Hemingway At Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched An American Legend

The Washington Times ran my review of Steve Paul’s Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched an American Legend.

There have been books written about the late, great American writer Ernest Hemingway and his time as a cub reporter on the staff of the Kansas City Star, and there have been books written about Mr. Hemingway’s time in the Red Cross ambulance service in World War I, but Steve Paul has written an interesting book that combines the writer’s two dramatic experiences, both of which occurred during Mr. Hemingway’s 18th year.

“Hemingway is quite likely the American author of the twentieth century who has been the most argued about, dissected, and puzzled over to this day. His life grew to mythic proportions. His work, or much of it, remains canonical, inspiring, mysterious, and powerfully, surprisingly relevant to humans with a heart in a world shaped by war and anxiety. Popular culture retains him as a complicated force of nature. Books by and about him continue to make waves and news,” Mr. Paul writes in his introduction to “Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched an American Legend.”

Mr. Paul admits that the book’s emphasis on a single year of a great writer’s eventful and productive life is a “presumptuous slice of biography.”

 “But what a year it was,” Mr. Paul writes. “This was the year that Hemingway’s life of self-invention began.”

In that year Mr. Hemingway’s path toward becoming a world-famous writer began in the busy newsroom of a great American newspaper and would lead him to a near-death experience in a wartime trench in Italy.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/27/book-review-hemingway-at-eighteen-by-steve-paul/ 

The End Of Tsarist Russia: The March To World War I & Revolution

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Dominic Lieven's The Of Tsarist Russia: The March To World War I & Revolution in today's Washington Times. 

In the freshest of books marking the centennial of World War I, Dominic Lieven offers an explanation for the conflict that most western-oriented historians have ignored: “The war was first and foremost an eastern European conflict.”

As is well-recorded, the precipitant event for the war was the murder of the Austrian heir Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. Two weeks of diplomatic to-and-fro led to a war involving all European powers. Mr. Lieven, a British historian of Russian heritage, convincingly argues that at its core, the war was a confrontation between Russia and Austria, eastern Europe’s two greatest empires.

As he writes, France and Britain were drawn into what started as a conflict in eastern Europe above all because of fears for their own security: The victory of the Austro-German alliance over Russia would tilt the European balance of power toward Berlin and Vienna.

And, although victory was finally won by Britain and France on the western front, “the peace of 1918 was mostly lost in East Europe. The great irony of World War I was that a conflict which began more than anything else as a struggle between the Germanic powers and Russia to dominate east-central Europe ended in the defeat of both sides.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/6/book-review-the-end-of-tsarist-russia-the-march-to/

Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a review in the Washington Times of Nick Lloyd's Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I.

By the spring of 1918, both sides in World War I were reeling, with a “final chance” German offensive only adding to the hundreds of thousands of casualties already suffered on the battlefield. The defeat started serious discussions among German officials that perhaps it was time to sue for an end to the deadlocked war.

The allied armies, similarly battered, managed to muster enough strength to launch their own attempt to win the war, in what historians now call the Hundred Days Offensive. However, unlike the Germans, whose manpower pool for replacements had essentially gone dry, the Allies could rely upon the resources of a late entrant to the war, the United States military.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/24/hundred-days-the-campaign-that-ended-world-war-i/

Dark Invasion 1915: Germany's Secret War And The Hunt For The First Terrorist Cell In America

Gerard DeGroot reviewed Howard Blum's Dark Invasion 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America for the Washington Post.

‘How’s the book?” my daughter asked when I was reading “Dark Invasion.”

“It’s okay,” I replied. “But it’s more like a crime novel than a history book.”

“So?” came her response. “You like crime novels.”

And therein lies my problem.

Professional historians are often suspicious of history books that seek blatantly to entertain. We’re a sober lot, which is a polite way of saying that we’re frequently dull. We have a remarkable talent for distilling the rich commotion of human experience into something boring and lifeless. The historian able to convey the drama of the past in a captivating yet accurate manner is unusual.

Given their oppressive solemnity, my colleagues will probably not like “Dark Invasion.” In style, it’s more like Lee Child than Richard Hofstadter. It breaks all the rules of historical writing, wantonly and repeatedly. Yet, partly for that reason, it’s wonderfully gripping.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dark-invasion-1915-the-hunt-for-the-first-terrorist-cell-in-america-by-howard-blum/2014/02/07/e1a29fce-851b-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes To War

James Srodes at the Washington Times offers a good review of Max Hastings' Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes To War.

