Category Archives: Books

Book Review – The Rejection Collection – Edited by Matthew Diffee

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I love cartoons of all types. While many people express dislike for the standard newspaper cartoons that are everywhere, I love them. But I also like cartoons featured in other places, like online or in magazines. And while I do appreciate the family-friendly, I’m not really a fan of censoring cartoonists. Which is where the Rejection Collection comes in.

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Here is a collection of wonderful cartoons that couldn’t appear in the New Yorker magazine for various reasons. Most of them are wondrously funny, and those that I personally don’t like will definitely be enjoyed by others. And since most of these cartoonists do work for the New Yorker, the jokes that might be distasteful are presented in at least an appropriate and (almost) intelligent manner.

Accompanying the cartoons is a collection of forms filled out by the various artists to represent themselves. These forms are somewhat tedious, but in many cases you get to find out fascinating and funny things. In other cases it’s clearly a joke, but at least you find out the cartoonist’s sense of humor. Occasionally there is one who unfortunately takes it seriously (I would if the New Yorker sent me a questionnaire), and these can be skipped. The drawing and answers in this portion really make the book, in my opinion, as otherwise it would just be a collection of mostly obscene jokes done by New Yorker cartoonists. And while there is a market for that thing (I would buy it if I had a lot of money laying around, while I’d buy this with just a little more money than I currently have, as my copy was a gift). The cartoons are fun though quite fast, and the only thing that makes this a book and not a collection of cartoons are the forms.

This book is a wonderful insight into both the heads of cartoonists and what will and will not get published. It is hilarious and well drawn. The execution is what one would expect from the New Yorker: excellent.

Book Review – No Man’s Land: 1918 – The Last Year of the Great War – John Toland

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No Man’s Land by John Toland is a book about the First World War, as the abundance of evidence in the title suggests. It is a very comprehensive and lengthy account of the war, throughout using many official memos, documents, and various journals to showcase the varying perspectives on both sides of the conflict. While mainly focusing on the Western Front, the infant Soviet Union is also talked about a bit (perhaps too much), though the various other sides of the war in the Middle East, the Italian front, and the Bulgarian front are glazed over. And that is for the better in the larger narrative. The book is really about the famous hell that was the trenches in 1918.

This was the best photo of the cover I could find, mine is quite different but doesn't work in a photo

This was the best photo of the cover I could find, mine is quite different but doesn’t work in a photo.

And what a hell the book paints it to be. But far from the illogical slaughter it is usually made out to be (okay, not that far) this book made me realize that in the situation, it made good military sense. With faster transportation and longer ranges and accuracy of weapons, a larger front was needed to contain an enemy army. With a longer front comes a higher need for cover, and without tanks to break enemy lines, massive artillery barrages are the only way the trench defensive networks could be broken through. Now, this might not be what the book intended to tell me. But it gives the reader a good enough feel for the people involved that I believe they could simply have not reached another conclusion about how the war should be waged. And even though the trenches were a grinding hell, the book accurately depicts the great surges that were required to break the lines, and the enormous amount of movement needed to capitalize on a victory.

The book runs through many battles, all along the front, by the various forces. All accounts are of people who lived through the war (for obvious reasons). From Patton strolling through the battlefield, collecting retreating units and sending them forward again; to the British artillery officer Patrick Campbell, who dealt with a series of characters and ineffectual commanding officers; to the German Franz Seldte, in charge of creating motion pictures out of battlefield scenes. Through talks of both advances and retreats, where 90% casualties were easily expected, and communication so limited that individuals had little to no idea what they were supposed to be doing. Up to the Field Marshals: Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and Paul Hindenburg. And it ends with the politicians: Prime Minister Lloyd George, representative Colonel House, Premier Clemenceau, and Chancellor Prince Max.

The book covers from high to low all throughout the year in a very well researched and orderly manner. Everything is presented, as a historical book should, in a manner that does not judge, but only tells. The reader is left to make their own judgments about each of the various people presented. The author seems to put more into judging people who later wrote biographies and deleted some of the more rousing passages from various texts, though that is left to the footnotes.

The things that are presented in extravagant detail and the things that are almost glossed over are sometimes puzzling, as is the reasoning of which get better treatment, but that is very little of the book. Overall, it is quite excellently written, and a great in-depth look at the final year of the Great War. The things everyone knows, and the things only the few would know are all presented fascinatingly.

It is a bit of a disappointment to me that the negotiations preceding the Treaty of Versailles and the treaty signing itself were kept out of the book, but it was already at 450 pages when it does end, just after the armistice celebrations. It took me more than a month (with a vacation where I didn’t read much) to finish the book, and the pages are dense enough that going is slow. This, of course, does not diminish the quality of the work.

If one is at all interested in the last year of the first Great War, and has the time to devote to this book, it is great for both the casual and historic reader, with its only detriment being its length, and some might consider that a bonus.

Book Review – Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power – By Andrew Nagorski

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Hitlerland is an amazing title for a book, and it was one of the lesser titles in a set of books I picked up one day that I hope to read. Still, it was one of the first that I wanted to actually read.

hitlerland-book-cover

Hitlerland covers a period from 1922 to 1942, and follows American journalists, diplomats, and military attaches in Germany from that period. It attempts to display their feeling and ideas as they were at the time and generally not colored by hindsight, though many times the author will jump in with what the person said later, showing their changes in attitude and/or willingness to admit they made mistakes. Many different pieces of writing, letters, postcards, published and unpublished manuscripts, and more, are used in an attempt to show what these people were doing and how they were feeling during these historic decades.

