This is a very quick read. Tyson is an decent writer with unbounded enthusiasm for his work. For me, this was mental chocolate: sweet, over quick and familiar. For most readers, however, I think a large percentage of this book will be new information… information that we all should have. It speaks to where we are in the grand scheme of things, but most importantly, it tells of just how grand the grand scheme is. And no, there is no schemer, only the laws of physics. In my life time, the amount we know about the universe has increased many fold. No other people in history have seen this happen. The trend will continue, but as time goes by, the revelations are bound to get smaller and less impressive. In other words, it is a great time to be curious.

he Philippines are a large group of islands in the Pacific. The western part of the island group is largely open to the ocean. It is easy to enter the inner seas from the west. The east is a different matter. Luzon to the north and Mindanao to the south are the largest islands in the group. Samar and Leyte, essentially one island, are to the south and east of Luzon and form the eastern shores of the Philippines along with Mindanao. 

In late October, 1944, a major landing was underway at Leyte Gulf  in anticipation of MacArthur's return and the liberation of the Philippines.  Leyte Gulf was filled with helpless transports and an attack by the Japanese was expected. 

There are three ways to get to Leyte gulf. From the west (the Japan side),  one can go through the  Philippines via the Sibuyan  sea and exit on the east side of the Philippines through the San Bernardino Straights, which separates Luzon from Samar and Leyte, and then turn south towards Leyte gulf. Or one can approach from the south, taking the Surigao Straight north of Mindanao, which opens onto Leyte gulf. The only other approach is from the eastern Pacific, an area controlled by the US. This is the field of battle for the largest naval conflict in history.

Japan was going all-in. Either they beat the US back, or Japan's navel dominance in then Pacific would be  over, and Japan's fate sealed.  Prior battles, especially  the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot", had all but wiped out Japans naval air power.  They had carriers, but few planes and fewer crews to man them. However, they still had the world's two largest battleships ever: the Yamato and the Musashi.

The US was fighting far from home. They were stretched thin  on ammo and fuel.  But by all measures, they out gunned the Japanese.

This was a very complex battle that took place over a few days. I will give a 50,000 foot description.

The Japanese were in three groups (JN, JM, JS).

JN (for North) hung off the Philippines to the north and east. It was a carrier fleet, with almost no planes. It included the Zuikaku, the last Pearl Harbor flat top still afloat. It would not survive this battle. This fleet was assigned to throw itself at the northerly American ships as a feint to draw the Americans away from Leyte. They expected to get cut to pieces… and they were. 

JM (for middle) went through the Sibuyan Sea and out the San Bernardino Straights. Its job, as was JS's,  was to sink  American ships and stop the invasion.

JS (for South) approached from the south through the narrow Surigao Straights.

The Americans were in three groups (AN, AM, AS).

AN was Bull Halsey's group. Their primary task was to guard the San Bernardino Straights. Halsey would split his force to create AM.    

AM included a group returning from refits that were not completed. It steamed into the middle off Samar Island.

AS was to guard the Surigao Straights and the Leyte landing.

The Americans hit JN first by air in the middle of the Sibuyan Sea (the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea) , sinking the Musashi (the first Japanese battleship to be sunk my air power alone), and hurting the Japanese. The US over-estimated the damage done.
Then the  Americans waited for the Japanese JS at the top of the Surigao Straights and beat them back decisively. 
The Battle of Cape Engano (located off the north end of Luzon) followed with JM vs AM.  It was a draw. And finally the Battle of Samar finished the encounter.  This battle saw the introduction of the Kamikaze. The US took a lot of damage in this battle, mostly to escort carriers.

A lot of ink has been spilled on AN and Halsey. He did manage to finish off Japanese naval air power, but it was already all but dead.  He spent most of his time steaming toward a fight rather than fighting. He left his post guarding the San Bernardino Straights to get JN. This left AM unable to handle JN when it slipped through the San Bernardino Straights un-noticed.

An equal amount of ink was spilled on why JM decided to bug out. The Battle of Samar was in Japan's favor. AM was on it knees, but they did not know that, nor did they know that JAs feint had actually worked. Poor communications. Had they continued to steam south to Leyte Gulf, they would have wreaked carnage. But instead they turn back through the San Bernardino Straights.

