A Treasurey of Tales About the Space Race!

Cuhaj, Joe.  Space Oddities: Forgotten Stories of Mankind's Exploration of Space.  Lanham, MD:   

         Prometheus Books, 2022.  ISBN: 978-1-63388-784-4

 

Did you grow up in the age of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo?  Or are you just a space junkie who hoards details about the space program, actually any space program?  Joe Cuhaj fits in both categories.  Space Oddities is the outpouring of his obsession with space that began when a 4-year-0ld Joe saw his first rocket launch in 1962.  

Joe Cuhaj opens with a look at some of the early space pioneers - Wan Hu, Max Valier, and Wernher von Braun.  Von Braun ended up in the USA after WW2 still working with left-over German V-2 rockets.  One launch went astray and blew up a cemetery in Mexico  - dubbed the only attack on Mexico by Germans from their base in the US of A..  The second chapter covers the role of women in space, both as ground crew, calculators and astronauts/cosmonauts.  The role of animals in space has its own chapter.  International space exploration such as Zambian Afronauts and the Russo-American cooperation that lead, eventually, to the International Space Station also has a chapter.  Cuhaj discusses the objection many made to the cost of space exploration versus spending that money of problems on Earth which also examines how NASA and the Civil Rights marches of the 1960's interacted and affected each other.  Another chapter looks at the safety concerns and risk analyses are a matter of life in death in space exploration.  Did you know that there were wake-up calls for the space missions? In 1981, the crew of the Columbia were woken up by the crew of USS Swinetrek - "the puns were painful!"  this chapter is followed by one in which Cuhaj documents some of the pranks done on various crew members and/or ground crew.  Then there is always the issue of what to pack and how much to pack.  And for all you coders, there is a chapter entitled "Wrecked by the Most Expensive Hyphen in History."  Anyone remember the "space pen" being sold on QVC?  This phenomena and other space business stories are listed in "Space is Open for Business"  The next last chapter asks the perennial question -  "How do you have sex in space?"  The final chapter looks back at the Earth and longs to go forth and spread humanity's wings outside the cradle.

Space Oddities is a collection of miscellaneous stories brought together by Joe Cuhaj and bound between the front and back covers.  Each chapter could be a launching point for exploration by the interested reader.  But the only links between the chapters are that these are the tales Joe Cuhaj choose to share with the reader.  Dip in and read what interests you! 

25 Missions in a B-17

 Maurer, Kevin.  Damn Lucky: One Man's Courage During the Bloodiest Military Campaign in 

          Aviation History.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2022.  ISBN: 978-1-250-27438-0

In World War II, the U.S. Army Air Corp waged a brutal air war against Germany and occupied Europe by day and British Bomber Command did the same by night.  The object of this campaign was to destroy German infrastructure and bring the German economy to a halt.  For the Eighth Air Force based in England, the B-17 Flying Fortress was the main weapon.  Each B-17 had a crew of 10 men armed with bombs and machine guns.  But despite the name, the B-17 was vulnerable to enemy fighters and flak.  The goal of every crewman was to survive 25 missions and return home.  But the average crew only lasted 10 missions, so a constant stream of new recruits were needed.  Damn Lucky is the story of John Luckadoo, a pilot of a B-17 during 1943 at the height of the air campaign and his 25 missions.

John Luckadoo had planned on being a fighter pilot.  He and his friend Sully planned on joining the Army Air Corp, but need two years of college before they could apply.  Then Sully heard about the Royal Canadian Air Force and joined with his mother's permission.  Luckadoo could not get parental approval, so he stayed in college until Pearl Harbor happened.  He then joined the Army Air Corp, but he almost did not become a pilot.  His flight instructor was terrible, doing everything by rote and by the book.  Luckily, Luckadoo go a second chance with another flight instructor and passed.  Instead of becoming a fighter pilot, Luckadoo was assigned to the B-17 as a pilot in the 100th Bomb Group.  In June 1943, the 100th Bomber Group flew across the Atlantic to England.  They were based at Thorpes Abbots in East Anglia.  Luckadoo  flew missions over France and Germany from June 1943 to February 1944 when he flew his 25th and final mission.  

 

John Luckadoo provides just enough details for Kevin Maurer to describe the course of several missions.  Each mission had its moments of tensions, but several missions were quite harrowing and nerve-wracking to read.  If you want to know what the air war was like over Germany in World War II, Damn Lucky is one of the books to read!  John Luckadoo was damn lucky to survive!