And I believe it works well. The people are laid out in such a way that they can be judged, but really it’s more interesting to see where they are taken. Whether or not some of these people underestimated the Nazis, or wanted to aid them against the communists, or give the communists aid against them, is much less interesting than how they arrived at their conclusions.

There is a wide variety to be had with the book. Their varying jobs, from radio broadcaster, newspaper reporter, ambassador, diplomat, and military attache are fleshed out to an extent and serve to show how each one would act differently to gain different types of information and be treated differently by the Nazi government. The “story”, which is really a loose conglomeration of anecdotes about Nazi Germany, is well told and exciting. I quite enjoyed the book. It’s one of those with the pictures printed in the middle, though, so one has to be careful with them to not look too far or miss out at the end. (Someone should format the pictures better, maybe with corresponding page numbers). It is a fascinating look from a different perspective, and one often not considered, about the post-WWI German era. And like all sane books, Hitler is indeed condemned, though some of the figures in the book are late, or cautious, in doing so.

If I had any complaints other than formatting, (The hardback also comes with the uneven cut (deckled) sheets that just make it harder to read) it would be the ending is a bit lackluster. It ends rather abruptly after summarizing an amount of time that would’ve take twice the number of pages at least earlier in the book. There is the indication that nothing much happened in the later times.

It’s a good book, but one for those who know some about WWII coming in. It is by no means an introduction, except to the concepts of American correspondents in Berlin during the period leading up to and under Nazi rule. It’s like and introduction to an advanced course. So, if you’re interested, I’d recommend reading up on some other WWII and inter-war things first before diving in. But I believe you will enjoy if you are interested.

Book Review – Halo: The Cole Protocol By: Tobias S. Buckell

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Halo: The Cole Protocol is one of the later books in the Halo novel series to feature characters from the games. Later books focused more on aliens from the distant past. Still, the book is more than five years old, and I’m only looking at it because I read it after picking it up second hand, not because it’s relevant.

Kinda generic cover really

Kinda generic cover really

I’m going to try and not focus on the story, because the whole thing sounds silly when you say it out loud; and to avoid confusion, as I’m not the most up on the Halo lore. From what I understand it is cannon, but sometimes it seems to not be.

The book is written decently, though it seems more like a draft. There are some very clunky transitions, and a spelling error here and there. The narrative does flow, and I’m not sure whether I’m just enthralled with the Halo universe, or the book is super good, but I read fast and didn’t want to stop.

It doesn’t interfere with any of the established Halo lore, so people infatuated with the franchise wouldn’t be frustrated reading it. Even so, it deals with quite a bit, and jumps around so much that one-page chapters are more frequent than I’ve seen outside of the work of Michael Crichton.

The point of view is interesting and the narrative compelling. I liked many of the characters, perhaps even the ones I wasn’t supposed to, and empathized with them, but maybe that’s me and not the writer at work. It looks at the world of Halo from a variety of perspectives including that of an alien enemy. Still, it isn’t anything more than a video game tie in. The Spartans of Grey team and the Covenant Elites aren’t any more flushed out or dramatic than their video game counter parts. It’s really just mindless fun (kinda, a lot of characters die, something else similar to Crichton).

If you’re a fan of Halo and missed this one it’s worth at least a look, though new I’m not sure I’d go for it. It was fun, but there isn’t much there. Beyond that I could only really see it appealing to more dedicated science-fiction fans who read any sci fi book they can get their hands on. Anyone looking for a serious book won’t find it here, but if they were looking, they’d be looking in the wrong place.

Book Review – The Pig that Wants to be Eaten

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The Pig that wants to be Eaten (By: Julian Baggini) is a moderately confusingly titled book that is exactly what its subtitle says it is, 100 experiments for the armchair philosopher.

I think the cover I got is the best design-wise

I think the cover I got is the best design-wise

These experiments are mostly one-page summaries of philosophical dilemmas, followed by two pages of explanation. Usually the explanation covers both sides of the problems that are usually one way in and two-ways out. There are a few of them where three options will get you out, but that is generally discouraged. And in the context of the book, if you can find four or more ways to solve the problem, you’re thinking about it too much. These experiments are meant to force you to solve a specific problem to your satisfaction, not skirt around the issue.

To the author’s credit, he does provide a generally non-biased explanation of either side, and good comparisons to reality where one is not often present in the more abstracted and fanciful way the stories are placed. They are very metaphorical, and a lot more fun to think about that way. Their parallels are oftentimes difficult to guess, and aside from a rather heavy-handed abortion metaphor, this can make guessing where this would apply in one’s life part of the fun. 
And the book is quite fun. I hope it wasn’t meant to be very serious, because if it was it failed.

Its simple language and short section format make it easy to understand. And it still makes one think rather deeply about things that seem quite simple. While some of the topics may be absurd, that is the point. By eliminating a factor, and all natural variations that would occur, one can present a scenario that gets to the real heart of the problem being discussed, and since it is all in one’s mind, the usual methods for getting out of a hard decision are gone, and one has no choice but to provide an answer within the guidelines of the question.

If you read the book and do not question what each person in their various scenarios should do I’m not sure why you picked up this book. Though the limitations of presenting these “experiments” in a single page can be frustrating, the amount of complexity is surprising for the small size.

In other words I quite liked the book, and if you fancy yourself an armchair philosopher, or would like to look a little deeper into why you make the decisions you do I’d give it a try. Philosophy is something everyone can dip their toes into. I might even look into getting the sequel.