More from Robert K. Massie, Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea.
Decades ago I read John Irving’s The Smoke Screen of Jutland and so was familiar with the course of the battle. I had not known, or had forgotten one story:
Continue reading
I recently read Robert K. Massie’s, Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea
Some of this story I knew from other books, notably Dan Van der Vat’s The Ship that Changed the World: The Escape of the Goeben to the Dardanelles in 1914. In the 1920s Winston Churchill wrote that the Goeben brought “more slaughter, more misery, and more ruin than has ever before been borne within the compass of a ship.” This was because the Goeben forced the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the German side. This in turn led to the breakup of the Ottoman Empires. Long after Churchill wrote those words we are still dealing with the consequences of that: Modern Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel were all Ottoman provinces in 1914.
Notes and quotes concerning Myke Cole’s, The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy. From Amazon:
“The last stand at Thermopylae made the Spartans legends in their own time, famous for their toughness, stoicism and martial prowess – but was this reputation earned?”
Continue reading
Notes and quotes concerning Myke Cole, Steel Lobsters: Crown, Commonwealth, and the Last Knights in England
“The total time from the moment they donned their armor , to the battle that would see them pass into legend, was about a month. It was a bright, final flash of glory – like the sparkling sun on their polished metal armor – before winking out forever.”
Lars Celander, How Carriers Fought: Carrier Operations in World War II. “An in-depth analysis of aircraft carrier battles in WWII and the evolution of carrier operations—from technology and strategy to life among the crew.” The book covers US, Japanese, and British carrier use in the war. Very much about the nitty-gritty of how things got done, with a lot of quantitative analysis. “Carriers evolved into ‘eggshells armed with hammers,’ destined for short but interesting lives.” One thing I had not previously appreciated about the 1942 carrier battles in the Pacific (Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz) was the longer range of the Japanese search planes. Highly recommended for those with an interest in WWII naval and air history.
Scott Carpenter, French Like Moi: A Midwesterner in Paris. An American college professor buys a condo in Paris and, though fluent in French, learns how different Parisians and Midwesterners really are, through one story after another. This is one of the funniest books I have ever read. Thank you to my fellow Carleton College (where Scott Carpenter teaches) alumni for suggesting it.
Christopher Matthew, A Storm of Spears: Understanding the Greek Hoplite at War. The most important conclusion from this is how the Greeks wielded their spears. Despite all the pictures, they did not hold them over their heads with a back-handed grip. Instead, they held them with the butt of the spear tucked under their armpits. This allowed for much greater reach and strength. Lots of good experiments with re-enactors.
Dan Van der Vat, The Dardanelles Disaster: Winston Churchill’s Greatest Failure. The sequel to The Ship That Changed the World: The Escape of the Goeben to the Dardanelles in 1914, which I read years ago and really like. Again Van der Vat is looking at how a single ship made a big difference. Rather than the formidable battlecruiser Goeben, we are looking at the lowly Turkish minelayer Nusret. On March 18, 1915, the mines it laid sank 3 allied battleships, and seriously damaged 3 others and a battlecruiser. This forced the allies to abandon their plan to force the Dardanelles open by naval power alone, which was not really a good idea in the first place. As a result the allies decided to land an invasion force on the Gallipoli peninsula, which was an even greater failure.
After posting about The Prosecutor’s Fallacy I recalled a similar case with the Defense in the O.J. Simpson trial. The issue was summarized in What is your favorite problem for an introduction to probability?:
… one of Simpson’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, noted that even though Simpson beat
his wife, that hardly mattered, because in the United States, four million women are
battered every year by their male partners, yet only one in 2,500 is ultimately
murdered by her partner (1 in 1000), so, by the ‘reasonable doubt’ criterion, this is
irrelevant. The jury found that argument persuasive, but it’s spurious. The relevant
question was what percentage of all battered women who are murdered are killed by
their abusers, which ain’t 1 in 1000, but rather 9 in 10.
For a clear explanation of the details see Chances Are, by Steven Strogatz, which is reprinted in his excellent book, The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity.
Helen’s Daughter is about the life of Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen of Troy, and granddaughter of Atreus (Hence the Amazon blurb’s reference to “the curse that haunts her family”). The author, Laura Gill, knows the Mycenaean Greek world very well and tells a gripping and realistic story about what Hermione’s life might actually have been like.
The First Heroes
The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age. The stories are a mix of Historical Fiction, SF, Fantasy, and one of Altenate History. Fantasy comes from the myths of the era being incorporated in several of the stories. The Greek world is well represented, but China, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, Northern Europe and even Peru appear. Continue reading
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 