An outstanding biography of the redoubtable Native American warrior Osceola that captures both the fury of battle and the political complexities (and An outstanding biography of the redoubtable Native American warrior Osceola that captures both the fury of battle and the political complexities (and treacheries) of the Great Seminole Wars.
Taken together, the three Seminole Wars of 1816 to 1858 were the longest, most expensive, and most deadly of all the American Indian Wars. And while names such as Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, and Red Cloud are well remembered for the stiff – and often bloody -- resistance they offered to encroaching American settlers and military, the Floridian Osceola is arguably the most notable Native American tactician, fighting the U.S. military to a standstill in a guerilla campaign until he was treacherously captured under a falsely waved ‘white flag.’
Thom Hatch’s biography of Osceola and the Great Seminole War is an enjoyable, easily read, compact biography of both the warrior and his armed resistance to the American government’s forced deportation of the Seminole tribes from southern Florida to reservations west of the Mississippi. For me, war books amount to little if an author can’t vividly recreate the major battles of a campaign. In this area, Hatch excels, recreating key engagements in the conflict, as columns of federal troops and militiamen beat through the Florida swamp and brush in search of Osceola’s out-numbered braves, who lurk ghost-like in the tangle weed of the next hummock.
And while this had its hooks in me simply for its military prowess, Hatch’s writing skills are hardly limited to bullets and cannonades. In fact, his talent in explaining the complex relationships between different Native American tribes – Creek and Seminole – as well as the Native Americans’ loyalty to the so-called Dark Seminoles, escaped slaves and free blacks adopted into the tribe, are critical to understanding the near-impossible conditions the U.S. government imposed upon the Seminole people, hardening Osceola’s resolve to fight. Hatch also does a nice job of picking apart the ‘treaties’ the U.S. Government brought to table, exposing the paperwork as little more than flim-flam that would be casually ignored as soon as an inconvenient word was found on a page.
Osceola and the Great Seminole War is good history: detailed without being monotonous, gritty but spirited; replete with action and politics, balancing great people with great events, and most importantly (for me anyway), peppered with historical curio that make you say right out loud, “Really?” -- for example, in this one, there’s the story of coining the phrase ‘if the creek don’t rise” and the riddle of poor dead Osceola’s missing head. For whatever the reason, this reading year has been a little tough on me -- I just haven’t hit on many really good books -- so it’s nice that as we creep toward the final quarter of 2024 to find a five-star gem like this one. ...more
If I’m going to stereotype a group of books as a man’s man read, then Tom Clavin’s Follow Me to Hell fits the label. Told ”All outlaws look good dead.”
If I’m going to stereotype a group of books as a man’s man read, then Tom Clavin’s Follow Me to Hell fits the label. Told with a squinty-eyed glare and a spit of tobacco juice, Clavin’s biography of legendary Texas Ranger Leander McNelly has so much historical grit that you might just have to wipe a little sweat from your brow and knock the dust from your footwear after finishing. Thankfully, even for a cowpoke like me who’s never left his armchair, this trail ride is well worth saddling up for as Clavin spins quite the yarn, meandering through the backwaters of Texas state history while capturing the larger-than-life figures – lawman and outlaw – who flocked to the Lone Star state in the mid-1800s to make their fortunes.
In his introduction, Clavin compares the story to a tale spun beside a campfire amid the chaparral, and he’s true to that voice. While Leander McNelly might be the focal point of much of the book – and no more than two thirds of it at that – Clavin digresses into so many side treks that the average reader might have become hopelessly lost in the thicket without the author as a guide, but these treks end up as delights, whether Clavin is recounting the Confederate states little remembered invasion of the American west during the Civil War to the ill-fated Mier Expedition and its poorly advised invasion of Mexico in 1842 to his short biographical sketches of McNelly’s more notorious opponents, such as outlaws John Wesley Harden and John King Fisher. If you are fan of the West and the nooks and crannies of its history, then you’ll end-up as lost as I was in Clavin’s recounting.
Of course, the book is titularly about the exploits of Texas Ranger McNelly – and if there’s a fair criticism, it’s that it takes a whole third of the book to get to him in earnest – but once the captain slips on his spurs and loads his Springfield, it’s a wild ride of bullets and bravado. McNelly’s gutsy crossing into Mexico to apprehend a few cattle thieves, arguably the climatic tale in the story, is as riveting as any stand-off in history, earning McNelly a hero’s reputation after he dared an international incident. One can’t help but wonder had not the US Army shared a Gattling gun at a critical juncture, McNelly and his men might still have earned a reputation, but one more akin to that of George Armstrong Custer and his calvary at Little Big Horn. For me, McNelly’s bravery bordered on a death wish, which is not unsurprising, beset as he was with a worsening case of tuberculosis that was inevitably killing him.
Follow Me to Hell is a solid bit of old American western history told plainly and seasoned with a bit of cow paddy, gunpowder and wry humor that is recommended for history buffs and aficionados of cowboys, cattle drives, and the taming of wild frontier. And though Clavin avoids weighing in on more modern politics, one can’t help but walk away from this one noting that the unsettled nature of the Mexican-American border goes back quite a ways and that the insistence by some to try to find a way to keep ‘them on their side and us on ours’ is hardly a controversy that began recently. ...more
”Since I was a child I always wanted to be a criminal, but not this big a one.”
The story of spree killer Charles Starkweather and his fourteen-year-ol ”Since I was a child I always wanted to be a criminal, but not this big a one.”
The story of spree killer Charles Starkweather and his fourteen-year-old girlfriend Ann Fugate shook the heartland in 1958 as the pair carved a butcher’s path through Nebraska and Wyoming, killing ten people in just over a week. It’s as ghastly a true crime tale as they come with Starkweather indiscriminately murdering men, women and children, carjacking innocent bystanders, callously invading homes, and slaughtering his girlfriend’s family.
Crime writer Harry N. Maclean delivers what is likely the definitive account of the murders, subsequent trials, and the reverberating impact the killings had on the psyche of the American public as the relative naiveté of the Father Knows Best generation was peeled away by one of the first mass murder sprees to be covered on the then fledging national television news networks. The hunt for Charlie and Ann was original ‘breaking news’ and broadcast into homes across the nation nightly. The collective exhalation of relief when the pair was finally caught was expelled not just in Nebraska, but in households across the nation.
