U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1957 Book Reviews

Class of 1957 Book Review Site. ©2007. To add a Book Review, or to comment on a book already in this listing, send your material or review to Sam Coulbourn at Persnav@shore.net. Photo at top of each page shows VADM C. Turner Joy (1895-1956). Joy was Commander Naval Forces Far East for most of the Korean War, presided over Armistice Talks with the North Koreans, and then came to Annapolis to serve as Superintendent. He was our Supe during our plebe year. Revised 3 August 2008.

Text Box: United States Naval Academy Class of 1957 Book Reviews

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Text Box: HISTORY The Russian Tradition By Tibor Szamuely, 1986. This is not an easy book to find, but I included it because it ranks among a very small number of the most important books I have ever read. It is in part a history of the recurring “advances” that promoted regression throughout Russia’s history. It offers an enduring recipe for revolution, embodied especially in Nechaev’s Revolutionary Catechism, a code that provides the underpinning for ardent revolutionaries even today. It enunciates a theory and practice of terrorism as a pattern of asymmetrical warfare that enables a dedicated minority to topple a less committed majority. In a brilliant chapter on the “intelligentsia,” Szamuely provides thirteen fundamental premises held by all generations of the intelligentsia. These premises are powerful notions, many of which are still held to varying degrees by the political left in the West, a factor in the historical reluctance of the left to be sufficiently critical of Marxist atrocities (political as well as physical) over the last century, and continuing today. You may be able to order this book from specialized booksellers, or perhaps find it in your library. It is well worth the search. Review by Paul Roush.
HISTORY Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution By Richard Gott, with photographs by Georges Bartoli, 2005. Veteran correspondent Richard Gott is a former Latin American correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. Gott’s account is very positive, very optimistic. He has produced an adoring, perhaps fawning story of Venezuela’s controversial and charismatic leader. Chavez has been plotting and stirring up a coup d’état in Venezuela for years, and he finally attempted it in 1992, but all the players didn’t show up, and it failed. However, it did allow him to capture the attention of the public, so that his face and name became familiar, and in December 1998 when he was elected president. In early 2002 Caracas was convulsed with angry demonstrations both for and against Chávez. Groups of retired officers, politicians from old political parties, union leaders and spokesmen for the Catholic hierarchy united to denounce his government; newspapers and private television stations kept up an “endless litany” of stories hostile to Chávez. A coup succeeded—Fidel Castro advised Chávez to preserve himself—and the opposition was seemingly in power. However, two days later, after army units captured key points, and his supporters rose up, Chávez was back in power, where he remains today. Gott’s account of this counter coup is detailed, and sounds like a comic opera. The political left of the world seem to admire Chávez, because he has championed the cause of the indigenous peoples, and all the poor, of Venezuela. He is openly anti-United States, and he has circled the globe gathering up friends amongst the opponents of the United States, notably Ahmadinejab of Iran, Castro of Cuba and Kim Jong-il of North Korea. He has formed a warm bond with Castro’s Cuba, and now provides that nation with oil at a bargain price, in return for a large-scale health-care program all over Venezuela, run by Cuban doctors and technicians, with medicine supplied from Cuba. There is little doubt that often the United States has backed dictators and despots in Latin America, often because they appeared to offer stability, but also perhaps because of cozy commercial ties. The question with Chávez is--- is his leadership actually producing economic and social improvement in his country? Hugo Chávez grew up in Barinas, in the foothills of the Andes, eight hours by bus from Caracas. He was born July 28, 1954. Both parents were schoolteachers. Chávez joined the army when he was 17, mostly because he saw it as a way to play baseball. He was a very good player. He entered the military academy and when he graduated, he received his sword from President Carlos Andres Pérez. Sixteen years later, in 1992, he tried to overthrow Pérez. As a country rich in oil wealth, with a young, bright and forceful leader, Venezuela could be a world leader. But will it, or will it be just another banana republic dictatorship, but with the extra money to make world-wide mischief? Review by Sam Coulbourn, November 2006. HISTORY A Short History of Nearly Everything By Bill Bryson, 2003. This is one of those books that should be read by