The Americans out gunned the Japanese and expected a win. Halsey almost reversed that. Poor intelligence on both sides led to poor decisions. Both sides also had command issues. There was no over all commander on either side. This led to poor coordination of attacks.

There was much carnage to follow before the war would end, but the Japanese would never again pose a serious navel threat (this does not count kamikazes).

The book is a fairly quick read. Lots of details on who did what, when, and why. It illustrates the old maxim that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. It certainly underscores the need for good communications. In 1944, most ships ran "silent" and only sent short transmitted radio messages in code. This lead to delays and errors.

This book is a long read about a difficult subject - human suffering on an unprecedented scale.

The obvious first question is "What are the Bloodlands"? The Bloodlands refers to the dirt between Germany and Russia during the early 20th century. I say dirt rather than listing countries because borders change and definitions are loose. In today's terms it covers Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, the eastern two thirds of Poland, the western borders of Russia, and Ukraine. After the war ended, the iron curtain came down and the nature of the crimes committed  in these areas were covered up. Only now that 75 years have passed has more information come available.

For example, the liberating western allies never once saw a death camp. They saw the ends of several labor camps, and grisly as those images were, they were  but a shadow of the crimes committed  in the Poland death camps (they were all in Poland which became a Soviet puppet state). Another example: the truth is finally out about death sites like Baba Yar and Katyn. Katyn was a Soviet slaughter of Polish officers which they tried to blame the Germans for.

"During the years that both Stalin and Hitler were in power, more people were killed in Ukraine than anywhere else in the Bloodlands, or in Europe, or in the world."

Think about that statement. 

We know Poland suffered greatly, due in part to being between a rock (Germany) and a hard place (the USSR), as did Belarus. It is worth noting that countries such as Canada (young, one border, surrounded by oceans) did not exist in Europe.  Europe has regions that have certain ethnic characters, and the map of Europe has changed many times prior to the end of WWII. Poland, for example,  had the largest number of Jews in Europe as well as large populations of Germans, Ukrainians, and Belarusians.   

Chapter 1 deals with the Soviet famines.  Starting in 1930, Stalin began "collectivizing" Ukraine farms.  Kulaks (well off peasants) were killed. Farms became state property.  And the state demanded ever increasing quotas of grain resulting in famine and starvation by the millions. The phrase "roving bands of cannibals" says much about the conditions.  Stalin's wife committed suicide the day after the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution. She was clearly making a point.  Young  communists were told starving people were the enemy  who "risked their lives to spoil our optimism".  3.3 million dead in Ukraine.

Chapter 2  is "Class Terror", basically blaming other people for the USSR's failings. If it wasn't a satellite state ruining things, it was foreign powers.  It deals with the internal and external politics of both Hitler and Stalin from 1933 to 1937.

National Terror, Chapter 3, deals with purges. Poland shares a long border with Ukraine. In the late 30s, the most persecuted group in Europe were not the Jews, but the Poles.  The definition of an "enemy" was so broad in the USSR that it could apply to anyone (it included as crimes certain "forbidden thoughts and ideas", and trivia like owning a rosary).  Stalin's Great Terror purged the upper ranks of his officers and again fell on the Kulaks. . Torture was common place and often public.  A million were killed. Many blamed the Jews for this. Later, when Germany and the USSR split Poland, the terror started there too.

Chapter 4: The Molotov - Ribbentrop line partitioned Poland.  Poland was a haven for Jews and had the largest concentration in Europe.  Germany got about 2 million Polish Jews and immediately began planning how to get rid of them. In about a year or so, eliminating Jews from Europe would become Nazi policy. The big players: Hans Frank (governor of Poland, and Hitler's one-time lawyer) , Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich (perhaps the evilest man in modern history) and Adolph Eichmann. Heydrich created the first Einsatzgruppen (special killing squads). Between 1940 and 1941, the two conquerors killed 200,000 Poles and deported a million more to  gulags or concentration camps. 

Chapter 5 deals with economics. Germany has attacked the USSR. The Germans had a Hunger Plan… feed the soldiers, starve the locals. The Russian war did not go as Germany planned. The 
Einsatzgruppen  were released in earnest  in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine (among others). Vast numbers of Soviet troops were captured and treated far worse than any other POWs in Europe. Only about 50% would survive. No names were taken, unusual even in those times.