Maclean takes a big risk in his approach to describing the killing spree, dividing the narrative of ‘The Killings’ into two viewpoints: first Charlie’s, then Ann’s. I was skeptical of the dual narration, but it ends up a masterful choice as Maclean wryly notes that the couple’s descriptions of the carnage rarely matched: Charlie’s changed every time he opened his mouth while Ann’s remained largely the same from start to finish. Tautly and expertly told, part of the lure for every armchair detective is trying to determine how much blood to smear on to Ann Fugute’s hands. Charlie is unquestionably a murdering psychopath and deserves no real tears, but Ann’s case is much more complex.
If there’s a criticism to this one, it’s that Maclean’s strength – as doggedly detailed and determined as a bloodhound in his research -- can also become a weakness. ‘The Trials’, for example, trend toward tedium as Maclean recounts reams of evidentiary testimony (and counter-testimony) that essentially mirrors the facts presented in ‘The Killings.’ It is essential legwork for later as Maclean picks apart the question of Ann’s culpability, but it is indeed dry fare compared to the rich torrent of blood that spilled in earlier parts of the work.
Still, this is a must finish book as Maclean writes himself into the end of the story for a heart wrenching denouement that is both touching and sad. If true crime is your reader’s libation of choice, Starkweather is a must add to the bookshelf --savage, haunting, and something that won’t come unstuck all that easily from your head. ...more
The Danielses represented good, a family with talent and time to give to the community, while Jerry Scott Heidler stood for evil in its most sneaky an The Danielses represented good, a family with talent and time to give to the community, while Jerry Scott Heidler stood for evil in its most sneaky and deranged form.
It’s hard to put a bloody smear on the name Santa Claus, but Jerry Scott Heidler did exactly that on a chill December night in 1997. Heidler broke into the home of Danny and Kim Daniels, killing four including the couple and two of their children before kidnapping three of the family’s young girls in the tiny town of Santa Claus, Georgia. Santa Claus (population 200) was until that night famous only for its name and the stream of holiday well-wishers who flocked to the town’s tiny post office to get their Christmas cards post-marked with Jolly Old Saint Nick’s name. Doug Crandell’s Fear Came To Town provides a detailed — and perhaps the definitive account — of the quadruple murder in one of the Peach state’s most notorious and heinous crimes.
For true crime buffs, Crandell does his homework, digging deep in Heidler’s background which is ridden with childhood abuse and mental health issues. It’s a rather fair picture of a convicted and seemingly remorseless killer, and while not exactly sympathetic, Crandell is arguably objective, especially as he contrasts Heidler’s background with that of victim Kim Daniels. Growing up, Kim was as much a victim of abuse and drug addiction as Heidler, but unlike him, Kim fought her way through to recovery and became, by all accounts, a loving mother not just to her own children, but several foster care kids. The awfulness of Heidler’s bloody rampage is only magnified not just in the lives he outright cut short, but in the futures he stole from several foster care kids who had a shot at the loving home they always hoped for only to have it debased and destroyed by Heilder’s mania and shotgun.
The downside to this one is that Crandell’s prose can be a bit purple. His introduction plays heavily into southern stereotypes; more southern gothic over straightforward reporting but fortunately, the moodiness evens out quickly once past the table-setting. From there the book is fairly straightforward, chronologically introducing to all the key dramatis personae through a gory crime scene reconstruction the on to capture, trial, a (brief) escape, and punishment. As someone who continues to enjoy even the dark corners of Georgia history, this one is worth a read if you have the stomach for it. ...more
’Such are the lonely testaments to an extraordinary ship.'
If anyone needs yet more proof that the Nazis were absolute monsters and could pervert just ’Such are the lonely testaments to an extraordinary ship.'
If anyone needs yet more proof that the Nazis were absolute monsters and could pervert just about anything into something awful, then there’s the story of the ocean liner Cap Arcona. Built as a luxury cruise ship between the World Wars, the Cap Arcona was one of the few bright spots in the post-war German economy, ferrying well-heeled passengers from Europe to South America in near-decadent luxury. Carrying some 1,325 passengers per voyage, “The Queen of the South Atlantic” boasted personal valets, large staterooms, lavish meals, tennis and shuffleboard courts, a heated pool, gambling and dance clubs, and a ship’s orchestra. The pride of the Hamburg-Sud steamship line, the Cap Arcona successfully made some ninety-one opulent trans-Atlantic voyages.
Until the Nazis.
Author Robert P. Watson traces the bizarre, bloody, and ultimately tragic fate of the Cap Arcona (and those who had the misfortune to be aboard her) through the very last hours of the Second World War in Germany. Used as a ‘body-double’ for the HMS Titanic in an outlandish scheme by SS propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels to a create a blockbuster propaganda film, Watson’s reader’s screening of the Nazi’s attempt to create their own Hollywood on the Rhine is as weird as it is ultimately disturbing.
But as disquieting as the first act of this tragedy is, it is but a mere taste of the horrors to come. The aging and ill-maintained Cap Arcona is put into service during the last desperate days of the war, first ferrying German war refugees past predatory Russian subs then, in a dreadful piteous final flourish, transformed into a floating concentration camp for detainees of some twenty-five nationalities, only to be mistakenly gunned to the bottom of the Baltic Sea by Royal Air Force bombardiers just hours before liberation. Perhaps 5,000 people died on Cap Arcona, most prisoners or concentration camp victims, in what is one of history’s worst maritime disasters.
This is a pretty spell-binding tale, but certainly not for the weak of stomach. Watson is unflinching – as he should be – in describing the atrocities perpetrated by not just Nazi overmasters but by invading Allied troops against hapless German civilians, worsened by the desperation of a failing, flailing, murderously mad regime. If there’s a weak point to this story, it's that the spotlight often drifts well away from the titular Cap Arcona; Watson may insist in his introduction that he never wrote his promised book of the final days of Third Reich, but for most readers this is about as complete an epitaph on Hitler and the Nazis end as one needs.
