The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as “Deadwood Dick” by Nat Love
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nice insight into the life of Nat Love. The writing is a bit uneven, as it was dictated to someone that didn’t do a lot of editing of the train-of-thought tangents, but there’s still a lot of great stories in it. Even though a lot of the stories do have a “tall tale” feel to them — I attribute that to the book being written years after the fact — the book is a very informative look at the experiences of an ex-slave’s transition to the life of a cowboy, post-Civil War.

View all my reviews

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A great overall look at the war in Europe from the United States’ perspective, covering from Normandy through to the surrender. Atkinson goes a lot into logistics, which isn’t the typical “sexy” subject matter of WWII books, and shows how it was that “behind the lines” business of getting supplies to the front line troops that dictated much of the pace of the last year of the war. He also delves into the shortage of manpower, such as how British and German losses over the many years of war affected how many soldiers could be thrown into battle. American losses suffered during the Normandy campaign are also stacked against maintaining enough reserves of U.S. forces to prepare for the anticipated invasion of Japan.

Well thought out and written, this is an amazing book. I now need to go back and read the first two volumes.

View all my reviews

Over on ModelWarships.com, I review the new resin kit of the Civil War ironclad USS Choctaw.

Check it out HERE.

Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Donald L. Miller’s book is a mid-level look at the events from Grants first arrival at Cairo, Illinois, in 1861, up through the capture of Vicksburg in 1863. Miller covers the planning and thought behind the push to recapture the entire Mississippi river valley, focusing more on plans, logistics, and political intent than on the soldier’s eye view of the conflict; there’s still some of this, but those looking for pages of “a day in the life” of the soldiers on the line, they need to look elsewhere.

Two aspects of Miller’s work are a refreshing change. Continue Reading »

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David McCullough
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another great read from David McCullough. This one is a little denser than the other recent titles I’ve finished by him – The Johnstown Flood and The Great Bridge – but that doesn’t detract from the book. Indeed, the scope of the work requires the density. McCullough covers not only the American involvement in the canal, but the initial surveys and the aborted French project, and all of the associated drama. He recounts the engineering and medical advancements brought about by the project, as well as the darker side of the racism prevalent in the lives of the workers, and the dubious circumstances of Panamanian independence at the insistence of the United States.

My only quibble is that I’d like to have an addendum that covers the canal as it is today, after the ceding of ownership back to Panama, and with the new locks and other improvements recently added. Others can cover that, though, as McCullough’s book stands fine on its own as a thorough and compelling chronicle of an astounding project. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Here’s another that’s been done for a bit, but is just now getting added to the website. A simple kit, easy build, fun project.

Added to the Model Building page, and can also be reached directly HERE.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” ― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

William Faulkner famously struggled with the history of the South. Born and raised at a time when Civil War veterans still lived, he didn’t have to walk the battlefields at Gettysburg in order to be able to write his stirring piece on how those days in 1863 have never left us. But once the people who lived during significant events have passed into that same history, no longer to tell their stories, we have to find other ways to touch the past.

Recently, I was made aware that the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia, the home of the restoration of the USS Monitor turret and other recovered artifacts, was giving tours of the facilities and the turret itself. See, the turret is kept in a tank filled with water the majority of the time, fresh water and a slight electrical current leech the accumulated salt from metal that spent 140 years on the bottom of the Atlantic. Once I heard of the tours, I made plans, borrowed a car, and drove south on a Thursday afternoon.

The USS Monitor had a short lifespan, yet was a truly revolutionary ship. After careful perusal, I can actually recommend the Wikipedia article on her as a good source for her history during the Civil War, and post recovery in 2002. I’ve read a lot about the Monitor during years of model building, general historical curiosity, and research for my New York Times pieces, so I was well versed in her past when I arrived at the museum on Friday morning. I was greeted by Hannah, who took me through the initial  Monitor related exhibits. These artifacts include, among many other items, a busted Dahlgren cannon fired from the CSS Virginia, and a full-sized partial depiction of the Virginia herself. Several preserved artifacts recovered from the Monitor’s wreck are displayed, the most impressive of which is the red signal lantern at the top of this entry. The red lantern, the distress signal the Monitor raised on New Years Eve in 1862, was the last thing anyone ever saw of her as she sank. 140 year later, it was also the first thing found of her wreck, spotted laying on the ocean floor, literally rolling in the sand and current, several hundred yards from Monitor herself. Continue Reading »

Just finished reading this title. A fantastic look at enlisted life in the Pre-WWII U.S. Navy:
Battleship Sailor by Theodore C. Mason

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mason has done a fantastic job of describing the life of an enlisted man on a battleship on the eve of WWII. His description of arriving at the training command in San Diego in 1940 was almost exactly the same as mine in 1988: the same late night arrival, not knowing what’s going on, finding an open bunk in a strange barracks in the dark, and the following days of figuring out where one belongs in a totally foreign new world.

His descriptions of time in the fleet also show how little the Navy changed in a half-century, with the Continue Reading »

I’ve posted a review of “Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway” over on the USS Yorktown website. This is a book I’ve had on my shelf for years, but my detour into all things Civil War pulled me away from my studies of the Pacific war. Really glad I got around to this, as it’s a truly ground-breaking treatment on the battle from the Japanese point of view.

Here’s a fascinating article about one of my favorite things in life: abandoned and rusting ships. Known as the USS Sachem during WWI and Circle Line V in New York City during the 1980’s, the boat has had a long and varied life, but now sits on the banks of the Ohio River in Kentucky, rusting away. While I hope someone comes to the boat’s rescue, for now I really love the photos of this rusty old hulk.

Full article on the Queen City Discovery website HERE.