Movies and Music!

Patrin, Nate.  The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock'n'Roll to Synthwave.    

        Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023,  ISBN: 9781517913243

How much does the soundtrack of a movie affect your enjoyment of a particular movie?  What about your memory of a movie, does a particular song stick in your head as emblematic of the movie?   That is the question Nate Patrin chose to explore in The Needle and the Lens.

Nate Patrin defines a "needle drop" as using a preexisting song to provide context for the film.  He takes sixteen movies that use songs not written/recorded for the movies and explores the interaction between the movies, the songs, and the audience.  Some of the combinations are very well known - Easy Rider/"The Pusher," The Graduate/"The Sound of Silence ," or American Graffiti/"Do You Want to Dance?"  Others are a bit off the wall (but then I have not seen all of these movies) such as Killer of Sheep/"This Bitter Earth," Blue Velvet/"In Dreams," or Drive/"A Real Hero."  Then there are ones I just had not thought of in this fashion - mainly Apocalypse Now/"The End" and Wayne's World/"Bohemian Rhapsody" that just work well. While individual chapters may be less of a treat, the book as a whole is a good read.

 

Nate Patrin enjoys exploring the intersection of movies and music and sharing his findings with an appreciative audience.  If you think you might be in that crowd, pick up The Needle and the Lens and join the conversation! 

Sunken Sub Sinks Aircraft Carrier!

Moore, Stephen L.  Strike of the Sailfish: Two Sister Submarines and the Sinking of a Japanese 

         Aircraft Carrier.  New York: Dutton Caliber, 2023.  ISBN: 9780593472873

"Down periscope! Dive!  Dive!" is the cry of the submarine's captain as submarine and her crew seek to sink beneath the waves before the enemy spots them.  Many books and movies have this scene.  In Strike of the Sailfish, this scene plays out several times as the Sculpin and the Sailfish search the Pacific Ocean for prey.

 

As the title states, Strike of the Sailfish is the intertwined tale of two submarines - the Squalus and the Sculpin.  The tale starts when the Squalus sank during a test dive in 1939 killing half the crew.  The Sculpin happened to be in the area and helped in rescuing the crew and recovering the boat.  The Squalus was refitted and renamed the Sailfish in May 1940 before getting a new crew and reentering the fleet.  

After United States entered the war, both submarines were sent to the Pacific to attack Japanese shipping.  Each submarine suffered through the teething issues of dud torpedoes, bad warheads, and plan bad luck.  But by 1943, better weapons had arrived and the submarines started coming into their own.  But when the Sculpin attacked a convoy near Truk on November 19, 1943, her luck ran out and she was sunk. Part of the her crew were captured and taken to Truk and then transferred via aircraft carriers to Japan.  But on December 3-4, 1943, the Sailfish as part of a wolfpack attacked this convoy in the midst of a typhoon and sank the aircraft carrier Chuyo. I took three separate attacks to sink it.  George Rocek was the only Sculpin sailor onboard the Chuyo to survive.

Strike of the Sailfish provides a very gritty look at World War II submarine warfare through the lenses of two U.S. submarines and the stories of their crews.  Stephen Moore provides plenty of details of a submariner's life and the plight of submariner POWs alongside the various attacks and other duties the submarines performed.  If you enjoy reading about WW II naval action, pick up this title.  It will not disappoint!

Great War Saboteur Manhunt

Mills, Bill.  Agent of the Iron Cross: The Race to Capture German Saboteur-Assassin Lothar 

        Witzke during World War I.  Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.  ISBN: 

        9781538182086

 

Secret agents, sabotage, planned invasions, codes breaking and double agents are often the stuff of spy stories, but can be found in real life as well.  Agent of the Iron Cross documents Lothar Witzke's story as German agent, running loose in the United States and Mexico from 1915 till his capture and trial in 1918.  