If you are as alarmed as I am over how the world’s political leadership — especially our own — seems to be a parade of imbeciles, then invest $35 and read about how the world slid into a similar global catastrophe almost exactly 99 years ago. While history does not repeat itself exactly, this book shows how close it can come.

The British editor and war correspondent Max Hastings over the past two decades has become the contemporary premier historian of 20th-century war. Most of his more than two-dozen books, such as his 2011 masterpiece, “Armageddon,” focus on World War II. But in this large and lavishly illustrated book, he examines just the final six months of a single year when the world descended from an idyllic, albeit unstable, age into the chasm of carnage and upheaval that is known as World War I.

The real strength of this story is how Mr. Hastings portrays the principal characters, not as stereotyped tyrants, greedy empire builders or mindless militarists, but rather as very real human beings with as many flaws as virtues. Most of all, they were prisoners of the times in which they lived and had to make decisions. In other words, a lot like the current crowd.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/23/book-review-catastrophe-1914/

Hemingway Transformed, 95 Years Later: Hemingway Not Only A Great Writer, But A Man Of Great Faith

 

Mary Claire Kendall at Forbes.com offers a piece on the late great writer Ernest Hemingway's faith.

In the summer of 1918, as World War I was entering its final bloody stages, Ernest Hemingway, like most American youth, answered the call to serve in this “war to end all wars.” Then, as now, the same sectarian and religious rivalries convulsed the world.

Within weeks, Hemingway was seriously wounded and nearly died. The experience would transform him into not only a great writer but a man of great faith. The former we know all too well—embodied in such epic works as A Farewell to Arms, made into an Oscar-winning film starring Gary Cooper, who would become Hemingway’s good friend. The latter we know little of. 

That the underlying theme of his writing—and his life—is “sanctity,” according to Hemingway scholar H.R. Stoneback, has everything to do with what happened in the heat of battle in Fossalta, Italy along the Piave River, and its immediate aftermath, 95 years ago today.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maryclairekendall/2013/07/08/hemingway-transformed-95-years-later/

The Zimmermann Telegram: Intelligence, Diplomacy And America's Entry Into World War I

Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of an interesting book by Thomas Boghardt called The Zimmermann Telegram.

On the morning of March 1, 1917, virtually every American newspaper published a bombshell story: a report on a telegram from the German foreign secretary,Arthur Zimmermann, proposing an alliance with Mexico. He offered his country’s support to Mexico for reconquering “the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona” in exchange for a Mexican attack on the United States should the Americans enter the war on the side of the Allies.

World War I had entered a crucial state in the winter of 1916-17, with neither the Allies nor the Central Powers having the resources to push through to victory. To be sure, the Allies had more soldiers on the battlefield. Nonetheless, the German army remained deep in French and Russian territory, and deadly submarine warfare deprived millions of people of the substances of life. War-weary populaces on both sides yearned for an end of watching their youth fed through bloody meat grinders.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/20/book-review-the-zimmermann-telegram/

I interviewed author and historian Thomas Boghardt (seen in the above photo) about the history of cyber warfare a while back for Counterterrorism magazine.

You can read the interview via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QAThomasBoghardt1.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QAThomasBoghardt2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QAThomasBoghardt3.jpg

A Review Of 'Death At Sea: Graf Spee And The Flight Of The German East Asiatic Naval Squadron in 1914'

Frank Wilson, my friend and former editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote an interesting review of Eric Dorn Brose' World War I naval history.

Mention World War I, and most people will likely think of trench warfare in Europe. They likely will not think of the Pacific Ocean.

But the conflict triggered by the assassination on June 28, 1914, of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was indeed a global conflict, fought on sea as well as land.

Drexel University history professor Eric Dorn Brose thinks historians have missed the boat by not paying enough attention to what went on in the Pacific during World War I. The conventional view, he says, is that "this was a kind of sideshow, not a particularly important aspect of the war. I think it was more important to the outcome of the war than has been realized."

You can read the rest of Frank Wilson's review in the Philadelphia Inquirer via the below link:

http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-02/entertainment/29730676_1_graf-spee-light-cruisers-catholicism