For history and maritime readers, The Nazi Titanic is a compelling book, a macabre niche in history that makes for fascinating reading, but which also wounds head and heart in contemplating the awful real-life consequences. ...more
Hoods, robes, and guns. Midnight initiations. Red lights in dark rooms. The Black Oath with its death pledge.
The mix of championship sports and a secr Hoods, robes, and guns. Midnight initiations. Red lights in dark rooms. The Black Oath with its death pledge.
The mix of championship sports and a secret society of terrorists in depression-era Detroit is an odd blend of story elements, but author Tom Stanton makes it work, painting a vivid picture of the grit and grime of the Motor City during the mid-nineteen thirties. As the Tigers, Lions, and Redwings took – to this day -- the only trifecta of national sports championships in a single season (with Joe Louis as the uncrowned champ of professional boxing to boot(!), hooded, black robed men intimidated and murdered labor organizers, minorities, and political opponents with beatings, floggings, hangings, and shootings.
Being far from a baseball aficionado myself, Stanton was still able to captivate me in the Tigers’ quest to go from worst to best and bring home their first World Series Championship to owner Frank Navin. While Stanton might only be recounting ballgames on paper, his pen captures all the drama of the critical contests between Tigers, Cardinals, and Cubs. Even as a relative non-sports fan, the competitions made for fascinating reading, especially as Stanton does such a good job telling the backstories of the star players. By the time the games start, Stanton has got you caring about these long-ago ballplayers, convincing the modern reader to route just as hard for the team’s success as contemporary Detroit fans did decades past.
Juxtaposed against the game of baseball (and to a lesser extent football, hockey, and boxing) is the specter of the Black Legion, which through a process of threats and deceit impressed an ever-growing number of men into its order across several Midwest states. Evil and heartless, Stanton ties the sect to a number of murders – many racially or politically motivated, others coldblooded killings that made widows and orphans of some of the area’s poorest people. Again, Stanton does a really good job of profiling some of the Legion’s most notorious members (and their most heinous actions), peeling away the group’s penchant for forcing people into membership and frightening them into silence.
In addition to these main threads, Stanton packs an amazing amount of detail into his book; by the time the reader is finished, it feels as if you’ve walked the streets of old Detroit and nearby rural environs for at least a baseball season. For pure sports fans, the level of detail may be a bit too much and the tale does end-up slightly uneven: there’s lots more baseball up front, less of some of the other sports, while most of the fallout coming from cracking from the Black Legion case is saved to the end. However, I kind of liked the pacing, but if you’ve come for one and not the other, you may be missing sports or history connections a little depending on where you are in the book.
Recommended … even for the non-sports fan … Stanton will still make you a faithful Tigers fan at least for one magical season and be glad the Black Legion got put out of business. ...more
Nowhere outside the fictional town of Castle Rock has such a plethora of aberrant crime flourished in such a small community.
Absolutely unequivocally Nowhere outside the fictional town of Castle Rock has such a plethora of aberrant crime flourished in such a small community.
Absolutely unequivocally crazy!
As a resident of northwest Georgia and local history nut, it’s going to be impossible for me to be unbiased about this book. Not only is the site of the notorious Chattooga County ‘devil house’ less than an hour from my front door, but one of the lead investigators of the case was a former boss. Years after the murders, I actually responded to what some might characterize as a supernaturally-influenced epilogue to the infamous klllings: the horror show at the infamous Tri-State Crematory. I wish I could say that author Amy Petulla embellished the macabre aspects of the case just to sell a few more books, but this is the definitive take on that grisly double homicide, replete with its connections to drugs, orgies, Satanism and occultism, the details of which continue to chill the spines of those who have heard tales of Corpsewood Manor.
Constructed in a remote section of Chattooga County by the eccentric Dr. Charles Scudder, Corpsewood Manor might appear a dark reflection to the nearby Biblically-inspired Paradise Gardens (built by the equally eccentric folk artist Howard Finster). The manor’s thick brick walls hiding antique furnishings, skulls and gargoyles, Satanically inspired architectural flourishes, with a nearby outbuilding for chickens, pornography, and a pink-painted adult playroom. Petulla hides none of the bizarreness, delivering a starkly unsettling real-life, rural gothic, that begins with a nice sketch of small-town charm and peculiarity before stagediving into the oddities of Corpsewood even before murder further darkened its reputation. The book is only made all the creepier by Petulla’s catalogue of black-and-white photos – including a few from the crime scene that are NOT for the faint of heart -- that will quickly raise even the jaded reader’s skin to gooseflesh.
As strange a story as this is, it would have been easy (even tempting) for Petulla to slip into sensationalistic tripe, but she only spices the story with the supernatural, acknowledging the strange occult influences that some see as hanging over the case – from the bad luck that seems to clings to the estate’s souvenir hunters, to the self-portrait of Scudder that seems to presage his murder, to the unseen menace that police investigators felt watching them during their first hours at the manor house. The head nod to the uncanny only adds to disturbing feel of the book. At the same time, her portrayal of other principle characters in the case, such as Sheriff Gary McConnell (who hired me into the Georgia Emergency Management Agency more than two decades ago), is fair and honest, capturing for example McConnell’s larger-than-life presence on the pages.
If there’s a slow spot to the story, it’s the trials; interesting, but after the batshit crazy of the opening chapters, its hard to maintain that level of jaw-drop. Regardless, whether you’re a fan of true crime, weird world tales, north Georgia esoterica, or just a GEMA-alumni, The Corpsewood Manor Murders in North Georgia is titillating reading. ...more
The DLB-269 and all the men aboard her were floating victims. Their attacker would be named Roxanne.
In a contest between ship versus hurricane, take t The DLB-269 and all the men aboard her were floating victims. Their attacker would be named Roxanne.
In a contest between ship versus hurricane, take the hurricane.
With All The Men In The Sea, author Michael Krieger vividly captures the now largely forgotten loss of the undersea pipe laying barge DLB-269 and the daredevil rescue of more than 200 men from storm-tossed waters by a trio of tugs in the midst of Hurricane Roxanne which pummeled the Yucatan peninsula and nearby seas in 1995. Daring a hurricane and assuming that these monstrous storms will follow a predictable path has been the folly of many a mariner and (as my maritime bookshelf shows) doomed many a vessel to slip beneath the waves.