"As many Soviet POWs died on a single given day in Autumn 1941 as did British and American POWS over the course of the entire second world war."  

The invasion of the USSR was supposed to solve Germany's economic problems. The opposite happened.

The Final Solution (Chapter 6). Himmler get s control of the eastern conquered territories. By now Communists and Communism were viewed a  Jewish plot, so killing Soviets and killing Jews were justified in the same breath. When food was short, the emphasis for the Germans was to kill Jews (useless eaters). When labor was short, the emphasis was to kill those unable to work, and deport those who could to now-depleted German factories. This had the odd result of making Germany the  country with the largest percentage of Jews and Slavs in Europe (other than their home countries). Atrocities were  everywhere. Baba Yar and Katyn are two examples.  

Holocaust and Revenge:  Belarus was ground zero for Germany vs. USSR. Moscow was never taken, but Minsk was burned to the ground.  A fantasy that is promoted to this day is that the Russians suffered more than any other group in WWII. This is false. In terms of territory, Germany barely penetrated Russia. Not so for the states in between.   Jews in Belarus feared Soviet pogroms, but feared the Germans more. Poles hated them both  but could see the future: If they defeat the Germans, they get Russian rule. The devil you know…?  Many fled Minsk to the forests where Jews and others carried out sabotage. The movie Defiance w/Daniel Craig captured the internal conflicts quite well . By war's end, half the population of Belarus was either dead or moved. No other country was treated worse.

The Death Factories: I wont go into a lot of detail here. From the killing squads, body burning, baby shooting, and gas vans to factories of death.  This is the most grisly chapter in human history. Six death camps did the dirty work:  Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Madjanek and Auschwitz.  They were all in Poland, and the Western Allies never set foot in one.  The horrible familiar images from the Nuremburg trials were all Americans visiting labor camps that had been recently abandoned. 

Women, with more fatty tissue, burned better than men, and so workers would put them on the bottom of the pyres. Chew on that for a moment.

Resistance and Incineration recalls the closing days year of the war. The treatment of Poland and Warsaw are discussed at length. I have reviewed a book on this subject matter already.    

Ethnic Cleansings: Although Poland "won" the war, it lost 47% of its territory and became a Soviet satellite state. As the war ended, Stalin went on another rampage. He wanted pure states with pure goals, which he would create come what may.

The closing chapters sum up the book.

• German shot more Jews in the East than they had inmates in concentration camps.
• The vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust never saw the inside of a concentration camp.
• The German  killed about 10,000,000 in the Bloodlands, the Soviets, about 6,000,000. Add about 30% to both for starvation and ethnic cleansing.
• More Poles were killed during the Warsaw uprising than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• Almost as many non-Jewish Poles died as Jews died in Auschwitz.     

Final Thoughts

I have read a lot about WWII. I am never surprised, but always shocked, when I read the details of human suffering at the hands of the Germans and the Soviets. One can get almost anyone to do unspeakable violence if they can be convinced that they are the victims. This is a long book, but I never got bored. It has helped put the eastern part of the war in better perspective.  

Dyer is a Canadian war researcher who wrote this book in 1985. From what I can gather, it is well respected. This edition has been revised and updated.

The book tours war historically, examining its roots and its evolution over the millennia.
The opening comments discuss some of the big picture history. For example, major battles prior to the 20th century would generate casualty rates as high as 50-60%, with an average of 20. In modern battles, this figure rarely exceeds 1 percent. This was due largely to changes in technology (weapons got better). This in turn changed the nature of soldiers and their mission. In the old days, soldiers did not get combat fatigue (shell shock, or today: PTSD) because they would die before it ever happened. Today, all armies recognize that troops can only take so many combat days (in WWII, it was 240) before they  fall apart.

Dyer has always impressed me especially with regard to basic training, which he discusses in a chapter called "Any one's Son Will Do". Get them when they are young. Break them down to the same level, making them all equals, and then build up a small group dynamic where each man relies on the others to help him stay alive. Drill Sergeants are masters of psychological manipulation, and they know it.

