A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Photo Credit: National Archives via US Navy   Hi there, Dear Reader. Well, today is Friday, September 18, 2020, and right now it is late afternoon in my corner of Florida. According to my phone’s AccuWeather app, it’s hot – Africa hot, as Eugene Jerome liked to say in Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues. It’s mostly cloudy and the current temperature is 89 ˚ F, but with 62% humidity and a westerly breeze of 6 MPH, the feels-like temperatures are 95 ˚ F in the shade and 98 ˚ F in the open. Not as bad as yesterday, but it’s still summery rather than getting close to autumn. That’s what living in the subtropics entails, really; we are spared from the bone-chilling ice and snow of northern climes, but by the same token we need to live in houses and apartments with functioning air conditioners and endure the six months-long hurricane seasons. Photo illustration courtesy of Pixabay Today was a productive day, at least on the writing-blog-posts front. I actually wrote two posts in A Certain Point...

Cover of the paperback edition of Six Frigates.   (C) 2008 W.W. Norton & Company On October 17, 2006, W.W. Norton & Company published Ian W. Toll's Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy. In its 500+ pages, Toll (a former political speechwriter and financial analyst) tells the incredible story of the founding of the United States Navy during the Presidential tenures of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Set in the tumultuous early years of the Republic, Six Frigates follows the events and personalities that led to the appropriation, construction, and eventual deployment of the Navy's first post-Revolutionary War frigates: USS United States, USS Constellation, USS Constitution, USS Chesapeake, USS Congress, and USS President.  Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became the most divisive issue facing the new government. The founders―particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams―debated...

(C) 2015 W.W. Norton On August 7, 1942, exactly eight months after the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, elements of the First Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal and two other islands occupied by enemy forces. Two months earlier, the U.S. Navy had won a decisive engagement at the Battle of Midway and stopped Japan’s eastward offensive by sinking four aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser and thwarting Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s plans to destroy the American Pacific Fleet. Now, for the first time in World War II, American forces were seizing the strategic initiative and taking offensive action against a major Axis power. Code-named Operation WATCHTOWER, the landings on Guadalcanal, Tonombago, and Gavutu had one goal: the capture of a new Japanese airfield under construction on Guadalcanal’s north coast. If the Japanese completed it, the air base could be used to cut the lifeline between the U.S. and Australia. If this occurred, Australia could face a Japanes...

(C) 2011 W.W. Norton On Sunday, December 7, 1941 – “a date which will live in infamy” – a massive Japanese aerial armada swooped over Pearl Harbor and struck a devastating blow against the U.S. Pacific Fleet.  Almost six months later, four of the six aircraft carriers – Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu – which had launched those planes were ambushed and sunk by American naval aviators at the Battle of Midway. In less than 180 days, the battered but determined Pacific Fleet, commanded by a soft-spoken and strategically savvy Texan named Chester W. Nimitz, halted the seemingly unstoppable string of Japanese victories and gained the initiative in the Pacific. Ian W. Toll’s “Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942” is a vivid and searing account of the early months of the long, bloody and vicious struggle between the United States and Japan. In its 640 pages, Toll – a former Wall Street analyst, Federal Reserve financial analyst, and a political aide and spe...

Hi there, Constant Reader. It’s 11:03 a.m. EST on a cool Saturday morning in Miami. The current temperature is 76 degrees Fahrenheit under cloudy skies. With an east-northeasterly wind blowing at 15 mph (gusts of up to 21 mph) and humidity levels at 51%, the feels-like temperature is 76 degrees Fahrenheit. So it’s not too chilly here, but not warm enough to turn on the air conditioner. I have been reading a lot over the past few days. Partly because I have been a voracious reader since I was a child, partly because I am a book reviewer for Examiner, but mostly because I need to read a lot in order to be a good writer. Right now my main focus is non-fiction, with an emphasis on U.S. military and political history. I’m also half-heartedly reading some fiction, especially Stephen King’s 11/22/63 and his epic Dark Tower series. I used to post my “current reading lists” at the now-defunct Bubblews and the soon-to-be defunct Persona Paper every so often, especially in “blog doldrums...