DLB-269, an unpowered ocean-going barge tasked with laying undersea pipelines for Mexico’s petroleum industry, made the decision to ride out an approaching Hurricane Roxanne at sea instead of seeking shelter in port. Towed by two tugboats, the aging barge with its multi-storied Clyde crane in the stern, initially dodged the storm – though the battering it took created serous internal flooding – but when Roxanna unexpectedly stalled, then turned back, the hurricane hit DLB-269 and her two small escorts with renewed fury, eventually sinking the barge and putting its crew into the water.
Krieger sequences a series of very bad decisions that led to catastrophe while detailing the steadily worsening conditions on the barge and its eventual swamping by towering 40-foot seas. Working from a number of eye-witness accounts, Krieger offers a vivid and terrifying picture of the last moments of the barge as men frantically leap into the sea, struggling to survive amid terrifying waves and spume, and of the heroic efforts of the nearby boat captains and crews to pluck men from the surging waters. It’s a white-knuckle survival story that is a tense as it gets and grittily described by Krieger’s expert pen. Remarkably, some 222 men were pulled from water by the heroic tugboats and even more crazily, 15 workers survived by never leaving the barge(!) -- clinging to the superstructure of the barge’s giant crane, which remained just above the waves even as the rest of barge sank to the sea bottom.
Shipwreck stories are a favorite of mine and this one is a good one, well-told, heroic, heartrending and dramatic. It, like many disaster stories, ends on a sour note as victims’ families and survivors received little consolation or compensation after the tragedy. It would take years (and the 9-11 terrorist attacks and other similar mass causality events) to fully awaken the public (and government) to the damage post-traumatic stress from catastrophic disasters causes to both survivors and rescue workers.
’She embraced her oldest son, then with her right hand slipped off the wedding ring she always wore on her left finger and handed it to Billy. Surpris ’She embraced her oldest son, then with her right hand slipped off the wedding ring she always wore on her left finger and handed it to Billy. Surprised with the gesture, and reluctant to accept it, Billy added the ring to the dog tags that dangled from his neck. She wanted to give him something to keep him safe.’
While there seems to be a lot of disagreement on who exactly was the last U.S. serviceman to be killed in World War II – Google it and you’ll get a return that offers several different choices – historian John Wukovits details the deaths of four Naval airman who are certainly candidates for that unfortunate distinction. Pilots Harrison, Sahlof, Hobbs and Mandelberg were all shot down by Japanese zeros while returning from an aborted bombing run in the hours just after peace had been officially declared. Outside of fueling the ego and perpetuating a bitter vendetta Admiral William F. Halsey held against the Japanese – along with many other Americans it must be said -- the attack and loss of life are hard to justify.
With Dogfight Over Tokyo, Wukovits provides a battle history for these young pilots and their colleagues in Navy Air Group 88 from recruitment through training to posting on the USS Yorktown, and eventual combat in the skies over the home islands of Japan. While the format is similar to other books in this genre, Wukovits offers one of the better, layman’s picture of aircraft carrier purpose and operations, vividly describing launch, recovery, and management procedures – in a way that is thankfully neither boring nor too technical. He also shines in his combat essays, the bombing runs over various Japanese targets are well done and particularly special is the chapter of the rescues of downed servicemen by Dumbo PBY-Catalina rescue planes.
The real difference, however, between this book and others is the attention to detail Wukovits pays to the home front and the anguish mothers, fathers, siblings and fiancés faced wondering if their sons were still alive and well in Pacific. We continue to take for granted the super-speed of information that now flows instantaneously around the globe and simultaneously to millions with a button push. Families in World War II waited weeks or months from servicemen abroad and we are agonized by the start reality that the loved ones could be gravely injured, captured or dead for months before they knew, vainly sending letters, cards and care packages that would never be opened.
A serviceable narrative for the armchair history buff, Dogfight Over Tokyo is a good read, well-researched and well written. It might not have much appeal to the more casual reader, but if military history is your thing, then I’d check this one out.
P.S. And whether or not these four airman were actually the war’s last casualties (or was it airmen Philip Schlamberg as CNN seems to think … see https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/11/asia/a...) really makes little difference. Their loss and Schlamberg’s (who disappeared that day as opposed to being verifiably shot down), both coming after the Japanese surrender, remains tragic. ...more
’Care has been taken not to dimmish the terrors of this last resort of poverty, because it has been deemed better that a few should test the minimum r ’Care has been taken not to dimmish the terrors of this last resort of poverty, because it has been deemed better that a few should test the minimum rate at which existence can be preserved, than that the many should find the poor house so comfortable a home that they would brave the shame of pauperism to gain admission to it.’
An asylum. A jail. A poorhouse. A charity hospital. Author Stacy Horn gives us the grandly dismal tour of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island in this well-written, morbidly engaging history of Damnation Island where tens of thousands of New York City’s indigent were cast away. Opened by the city fathers as a refugee for the insane, the sick, and the poor and as a penitentiary for the criminal, Blackwell’s Island (and many nearby islets) became atolls of misery, suffering and horrible abuses.
While this is very much a social justice history, Horn’s prose is every bit as sharp as that of a novelist as she artfully constructs the tale to follow in the footsteps of the Reverend William Glenney French, a chaplain for the island, who dutifully ministered to the souls wallowing in Blackwellian purgatory, building-by-building, north to south. French left behind vivid (and depressing) observations which Horn quotes liberally to portray the despair found within those ill-lit, dank and dismal buildings while at the same time capturing numerous other vignettes of the famous, infamous, and carelessly forgotten whose lives intersected with Blackwell’s shores.
Where Horn does dive into data and social commentary, it’s with a verve that makes the statistics, laws, and politics easily digestible and her occasional wry bit of humor keeps things from ever getting pedantic. Blackwell’s Island is nowhere anyone would want to visit, let alone be condemned to live out the rest of the lives, but the modern reader could not ask for a better guide to its depravities than Horn who captures the heartlessness of societal abandonment of its most vulnerable and the cruelty of conflating poverty or illness with criminality and deserved destitution. ...more
… he said, ‘The enemy will surround the camp, and the saints will die … There will be blood and fire, an explosion at the end.’ And he believed that, … he said, ‘The enemy will surround the camp, and the saints will die … There will be blood and fire, an explosion at the end.’ And he believed that, and the people that followed him believed that as well.