In his opening chapter, Dyer makes this startling revelation:  In WWII in the ETO, only 15% of combat infantry riflemen ever fired their weapon in anger! Most soldiers would never have  reveal such a fact, until they were told they were not at all alone.  More than four fifths of combat soldiers got through the war with killing anyone, and without firing a shot! More research has backed this up. Gettysburg was a hugely costly battle  for Americans because it was Americans on both sides. More than half of the recovered muskets from the battle were loaded with more than one round, and only 5% were ready to be fired when they were abandoned or dropped.  Six thousand had as many as 10 rounds in the barrel. In other words, most of the fighters were spending their time  reloading a loaded gun, and, one assumes, ducking. No one is suggesting these men were cowards. Many were simply principled and did not want to kill.

The upshot of this is startling: if you could get the malingerers to enter the fray, the other guys didn't stand a chance. Which they did. New training got the numbers up to 50% in Korea and 80% in Vietnam. The US had figured out how to get men to kill automatically. Dehumanizing the enemy was a big part of it.

War goes back a long way. Chimps war on each other and so do we.  We did not invent war, we inherited it. Dyer examines hunter gatherer groups and their interaction;  ritualized warfare in groups like New Guinea bushmen;  and other evidence of our more primitive past.  Some suggest that ritualized warfare is not the "real deal". It does generate casualties at a low rate, which meant that they could do it a lot, which in turn meant high casualty rates over time.   Hobbs, Rousseau and Darwin are invoked  and examined for their viewpoints.

The birth of war was driven by human life style choices. Hunting and gathering can keep you alive. So can farming. But a new type of living was now being made: pastoralism (i.e.: nomads). They lived by herding domesticated animals. Inevitably, these groups clashed. The nomads would win fights because they were mobile, which meant they could concentrate their forces when needed. To combat this, walls around towns were built.  When horses were domesticated, things accelerated.   It is worth noting that Egypt was largely spared from nomadic attacks by its geography.

The Sumerians hit upon the idea that religion could be a better way of settling disputes. It worked for a while. Priests liked it because it gave them power.  But as we know, religion is not a cure for war, but more often an excuse or a direct cause.

Aside: Women were equal partners in life until civilization and agriculture came along, driving the need for a power structure which eschewed women because it could.

Sargon was the worlds first emperor over a militarized society (circa 2300 BC). Around then, there was a major technological innovation: the compound bow. The bow and arrow has killed more people than any other weapon, ever.  Unlike the English longbow (yet to be invented), the composite bow was short, powerful and could be fired from horseback.

Other inventions over time include the chariot (fast, hit and run, archery platform); the pike and phalanx; war galleys; improved, harder metals; bigger horses;  the saddle and stirrup (700 AD);  gun powder (1300 AD); and organized armies (which gave the powers-that-be the willies).

Aside: Japan had a warrior based culture. When the musket was introduced, they were appalled. A samurai could be killed by a commoner! Unacceptable… so they just stopped making them. That obviously changed later in history.

Armies got bigger, the percentage of soldiers dying went up, battles were huge but infrequent; and the average citizen was left alone.

Armies had to be trained and fed. You could not just conscript someone and throw them into battle. Standing armies were a part of every major European power from 1700 on. 

What happened next was the introduction over time of the concept of "total war".

New weapons were being developed at a quick pace. It was soon discovered that a few men behind cover with guns could stop a large number of advancing troops. Tactics changed. WWI introduced the concept of the continuous front.  The  tank was used for the first time. It gave professional soldiers the hope that  it might end the wars of attrition. It did, but it caused the continuous front to become mobile. This and aircraft took a terrible toll on civilians. The tank eventually spawned "blitzkrieg", or  mobile "lightning" war.  The world wars were the first where civilian deaths outnumber the deaths of combatants.

The next chapter in the book documents the history of nukes. There have been a lot of ideas over the years on this subject, but the prevailing idea is that you only need enough to destroy the other guy. This was known as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). And so far, this math has kept the nuclear peace for 75 years. The advent  of nukes gave rise to the phrase "conventional war".

The birth of the professional army came in 1803 Prussia with the creation of the Kriegsakademie. This approach of using well trained professional soldiers was soon adopted by others.  One hundred Germans in WWII were a match for 125 British or 250 Russian troops. Why? Because they had 10x as many good generals who knew how to get the most from men and equipment.  The old game is now protected turf and generals everywhere want to keep it that way (the start of the military-industrial complex?). Technology has changed the equation a great deal. One example: a Spitfire in WWII cost 5,000 pounds to make. The supersonic Tornado, its 3rd generation successor, cost 17 million, 172 times more after adjusting for inflation.

