The 2022 Nonfiction Challenge in May: From War to Peace (and vice versa)

Well, I really deeply wish that this wasn't such a timely challenge.

Read a book about war: about what causes a war, what caused a specific war, to what it's like in a war zone or related catastrophes (from military strategy to humanitarian issues), what it's like on the home front (pacifism, for instance? the impact on civilians/non-combatants of war?) to the aftermath of a war, including peace/armistice negotiations, the extent to which a "peace" really settles a conflict to trying to rebuild/recover.

Wars can be global, regional or civil. Maybe we can, by sharing our thoughts after reading, shed a bit of light on just why humans persist in slaughtering each other systematically with such depressing regularity?

Anne is going to post images once more -- much appreciated!

Here's the slate for the rest of the year, for your planning purposes:

What's on the horizon:

June – Science & Medicine -- Gene splicing? Covid vaccines? Pandemics and healthcare system challenges? New surgical techniques??

July – *Cross-Genres -- Sometimes the most fascinating books are those that cross genres. For instance, a true crime book that involves the theft of an ancient manuscript. Or a travel book that's also about music or theater (I'm thinking of Bernard Levin's hilarious tour of opera/music festivals). Or a biography that is as much about history as it is the person being profiled. Or someone who is writing about gardening, but when the book itself ends up as a memoir. You know these when you see 'em...

August – Books By Journalists -- A returning fave

September – Biography -- but NOT memoir this time! (*grin*)

October – *From the 'Middle Ages' to the Renaissance. Yes, I know this is a largely European construct, but it also can involve stories of first contacts as Europeans set off to see what was along the coast of Africa or in the 'New World' in this time frame. Let's put this roughly from 1300 CE to 1600 CE? The earliest parts of the Renaissance (other than the Carolingian Renaissance, of course) were visible by 1300, but it was still the 'Middle Ages'. Open to books that explore ideas that would be developed in this time frame but that start earlier. For instance, Marco Polo's travels took him to China and he and others (including Crusaders) were bringing back new ideas and things that had traveled across the Silk Road, such as paper, which then would permit the creation of a hallmark of the new era, the printing press...

November – Books About Books -- a logical followup from a time-frame focused challenge that includes the birth of the printing press!

December – As You Like It -- Look at the year's best lists; wrap up something you've been wanting to finish; seek out something that defies description/categorization.

*New categories for 2022!

What we are reading:

                                                                                                           

Two up for May Challenge:

Torn Lilacs
and
THE ANTI-WAR QUOTE BOOK...both memorable.

I am planning to read The Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust, about the U.S. soldiers who liberated the concentration camps in WWII. If I have time, I will also read Fighting in the Shadows : Untold Stories of Deaf People in the Civil War.

I'm planning to read Red Famine (Anne Applebaum) later this month.

Would an autobiography work? I was thinking of tackling American Sniper.

>4 m.belljackson: Are those titles books you are planning to read this month? Or are they recommendations for others (it sounds like you've read them)? I'll probably only post the covers if you or someone else is reading them for the challenge.

I'll be reading Fascism: A Warning by Madeline Albright. My RL book group picked it for May and Suzanne pointed out that it qualifies. I also plan to read War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret McMillan. And if I have time, which seems unlikely, I'll read A World on Fire by Amanda Foreman, about Britain's role in the U.S. Civil War.

I will be reading End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 by Ian Kershaw. If I get time I will also be reading Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard. I will have to place an ILL request for this book so may not get to it. I also want to try to read Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell. I have several other must reads this month so may not get to either of the last two. Add to that, The End is a book with lots of meat and heft to it, so it may be that will be enough of traipsing through war for the month.

I have already started the Ian Kershaw book and the first 50 pages are fascinating. It is all about why the military didn't end the pain and suffering and instigate a coup. There was also a section on the difference of opinion in the Nazi Party about what Total War would look like. I can't wait to really dig into this book.

