The Quiet Americans

"He [Peter Sichel] paused, folded his hands neatly on the table before him. "And we also didn't think about history. If we had, we would have remembered that crusades always end badly." 

Tripped

If you had asked me, I couldn't have told you what connection, if any, psychedelic drugs like LSD had with WWII. Ohler's research connects the dots. 

Spy

Did she really know what she was signing up for when she accepted a position as a spy in Nazi-occupied France during WWII??? 

Code Name Madeleline by Arthur J. Magida

Passive Resistance

Magida reports a fascinating dialog that took place between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Buber over the effectiveness or the ineffectiveness of passive resistance in the case of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Noor Inayat Kahn, the daughter of a Sufi mystic herself and inclined toward non-violence, nonetheless seemed persuaded that some kind of active resistance was required.

Nonfiction

Picked up another couple of books at my local library—Norman Ohler’s Tripped and Arthur J. Magida’s Code Name Madeleine.

Midred Harnack

Finished reading Rebecca Donner's All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days. A very interesting follow-up to Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest. 

Expansionist Views

In Larry Gara's The Presidency of Franklin Pierce, he makes clear how the United States has long entertained "expansionist views", especially when it comes to various countries both north and south of our present borders. Strange, but true.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

"Indeed, a limited civil war was already raging in Kansas." -- Larry Gara

So could the violence and bloodshed that resulted from passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act maybe have been avoided had President Pierce been more even-handed in his policies toward the new territories? 

Diaries

I really appreciate seeing these snippets of handwriting from various diaries in Rebecca Donner's book.

Bonhoeffer

"Dietrich Bonhoeffer is inside the Castle Church in Wittenberg listening to Bishop Müller blabber on about the glories of Hitler." - Rebecca Donner

Fascinating & Disturbing

Finished reading Mark Braude's The Typewriter and the Guillotine last night. A very interesting take on life in France both before and during WWII as told through the lives of a journalist, Janet Flanner, and, rather shockingly, a serial killer, Eugen Weidmann. As fascinating as it is disturbing. 

Orgeval - Bordeaux

  

In Braude's The Typewriter and the Guillotine, Janet Flanner flees Paris to Orgeval (marked), then to the port city of Bordeaux, hoping there to catch a ship back to the United States.

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

Spotted this in my local bookstore and wondered if I might also find it in my public library. Huzzah! It was there and, better yet, available, perhaps because it was first published in 2021. 

Totalitarianism

It happened. (From Mark Baude's The Typewriter and the Guillotine) 

Hitler

"Her [Janet Flanner's] harshest criticism was that Hitler 'has mystical tendencies, no common sense, and a Wagnerian taste for heroics and death. He was born loaded with vanities andhas developed megalomania as his final decoration.'" - Mark Braude, The Typewriter and the Guillotine

Indians

 

  

"Fighting Indians provided a considerable amount of the United States' early nineteenth-century military experience, and much of that activity occurred during the Pierce years."

The Typewriter and the Guillotine

Brutal and gruesome opening chapter, so I had to temporarily put it down. Subsequent chapters, however, have kept me coming back for more.

The Election of 1852

 Gara's opening sentence in chapter 2 had me comparing our distance from the events of WWII to the distance of Franklin Pierce's election from the American Revolution.

Free Soilers & More

Free Soilers, Barnburners, Hunkers, Whigs, Democrats...oh my! How does anyone even begin to grasp the complexities of mid-19th century American politics! Evidently Larry Gara does in his "The Presidency of Franklin Pierce."

Private Ron Beal

I really appreciate how David O'Keefe concluded his book, One Day in August, with Private Ron Beal of the Royal Regiment of Canada "In 2012, after the real reasons for the Dieppe Raid were revealed to him, he said: 'Now I can die in peace. Now I know what my friends died for.'"