 

At the opening of World War I, Witzke was a midshipman on the German cruiser Dresden and wounded in the final battle with the British Navy off the coast of Chile.  He escaped from the hospital at Valparaiso, Chile, and disguised as a Danish seaman who had lost his papers made his way to San Fransisco.  Consul Bopp employeed Witzke as a courier until he hooked up with Kurt Jahnke and became a saboteur.  He helped plant explosives on merchant ships and with involved in the Black Tom Island and the Mare Island Naval Station explosions.  In 1917, Witzke and Jahnke moved to Mexico to stay in communication with their HQ while continuing their operations.  One such operation involved creating labor unrest at mines in southwestern United States so that local US Army troops would be called out while also having blacks in the South rise up in insurrections followed by the Mexican Army invading and occupying parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and California.  All this mayhem would keep the United States out of the war in Europe.  Fortunately, for the United States there were some competent undercover agents and double agents embedded in the German camp so that this plot could be thwarted.  As part of the plot, Witzke crossed the border into Texas and was arrested, his luggage searched and a code found.  The contents of the coded message played its part in the court-martial trial in convicting Witzke of espionage and sentenced to be hanged.  After judicial review in 1919, the sentence was changed to confinement at hard labor.  In 1919, Witzke and two other prisoners broke out of Fort Sam Houston prison but quickly recaptured and he ended up in Leavenworth for several years until released in 1923.  Witzke moved back to Germany and  joined the Abwehr under Canaris before World War II started.  After the war Witzke served in the Hamburg legislature from 1949-1952.  He died on January 6, 1962.

If you are interested in spies, secret agents, double crosses and feats of daring, pick up a copy of Agents of the Iron Cross and pick up a few little known facts!

 

Pirates in the South Seas!

Thomson, Keith.  Born to be Hanged: The Epic Story of the Gentlemen Pirates who Raided the 

          South Seas, Rescued a princess, and Stole a Fortune.  New York: Little, Brown & Company, 

         2022.  ISBN: 9780316703611 

Pirates!  Almost everyone's favorite villains/heroes!  But, do we really need another tale of daring do?  Of course we do!  Especially this one where Keith Thomson uses the diaries of various pirates along with court records and other documents to trace out their adventures on land and sea during the reign of Charles II.

In 1680, 300 pirates banded together to rescue a princess of a local tribe from the Spanish.  They used this pretext to go a "pyrating" in the fashion of Captain Morgan across the Darien jungle to attack the city of Panama.  That attack did not quite work out, so they set out to blockade the city until a ransom was given.  Some pirates returned back across the jungle while others decided to hang out in the South Seas and see what treasure they could scrounge up.  But not all pirates were happy with their leaders so a series of mutinies and failed attacks slowly whittled down the pirate band while the Spanish opposition grew.  After finding a decent haul off the Santo Rosario (treasure worth 10,000 pieces of eight) but failed to take the 670 "piggs of metal" (in this case silver worth around a million pieces of eight ) aboard their ship.  But they did get a book with 300+ pages of maps/charts and sailing directions for the South Seas before the Spanish could toss it overboard.  The pirate crew set sail for England going around the tip of South America and barely making to the Nevis in the Caribbean before their ship, the Trinity, fell apart.  The crew split up with several traveling to England where they were put on trial for breaking the peace between Spain and England.  But the fix was in at the Admiralty Court due to the intelligence gained by the "gentlemen pirates." 

If you are interested in true tales of adventure that may have inspired at least one author, pick up a copy of Born to be Hanged by Keith Thomson and be enthralled!

Preston, David.  The Lost Tomb and Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder.  New 

         York: Grand Central Publishing, 2023.  ISBN: 9781538741221

Douglas Preston is half of the duo that writes the Agent Pendergast series (Lee child is the other half). When he is not writing thrillers, Preston writes non-fiction books and articles. This tome is a collection of articles he has written on murders, unexplained deaths, unsolved mysteries, curious crimes, and old bones (those were how he categorized the articles).