I will try to get to Valleys of Death : a Memoir of the Korean War by Bill Richardson.

>7 fuzzi: absolutely, that would work.

Paul Fussell is BLOODY AMAZING.

I've read a few interesting books about how conflicts begin and intriguing side notes on different aspects of war recently, in case they appeal to anyone.

Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth Samet -- she quotes Fussell's memoir about WW2 extensively, and the book feels like a related approach to his book about WW1 -- a cultural/literary evaluation of how we see war.
How Civil Wars Start by Barbara Walter -- a political scientist draws on data and other stuff to analyze the trajectory from democracy to political conflict.
The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche (seeing a theme here??) -- Canadian writer tackles the pesky question of the political/social/economic fault lines in the United States. Overlaps a lot with Walter's book, but is less analytical.

>8 AnneDC: Thanks for the question - I've read into both of them so already memorable.

After a few more posts are up, I'll type in my favorite Anti-War quote so far.

I've picked Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power. Should be interesting.

I will be reading First Into Nagasaki by George Weller for this challenge.

From the Anti-War Book Quote:

Mother's Day really was in its origin an anti-war day and anti-war statement.
Julia Ward Howe was sickened by that had happened during the Civil War;
the loss of life, the carnage;
and she created Mother's Day as a call for women all over the world to come together
and create ways of protesting war, of making a kind of alternate government
that could finally do away with war as an acceptable way of solving conflict.

- Gloria Steinem

I picked up a digital advance copy of The Island of Extraordinary Captives by Simon Parkin for this challenge, which tells the story of some of the many internees on the Isle of Man in the early years of World War II. Who knew that the Amadeus String Quartet had its roots in one of those camps?? Parkin does a good job of capturing all the strands of the story and ensuring that it doesn't emerge all rah-rah and triumph of hope over despair, while not excluding the uniqueness of the experience of all these people being interned together as 'enemy aliens', from Gestapo spies to Jews who had escaped concentration camps; one of the central people is an orphaned German teenager admitted to England on a Kindertransport but who was nevertheless swept up and incarcerated for more than a year. It's the individual details that makes this fascinating; the writing is mediocre to purplish at times. I'd run across the story in passing, but never explored in such detail.

I'm kinda plodding through the Madeleine Albright book. Maybe it's just that I've read too many tomes on international politics, totalitarianism, etc. etc. that the early chapters just feel like a rehash of stuff I learned in high school. I hope she's setting the stage for something more interesting/provocative down the road.

>16 Chatterbox: I know what you mean, Suzanne. I'm not really plodding--I'm finding it accessible and succinct, but pretty surface level. For my book group, which doesn't really read non-fiction and isn't steeped in this history, I think all of this will be a plus. What I find surprising, although maybe I shouldn't, is that it seems Albright is speaking more as a diplomat or a government official than as a scholar. There's a critique to be made about US Russia policy in the Clinton era, and she clearly has no intention of making it. (I worked in intelligence at the State Department during this period, and my area was the former Soviet Union, so I'm not learning anything new about Putin.)

I finished reading The End: Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945 by Ian Kershaw last night and it is an amazing look at the last year of World War II from the point-of-view of the leadership of Germany. I still haven't processed all of what I learned from this book, but it is an amazing eye-opening book. I read this book because I have had it for a long time (a quick check of my LT records shows that it was purchased back in 2014) and I figured it was time to get it off the shelves. It attempts to answer the question of why Germany continued to fight on after the summer of 1944 when it was clear to everybody, German leadership included, that the war was lost. I think that the author comes up with a plausible answer and lays it out beautifully in this book. I will have to think about how to write my review of this book, but it is clearly a book that anybody interested in WWII should read. I will also say at this time, that the book was written with the general public in mind, so it is not full of academic speak. There were a few words I had to look up to understand why they were used and knowing the exact meaning of the word was helpful in understanding the use. An example of this was plenipotentiary. This word means that a person, especially a diplomat, or government representative, is invested with full power to make independent decisions with the authority of the government that they represent. This authority can be removed, but until it is what the plenipotentiary says is what is done. Turns out that holding a letter or writ of plenipotentiary from Hitler was what many of his inner circle were vying for. Right up to April 28, 1945. Most of them wanted to be the next Hitler and none of them walked away from getting that blessing from Hitler himself.

