In the Heart of the Sea

This last week on my business trip I read "In the Heart of the Sea" by Nathaniel Philbrick. This is the story of the sinking of the whale ship Essex and the 90 day, 4500 mile trip the survivors made in open lifeboats in the Pacific. The sinking was the inspiration for "Moby Dick", and Melville may have even met the captain of the Essex.

The physical and mental anguish these men went through is staggering - they survived on about 500 calories a day of hardtack, eventually running down to 200 calories or so. They eventually resorted to cannibalism, which probably saved the lives of the men who made it.

What I found most interesting was the way that the various leaders on the crew dealt with things. When the ship sunk, they were only something like 800 miles from the Societies islands. The captain said they should sail for those islands, but the first and second mates were terrified of cannibals (somewhat ironic, right?) so they talked the captain into a scheme that would, in optimal circumstances, give them about one or two extra days of starvation rations. It was a terrible plan, but the captain was shell shocked and didn't assert his command. The real kicker? There weren't any cannibals on the islands.

I thought this was a fascinating book, and an amazing story of what people can survive. I could have done with a little less graphic description of cannibalism, but it certainly drove home the point.

The Hatfields and the McCoys

Well I finished the book "The Hatfields and the McCoys" by Rice Otis.  I really enjoyed reading about my family history.  I grew up on some of the stories that the book covers, but it was fascinating to read just how long the feud lasted and how involved it was.  I didn't know that the Kentucky and West Virginia governors were so deeply involved in the political aspects of the feud.  The book was more historical and focused on historical documents rather than lore.  But Otis did a good job tying these documents together in a narrative form.  I really enjoyed reading it and it was a pretty short book (only about 130 pages or so).  Otis also did a pretty good job staying neutral and represented both sides of the feud well.  The pictures were fun to look at and I am pretty sure I saw my uncle John and his son John Richard in those pictures!  And the History Channel mini series does a good job of following the facts as Otis presented them.  I am enjoying watching the mini series, but is harder to see the violence than it was to read about it.  Over all I am proud to know about my ancestry and am thankful for the chance to learn more about it.

Between Silk and Cyanide

To speed things up, here's a link to the Amazon summary.

I really enjoyed this book - it's the memoirs of the British code master for their commando units during WWII. At the beginning of the war, the Brits were using a simplistic code based on picking a set of words out of a poem they had memorized and coordinated ahead of time with home base. Leo Marks, the protagonist, realized how vulnerable the codes were to interception and decoding, and designed a set of codes that were significantly more secure. The conflict between the eggheads who were designing codes and the directors who were running the agents is fascinating, and it's kind of surprising that we don't all speak German at this point, given how much politics went into fighting the war.

As an egghead, it was also really neat to read about someone who made a difference and saved lives in the field, even from the home base.

This book is quite long (600 pages?) but it is very well written. I could hardly put it down - he even makes frequency analysis exciting! The author later went on to write screenplays. Well worth a read if you like WWII history or cryptography.

Killing Lincoln

Tonight, I finished Killing Lincoln, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard.  This was a good pop-history account of Lincoln's assassination, but it was modeled way too much on a James Patterson mystery paperback for my taste. It has no references, very little background information, and the Notes section is an informal bibliography (most charitably). I had the hardest time with the insinuations that there was "more to the conspiracy than we know", presented without actually saying what the accusation was, or sourcing the accusation. The notes section mentioned a few "controversial" books, but it never said where the most out-there conspiracy theories came from.  It did helpfully note that the source for a lot of the conspiracy theory stuff has been thoroughly discredited by the historical community.

Basically, I thought this book did a good job of telling the story of the assassination, but it's not a useful piece of history writing, and if you'd paid attention in US history class, you'd have heard about 80% of it before. 

TL;DR: Good read, but feels like one of those History Channel shows you watch when you're home sick at 2 in the afternoon.

Patrick Henry First Among Patriots

I finished this fine history book written by Thomas Kidd. It is not for everyone as it is pretty thick history. Very interesting as it has some unique features to books about the founding fathers. I have read several. While this guy is no McCullough or Goodwin he writes well.

The book delves into George Washington more than most books of this nature. Henry and W (the first one) were born the same year and died 4 months apart They both cut their teath politically together in the House of Burgeses. The book writes plenty about W corresondence for which he was not known for.

Henry is most famous for his give me librty speech. He was a great orator and many of his contmporaries said he should stop at the oratory as his politcal skills were limited.

He was Govenor of Virginia 5 times (one year terms). He would serve a year and have to go back and run his business because he was not wealthy enough to serve the government. My how times have changed. I guess he was not a very good politician if he could not figure out how to get rich while serving. They have figured that out in Washington now.

He started out a s shopkeeper and failed, he was a bartender at his father's pub in the Virginia capital and became friends with Jefferson. Decided to change jobs and went and tested for the bar and became a lawyer. He was self educated as he only attended primary school- very well read in the classics. His first case was defending the state sponsored church against a bunch of priests suing for back wages. Preachrs were paid with tobaco and they petitioned the King to be paid in cash and won. A drouth came by and the price of tobacco skyrocketed and they petitioned the King;s court to revert back to tobaco payment and they did. They then sued the Virginia government for back wages. Henry who was a prominant Anglican defened the Church and won based on his arguement against English control of Virginia taxes and business. He won and spent the rest of his life on the same theme. It went downhill from there and you know the rest of the story.

He stood for religious freedom and state funding for all churchs or none at all. He proposed (or maybe just supported) a tax that would be sent to the churches and if you did not attend church you would not pay the tax. Sounds like the wrong incentives to me. It failed

He was at the front of supporting the revolution and going by the details of the book it is a wonder that the revolution succeeded. It was nip and tuck all of the way. He helped prevent a coup to remove Washington as head of the Continental Army in the dark days of Valley Forge. Washington was very grateful until the end.

Henry opposed the ratification of the Constitution. He was afraid a strong central government would only replace the King's tyrany. His was and others were so vocal and had such strong concerns that it resulted in the Bill of Rights which was written to restrict the powers of the Federal Government. He voted against ratification but after passage fell in line and stood against susession which was not out of the question for Virginia at the time.

He was a slave owner and like his contemporaries did not see the irony of freedom in a land of slavery. They sowed the seeds of the civil war but it would not be a union if slavery was outlawed as part of the formation of the nation.

The book is very detailed and not for everyone but it is a great book to show the not so pretty underbelly of the revolutionary process. Henry is not a first among patriots but he was an important and influencial figure in Virginia's role. Erin is decendent of the Henry family. Soemthing to be proud of.

My next book is on Mao the untold story. 800 pages so it will be a while until my next post

Max