 

 Douglas Preston opens with him discovering the murder of a middle school friend who had moved away; another murder explains why he can no longer visit Italy. The unexplained deaths happened in the Himalayas, the Ural Mountains, and Kennewick , Washington. The mysteries involve Oak Island, Sandia Cave (NM), and Hell Creek (MT). The crimes involves a con that was thought impossible by experts, and the ire and blow-back caused by Amanda Knox haters (interesting link back to the 2nd murder story). The final section (Old Bones) discuss the human remains held by museums, the possibility of cannibalism in the American Southwest, and a visit by Preston to KV5 - the "lost" tomb of Ramesses II's sons. All of the articles have updates after the original article and have listed the original publication dates and journals. 

 

If you enjoy the topics or have enjoyed other non-fiction titles by Preston, pick up this book and read!

Blazing a Trail from World War II to Vietnam!

Rinehart, Lorissa.  First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female 

        War Correspondent.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2023.  ISBN: 9781250276575

 

How many war correspondents can you name?  Okay, now for a even trickier question - How many female war correspondents can you name?  If you can name any, it might all be due to the path Georgette "Dickey" Meyer Chapelle created for all who came after her.  In First to the Front, Lorissa Rinehart seeks to tell the whole story of Dickey Chapelle.  

Georgette "Dickey" Meyer was born and raised in Wisconsin, In 1935 she flunked out of MIT, and ended up in Coral Gables (FL) as the city editor for the Miami Airshow at $15 a week.She wrangled her way into an assignment for the New York Times covering the Havana Air Show.  This led her to a job as assistant publicity chief for Howard Hughes's airline - TWA.  There she met Anthony "Tony" Chapelle who was teaching photography.  Dickey became a photojournalist after she married Tony.  After December 7, 1941, Dickey Chapelle got a job with Look to cover the 14th Infantry Regiment training in the jungles of Panama.  Then she got a break - she was accredited as a photographer in the Pacific Theater of Operations..  On board the USS Samaritan, she took photos of blood drive that the Red Cross used for a decade at blood drives.  She also captured the faces and stories of soldiers and Marines loaded on board the hospital ship.  She spent time on Iwo Jima and then Okinawa managing to endear herself to Marines while ticking off the higher brass who arrested her and revoked her credentials. Seventeen was the one magazine who would still employee her.  

After the war, Dickey and Tony traveled around Europe for the Quakers bringing in supplies and photographing conditions in Poland, Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, and  France.  After several trips through Europe, the duo made a sweep through Iraq, Iran and India for the US State Department's Point Four program documenting their work.  Dickey managed to get articles in National Geographic, World Magazine and Reader's Digest along with the documentaries for the State Department.  After finally divoracing Tony, Dickey returned to Europe to cover the Hungarian Revolution which lead to a stint in Hungarian prison.  Next, she traveled to Algeria to cover the Algerian Liberation Front's fight against French colonialism.  She covered Castro's fight with Batista in Cuba.  Then she went to cover the conflict in Laos.  She wrote a primer on guerrilla war for the Marines before covering the conflict in South Vietnam.  She spent time with the Sea Swallows, Marines in helicopters, and the Vietnamese Marines.  Then on November 2, 1965, while on patrol with U.S. Marines, a booby trap tripped by a Marine killed her.  She died doing what she enjoyed most - taking photos.

The bare details given above does not cover the depth of detail that Lorissa Rinehart provides in this well-written biography of Dickey Chappelle, who that deserves far greater recognition than she has received.  If you are interested in female journalists, especially photojournalists, First to the Front is a title to read!

Screens-R-Us

Hickey, Walt.  You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything.  New York: 

        Workman Publishing, 2023.  ISBN: 9781523515899

Pop culture - how much do you consume in a day?   Walt Hickey knows.  Well he knows the amount of time the "typical" American spends watching television/movies/reading/writing - about 3 hours and 22 minutes a day.  If you want to find out what all our media consumption does for and to us not to mention the world, dive in with Walt and find out!

