremendously affecting.  One thing that’s struck me the most is how vast, new, difficult, and terrifying the Pacific War was.  It’s hard for me to fathom, especially since as a young person it has always been simply a fact of history rather than a colorful and uncertain event.  It’s been interesting reading about the emergence of the Marines as a crucial force in WW2, as well as the immediate, and varying, reactions these men had after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

We should have a few copies of this book in the store within the next few days (it’s not out quite yet) and even if you’re not planning on watching the miniseries on HBO, I recommend reading it.  As I said, I’ve still got to read most of this book but so far it’s fantastic.  As Ambrose himself points out in the introduction, there are lots of books about the Pacific War, each with their own place; there’s certainly room in the historiography of the war for this one.

Susie

We got a couple new good war books in today.

Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer, examines the life of Pat Tillman. Tillman gave up an NFL career to fight in Afghanistan, and was killed 2 years later. When it came to light that he had likely been killed by friendly fire (and that the circumstances of his death were possibly covered up by the U.S. Army), Tillman’s life and death became central to the national debate over the War on Terror. There have been a couple books about Tillman, but they have mostly been attempts to use his story for political purposes (on both sides of the debate) — this is likely the first balanced (and probably best-written) book on Tillman.

Also in today is The Good Soldiers, by Pulitzer Prize winner David Finkel. Following the Army Battalion 2-16, Finkel has delivered a ground’s eye view of the 2007 “surge” that was supposed to wrap up the ground war. We’ve been touting Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War as the best book on the War on Terror, but The Good Soldiers may give it a run for its money. When you pick it up, you’ll see blurbs from Rick Atkinson and Steve Coll, but what caught my eye is what Geraldine Brooks had to say:

“From a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of his powers comes an incandescent and profoundly moving book: powerful, intense, enraging. This may be the best book on war since the Iliad.”

Here’s a link to a cool video that was shot in our store on June 2nd when Reza Aslan was here for his new book How to Win a Cosmic War.

See John’s blog on Reza Aslan.