The last chapter speculates about the future of  war:

Baboons are nasty creatures. The males are obsessed with status and fight all the time.  But in one troop something unusual happened. The aggressive males all died off at once from eating infected meat.  Overnight, the troop settled down to a much more egalitarian society. And it  stayed that  way even after the demographics of the tribe returned to normal! The ritualized war fare on New Guinea bushmen killed a large percentage of  combatants, one at a time, year after  year. The government stepped in and told them this had to stop. They all agreed enthusiastically and never looked back! It seems both were caught in a local stability point that they could not get out of without a nudge. Perhaps there is hope in both those stories.           

While not as eye-opening a book as Guns Germs and Steal, this book is a must read for anyone who wishes to grapple with these thorny issues. War has been with us for all of our history. But perhaps we can first ritualize it, and then dump it as a bad idea.  I doubt it. The New Guinea bushmen were offered an alternative to their wars… essentially third party arbitration. This is something the top dogs will never agree to.

One final tidbit: Have you ever wondered if you were safer as an officer in combat, or as a soldier? In WWII, the answer was "soldier". In Vietnam, it did not matter.

Dyer himself has served, so he has seen some of all this from the inside. 

I  recently read Prisoner's of Isolation which focused on solitary confinement in the Canadian penal system. Canada's practices were, as I described, barbaric. There is some light at the end of the tunnel for Canada.

This book is a much broader  indictment of the US penal system, and specifically Attica. Canada was bad. The US was and is far, far worse.

Attica is a name familiar to anyone of my generation. I was a teen when it happened, and I must admit I did not pay much attention. Attica is a town and a prison in upstate New Your. On Sept 9, 1971, after months of simmering issues, the shit hit the fan. The prisoners took over, controlled the yard, and had many CO (correction officers) hostages. In the process, a CO was killed. After that, the cons took responsibility for the hostages and protected them. Rumors fostered by the state spread: castrations, torture, slit throats and such. The COs and the SPs (State Police) smelled blood. A few days later, the state (lead by the warden and the state head of corrections) let to dogs loose. What followed was chaos, torture and barbarity. Many cons and several hostage COs were killed, all by other COs. No attempts were made to match bullets to guns, guns to COs, or do any of that police professionalism stuff.

Bigotry was a major issue. Most of the prison population was non-white. Guard training was an issue: they had none. General cowboy attitudes, tough on crime types, and the general view that COs walked on water and cons were animals did the rest.  These were jail towns and they hired any moron who could tote a gun from the local populace to do a "professional" job.

The top names in law were embroiled in a 40 year long cover up of crimes. The state was utterly heartless to everyone involved, including the families of injured or killed COs. The state refused to pay the salaries of the hostage COs  because they were "off the clock". The state lost evidence, or denied it existed, or claimed privilege, or said it existed but it was unimportant throughout it all. The state even sent "support cheques" to widows, knowing that if they were cashed, they would, under NY state law, constitute an acceptance of compensation… i.e.: take this pittance which you desperately need, but if you do, you can never, ever sue.  IOW: the state conned its own citizens.  

You would think things would have gotten better, but not in the US of A. Some precedents were set, some rules changed, and some people made whole (ish). But mostly, the US doubled down, prison populations soared, , conditions got worse, for profit prisons made it worse still, and it is worse than ever now.

This is a long but gripping read. There are real heroes, real bad guys (most of whom died before the law could ever catch up to them), and lots of victims. The worst thing about it, though, is just how trivial it is for politicians to completely derail the justice system whenever they want and use it as a cudgel.
  

​I have known about this book for some time and finally got around to reading it.

Nothing is big topic. What is nothing? Just empty space? It still has time and volume, and the potential to have other stuff too, and the potential is something. Or: nothing is not nothing if it has the potential to be something.

One hundred years ago, the fastest form of commercial travel was the train and ship, and Einstein's special theory was still being debated . The General Theory of Relativity took longer to accept.  One hundred years ago, we believed we lived in an island universe called The Milky Way. But now we know that the universe is far, far more vast. At this point, the author turns to Douglas Adams ("the universe is so big, you wouldn't believe it" etc).

To get a handle on the universe, we need to know how much stuff is in it. I.e.: what does it weigh?