What a royal fruck-up.
Author Jeff Guinn tackles the disaster that was the deadly 1993 confrontation between federal agents and the Branch Davidian religious sect in his new book Waco, a gripping page-turning account of the rise and fall of the cult and its leader, the charismatic, self-styled David Koresh, and the bloody shoot-out, siege, and massacre that ultimately killed four ATF agents, fifty-three adult Branch Davidians, and twenty-three children. To be clear, it’s hard to find a better nonfiction writer out there right now than Jeff Guinn, and his prodigious talents as a writer and researcher are on full display here. Guinn takes this incredibility complex, controversial, and twisting tale of the conflict, boils away the screed, and provides a balanced, easily understandable account, that flows as smoothly Texas tea and snares the reader as tightly as barbed wire.
Much of the beginning of the book sees Guinn providing a thorough history of the Branch Davidians and the life of David Koresh as he becomes the group’s preeminent prophet and eventual leader of the Mount Carmel property in Waco, Texas. While Guinn is scrupulously objective, Koresh comes across as a very smart, very cagey, self-centered narcissist – delusional perhaps, but not quite homicidal. His grip over his followers is hard to grasp, especially as he insists on celibacy for the male Branch Davidians while taking their wives and (sometimes under-age) daughters to bed. Koresh isn’t a figure to be defended; he took advantage of his followers, his sexual predilections were criminal, and when he could have spared his followers their lives, he dithered.
But as blamable a figure as Koresh is, the ineptitude of US Government agencies, including the ATF and FBI, is jaw-dropping. A series of uncoordinated government investigations alerted the Davidians that they were on the radar of state and local officials and nearly everyone in Waco seemed to know the ATF was coming that February morning as the agency offered scoops to reporters and paraded in agency apparel around town. The FBI was little better. Though they inherited the ATF’s mess, they undercut the efforts of their own negotiators, failed to appreciate the Davidians’ point-of-view, and even before the all-consuming fire, smashed the compound with tanks likely killed many children as walls and ceiling collapsed atop them. Government agencies also clearly cooked the post-incident investigation, lying about the use of incendiary weapons and quickly bulldozing the compound to limit the accessibility of evidence.
And I’m a law-and-order kind of guy. But if nothing else, Waco is illustrative that citizens do have a right to expect more their government. Its justification for the raid on the Branch Davidian compound is ultimately flimsy. The most serious crimes leveled against David Koresh included child abuse, polygamy, and statutory rape. But none of these crimes were raison d'etre for the ATF’s disastrous raid; they entered the compound because the Davidians were modifying guns for sale at gun shows – illegal only because the Davidians were not registering the modifications or paying requisite taxes.
The pretext for the raid did not justify the force exerted.
More damning, it is clear that Koresh was individually culpable for the worst acts within Mount Carmel: polygamy and sex with minors. As Guinn points out, it would have been fairly easy to lure Koresh into town and arrest him; he made regular visits to Waco and spoke frequently with local officials. Had ATF resisted the temptation for a military-style raid on the compound (and chance at a media coup), it is possible neither their agents nor the Davidians – nor the children both sides should have been obligated to protect – would have died. Again, I’m not a ‘deep state’ conspiracy buff and there’s no need to read a more intentional and malignant strategy to the government’s actions; they were simply stupid, they miscalculated, and they escalated -- rather than defused -- the volatility of the situation.
That aside … bottom line … if I’m ever involved in something infamous … please Jeff Guinn … write my story! While Guinn’s biography of Bonnie and Clyde is still my favorite of his works – as much for the subject matter as the style of novel – as this point, you can’t go wrong with his prose. Mark Guinn as one of the few authors who could write about ‘stealing lint from a dryer factory’ and I’d like be there to get his take on the culprits! ...more
Sarah was now widely perceived as a pirate’s wife, an associate to an outlaw, and a disgraced socialite.
While there are bookcases full of pirate tales Sarah was now widely perceived as a pirate’s wife, an associate to an outlaw, and a disgraced socialite.
While there are bookcases full of pirate tales and I am sure many volumes dedicated to the notorious buccaneer Captain William Kidd, it is largely overlooked that many privateers left families at home as they sailed the ocean swells. In Kidd’s case, he married for love to a redoubtable New York socialite Sarah, who followed him to his ship and later jail as she sacrificed nearly everything to try to keep her husband from the English gallows.
Author Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos’s telling of the story of Sarah Kidd is a clean, well-paced biography that provides a nice sketch of pre-revolutionary America and the relative role of married women in the colonies. I say relatively, because Sarah certainly broke a lot of molds, navigating a life that whips from riches and respectability to rags and infamy, with a shrewdness, savvy and resilience that carried her through four marriages and the Boston jail.
The challenge is of course that the historical record for Sarah (and women in general) of the period is rather thin and another good example that the lives of many remarkable people are likely lost to history simply because they lacked the means to tell their story. Sarah’s tale is an exception. Despite her character and experiences, she would have otherwise been ‘invisible in colonial history,’ as Geanacopoulos observes, if not for the notoriety of her husband.
Consequently, the largest part of the book (and much of what is known about Sarah) orbits around the fate of her husband. Captain Kidd fills about as much of the book as Sarah does. But Geanacopoulos squeezes as much detail as can be had about her even if some of it leans toward well-grounded conjecture. She also paints a rather sympathetic picture of Kidd, emphasizing his ties to his family and, though not himself an entirely blameless criminal, points out he took a lion-sized rap for a coterie of English gentry that encouraged (and financed) his privateering.
So if pirate history is your thing, The Pirate’s Wife is worth your time, if for no other reason than the uniqueness of its perspective. ...more
”No disaster other than the usual incidents to border warfare occurred until gross disobedience of orders sacrificed nearly eighty of the choice men o ”No disaster other than the usual incidents to border warfare occurred until gross disobedience of orders sacrificed nearly eighty of the choice men of my command … Life was the forfeit. In the grave I bury disobedience.”