In You Are What You Watch, Walt Hickey does several deep dives into pop culture.  He opens with a chapter on how movies, television and other parts of pop culture affects our bodies and shapes what we do. the next chapter looks at how social media, movies, television and books capture our attention and keep us coming back for more.  Two chapters guides us into the twisted mirror-scape where movies, television, and other aspects of pop culture reflect us as we are and how we change ourselves to reflect what we see in pop culture.  Of course there is a chapter on the role money plays in shaping pop culture and how pop culture shapes money making opportunities.  The final three chapters examine the empires created by pop culture (yes, Disney is part of the focus, but so is the United Kingdom!), what culture does to survive and thrive, and how stories and the creation of stories shape their creators.

So, if you ready to find out how pop culture has shaped the world in the past (can you name which movie led to a world-wide decline in sharks) and into the future, pick up Walt Hickey's You Are What You Watch, read it, and explore the whole spectrum of pop culture!

What is the Body's Biggest Organ?

Lyman, Monty.  The Remarkable Life of the Skin: An Intimate Journey Across Our Largest 

       Organ.  New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020.  ISBN: 9780802129406

So you think you know all about anatomy?  Can you name the largest and one of the most important organs in the body?  If you called out anything other than skin, you need to go and listen to John Lithgow crooning "You Gotta Have Skin!"  As Monty Lyman makes very clear in this interesting tome, your skin does so much more than just keep your insides in!

In ten informative chapters, Monty Lyman takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of skin.  He starts off with a look at instances when the skin fails, and then dives into all the intricate layers of your skin.  He looks at how your skin reflects what is going on in your gut, how skin deals with light and sun exposure, and how it ages.  Skin plays a key role in your sense of touch, for both good an ill. How our skin looks and feels affects us psychologically while what we ink on our skin can affect us socially.  And then skin plays a part in our impression of others and their impression of us.  Finally Monty Lyman discusses how skin shapes our thinking in regard to religion, philosophy, and language.

Skin is so much more than just a container for bones and guts.  The Remarkable Life of the Skin provides the reader a readable entrance into the world of skin!

Beware the Spade!

McDowell, Marta.  Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim  

          Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers.  Portland, OR: Timber Press, 2023  

          ISBN: 9781643261126

Do you read mysteries?  Do you garden?  If your answer to either is yes, then Marta McDowell has a book for you!  She has taken time out from her gardening to indulge in her other passion -  murder mysteries!  In Gardening Can Be Murder, she combines both by looking at how these two passions intersect.

 

McDowell opens with a chapter on detectives known for their gardening starting with Willkie Collins' Sergeant Cuff, meanders to Agatha Christie's Miss Jane Marple, darts back in time to Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael, Heads into the present with Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and his orchids, and finishes with Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles, 

Besides individuals, McDowell provides a look at various mysteries that are set in a garden; use  garden tools or objects for the murder; plants as means of the murder, gardens/plants as clues in the murder and an interesting look at mystery writers who garden.  Another nice feature is the list of all the authors and titles she mention through the book along with various source material used.

So if you are interested in mysteries and or gardens, do check out Gardening Can Be Murder for your enjoyment and enlightenment!

The Final Chapter - U.S. Army vs Japan

McManus, John C.  To the End of the Earth: The U.S. Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945.  

         New York: Caliber, 2023.  ISBN: 9780593186886

 

In January 1945, no one knew what would happen.  There was no notion that the war would finally be over.  Instead there was a resolve to continue the grind of the war until victory could be obtained.  In To the End of the Earth, John McManus finishes the tale of the U.S. Army in the Pacific that he started in Fire and Fortitude.  

 

McManus opens with General McArthur's invasion  Luzon in the Philippines and the march across the island to liberate Manila and the POWs on the island while keeping Japanese forces pinned in the mountains.  Next up is changes in China with General Wedemeyer replacing General Stilwell and the completion of the Burma Road that provided a narrow land route for supplies to reach China from India.  The third major front was Okinawa where the U.S. Army and Marines faced a determined enemy who had a plan to bleed American forces as much as they possibly could.  The final act has McManus taking a last look at American POWs located in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere as Truman takes over and decides to use weapons rather than blood to end the war.  McManus closes the book by following some of the well-known names into their lives after the end of the war. 

