2016 – Justin Daniel

This is a list of the books I read in 2016. All the reviews were written in 2016 and are archived on this site in (roughly) the order I read them in.

Book Reviews 2016

The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-boats, William Geroux

January 14, 20202016Mathews County is located in Virginia, and in order to find it, you have to want to go there. Farmers still leave trucks full of produce out on the side of the road where you can pay for fresh vegetables and fruits on the honor system. There is just a two lane road that runs through the central part of the city, where the courthouse and other administrative buildings lay. It hasn’t changed much since the 1940’s, where the majority of men from Mathew’s County men were mariners who worked on ships run by the Merchant Marines. And in these few details lies a story that is inextricably linked to the greatest conflict the world has ever known and how a family from this backwoods place worked to fight against the evil Nazi regime. One of the most overlooked details of World War II was the Atlantic war where ships carrying supplies to Europe from America were systematically gunned down in the Atlantic Ocean. America was neutral until 1942 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but under Roosevelt, they supported the Allies in the East by shipping weapons, supplies, and ammunition to England and France. Obviously, Hitler couldn’t stand for this and while angering the Americans might lead to them declaring war on Germany, Hitler thought this inevitable; therefore, he waged a fierce war for the German U-boats (the precursor to the submarine) to take down ships of the Merchant Marine’s on their trek to Europe. At the beginning of this engagement, German U-boats were tasked with destroying ships around Europe. But soon, their focus spread to the American mainland. As early as 1942 when Hitler declared war on America, U-boats were routinely seen off the coast of North and South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. The Merchant Marine ships were not equipped with any sort of defensive capabilities and were pretty much sitting ducks. Hundreds of ships were lost in 1942 to U-boat attacks. This book follows seven brothers (as the title suggests) from Mathew’s County as they risked their lives to continue the supply chain to Europe. What emerges is a story of heroism and courage in the face of imminent danger. Most of the young men joined the Merchant Marines when they came of age. And although they were dodging bullets from downrange, their sacrifice is not to be overlooked. The dangerous waters of the Atlantic produced a ship graveyard that is still being studied today. In 1943, the Navy began assigning groups of ships to protect the assets crossing the sea. While I don’t have the exact statistic, ship casualties went from around 800 in 1942 to around 300 in 1943 as the government began to deal with the growing crisis. After the European war ended, ships were diverted to the Pacific to carry supplies for the war against the Japanese, and while the dangers of U-boats passed, the Merchant Marines never stopped. A quote I recently read is from Alexander the Great, where he is purported to have said, “My logisticians are a humorless lot… they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” Alexander understood the importance of logistics in the war effort. So too we have to recognize that the Merchant Marines played an integral part of the American military machine in World War II, no matter how un-sexy it is. It’s much more interesting to read about Easy Company in the European theater or the Marines on the island hopping campaign. But without the critical supplies from people like the Mathew’s men, there would be little success on the battlefield. So tip your hats and kiss a logistician the next time you see them and thank them for making things work. [...]