Author Dee Brown remains one of the American west’s best historians, weaving a vivid and engrossing account of The Fetterman Massacre which saw a confederation of native American tribes lure, trap and destroy a detachment of US soldiery just past the walls of Fort Phil Kearny on December 21, 1866, in what is now modern Wyoming. The loss would (at the time) be the bloodiest defeat suffered by U.S. troops on the Great Plains (only later eclipsed by the massacre of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn).
With much of the book focused on Colonel Henry B. Carrington, the controversial builder and commander of the fort, Brown traces the U.S. government’s increasingly aggressive efforts to secure the Bozeman trail, beginning at the building of the military outpost and ending at its dismantling. The narrative is rich and, once again, I’m hard pressed to imagine I would have lasted very long in the wilds, trucking through heavy snows, felling trees and wild game, let alone building fortifications on the frontier. Brown packs in both facts and personalities, without slackening the pace of this engaging narrative. And while the majority of the story is from the white man’s perspective, Brown (as much as he is able) tries to offer a balanced view, including tribal cultural features and perspectives. I, for one, particularly liked the chapter headings, subtitling each month with Native American seasonal descriptions.
The climax of the book is, of course, the battle, which Brown describes in cinematic detail. Despite the lack of survivors, Brown is able to recreate the engagement in frenetic and often gory details as the U.S. infantry and calvary are decoyed into a well-laid trap by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. It does not go well for the soldiers. The aftermath is also intensely portrayed, bodies brought by the dozens into the isolated outpost, grieving widows, and heroic dashes by outriders into the teeth of a blizzard to carry news of the bloody defeat and bring military relief to the by now panicked fort.
Perhaps the only bummer of the book is the author’s biography (with photos!). After thoroughly enjoying the tale, I found out that this new favorite writer of mine …. is dead. Sure he leaves behind quite a considerable bibliography, but as an author that was ‘brand-new-to-me’, I was very saddened to learn that Dee Brown is no longer at his keyboard.
Regardless, Dee Brown's The Fetterman Massacre is great history, told with verve and immensely enjoyable reading. ...more
”Wicked men did not arrive in [elected] office by some foreign power. We, the people, have done it.”
As I write this in the Spring of 2023, it’s hard t”Wicked men did not arrive in [elected] office by some foreign power. We, the people, have done it.”
As I write this in the Spring of 2023, it’s hard to imagine a more bitter or divisive time in U.S. politics.
Unless of course, you read books. Then you begin to realize that Washington politics have -- more often than not -- always been bitter and divisive … and even quite a bit bloodier. From an assault with a deadly weapon in the Senate to a fistfight in the House, the stormy pre-Civil War era perhaps culminated in the ‘in broad daylight’ murder of a US District Attorney by a sitting US Congressmen after the former engaged in a salacious and scandalous affair with the latter’s wife.
Author Chris DeRose unpacks the last of these transgressions, detailing the ‘trial of the century’ (which like many other ‘unforgettable’ trials are quickly forgotten historically) of Congressman Daniel Sickles who gunned down US District Attorney Phillip Barton Key (son of Francis Scott Key, composer of US national anthem) on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in 1859 just across the street from the White House after discovering a flagrant affair between Key and Sickle’s wife Teresa. The details of the illicit romance are still pretty steamy even 150 years after the fact, and there’s a nice a bit of gumshoe detective work that makes the tale really juicy, worthy of a spicey episode of the 19th century version of Cheaters.
To his credit, DeRose keeps things compelling whether it’s in describing the DC social scene, the murder in Lafyette Park, the packed courtroom of the trial, or the utter anguish of Sickles on discovering his wife’s adultery. Unlike many similar stories, DeRose has access to many first-person, original sources, allowing for a rich emotional picture of the principal parties that helps make the story stick. The ‘victim’ Key can’t help but look like an awful cad, while the shattering of the Sickles’ marriage is appropriately heart-wrenching.
DeRose is a capable teller of tales and Star Spangled Scandal is enjoyable both from the historical and true crime perspectives. From the historical viewpoint, DeRose’s vivid depictions of the Washington social scene on the eve of the Civil War is a highlight; it very much has the feeling of a last desperate party – a final orgy -- before the hell storm breaks. For the true crime buff, DeRose achieves a rare feat in keeping the jury’s verdict secret until page 289. As I was entirely unfamiliar with this, the historical outcome to the trial was a welcome surprise and made for a nice climax late in the story....more
All his sensations, some ebbing some flowing, seemed to be converging on the moment his spirit would abandon his body to the jackals and his corpse wo All his sensations, some ebbing some flowing, seemed to be converging on the moment his spirit would abandon his body to the jackals and his corpse would join the company of skeletons on the Zahara.
As shipwreck and survival stories go, Dean King’s Skeletons on the Zahara is exceptional. Well told and remarkably intense, King details the wreck of the American merchantman Commerce off the east African coast in May 1815, relating the toils and travails of the ship’s thirteen unlucky officers and crew who after abandoning their stranded ship on the rocks off Cape Bojador, survive a harrowing journey in an open boat only to be castaway, emaciated and destitute, on the wild shores of Africa, captured by Arab tribesmen, and sold into slavery.
King is a gifted historian and wordsmith. The grit and heat of the desert shimmers from the pages as King paints a vivid picture of the miseries and depredations of life on the Sahara while balancing the narrative with an engaging picture of the cultures, customs, and characters in the nomadic desert society. Amid the hostile sands, life and death are always balanced on a razor’s edge and King (as the surviving sailors also observed) remains objective in relating the harshness of the seamen’s captors. Where even the smallest scrap of cloth, a morsel of food, or even a drop of water was a struggle to obtain, it’s not hard to imagine cultural morals hardening to match the harshness and paucity of the environment
King is also quite the storyteller, pulling two diverging survivors’ accounts into a single story that is never short on details and ends-up quite the adventure as the beleaguered sailors are smuggled toward rescue past increasingly factious Arab warlords and potentates. Pulling from two separate first-hand survivors’ narratives provides a depth and detail often lacking in similar historic tales, especially as survivors are separated. Some stories continue, while the fate of other comrades often fade into the murk. Fortunately, King is able to keep track of two packs of survivors and follow at least two threads to conclusion.