Raiding versus Archeology

 Ricca, Brad.  True Raiders: The Untold Story of the 1909 Expedition to Find the Legendary Ark

         of the Covenant.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2021.

 

These days, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is what springs first to mind when people think about the Ark of the Covenant.  But the story of the Ark of the Covenant begins long before 1981.  It goes back into ancient history, recorded in the Pentateuch, specifically Exodus.  The Ark disappears from the record during the time of kings of Judah and no one knows where it is located now.  Many folks have searched for the Ark, True Raiders is the tale of one of those searches.

While True Raiders focuses on the 1909-1911 Parker Expedition to Jerusalem, Brad Ricca includes bits of the the Charles Warren exploration conducted in 1867 and Jacob Vester's discovery in 1880.  In 1908, a Syndicate of British and Swedish businessmen was formed for the purpose of finding the Ark of the Covenant based on a cipher constructed by Valter Juvelius, a Finnish scholar and surveyor.  Monty Parker, a hero in the Second Boer War, was appointed the head of the expedition.  He recruited among others, Cyril Foley, a famous cricketer and a member of the Jameson Raid during the First Boer War.  The Expedition sailed to Palestine in a private yacht, obtained the required permits from the Turkish authorities and commenced digging in the tunnels.  They spent the summer of 1909, the summer and winter of 1910 digging before they were required to leave in 1911 due to rumors that they had infiltrated the Dome of the Rock and dug there.  They managed to clear out the tunnels that connect the Pool of Siloam, but they did not find the Ark.  What they might have found is still a question that was not really answered even when Monty Parkers's private papers were located.

Brad Ricca has written an old-fashioned history for the general public.  True Raiders provides plenty of adventure, intrigue, and twists for the reader to enjoy.  But the multitude of of viewpoints and time shifts can be off-putting to the reader while the first-person narrative seems more suitable for fiction than a history.  Thankfully, Ricca does provide sources for the reader to explore.  If the reader is looking for a quick moving archeological adventure, picking up and perusing True Raiders would be rewarding.

A Revisionist view of the Middle Ages

Gabriele, Matthew, and David M. Perry.  The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.  

         New York: Harper, 2021.

 

 

The Dark Ages or the Middle Ages - terms which are often used to describe the time period between the "fall of Rome" and the flowering of the the Renaissance.  However,Gabriele and Perry argue in The Bright Ages that rather being a period of stagnation, dirt, and destruction, medieval Europe was a continuation of the past.  Their book provides a shifted perspective that seeks to shed light on forgotten and overlooked history.

 

In this revisionist survey of medieval Europe and its broader world, Gabriele and Perry opens The Bright Ages in the chapel of Galla Placida in Ravenna in 430CE with an examination of the ceiling filled with stars against a bright blue background.  The role of Galla Placida is explored as is the concept of Rome and empire.  The interaction of Islam and Europe is explored starting in Jerusalem, later in Egypt and Spain.  The role of the Church comes into focus both in Rome with Gregory the Great, but also in a field in Britain where a stone cross stands in Ruthwell (Scotland).  The spread of trade include the story of Charlemagne's elephant Abul-Abass who traveled from Africa to Baghdad to North Africa to finally arrive at Aachen..  Vikings play their part in the narrative of trade and cultural interaction as do the Crusades against Muslims and heretics in Europe.  Both piety, learning and intolerance, not to mention plague are all part of the tapestry of medieval Europe.  Gabriele and Perry end their survey back in Ravenna with an exiled Dante having his revenge in The Divine Comedy.

Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry have taken a different slant on the history of medieval Europe starting with the premise that Rome never fell.  How well they succeed depends upon who much of their evidence the reader accepts.  Take a chance and read The Bright Ages and see old events in a new light.

The Whatchamacallit at the Back of the Book!

 Duncan, Dennis.  Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the

          Digital Age.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2022.

Books, specifically non-fiction books,  are composed of many parts.  There is the cover, the table of contents, maybe a forward or introduction, the main body of the text, the notes or references, maybe additional sources and then, finally, the index.  The last item, the Index is what Dennis Duncan is specifically interested in.  

