Book Review: Coffin Corner Boys by Carol Engle Avriett

Coffin Corner Boys: One Bomber, Ten Men, and Their Harrowing Escape from Nazi-Occupied France by Carole Engle Avriett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While they had been substitutes on other missions, this was their first mission together after arriving in England and it would turn out to be their last. Coffin Corner Boys by Carol Engle Avriett features the stories of the 10-man crew of a downed B-17 bomb in occupied France and how they survived not only through her own research but through interviews and first-person accounts by the flyers themselves.

The newly arrived crew piloted by a 20-year-old George W. Starks left for their first mission, occupying the coffin corner—so named for being the most vulnerable to fighter attack—position in the flying formation due to being the least experienced in the squadron. They were shot down and those able to parachute to safety landed in occupied France three months before D-Day, their options were to get to Switzerland or Spain before being taken as prisoners of war. As it happened all three options happened to the crew as George Starks on his own and a few others as a group were able to get to Switzerland with help, a few were able to get to Spain with help, and the rest were eventually captured by the Germans and taken to POW camps in Germany. While Avriett is the main author, Starks is the primary contributor through interviews he had given and written accounts so much so that this could have been “The George Starks Story” but as one learns when reading this book that would not have been the George Starks way when it came to his crew. All the flyers’ stories are absorbing from two crewmembers’ harrowing last moments before making it to Spain to the crewmembers who survived in POW camps or later the death match to no where in the last months of the war.

Coffin Corner Boys tells the stories of survival by a crew of a downed B-17 bomber over occupied France that keeps the reader interested in a book that is less than 250 pages long. Carol Engle Avriett using research, interviews, and written recollections from all the crewmembers—especially by George W. Starks—brings page-turning read from those interested real-life military stories.

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Book Review: The Tower of Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski

The Tower of Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As the second Nilgaardian war continues, the search for a certain missing Princess from Cintra by various factions from both sides of the conflict including a newly dubbed knight from Rivia is getting more frantic. The Tower of Swallows is the fourth novel of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher saga as Geralt and his cadre continue their search for Ciri while she suddenly finds herself drawn to the titular tower.

There is a myriad of storylines that are centered around Ciri, either from her point of view or from other people looking for her with mixed results for themselves. While the action and the storylines themselves were very good, the way they were framed is the major issue for me. Apart from Geralt’s arc and the climax of the novel, every storyline was seen in flashbacks and frankly I wasn’t in the mood for that style of storytelling for most of the book. Don’t get me wrong I have no problem with flashbacks as a storytelling device, but after the previous book this was not exactly what I was looking forward to especially since this book is the penultimate installment of the main saga. Given all of that I liked how Ciri’s character was given more depth throughout the book and frankly that was needed for me to care about what’s her fate be the end of the next book.

The Tower of Swallows is an alright novel in the Witcher saga, Andrzej Sapkowski’s decision to mostly do flashbacks for most of the book is why after finishing I didn’t feel satisfied.

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Book Review: A Treatise on Tolerance and Other Writings by Voltaire

A Treatise on Tolerance and Other Writings by Voltaire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A man loses his son to suicide then the local religious fanatics claim he murdered his son because his son was about to change his religion to theirs and then tortured him to death, no this is not a country in the modern Middle East this is pre-Revolutionary France. A Treatise on Tolerance and Other Writings by the French Enlightenment thinker Voltaire who looks to exonerate a man of accused of killing his son and the religious fanaticism that inspired the injustice.

In reaction to the 1762 miscarriage of justice relating to the suicide of Marc-Antione Calas that ultimately led to the execution of his father Jean by religious fanatics “out for justice”. The whole affair caused a scandal resulting in the philosopher Voltaire became the champion for justice for the surviving Calas family, which brought about this Treatise. Voltaire describes the fatal events of the night of Marc-Antione’s death with evidence that he was for a time had studied how to take his own life, that the timing of his death around the celebration of the anniversary of a well-planned massacre of Huguenots—French Protestants—in Toulouse during the Wars of Religion that led to conspiratorial stories about Jean killing his son because he wanted to convert to Catholicism while ignoring that he had been fine with a younger son already doing that, and the total lack of justice in the entire process. The Treatise of Tolerance then becomes a clarion call for religious toleration while also attacking religious fanaticism—Voltaire specifically points to French Jesuits of his time with able arguments—and the superstition surrounding religion that leads to situations like in Toulouse. Voltaire also writes excellent endnotes that are very informative, though the decision of the publishers of this edition to put those Notes at the end of the book and not at the end of the chapters was a bit annoying. This is one of the most important works of philosophy and religion from the Enlightenment era for those that support the freedom of religion and are opponents to religious fanaticism.

A Treatise on Tolerance and Other Writings is a very well written defense of a wrongly executed man while arguing for religious tolerance and against religious fanaticism by the Enlightenment’s best known philosopher, Voltaire.

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Book Review: The Undiscovered Jesus by Tim Crosby

The Undiscovered Jesus: Hidden Truths from the Book of Luke by Timothy E Crosby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Gospel of Luke is written by a Greek convert doctor who joined Paul on his several of his missionary journeys but given his outsider background is unique in all the Bible. The Undiscovered Jesus: Hidden Truths from the Book of Luke is the supplement book for the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide (2nd Quarter 2015) by Tim Crosby who brings out interesting facets from the pages of the Gospel, explains the context of the actual Greek to give new insight to familiar passages, and writes in an engaging style. For nearly the 157 pages Crosby is a wonderful read, but unfortunately his diatribe on modern Communism in Chapter 10 “The Kingdom of Darkness” is quite simply one of the worst things I’ve read in one of these supplemental books as what facts he gets right are equaled by what he gets wrong. Unfortunately, due to Crosby alluding to what was coming in the previous chapter and contrasting his “Kingdom of Darkness” with the “Kingdom of Light” in the next chapter it spread this taint further than just the 14 pages that chapter contained. This is a hard book to rate and review as so much of it was very good, but the part that was bad is just something I can’t believe the same person wrote.