It's impossible for me not to recommend this one as a great, true-life adventure story and a nice window to an utterly foreign and unforgiving patch of the world. ...more
’The distance separating these two people, who have never met, is approximately eight inches. Close enough to breathe each other’s breath. Murder can ’The distance separating these two people, who have never met, is approximately eight inches. Close enough to breathe each other’s breath. Murder can be a very intimate business.’
In his rise to power, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini survived three assassination attempts. The middle attempt on his life came nearest to success, a bullet taking a chunk out of Il Duce’s nose, and was perpetrated by an unlikely hit woman, an expatriate English noblewomen named Violet Gibson. Tracing the life of this wayward daughter of the wealthy Ashbourne family, author Francis Stonor Saunders portrays a young women struggling with mental health issues well before she developed an obsessive hatred for the Italian tyrant. Her missed shot did not end Mussolini’s life as she hoped, but ironically only further burnished the Italian’s flamboyant reputation, further propelling him up the fascist ladder.
Stonor Saunder’s research is detailed and her prose at times (for example in the prologue) is delivered with a syncopated rhythm that feels nearly breathless. The challenge here, however, is that there is not quite enough drama -- once past the assassination -- to keep that pace. Occasionally, it reads more like a term paper, heavy with quotes from tangential lives, ranging from Virginia Wolfe to Ezra Pound to Lucia Joyce, and feels stretched past the centerline of the story. The end of Gibson’s biography is poignant, cashiered by her family in asylum to die decades later, with Stonor Saunders sifting through letters Violet wrote to friends, family, and government officials begging for clemency -- all of which went unsent by hospital officials and remain dusty, yellowed, and unread in Gibson’s medical file, years after her death.
There are palpable parallels to other attacks made by mentally-challenged individuals on notable public figures. Gibson’s state of mind feels reminiscent to that of John Hinckley Jr.’s attempt on American President Ronald Reagan. Unlike Gibson, however, Hinckley was eventually paroled. For those who question the wisdom of that decision, the calumny of Gibson’s incarceration in steadily declining accommodations and failing health, severed from her connections to her friends and faith, right until her final gasp of breath, may demonstrate the mercy inherent in a more enlightened decision for Hinckley.
Maybe the world would have been a better place had Violet killed Mussolini on that day in April 1926. Instead, her shot martyred only herself. ...more
And for everyone else, it would be a lesson about how the system really works.
In February 2003, a fire at Rhode Island’s Station nightclub killed 100 And for everyone else, it would be a lesson about how the system really works.
In February 2003, a fire at Rhode Island’s Station nightclub killed 100 people. Ignited by pyrotechnics lit as part of a performance by the band Great White, flames spread with frightening speed, engulfing the building in about 90 seconds. People died asphyxiated by thick black smoke, burned as a tar-like rain dripped from the ceiling, and were crushed and smothered in an exit hallway where people were packed so tightly together, they could not reach the nearby exit. It was one of the deadliest fires in U.S. history; the deadliest ever at a live music event.
With Trial by Fire, journalist Scott James offers a definitive account of the tragedy, ticking through the minutes of that horrible night and its aftermath with compelling detail, a master detective’s eye for accuracy, and a great novelist’s pen for painting vivid pictures of the many people the disaster touched – from victims and survivors and rescue workers to the band members, the club owners, government officials, media and attorneys involved in post-fire prosecution and litigation. Half of this book is a disaster-story about a heartbreaking tragedy and the resilience shown by its survivors; the other half is a horror story of a different nature about the insubstantiality of truth or justice and the reality of the machine-like gears of the legal and media systems that grind – often flawed -- toward their own ends.
The term ‘fair-and-balanced’ may be cliché, but for once, it’s not hyperbole to apply it here as James delivers a remarkably objective story. He does not shy away from either the awfulness of the fire or the missteps by both the media and legal system, which arguably rushed to judgment, misinformed the public with information that was ultimately specious, and protected potentially culpable parties from prosecution. It’s a real-life legal thriller that should scare the bejeezus out of the average Joe. Once the big gears of the media and legal systems start to churn against you, controlling your own narrative (let alone sharing the truth) is a near-impossible task.
For the professional emergency manager (of which I am one), Trial by Fire is a MUST read. It is one of the very best studies on mass casualty incidents and their aftermath I have ever come across. James traces the long road of recovery, beginning at triage in the first minutes after the fire, through family assistance, victim assistance funds, and permanent memorials. Few have traced this trajectory as closely as James and smart emergency managers would be wise to take notice. Like the phases grief or dying, traumatic recovery occurs in steps with tangles and barbs ready to ensnare and hurt. It would have been nice to have this roadmap years ago before I ever donned my first FEMA jacket.
Be you disaster relief professional, true crime aficionado, or just a history buff, Trial by Fire is an amazing account, tautly told, and perfectly delivered. This was an easy five stars.
P.S. Was a fan of Great White in the 80s. Not so much anymore. ...more
“On that sea … it was hard to divest ourselves of the idea that there was nothing but death in the world, and we the only living.”
It seems most of the “On that sea … it was hard to divest ourselves of the idea that there was nothing but death in the world, and we the only living.”
It seems most of the books I’ve read about exploration are climatic because they end in disaster.
Bitter Waters from author David Howard Bain is an exception as the U.S. Navy’s 1848 expedition to map the River Jordan from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea was largely successful. Lead by the intrepid Lieutenant William Francis Lynch, the party would negotiate with sultans, parley with Arab and Bedouin tribesmen, and dodge bandit ambuscades Indiana Jones-style while traversing the waterway on two skiffs – one of copper, one of galvanized metal – on an almost surreal journey through exotic Middle Eastern culture and past curtains of Biblical historical mist.
Aided by excerpts from Lynch’s original travelogue (and fortunately, Lynch is quite the writer!), Bain paints a vivid picture of lands, characters and journeys that are both pleasantly picturesque and somewhat mystical as the landscape is suffused with Biblical landmarks from the Hebrew fortresses of Masada to the pillars of salt at Usdum. There are chance encounters with ‘lost’ tribes of Arabic Christians, a tense encounter in the bastion of Kerek, and sojourns among hermetic monks (beset by scores of fleas) in cliffside redoubts at Mar Saba. It’s a rich text, even in its depictions of the dismal Dead Sea, which is described as gloomily miasmic, a tributary lake to stygian Hades.