Napoleon, Felix Markham

January 14, 20202016I have always found the person of Napoleon fascinating. When I was in Paris last year, I went to a place called Les Invalides. There is a chapel there that houses some of France’s most memorable leaders. Enshrined in that place lies the grave of Napoleon that attracts millions of visitors every year. But Napoleon has been described in history as the first dictator; a tyrant; a radical; and an emperor. But what makes Napoleon so special, and why is he still considered one of France’s heros? Well I think Felix Markham presents Napoleon is a balanced way in this book, “Napoleon.” I have often wanted to read a book on Napoleon, but in order to understand Napoleon, you have to understand the French Revolution. Earlier this year, I reviewed a book for a class I had to take on the French Revolution and Napoleon. I reviewed William Doyle’s book “The Oxford History of the French Revolution” which was a great introduction to the time Napoleon found himself in. Napoleon grew up in Corsica, which was an island in the Mediterranean south of France. It was always a contested island, and the French invaded it around the time Napoleon was born. Napoleon’s father and mother were freedom fighters for the small island nation, but succumbed to French rule. Napoleon never forgave his father for this treachery. As he grew up, he went to school on mainland France and eventually found himself enrolled in a military school where he was to become an artillery officer. When he became an artillery officer, he never really had a chance to ascend through the ranks because in the old regime (see my review of the French Revolution to understand this), the nobility were the only people who could advance far into the military. When the French Revolution happened, this did away with the old regime and Napoleon won a decisive battle against the English. He was promoted to Brigadier General and eventually put in charge of the French Army that was to conquer parts of Italy. In the Italian campaign, Napoleon won victory after victory with his brilliant military tactics. The government was very poor and his troops had not been paid for some time; Napoleon won the confidence of his men by allowing them to gather the booty of Italian treasures and they charged through the land. Paintings, statues, gold, coins, ancient antiquities were all liquidated to France during these campaigns. After the Italian campaigns, Napoleon devised a plan to halt the British dominance in the Western world. It would be near suicide to invade the British mainland, so Napoleon would strike at the British colony of Egypt. In the Egyptian campaign, Napoleon again found his mark as he conquered the land. Unfortunately, his entire fleet was shipwrecked by the British, stranding Napoleon and his men in Egypt. Napoleon, seeing events in France progress to the point where a power vacuum was coming, made his way back to Paris to take advantage of the situation. Eventually Napoleon orchestrated events to where he would become the defacto dictator of the country. This stabilization was actually ultimately good for France; what was not good was the wars that ensued. Napoleon wanted complete power, and he instituted himself as Caesar of the French Empire. Following this, he took to Prussia and Russia where he won victories at places such as Austerlitz that demonstrated he was in total control. Napoleon’s fatal mistake came in his assault into Russia. He was stymied that Spring into the summer, and the cold came upon the Le Grande Armee before they reached Moscow. When they did eventually get to Moscow, there was no one there to strike up a peace deal; rather, the Russians had set fire to the city. Defeated, Napoleon set off for France as his army continued to dwindle. The cold, lack of food, and attacks from the cossacks continued to drain his numbers. Just over a million set out to conquer Russia and only around 10,000 returned. Napoleon built up another army but it wasn’t enough; he had to capitulate and was sentenced to exile in Elba. He wasn’t there for long however; he broke free of his imprisonment and set out to Paris. He regained control and fought one last decisive battle at Waterloo with a coalition of forces against him commanded by the British. He lost this last battle and was sentenced to exile on St. Helena where he died sometime later. You can see that the legacy of Napoleon is mixed; on the one hand, he somewhat strengthened and saved France from the democratic disaster of the previous decade. The French Revolution took a toll on the people and Napoleon brought stability and order to chaos. And Napoleon was in all regards a genius. He was a tactician whose skills would only be dwarfed by men like Rommel in Italy and Africa. But on the flip side, he was brutal and took massive risks that endangered the French warriors of the time. He did a lot of harm to France mixed in with the good. Napoleon’s legacy is difficult. But one thing is for sure; he is a very interesting character to study. I think Markham’s brief study on Napoleon is palatable enough for both the novice and the ardent historian. [...]

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, David McCullough

January 14, 20202016I’m on a McCullough kick after reading the acclaimed 1776. This book piqued my interest because I visited Paris last Spring. It looked interesting and I wondered at what treasures it contained. It is a little bit deceiving, I think however. While this is a history of Americans in Paris in the 19th century, it also works as a history of Paris and even larger, France, in the 19th century. It coincides with my Western Civilization II class I’m taking nicely however. We just made it into the mid 19th century so I was pleasantly surprised to find some correlating information between the two sources. The book essentially is about how artists, painters, sculptors, writers, inventors, and politicians made their way to Paris and as a result, were impacted in a way that changed the course of their lives and of the nation that they represented. I’ll give you an example: Samuel Morse was a painter who made his way to Paris in the 19th century. He had painting gigs at the Louvre. Popular at this time was creating miniatures of famous paintings in the Louvre. He developed a friendship with James Fenimore Cooper who wrote the famous book “The Last of the Mohicans.” His time in Paris led him to think up an extraordinary invention: people could type out messages via an electrical current to be received, decoded, and given to the recipient from miles and miles away. He called this, the telegraph. He invented his own system of dashes and dots called “morse code.” Much of this book, at no surprise, focuses on great artists who found their stride in Paris. Among these were sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. But the impact of Paris on artists in the 19th century reaches beyond this. For example, Harriet Beacher Stowe wrote one of the most famous pieces of American literature, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and was a guest in the great city for a period of time. An early portion of the book focuses on medical students who came to Paris for training. At this time in America, the collegiate opportunities for medicine were limited and Americans came to Paris to further their studies quite often. The first female doctor in America was trained in Paris. Politics also take up some portion of the book. Elihu Washburne was the American Ambassador and lived in Paris through the Frano-Prussia war and the siege on Paris. What I enjoyed about this book was that it is not simply a history of Americans in Paris, but a history of Paris. Each story is a microcosm of a larger picture that needs to be explained. What we tend to forget about history is that the siege at Paris by the Prussians was a real, historical event that affected real, living people. It’s easy to read a sentence or a paragraph about how terrible things were, but it’s quite another thing to look at a particular human being, tummy growling, cooking rats for food, that brings history to life; it is not merely concepts or big pictures, but how events transpired and affected people. I like that about this book, and I like it even more because I’ve been to this great city and I can picture some of the images presented. For the historian or the layman, I think this is an intriguing book worth your time. [...]