 

An index plays a critical part in the book when properly done by letting the reader easily find a name, an event, or a piece of information quickly without having to reread the whole book.  Dennis Duncan opens his history with a J. G. Ballard short story entitled "The Index" which supposedly is the only remaining part of an autobiography.  It tells a story using keywords, subheadings, and page numbers to let the reader piece together the tale.This opening leads into the importance of alphabetization of the index.  Duncan then jumps to the origin of the index which came about with the rise of universities and mendicant orders of preachers and their desire to access their material easily.  And the index came in two flavors - concordance versus subject/word versus concept.  But to be truly useful, the index needs page numbers and there is a nicely done chapter on how that relationship developed.  The growth of indexing created an argument among scholars regarding what is more important - the text or the map of the text, i.e. the index.  People came to blows over this.  Not to mention that you need to be very careful who you let index your book since political disputes, not to mention scholarly  arguments have been carried out in the indexes of various volumes (Swift and Macaulay are among the luminaries mentioned in this chapter).  Then there is the crazy case of fiction with indexes which leads into a discussion on indexes for periodicals.  Print indexes lead to search engines which can act as a universal index except that not everything is digitized yet.  Also, what do you do when the electric is out?  You can always pull up your printed book and indulge yourself. 

If you are interested in the format and composition of books rather than just the contents of books, read Index, A History of the and enjoy the adventure!

POW or Terrorflieger?

Clavin, Tom.  Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival.  New York: St. Matin's Press, 

          2021.  ISBN: 9781250151261

Are you interested in WWII aerial exploits?  What about escaping pilots in the French countryside?  Nasty Nazis?  Survival by the skin of your teeth?  Well, then join Tom Clavin as he lays out the tale of Joe Moser, Lightning pilot on his 44th mission that went very wrong and what happened after.

Joe Moser grew up in Washington state on a farm who dreamed of becoming a pilot of the P-38 Lightning.  He got his dream job as a pilot with the 429 Squadron of the Ninth Air Force based in England.  He flew bomber escort missions as well as ground attack missions.  On his 44th combat mission, his plane was hit and he had to parachute out of his plane.  Some French farmers tried to help, but he and two of the farmers were caught by the Germans.  Joe ended up in Fresnes prison in the hand of the Gestapo.  Shipped out on the last train before Paris fell to the Allies, Joe and many others ended up at Buchenwald Concentration Camp as one of 168 Allied fliers accused of being Terrorfliegers.  Only due to a surprise visit by a Luftwaffe officer, did the Allied fliers escape being executed, instead they were transferred to a regular POW camp.  But then with the Russians approaching, the POWs were marched out in January on a harrowing trek to another camp in Austria where barely survived until the US Army arrived.  Joe returned back to the Bellingham, Washington area to marry and become the "local furnace guy."  He did not talk much until late in life when he started reconnecting with fellow survivors and had his story make the newspaper rounds in 1982.  In 2009, when he was almost 90, Joe collaborated with Gerald Baron to write A Fighter Pilot at Buchenwald.  Joe Moser died December 2, 2015.

 

Tom Clavin provides a narrative with plenty of asides that brings to life one of the great survival stories of WWII  in Lightning Down.  Joe Moser rose from humble roots to become a fighter pilot, survive not just Buchenwald, but also an epic trek in the January 1945 winter that almost killed him.  Yet he came back home, found a job and raised a family without fanfare. He is a true American hero that everyone should know!

Animal Patrol!

 Roach, Mary.  Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.  New York, W. W. Norton, 2021.  ISBN: 

          9781324001935

Do you have a problem with bears rummaging in your garbage?  Elephants tramping over your garden?  Gulls dive bombing your noggin?   Or mice infiltrating your domicile?  If so, then you have had animals that broke the law!  While modern society does not put animals on trial today (see The Advocate starring Colin Firth for when they did), animals are still punished for lawbreaking - not a law of Nature, but human law.  Fuzz will help you understand what is going on and why.

Mary Roach delves into animal lawbreakers with glee and gusto.  She attended WHART (Wildlife-Human Attack Response Training) to learn how to tell who or what killed the human lying on the ground.  She patrols the back alleys of Aspen (CO) to see the bears feasting on garbage cans not properly bear-proofed.  She visits India for the roaming elephants, the man-eating leopards and the breaking-and-entering monkeys.  Back in the US of A, cougars, mountain lions, and panthers are on the agenda in regard to where they roam and what they eat.  Then a trip to Canada for some killer trees and their crime and punishment.   Mary takes a walk around our gardens filled with poisonous plants and visits farmers and other victims (which includes The Pope!) of pillaging and harassing birds. The last few chapters deal less with the animal offenders and more on how humans try to discourage animal "misbehavior" and keep houses, work places, and food stores pest free.  

Mary Roach manages to find another off-beat topic to entertain and inform her readers in Fuzz.  Even if you do not get her quirky sense of humor, you will enjoy this book.