As good as this book is middle to end, it is unfortunately burdened by its first part. It takes 150 pages to get the expedition – nearly half the book! – onto Middle Eastern shores. And while historically detailed, the politics of expedition birthing are less lustrous that even the alkaline waters of the Dead Sea and the amount of pages spent on Lynch-contemporary, sailor-scientist Matthew Maury feels a bit much as Maury ends-up rather ancillary to core tale. It is, however, worth the struggle to get past the groundwork, as the charm of the Jordan Valley enchants the rest of the narrative.
Bitter Waters is good history, rescuing the Dead Sea mission from obscurity and helping prove the point that while tragedy dominates the explorers' bookshelf, missions of success can be just as interesting reads. ...more
”And it is Wagner’s own twisted words and actions that form the noose from which, should I succeed, he will be hanged again before your very eyes.”
Fro ”And it is Wagner’s own twisted words and actions that form the noose from which, should I succeed, he will be hanged again before your very eyes.”
From the very title, author J. Dennis Robinson promises a true crime, case closed account of the bloody double murder that occurred on Smuttynose Island in March 1873. Rich in fact and detail and pulled from a many volumed library of first and secondhand sources, trial records, and historical artifacts, Robinson traces the villainy of one of New England’s most notorious blackguards, the charismatic Louis Wagner. In the dread night, the penniless immigrant slipped away in a stolen dory to rob and butcher two women with an axe on an isolated spit of land in the Isle Shoals while a third woman, Maren Hontvet, ran for her life. It’s rare that a writer delivers on such a bold promise – case closed! – on a nearly 150 year-old killing, but Robinson delivers(!) leaving not a speck of space for doubt that the man whose neck was stretched on the gibbet at Thomaston State Prison was the culprit.
And while Mystery on the Isle of Shoals is principally a true crime clinic that surgically dissects the murder, victims, alibi, trial, perpetrator, and punishment adeptly presenting the ‘hailstorm of evidence’ that sent Wagner to gallows while shoveling into the privy all the speculation of the convicted murder’s innocence like so many gull droppings from the far coast of the island … to say this book is just a true crime tale would be selling it far short. Robinson is painting not just a picture of a crime but a picture of Shoals’ culture and the insular community that once thrived and eventually expired there. Peopling his tale with fisherman, hoteliers, lawyers, police officers, writers, and even more murderers, Robinson submerges us in the history of region and, more than most of books of this type, forces us to feel the reverberations that the Smuttynose murders caused across the islands. And how its shockwaves … marked the place … forever.
Robinson’s trail of evidence may clearly point to Wagner’s size-eleven boot heels, but to his credit, the author gives the criminal a fair enough shake, offering Wagner’s alibi in the criminal’s own words and pointing out that Wagner certainly had his proponents even from his jail cell. In fact, the author’s harshest words are for a contemporary: Anita Shreve who penned the very popular The Weight of Water. As a lover of books, I’m the generally the first to defend authors who bend history in the service of a great story –Make Abe Lincoln a vampire hunter? Chop on I say! – but there is a bit of tastelessness to Shreve’s fictionalization as she transformed convicted murder Louis Wagner into a guiltless patsy and his one surviving victim Maren Hontvet into the killer (who also preferred her brother’s bed to her husband’s). As Robinson points out, too many people take Shreve’s story for the truth, lionizing an unrepentant killer and accepting the smear against the lone survivor of the horrific crime.
I can see where historians become indignant.
The thickness of this one might be a heavy lift for some readers, but Mystery on the Isle of Shoals is worth the pages. Robinson is a perfect tour guide whose prose is crisp, his grasp of facts extensive, and his storytelling compelling. I like this one a lot and, while it will probably be seen mostly as counterpoint to Shreve’s bestseller, this book deserves to stand on its own as not just a great true crime casefile but also a perfect history of an intensely American ecosystem. ...more
I have read quite a number of disaster stories. But there are few books that do a better job of blending the t ”He may be the Frankenstein of the air.”
I have read quite a number of disaster stories. But there are few books that do a better job of blending the true story of an historical catastrophe with ‘weird world’ Americana than Garry Jenkins’ The Wizard of Sun City. Jenkins mixes the tale of the 1916 southern California floods that nearly wiped out San Diego with the biography of the man many would say made them happen: rainmaker Charles Mallory Hatfield. Taking a bet with Sun City politicos, Hatfield promised to fill the Morena reservoir with 10 billions gallons of water by ‘milking’ the clouds with a potpourri noxious chemicals, burnt like incense under the leaden January skies.
Hatfield’s secret sauce worked just a bit too well — or maybe more likely a curious convergence of storms met over America’s west coast, combined, and produced a record-breaking deluge — drowning communities from Oceanside to Tijuana and collapsing the Lower Otay Dam, inundating the valley in a deadly wave of water, mud and debris. Jenkins deftly captures the lives of those caught in the unfolding catastrophe, collecting and adding lots of little and dramatic details that paint a vivid picture of the period, while sparing nothing of the magnitude or the horrors of the catastrophe that pushed many towns right into the ocean.
And while this is a great ‘disaster’ book, Jenkins also paints an endearing picture of the pseudo-scientist Mallory. Coaxing rain from the clouds may have ultimately been flim flam (with Jenkins summarizing the pedigree of artificial rainmaking schemes back to the 1880s), but it’s impossible to finish the tale without taking a liking Mallory (as most of his contemporaries did). In fact, if there are villains, one’s a lawyer (no surprise there!) and the others the bureaucrats at the fledging National Weather Services. Mallory’s cloud milking might be bunk, but his research on climatology data to predict the best windows for precipitation make him about as a capable a forecaster as anyone else in this book!
Whether your itch is weather, emergency management or American folklore, The Wizard of Sun City fills those niches with a well-written, entertaining tale that — as we consider our own climate crisis — might also put a little perspective on things. Water woes are more than just a ‘now’ thing.