I am going to start reading Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell. This is another book I have had in my collection for years. Time to get it read. My copy is the illustrated edition. I don't know how much difference that makes in the book, but it is the one I have so it will be the one I read.

I finished this book this afternoon. It was difficult to read, yet compelling reading at the same time. It's been nearly 15 years since the author interviewed the U.S. veterans and a few others who were present at the liberation of German and other Western European concentration camps, and I suspect most of the interviewees have died by now. Their memories live on thanks to Hirsh, and continue to testify to the horrors of the Holocaust.

>18 benitastrnad: I reading this book and find all of the information quite amazing. I had to look up the same word! My progress through this book is quite slow though. Hope to finish it by the end of the month.

I thought I had a reasonable understanding of plenipotentiary (father was diplomat; I read a lot) until I started ghosting the memoirs of an erstwhile US ambassador last year. I found I had to ask him his distinction of a minister plenipotentiary vs an "ordinary" diplomat, and it reminded me how what we sometimes think we know, we don't understand thoroughly!!

Ah, Paul Fussell. Wonderful book.

I finished a short biography of Winston Churchill by John Keegan. In under 200 pages Keegan, a military historian, manages to give a fairly good picture of the one man who was involved in almost every major instance of war and peace in the first half of the twentieth century.

I also skimmed through the Ukraine sections of The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 by Timothy Snyder. For those interested in a very detailed picture of this area, this is the book for you, although it ends in 1999. Since I only read parts, I won't give any sort of review, but there is a good review of the book by rebeccanyc here:
https://www.librarything.com/work/315992/reviews/216263865

I was drawn to this book because I loved Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny Graphic Edition. A must-read for our times, IMHO.

Told from the point of view of Americans in Germany, predominantly in Berlin in the build up to WWII, Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power, was a unique outsiders view to this period of history. The American diplomats and press were in a privileged position with a ring side seat as the Nazis weren’t at war with the US. Indeed, the Americans weren’t stopped from working until German declared war on the US in 1942. It was interesting to see what the Americans were told as well as what they were able to glean from non-official sources.

Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa.

Yes, I dropped the ball. I was so intent on ensuring I had enough $$ to pay two rents (one to old landlord, the other to new landlord) on June 1, that I forgot that June 1 also marked the start of the new non-fiction challenge month...

If you're interested in reading some fab books about science and medicine/healthcare, do mosey on over and tell us all about it!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/342125

And please star the link, since the star you put on this page won't automatically carry over.

I finally finished The End: Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945. It took me a while to get through the book. One of the reasons is that I found the author's writing a bit tedious and I was progressing through the book very slowly. The book is interesting and I did learn a bit from it. As I was progressing through the book, I kept projecting to see how the current geopolitical events are similar to what was being described in the book.

>26 annushka:
The book is very academic in tone. And there are footnotes everywhere! I thought this was going to be a BIG book to read and then noticed that it had 165 pages of index, endnotes, and references. 165 pages! The author was making sure to cover all of his academic bases that is for sure. Even so there was lots of valuable information in this book. I also kept thinking about what I was reading in relation to the current world.

This was a very thought provoking book on many levels.

>27 benitastrnad: I noticed the same about the number of pages of indexes and references! It actually made me wish electronic books would not include these pages in the total count. I borrowed the book as an e-book from my local library and the app showed me my progress in percentage. What it did not take into account is the reference and index pages so my % number was actually much lower than what my progress was. The author did a good job including a lot of details and information which helped to understand the events from different angles.