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Book Review: Collapse by Jared Diamond

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Around the world there are abandoned buildings and monuments of long-gone or greatly diminished human societies that evoke questions of what happened and why they aren’t around anymore. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the follow up Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel as he looks at how those societies rose and fell while also how they didn’t realize they were in trouble then how those lessons could help us today.

Diamond begins by defining collapse as “a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time” then brings forth five significant factors—environmental changes, the effects of climate change, hostile neighbors, trade partners, and the society's response to the foregoing four challenges—to look at how they played into the demise historical civilizations. From the beginning it was obvious that Diamond was using Easter Island, the Classical Maya, the Greenland Norse, and many others as small-scale stand-ins for our globalized society that is facing the same challenges they did. However, Diamond is not all doom and gloom as he included various examples of societies—Norse Iceland, Tokugawa Japan, and Tikopia—that did make changes to save themselves. After all this Diamond looks at 12 challenges we face as today and “one-line objections” that are encountered when trying to solve them. Throughout the book Diamond can appear like a downer, but he ends on cautious optimism as he thinks we have the agility and the capacity to adopt practices favorable to our own survival while avoiding unfavorable ones. Overall, this book is an interesting read as a study of how historical civilizations dealt with changing conditions whether because of their own actions or of environmental factors beyond their control. While I appreciate Diamond’s look at historical civilizations to support his thesis, he isn’t a historian and as I’m not familiar with all the historical societies he cited I had to keep that in mind as he examined our globalized society.

Collapse is a book that looks towards historical societies’ relation with their environments and how it compares to our modern society. Jared Diamond’s cautious optimism is a high point, but there felt a lot of doom and gloom early on.

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Book Review: The Age of Reason Begins by Will & Ariel Durant

The Age of Reason Begins by Will Durant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The near century between the death of John Calvin and the Council to Trent to the end of the Thirty Years War saw first religious intolerance and religious wars range across the continent until in the end politics trumped everything like it always does. The Age of Reason Begins is the seventh volume of The Story of Civilization series by Will & Ariel Durant as Protestants fight one another and both fight Catholics before eventually politics overrules everything and people begin to ignore religion.

This volume continues a trend of transitions that defined Early Modern Era highlighting a single nation, then the continent, and finally beginning of the return of “reason” over “religion”. The Durants began the rise of Great Britain from the reign of Elizabeth I to the death of Charles I as it transitioned from warring individual nations to nations united political though with significant differences that still needed to be worked out. Next, they followed the transition across the continent of various religious wars that saw either the rise or follow of great powers from prominence that ultimately went from how God was worshiped but what was politically more important. Then they completed the volume with the rise of science and slow return of now religious inspired philosophy. Even though the Durants focused on philosophy and scientific advances in the last 100 pages of the book, they did not neglect cultural developments in literature to theater to music to the development of scientific thought, it was in this area that one could tell Will Durant was enjoying writing. After three volumes in which Will Durant had to focus on religion more than he liked this volume a reader of the series could tell change in Will’s writing that could by a result of Ariel or Will love of philosophy and science.

The Age of Reason Begins is a transitional volume of Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization not only in the transition into the Early Modern Era but also the involvement of his wife Ariel as a cowriter.

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Book Review: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Two families, two sets of brothers, a well-known Biblical tale, and one important location are central to this magnum opus of one of American’s best-known writers in the first half of the 20th century. East of Eden is an ambitious novel by John Steinbeck that is essentially a historical fiction novel of the Salinas Valley that is a double allegory for the Biblical Cain and Abel.

Steinbeck used his family history, his hometown’s history, and the Biblical story of Cain and Abel to form the backbone of this 600-page literary classic. Focused on the Hamiltons—based on Steinbeck’s maternal family—and the Trasks, were within Cain and Abel is repeated in succeeding generations, the story is also a fictional history of Steinbeck’s home region of the Salinas Valley in Central California. There is a slew of characters that come off the page at comes off as actual human beings, though many of them if we met them would wonder if they had gotten any psychological help and if not would hope they’d get it. The Biblical allegory centers around one man, Adam Trask, first as the Abel to his younger half-brother Charles’ Cain and then as the “father”—biologically it could also be Charles, legally it was Adam, and essentially it was Lee who I’ll get to further down—of Cal and Aron who repeat the Biblical allegory in a different way. Early on Adam is sympathetic given his childhood, but after the “breakup” of his marriage he becomes a human nonentity which allows the repetition of the Biblical story. The twins undisputed mother Cathy/Kate Trask (nee Ames), could be in the allegory the Devil or the Talmudic Lilith who was the Biblical Adam’s first wife but didn’t want to be dominated and became a baby killing demon in Jewish folklore, is an amoral psychopath who is able to hide her amorality from all but a few observant individuals. Then there is poor Lee, a Chinese manservant to the Trask family that essentially is Cal and Aron’s dad but could only do so much with Adam around and was in this ambiguous position of sage relative and hired help, but along with Sam Hamilton is the best character of the entire book. Looking overall at the story, it is very engaging and a page-turner to me yet also frustrating with Adam’s wanton disregard of his sons thus allowing the family drama to repeat itself.

East of Eden is considered by John Steinbeck as his magnum opus, it was certainly ambitious with this allegorical approach that was mixed with a fictional account of the author’s home region.

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