A Little History of Philosophy, Nigel Warburton

January 14, 20202016I suppose this seems to be the year of philosophy and history for me. After reviewing Douglas Groothuis’, “Seven Sentences” and others, I’ve been bitten by the philosophy bug. I could resist when I saw this little book that I thought might provide a different perspective. Last year, I read R.C. Sproul’s “The Consequences of Ideas” which is essentially what this book is about: a history of philosophy. In addition, Francis Schaeffer’s “How Should We Then Live” largely examines similiar themes. But both of these histories of philosophy come from the Christian tradition, worldview, and bias. What I appreciate about Nigel Warburton’s work is that it does come from a different perspective. And although I disagree with a good amount of his conclusions, I can appreciate the evenness of this particular work for its objectivity. The history of philosophy is not an easy task. Particularly for a book of this size. Warburton examines a philosopher at every chapter, and there are 40 chapters in the book. Therefore, there is not a whole lot of room to get wordy. The typical chapter goes like this: a introductory question or statement; a brief biographical sketch of the philosopher; some of his main ideas, his contributions to philosophy; a conclusion demonstrating on how his philosophy was built on by the next philosopher. What follows then is a cohesive narrative of philosophy through the ages. I feel as if this book is particularly aimed at those who want to cut their teeth on philosophy but are somewhat confused as to where to start or who to read. A few notes about philosophy: Warburton makes clear that philosophy, directly translated, is the love of wisdom. But it’s much more than this. From Ancient Greece we have the views of Socrates (the “Gadfly of Athens”), Plato, and Aristotle who thought deeply about life, cosmology, and reality. The views of these men would be built upon by almost every philosopher post their time. In fact, most of the philosophers between Socrates and the 19th century were eminently concerned about theology in relationship to philosophy. It was almost universal that a philosopher believed in a transcendent being; an “uncaused first cause” that set the universe in motion comes from Plato and Aristotle. Augustine of Hippo, the famous theologian, philosopher, and historian whom I wrote about here, absorbed some of the platonic sophism in his own philosophical musings. Other prominent philosophers of the medieval time include Boethius who wrote “the Consolation of Philosophy” (the book in which Ignatius Riley is obsessed with in “The Confederacy of Dunces”) in which he posited that the world is like a wheel of fortune which spins and gives good luck to the fortunate. The trio of thinkers that heavily impacted our own Republic were that of Rene Descarte (I think, therefore I am; more thoughts here), John Locke (blank slate theory), and Blaise Pascal (Pascal’s wager was if Christianity is not true, you just waste time at church during your life; if it is true, then the consequences outweigh the time wasted in church). It isn’t until Darwin, not a true philosopher, that the shift of philosophy takes place. Darwin’s ideas gave sufficient credence to thinkers to usurp the position of God. If the existence of man could be proved to have taken place outside of a divine creator, then there is no reason to suggest that God exists at all. We see this transition in Frederick Nietzsche (who was purported to have said that “God is dead”), the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud and others. The rational school of thought predated modernism in this time (see Kierkegaard) well. The next major shift in philosophy occurred at the end of World War II, where post-modernism, the idea that truth is relative to the beholder and the community, came to full force. The last chapters of the book deal with philosophy in the last 20 years. Warburton asks the question, “Are computers living beings?” All of this is very interesting and this is a particularly useful book to get an overview of philosophical thought in a condensed form. Not every issue is taken up with these philosophers but this book would be massive if it was. A great volume on an important topic. [...]

Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill, Mark Lee Gardner

January 14, 20202016In 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana. Americans were quick to blame the Spanish and what followed would become the Spanish-American War. President McKinley, with permission from Congress, enacted an order to recruit a volunteer outfit to help drive the Spanish from Cuba. What would ensue would be the brainchild of then Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Leonard Wood: the Roughriders. The order specified only 1,250 men could participate in the force from 4 states: New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas. But with Roosevelt’s legacy at that time, everyone wanted to be a part of his outfit. Thousands applied to be roughriders and Roosevelt made exceptions for those not from the four states mentioned. For example, millionaire businessmen from New York City and college dropouts from Harvard and Yale were accepted and joined the force. Teddy had to turn down many who wanted to be a part of the force but were cut because of lack of space. They were chosen and assembled in San Antonio. Their training included basic infantry training and mounted combat. As a volunteer force, you wouldn’t necessarily think that these men would be the most disciplined, but quite the opposite was true. They drilled hard and retained order and acted as a cohesive unit. They were shipped out to Tampa, Florida to await their final destination: Cuba. Complications ensued where only a fraction of the unit was to be shipped out to Cuba. When they finally got there, conditions were poor. Men battled disease, lack of food and shelter among other inconveniences. One recurring issue Gardner points out in the tenure of the Rough Riders was the poor logistics battle they faced. Even from their training, they found weapons, food, tents, and other essential supplies difficult to come by. Since the unit was poorly financed by the government, Teddy often spent his own money to make the men feel more at home. Gardner gives an example of this when, during training in San Antonio, Teddy and the men happened to come upon a beer garden where Teddy ensued to pay for a beer or two for all the men. At the end of the campaign when food was particularly scarce, Teddy went to Santiago and paid, with his own funds, for an enormous amount of food which was transported to the troops. Lastly, after the troops were returned home, they were quarantined for four days; unfortunately, they were given the same moldy food they had been eating on the ship for weeks. Teddy put in a rush order of fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, cigars, and other provisions from New York City which he footed the bill himself. The first fighting the Rough Riders experienced in Cuba was the Battle of Las Guasimas. Only lasting about an hour and a half, the Rough Riders took the outpost at Santiago with 8 dead and around 30 wounded. The next event would make history: After taking the outpost, the troopers came upon an extremely well entrenched Spanish position at San Juan Hill. After being stymied by the intense fire and confusion with the regular troops, Roosevelt believed the only solution was a full on charge up the hill. Roosevelt was on his trusted steed, Little Texas and ordered a charge. When he turned around to see the men following him, there were only about 6 troopers with him. Realizing that the sounds of war made it difficult to hear, he ordered the men to sat put while he went to fetch the rest of the men. What followed was the infamous charge up San Juan Hill that has forever become an integral part of the lore of American history. This book is a really interesting look at the history behind the Rough Riders and the legacy they left behind. It is also an incredible guide to what being an officer should look like. Roosevelt understood servant leadership and really put his men before himself. Who can imagine these days an officer footing the bill to feed thousands of troops? Because the force was a volunteer regiment, conventions that might have been looked down upon in the active military were able to get by in the volunteer force. And this isn’t to take away from the Army Soldiers and the Buffalo Soldiers who fought during these engagements. Roosevelt would attribute the success of the Rough Riders to these brave men. Of course, Roosevelt would go on to become President of the United States. This chapter in his life would be incredibly impactful to his policies and thoughts on national security. Furthermore, he never forgot about his troopers. He would visit with veterans of the Rough Riders throughout his presidency as well as appointing some of them to public office. Mark Lee Gardner has done a wonderful job at connecting the intricacies of this story into a coherent and delightful read. It was never dry and is perfectly suited for the audiobook format. [...]