In To the End of the Earth, John McManus brings his trilogy to a fitting close.  Throughout these three books, McManus provides the broad scope of the battles while using individual stories to highlight often overlooked details.  All too often, the U.S. Marines get the glory when talking about World War II in the Pacific.  But the Marines could never have succeeded without the help of the U.S. Army.  In this trilogy, the U.S. Army gets its due!

Chance and Your Doctor

Jena, Anupam B., and Christopher Worsham.  Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That

        Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health.  New York: Doubleday, 2023.

        ISBN: 978-0-385-54881-6

 

How much does chance, luck, or other random factors influence your medical care?  Does it matter what doctor you get when you visit the ER or your Family Medicine provider?  Does having a marathon in town put you at risk?  These and many other questions are what Dr. Jena and Dr. Worsham seek to discover in Random Acts of Medicine.

 

Jena and Worsham start a discussion on chance and random events in relation to our lives.  This discussion segues into them defining a concept of natural experiments which they will use in the later chapters.  The first natural experiment they discuss involves birthdays, and flu shots (and, yes, it does matter when your kid is born)   The next experiment involves Tom Brady, birth months, sports, and  ADHD diagnosis - actually several experiments regarding relative age effect.  Next, the duo asked the question, "Are marathons hazardous to your health?"  And the answer is maybe, but not necessarily why you might think they are.  Semi-related to the marathon study, is the examination of what role medical conferences may have on your health - specifically when many doctors are out of town.  You might actually get better care, or live longer!  Another study looked at all the data being gathered and whether this information actually helps or hinders your medical care. They also studied the role of left-digit bias in regard to medical situations (a patient's age being one of possible bias).  In the next to last chapter, they worked on how to define what a "good" doctor was.  The final chapter looked at politics at the bedside, i.e. does the political persuasion of your doctor influence the advice and care he or she gives to their patients?  

 

In Random Acts of Medicine, Jena and Worsham use naturally occurring experiments to delve into the multiple ways that chance and luck play in healthcare.  If you have an interest in these topics, or are fans of Freakencomics podcasts/books, you will want to read this title! 
 

The Land of Secret Societies!

Dickey, Colin.  Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American 

         Democracy.  New York: Viking, 2023.  ISBN: 9780593299456 

Secret societies - the Illuminati, the Masons, the Lizard People, "slaveocracy," and the John Birch Society are all part of the American Historical landscape.  But so are the Ku Klux Klan, witches, slave revolts, the Molly Maguires, Haymarket anarchists, the Satanic ritual scare, and the recovered memory movement.  Each of these and others were involved in "moral panics" that swept across America.  In Under the Eye of Power, Colin Dickey walks the reader through the conspiratorial-laden underbelly of America.  

Colin Dicky begins his meanderings with the Freemasons and its offshoot - the Illuminati in the section As Above, So Below.  He spends four chapters dealing with how the Freemasons developed, came to America, how its symbols are everywhere, yet its rituals are secret, so secret that some Masons have murdered a former member to halt their publication.  Next stop - Deep-Laid Schemes - has six chapters filled with slave revolts, slave conspiracies, Underground railroads, ant-Catholicism, witchcraft trials in Salem and elsewhere, and in Texas, Abolitionist arsonists!  In National Indigestion, Dickey has five chapters with anti-immigrationists, anarchists, bankers, Wall Street, antisemitism, and the (In)Visible Empire.  In Wonders of the Invisible World, Dickey, in four chapters, explores subliminal messaging, the CIA and "truth drugs" plus LSD, ant-fluoridation societies (which includes anti-Communist groups such as the John Birch Society), and the FBI COINTELPRO on anti-war and leftist groups.  Finally, Dickey, with six chapters in Behind the Hieroglyphic Streets, ventures into cultural wars, modern conspiracy theories, Satanic rituals, recovered memories, Q-Anon, the Lizard People, ritual sacrifices, and Citizen Commissions.

 

Under the Eye of Power is wonderful for readers interested in American history with all the warts and stains included or for the reader who longs for a primer on all the ways secret societies and conspiracies have played a role in U.S. history.  