everyone, and it should remain in their personal library. Making scientific discovery readable is a challenge for a writer: most scientists are encapsulated in their own arcane world and do not communicate well. Writers are mostly wordsmiths without a scientific bent or background. Bryson actually understands this "stuff", and can communicate it with a sense of humor that makes the failures, foibles, and occasional success stories of scientists interesting. (That he makes no serious attempt to discuss "String Theory" or “M-Theory" is gratifying because no reader would follow it anyway.) It is astonishing how many "facts" in science turn out not to be so, and indeed today's facts" are true only for today even "facts" that have unanimous current support. Until the 1970's there was no scientific recognition of plate tectonics, (although geologists working for oil companies knew it, oil geologists do not publish papers.) Similarly, the catastrophic demise of dinosaurs was not accepted until 1980. Neither plate tectonics nor catastrophic death of dinos may prove, eventually, to be true as we "know" today. Science is the ultimate dynamic. Reading of the personal foibles, intense personal jealousies, and downright bizarre behaviors of the brilliant scientists who have at least brought us to today's understanding is great reading and the "facts" as we now know them, are brilliantly described. Bryson can write and write with a British accent. Highly readable. A book that requires a new highlighter, and a patient spouse to whom you will read entire chapters, not just passages. HISTORY Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism By Stanley G. Payne, 1967 Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 316 pp. Paperback. In the early 1930s there was a lot of apprehension in Spain about the rise of the proletariat and the threat of communism. José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903-1936) was a young lawyer, son of a former dictator who seemed to have a lot of skill for organizing, and a dedicated zeal for building national syndicalism, or a rightist answer to organizing labor organizations, as opposed to the communist appeal for organizing labor. Author Payne, himself a distinguished historian of European fascism, and a conservative historian now retired, but attached to the University of Wisconsin, gives us a very detailed story of how José Antonio worked with leaders of various factions to develop a new Spanish fascist party. On July 17, 1936 troops in Spanish Morocco touched off a rebellion which grew quickly into the Spanish Civil War. The rebels were military people who were vaguely dissatisfied with their government, joined by the Carlists, an old right-wing organization that had the support of the Church, and many wealthy Spaniards. Primo de Rivera’s party1, a fairly small number of students and middle and working class workers who called themselves Falangists, and other groups of people who basically wanted to kill communists made up the Popular Front. At the time war broke out José was in prison, but Francisco Franco, an army general, picked up the leadership. The war began to fizzle shortly after it began, with victories only in two or so cities, and rebel troops dangerously short of ammunition. Franco quickly contacted Nazi German diplomats in Spain and soon Germany was supplying airplanes, trucks, tanks, ammunition and much more. The strong ties between the Falange and the Church distinguished it sharply from other European fascist organizations, especially after it joined forces with the Carlists, who were 1000% pro-church, ultra conservative. The government, supported by the left, approached the Soviet Union, and obtained armaments from them, so that the world began to see a sort of dress rehearsal for World War II—fascists vs. communists. José Antonio was killed by a firing squad in prison on November 20, 1936. Franco gradually changed nearly everything about the Falange that José Antonio had fought for, but still called this party Falange, and as the Civil War ended in April, 1939, Falange became the party of the state. Payne’s commentary about Franco is dismissive. Franco and his closest associates gutted the Falange of its “poetic” and its intellectual content, and Franco’s government throughout was aimed at protecting itself and perpetuating itself. Falange remained the party all during Franco’s rule, which ended with his death in 1975. The party exists in Spain even today, although it is no longer Partido del Estado. Payne’s history is very academic, loaded with details and names of Spaniards who may appear only once and never show up again. It lacks the flow of a good history for the less scholarly, and in some instances locks on phrases and assumes the reader understands them. For instance, José Antonio’s party was founded on syndicalism2, and it was devilishly hard to find out what this was really about. Thank goodness for Google. 