Standard candles (Cepheid variable stars and Type 1A supernovae are the two biggies) have opened our eyes not just to the size of the universe, but its age and its destiny. The universe is expanding and will continue to do so forever. Here is an interesting idea: in 2 thousand billion years (2 trillion years), stars and galaxies will still exist. But future astronomers will literally have no way of knowing the deep history that gave rise to their universe. The rest of the universe would have disappeared beyond the horizon (or, if you prefer, they will be so far red-shifted that they will be moving away at over the speed of light and thus become physically undetectable). We are privileged and can see our history, but this will not be true forever.

The book gives a nice summary of what we know today and how we know it. The reasoning is fascinating. The bottom line is that dark energy is driving the universe to expand.

Another fun fact: if you are old enough to remember TV in the days of yore, you will remember that TV was broadcast and picked up with antennae. In the dead of night, the broadcasters stopped broadcasting and the channel in question would appear as "snow"… just a lot of static. About 1% of the snow you see is the after-glow of the big bang! This microwave background radiation can be sued to calculate the age of the universe: 13.72 billion years. 

The fundamental base of the book is one of book keeping. We got a universe from nothing. But how. Energy (i.e.: matter and other stuff) is a zero sum game and so, suggests Krauss is the universe. If there are equal amounts of positive energy and negative energy (yes, there is such a thing), then the books still balance and sum to zero! And we get a flat universe…. Which is nice because curvy universes are more complex.

Krauss quotes Chris Hitchens often when it comes to the implications of all this. One thing seems clear, for Krauss there is no need of a creator. And the universe cares not what you might think of it. Stephen Weinberg is known for saying that science does not make it impossible to believe in god, it makes it possible to not believe in god.     

This is a quick read. But the contents are deep and I may come back and read it again in a few years.

One analogy I liked for how it came about is this:
Take a ball and throw it in the air. It will fall to Earth. Thrown it harder, and it will still fall back to Earth. But throw it hard enough and it will never come done. This is a kind of symmetry breaking. One can imagine the potential for space doing this for eternities stacked on eternities, until one day, the ball did not come back down, and the universe was born.

One final quip from the book: One answer to "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is "There won't be for long!"

​The timing:


Dec 7, 41: the US enters the war after Pearl Harbor
Jun 4, 42: Midway
Dec, 42: Stalingrad
Jun 6, 44: D-Day
May 8: The Germans surrender
Sep 2: After six years (and one day)… the war ends with VJ Day.

When it comes to battles during WWII, the two that stand out the most are the Battle of the Bulge and Midway. There are others, of course: the Battles of the Atlantic/Britain/Stalingrad/Kursk; D-Day, Alamein, Market Garden and many more… and that is just the EOT. But these two stand out.

The Battle of the Bulge was the most costly, especially for the Americans. But it lasted for a month, and its ultimate outcome was inevitable. The decisive action at Midway was over in under seven minutes; the final outcome was by no means clear; and ownership of the Pacific was at stake.

Prior to Midway was the Battle of the Coral Sea. This was the first  carrier vs. carrier battle ever fought. No ships saw the enemy. The Japanese had two of its Pearl Harbor veteran carriers damaged. The US also had two carriers damaged. Due to a non-battle related incident, the Lexington was sunk (actually, scuttled). Both sides towed their wounded carriers back to their home bases. The Coral Sea was a draw. But it set the stage for what happened next.

The Japanese were already planning an attempt to take and occupy Midway, a small atoll north and west of Hawaii, consisting to two small islands, Sand and Eastern, where the US had an airbase and refueling port. The American code breakers lead by  Rocheport  had broken much of the Japanese JN25 code and knew that AF, as the Japanese code worded it, aka Midway, was the target.

The Japanese were told that their  two damaged Pearl Harbor veteran carriers would take three months to repair. The Midway invasion fleet set sail with the other four carriers that hit Midway: Akagi, Horyu, Soryu and Kagi. The Japanese also wanted to hit the Aleutians as a feint. Following behind the two attack fleets was the rest of the Japanese navy, including the largest battleship ever built, the Yamato, which carried Yamamoto, the fleet admiral. Nagumo, who lead the Pearl Harbor attack, lead the  Midway attack force.

