A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2016 Bantam Books, an imprint of Penguin/Random House LLC The United States Navy is currently the world’s largest and most capable navy in the world. No other nation – including the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation – has as large a fleet – 282 warships, including 11 aircraft carriers in service, with two Gerald R. Ford carriers being built – or can project naval air power (3,700 deployable aircraft, second only in size and striking power to the U.S. Air Force, the world’s mightiest air force) as the American Navy. It’s worth remembering, though, that until World War II, this wasn’t always so; America’s mother country, Great Britain, started the war as the world’s premier naval power; in 1939 the Royal Navy’s 1,400 warships ensured that Britannia did, indeed, rule the waves. But after the United States entered the war – having restarted its naval construction program in 1937 to modernize a badly-neglected fleet, create jobs, and deter aggressor nation...

(C) 2018 Quirk Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) When I used to post regularly at the late and unlamented “writing” site Bubblews, I often shared short lists of movies I watched, albums I listened to, or books that I read. If I remember correctly, my summer reading list for 2013 was one of my most popular Bubblews posts.  Why this was so I’m not sure; perhaps because it was a list and  not  a comparatively complex article or review. (Not that I ever wrote anything at Bubblews that requires a master’s degree in English to comprehend, but most people on the Internet tend to shun complex articles or reviews. That’s just how the world is nowadays.) I was going to post a review today, but I haven't felt very creative or passionate enough to get to do that, so here's another reading list instead. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions,  Randall Munroe Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges 1944,  Antony Beevor The Fleet at Flood...

Cover design for Bantam Books: Belina Huey. (C) 2005 Bantam Books, a division of Penguin Random House World War II is now three quarters of a century away in our collective memory. All of the great or infamous military and civilian leaders – Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, George Patton, Takeo Kurita, and William F. Halsey – are long dead. The elderly veterans that in the U.S. are dying at a rate of 2000 men and women a day are now the junior officers and enlisted men who were then the youngest. In a decade or so, the last people to have lived during history’s largest and bloodiest clash of arms will be gone, leaving only the historical record and a plethora of monuments as reminders of those turbulent, violent years. Since the 1980s, when authors like Max Hastings,   Stephen Ambrose, Rick Atkinson, Antony Beevor, and Carlo D’Este kicked off the renaissance of popular World War II history writing, many fine books have been publ...

Although the naval battle of Midway (June-4-6, 1942) is often called the "turning point" of the Pacific War between the United States and Japan, many historians consider the six-month-long Guadalcanal campaign to be the true pivot point on which the tide of battle turned in favor of America and her Allies. Midway, for all its merits as an "incredible victory" for the U.S. Pacific Fleet and a morale boost for the nation six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, had been a defensive engagement; the breaking of Japan's JN-25 naval cipher code, cool-headed leadership on the part of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the availability of three U.S. carriers, bad planning on the part of the Japanese, the carefully-laid ambush of the Japanese carrier force, the bravery of U.S. aviators and a great deal of good luck all contributed to stopping Japan's eastward advance and a possible invasion of Hawaii. However, the United States could not have defeated Japan by...