1 Falange Española Independiente Frente de Estudiantes Sindicalistas Sindicato Español Universitario Juventudes Falangistas 2Syndicalism refers to a set of ideas, movements, and tendencies which share the avowed aim of transforming capitalist society through action by the working class on the industrial front. For syndicalists, labor unions are the potential means both of overcoming capitalism and of running society in the interests of the majority. Industry and government in a syndicalist society would be run by labor union federations. Review by Sam Coulbourn, September 2007. HISTORY Gulag, A History By Anne Applebaum, 2003 Ms Applebaum, a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post, won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, for this monumental work. She offers a sobering account of the Soviet Gulag ¾ labor camps that brought mass terror to real and alleged opponents of the Russian Revolution ¾ from their inception to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ms. Applebaum uses memoirs published in the ‘80s and research from Soviet archives not available earlier to construct her history. She begins with an historical perspective of the Gulag before describing the arrest, imprisonment, and transportation of prisoners to the camps, and their life, work, punishment, and escape or death in the camps. Unlike the Holocaust, very little has been written on the Gulag, since, to quote Ms. Applebaum, “To condemn the Soviet Union too thoroughly would be to condemn a part of what some of the Western Left held dear as well.” The author includes a splendid analysis of why Hollywood and the mainstream media are loathe to provide the same accounting of Stalin’s crimes against humanity that they routinely provide to Hitler’s Nazism. This is a book of profound importance. Ms. Applebaum writes, “This book (Gulag) was not written ‘so that it will not happen again,’ as the cliché would have it. This book was written because it almost certainly will happen again. Totalitarian philosophies have had, and will continue to have, a profound appeal to many millions of people.” Anne Applebaum’s book testifies to this truth lest we forget, lest we forget. Review by Paul Roush. HISTORY Night By Elie Wiesel, 1972, New translation, 2006. A dramatic first hand account of what it was like to suffer in the concentration camps during WWII. Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize brings home the cruelty of the Germans and what it would mean in the future if persecution is tolerated. HISTORY Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World By Margaret MacMillan. Foreword by Richard Holbrooke. 2003. New York: Random House. Trade paper. 570 pp. So many of the problems we have in the world can be traced back to the momentous Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. Whether we are talking about Japan, Israel, Iraq, Kosovo, Serbia, Poland, Russia, Europe, Africa— this conference got into it. Hitler blamed this Peace Conference for Germany’s troubles, and those troubles helped him to become Chancellor of Germany in 1933. This is the story of the elegant, elaborate peace conference hosted by the French, to settle the world after the turmoil of The Great War, which we now call World War I. The author, Margaret MacMillan, received her PhD from Oxford University and is a provost of Trinity College and Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She is the great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George. There were four key players at this conference: Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, who came with a widely publicized “Fourteen Points”; David Lloyd George, Britain’s Prime Minister; Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France; and finally, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Prime Minister of Italy. This conference attempted to restore boundaries to countries, and to create new boundaries of countries just being born, after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It created Yugoslavia from the stew of nationalities in the Balkans --- the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrans. It created Czechoslovakia. It brought Poland back into existence. It created Iraq and Lebanon, and gave Germany’s colonies away. In many ways, it created troubles that the world is having to deal with to this day. The Conference continued into 1920, but the principals left after settling with Germany – the main business of the conference. It’s a lively and intensely interesting book. Review by Sam Coulbourn, December 2007 HISTORY Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism By Peter Schweizer, 2002.
This book is not intended as a complete history of the cold war. From the flyleaf: "it is the story of Ronald Reagan’s personal and political journey as an anti-communist,-- and his central role in winning the struggle for global dominance.” Schweizer brings to light dozens of previously unknown facts about the cold war, based on secret documents obtained from archives in Russia, Germany, Poland, Hungary and the U.S.

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