The  Yorktown was towed back to Pearl and there, the shore crews also said three months were required to fix her up. Nimitz gave them two days. In a minor miracle, Yorktown sailed two days later to join her sister carriers Enterprise and Hornet.  Fletcher and Spruance were to lead the American side.

As history records, the two fleets met north and west of Midway. A couple of squadrons of bombers found the Japanese carriers without fighter cover and hurriedly attempting to re-arm their planes to fight the American fleet (rather than to attack Midway itself).  To this point, the US had had zero luck. But this time, in under seven minutes, three Japanese carriers were burning and subsequent action sunk the fourth.  The cream of Japan's naval fliers and ground crews were wiped out.

Later, the Yorktown survived two airborne attacks, only to be sunk by a submarine's torpedo.

One difference between the Americans and the Japanese: When the Yorktown was sinking, the captain confirmed that all crew were off the ship, and then grabbed his kit and left. When Akagi went down, they Japanese spent most of the time trying to figure out who should or should not commit Hara Kiri.  

I knew a lot about Midway, but this was still a stimulating read. The main reason the Japanese lost the battle was arrogance… what they called "victory disease". On paper, they were way ahead. There were other reasons too: Failure to deploy their battle ships; Inferior damage control technology (a consequence of the Bushido code); Poor use of scouts; Biting off more than you can chew; etc.

War is hell. The US launched around 30 torpedo bombers… old slow and carrying shitty US torpedoes.  Not one hit its target, or if it did, it failed to explode. The crews knew their likely fate and only one or two of them escaped it.


If the Japanese had succeeded, the Pacific would have been theirs for some time. As it was, from June 6, 1942 (two years before D-Day), every subsequent move of the Japanese took them closer to home.

If the Japanese had been succeeded, I suspect that Tokyo would have been nuked. In any case, many more people, mostly Japanese, would have died.

The book is well researched with loads of detail. 
   

This book was banged out in two weeks and published just before Trump was actually impeached.  In this case, I think the word  "impeach" really means  "impeach and convict (i.e.: remove from office)". It is remarkably current considering the pace of events.

Katyal is a regular on MSNBC and worked in the Obama Whitehouse. He is a Constitutional scholar and Professor of Constitutional Law.  The book is a quick read. The writing is concise and clear.

He outlines the history of impeachment first. He then examines the evidence, and the case against DJT.  The legal issues are well explained . He finds himself teaching the American people  law in the usual way: establish a set  of hypothetical circumstances, and then explore the legal consequences.  
Except this time, the circumstances are real, and USA is dealing with a bizzaro hypothetical come to life. Finally, he offers up some legislative patches that might make it harder for the next out-of-control President to follow in DJT's footprints.

The Whistler-Blower's statement is in it in full. It was compelling reading. The WB really did his homework well.

Katyal lays out the case why DJT must be removed from office very convincingly. I could go through the long list of things that Trump has done, but they are well known and there is no point in my summarizing a summary.

The book is not expensive and is out in paperback. Read it for yourself.  

​I really liked the film series of the same name that documented the experiences  of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne.  The book 's chapters each correspond to a 1 hour piece of the film series. I re-watched the series as I read the book.

Easy was trained by a much hated Captain Sobel. But Sobel's strict emphasis on fitness made Easy the most fit unit in the ETO (European Theater of Operations).  Easy landed at Normandy, fought through Holland and Belgium, participated in Operation Market Garden, and famously played a key role in defending Bastogne from the German onslaught during The Battle of the Bulge.

The book is an easy read. It is about as close to fiction as I read these days, but of course, it is not fiction.  The attention to military detail was fantastic in the film. I spotted things that were referred to in the book, but never pointed out in the film.  So unless you were there, or were a veteran of other battles, the film had aspects that you would never notice without reading the book. Having said that, the film viewing time is longer than the book reading time. So if you have seen the film, you have not missed much. In fact, for most people, you can read the book faster than you can watch the show.

What these men had to endure is beyond anything I will ever experience. I stand in awe of what they accomplished… beyond simple survival.

The film ends with interviews of some of the soldiers… now quite old. The paradox of war is in the title. When you arrive as a recruit, you and your mates are equals, regardless of background. And if you survive the whole affair, they are your best friends to whom you owe your life, and vice versa. All of the survivors are glad for the experience, but only with the after the fact knowledge that they make it. Regardless, the emotional ties are strong and very touching.