Possible Histories?

Johnson, Hal.  Impossible Histories: The Soviet Republic of Alaska, the United States of Hudsonia, 

        President Charlemagne, and Other Pivotal Moments of History That Never Happened.  New

       York: Odd  Dot, 2023.  ISBN: 97812250809674

Alternate histories (AH) are interesting.  The premise of all AH is that something or some moment happened differently than we know happened.  From that premise has grown a whole genre of SFF tales postulating what would have happened if Caesar had not been assassinated or if Columbus had not gotten his ships or if the black plague had not wiped out Europe.  Related to that genre is scholars and historians speculating what might have happened if such and such even was changed based on the choices available at that time.  In Impossible Histories, Hal Johnson takes the reader on a series of What Ifs through a number of eras in history.

Hal Johnson opens with a philosophical prelude (What does it mean for something not to have happened?) and follows that with 20 What Ifs and ends with s philosophical postlude (How do you make things that did not happen happen?).  In each of those 20 What Ifs, Johnson lays out what actually happened  and they brings out the change and how that change would have reshaped the world.  For example #2 Vikings in North America: What if Leif Erikson had Tarried in Vinland - Johnson discusses why Erikson ends up in Greenland and then Vinland and provides a brief history of what happened in our world.  Then he postulates what the outcome would be if the Vikings had stayed longer, brought horses and their diseases with them?  Would the Spanish faced armored horseman when they came later?  The What Ifs Johnson looks into cover war (World War I, World War II, World War III, Vietnam War), ancient history (Socrates dies, Julian the Apostate, 1st and 3rd Crusade, Rome and the dangers of bathing!, and Ethiopia vs Yemen), individuals (William Morgan and Freemasonry; Sigmund Freud reading Sophocles; Vice President Henry Wallace; Samuel Taylor Coleridge in America; Harriet Beecher Stowe vs Aaron Burr; and Seward assassinated), and odds & ends (British Navy and fresh fruit).   

Hal Johnson provides very readable Wat If scenarios that the reader can easily follow with sources that back up his historical renderings.  Some of the What Ifs are more plausible than others, but all make for interesting reading. 

North versus South in England!

Rose, Alexander.  The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a 

        Confederate Navy.  New York: Mariner Books, 2022.  ISBN: 9780358393252

 

The American Civil War is filled with stories.  There are battles, there are personalities, and then there are the less well-known tales.  These tales tend to be small stories, but not always and Alexander Rose is providing one of those tales in The Lion and the Fox.  Thomas Dudley, a Union  consul, was trying to catch and/or thwart James Bulloch, a Confederate agent, in Liverpool England.  Their struggle in England helped shape the conflict in America. 
 

Captain James Bulloch left the service of the New York and Alabama Steam Ship Company in April 1861 to become an agent of the Confederate States of America.  His job - hire and/or have built blockade runners, commerce raiders and warships in Liverpool using smuggled funds, subterfuge and the promise of cotton.  He enlisted several shipbuilders in Liverpool in his endeavors and skirted the British neutrality act by arming the ships after they left English waters.  

Thomas Dudley arrived in Liverpool as American consul on 19 November 1861 with his family after turning down the job as ambassador to Japan.  When he accepted the job, he did not realize the massive job ahead in trying to curb Confederate influence peddling and shipbuilding activity.  It took him time to realize how the Confederate side has enlisted folks in blockade running as a lucrative business that then financed the building of commerce raiders.  But once he realized the scope of the job, Dudley was relentless in getting agents to spy on shipbuilding, bring lawsuits, and ultimately thwart Bulloch's scheme to build ironclad dreadnoughts that would break the Union blockade once and for all.

Alexander Rose in The Lion and the Fox has written an exciting tale of intrigue, lawsuits, espionage, and diplomacy that shaped the war in America involving lesser known figures of American history.  Then he adds an interesting twist at the end the shows how entwined Americans are with Civil War history.  Read The Lion and the Fox to be entertained and enlightened!