The cliché "blood is thicker than water" does not refer to kinship ties, but to spilt blood between soldiers.

This was a read of a different nature. I wanted to learn a little more about feminism and a friend recommended this and one other book. It is different for me because it views the world from a perspective that I might try to empathize with, but cannot experience. It is worth noting that the book is 30 years old now, and some things have changed. I also note that Ms Wolf is very "beautiful", or at least she was in 1990. How much beauty-bias she personally suffered is hard to say.

The book  has six chapters: Work, Religion, Culture, Violence, Sex,  and Hunger,

There are many examples in every chapter (too many at times) of the various burdens women must bear… some external and some internal. For example: the intro points out that the average American woman would rather loose 10-15 lbs than any other goal. That is really sad. It certainly has a strong external component to it. You can blame Twiggy et al for that, but surely part of this issue is internal.   

She introduces the concept of the PBQ (Professional Beauty Qualification). She argues that the PBQ is a way to discriminate against women in a safe, litigation-proof way. The  standards for on-air female personalities are quite different than for men.  One woman lost a case where her employer said she was too, old, too unattractive, and not deferential enough to men.  Yikes! The PBQ, Wolf argues, is the currency of womanhood.

Here is a shocking statement from the book: Young professional women spend up to 1/3 of their income on their appearance. Or to put it slightly cruder: Want to keep your job: get your boobs done.

Culture obviously has shaped women. Women's culture is driven by women's magazines and the advertisers who support them.  The advertisers are constantly telling women how they should or could look, and assure them that if they buy their goop, all their woes will go away. In fact they create the woes first, and then fix them.  And they deliberately promote competition between women.  The author suggests that "adornment" is a huge part of female culture, and I am sure she is right. But I wonder if that aspect of female culture is not part of the problem.  Putting such a heavy emphasis on adornment seems rather shallow to me, but  I am a guy.

Women and weight is always an issue. Weight Watchers tells women "Always wear  your makeup. Even to walk the dog. You never know whom you are going  to meet." That says a lot. About appearance issues and weight. The author's Religion chapter focuses primarily on the cult aspects of beauty and make-up. She spends quite a bit of time focusing on the bullshit of skin creams that promise rejuvenation.  One marketing line caught my eye: "A lipstick you can have a lasting relationship with." I wonder if it comes with batteries.

Cults are something I know a little about. And it is all (well, most of it) there. Chanting, purifications, confessions and other mind control techniques are on full display. If the woman is also hungry, that helps as it will impair her reasoning.

Sex will always be an issue. And men control the issue. The book cites several cases where women were raped or brutalized, only to have the legal system tut-tut them, or suggest it was all in good fun. Who can forget the Canadian judge who asked a female victim why she didn't just keep her knees together? Ms Wolf does not approve of pornography and she may have a point, but these are issues that can be resolved academically, which is my only real complaint about this book… It could have used more science to back up its conclusions.

There is no doubt that weight and conditions like bulimia and anorexia are major concerns for women. The author quotes  a number of statistics on the subject. If one takes the worst numbers that have been put forward, then 1 in 10 college age women are anorexic and 5 more are bulimic. If the true figures are even close to that, that is very troubling indeed. The rail thin heroin-chic skinny look came in with Twiggie and has never left. Porn and women's magazines are part of the problem, to be sure.  They both make people of both sexes feel that their bodies are not as good as they could be.

Cosmetic surgeries have gone through the roof. Joan Rivers had more and more done until the last one killed her. The author argues that this is a form of violence toward women, and it is hard to argue that she has a point.  Doctors invade diseased bodies as a last resort.  Cosmetic surgeons call healthy bodies sick and then invade them.  The industry is huge and largely unregulated. Things may have changed in 30 years, but in 1990, doctors could not tell a patients the risks of cosmetic surgery because they did not know themselves. 

I found the book over-long on examples, and short on analysis and statistics. But these are quibbles. I can say this: it is more complicated being a woman in our society than a man.  We have a long way to go as a society to level the playing field. And women (and men) need to learn how to be happy with themselves and others. 

I recently visited my sister-in-law and complemented her on her looks. I had caught her in a rare moment: au natural (no makeup). She thought I was ribbing her. That should not happen.