Summer reading
Geez, I haven't written anything in a long time. Work and family life have monopolized my time. I have nothing earthshaking to report or profound to share so I will tell you what I am reading lately.
Dexter Filkins - "The Forever War"
"The Forever War" is the successor Michael Herr's "Dispatches." It's a ground level view of the war in Iraq from the invasion up to 2006 and also Afghanistan during the initial defeat of the Taliban.
The parallel between "The Forever War" and "Dispatches" is easy to draw: both are about failed, or at least not entirely successful, American wars. Like Herr, Filkins aspires to break out of his role as journalist and depict the war in more subjective prose. Filkins succeeds in this and to contrast his writing with Herr, avoids the Hunter S. Thompson-esque rock-and-roll journalism that ties "Dispatches" to its era.
Filkins ventures beyond the safety of the embedded reporter in TFW and spends much of his time with Iraqis over the years when Iraq slid into civil war. Unfortunately, Filkins was not reporting from Iraq when that civil war sputtered out, or at least faded to embers. I wish he was in Iraq to continue his reporting now that America seems poised to pull out.
TFW left me wondering too what Filkins would have made of present day Afghanistan, now that that war seems to be coming off the rails as Iraq did.
TFW's great strength is the attention it devotes to Iraqis. Filkins's portraits of the Iraqis he knows and meets are detailed and sympathetic.
It was jarring to discover that Filkins does not speak Arabic, something he reveals only well into TFW. Up to that point I had assumed that Filkins was fluent in Arabic so empathetic was his prose.
In his defense, I suppose that many if not most of his interviews and meetings were in English. But he makes no attempt to distinguish between those that were and those using a translator. As someone trapped on the wrong side of a language barrier so often, I am acutely aware of how baffling that divide can be. I am a little surprised that Filkins was not more of a journalist and point this out.
Roger Crowley - "Empires of the Sea"
I'm not done with this one yet but so far I am enjoying it.
Crowley traces the wars between the Turk and Christendom in the Mediterranean from the fall of Rhodes, the siege of Malta to Lepanto.
It is a chatty, vivid history, which usually makes me suspicious. The 1500s were a very different time to ours and authors writing chatty, vivid accounts may be skimping on the history part and playing up the juicier parts. Still it beats a dry slog through the history of different era (I am about halfway through "God's War: A New History of the Crusades" and have been so for a long time).
What strikes me about EotS is how Islam has been written out of much of European history. From the fall of Constantinople to the 1700's, the wars against the Turk were the great conflict in Europe, the pivot of history. Yet when I read "The Grand Strategy of Phillip II" a few years ago, I can recall no mention the Ottoman Empire, instead it was all about Phillip's wars against England and the Protestants in Northern Europe.
"Empires of the Sea" certainly is a corrective to an overly Anglo or Euro view of history but is a little too fluffy to be authoritative.
Dexter Filkins - "The Forever War"
"The Forever War" is the successor Michael Herr's "Dispatches." It's a ground level view of the war in Iraq from the invasion up to 2006 and also Afghanistan during the initial defeat of the Taliban.
The parallel between "The Forever War" and "Dispatches" is easy to draw: both are about failed, or at least not entirely successful, American wars. Like Herr, Filkins aspires to break out of his role as journalist and depict the war in more subjective prose. Filkins succeeds in this and to contrast his writing with Herr, avoids the Hunter S. Thompson-esque rock-and-roll journalism that ties "Dispatches" to its era.
Filkins ventures beyond the safety of the embedded reporter in TFW and spends much of his time with Iraqis over the years when Iraq slid into civil war. Unfortunately, Filkins was not reporting from Iraq when that civil war sputtered out, or at least faded to embers. I wish he was in Iraq to continue his reporting now that America seems poised to pull out.
TFW left me wondering too what Filkins would have made of present day Afghanistan, now that that war seems to be coming off the rails as Iraq did.
TFW's great strength is the attention it devotes to Iraqis. Filkins's portraits of the Iraqis he knows and meets are detailed and sympathetic.
It was jarring to discover that Filkins does not speak Arabic, something he reveals only well into TFW. Up to that point I had assumed that Filkins was fluent in Arabic so empathetic was his prose.
In his defense, I suppose that many if not most of his interviews and meetings were in English. But he makes no attempt to distinguish between those that were and those using a translator. As someone trapped on the wrong side of a language barrier so often, I am acutely aware of how baffling that divide can be. I am a little surprised that Filkins was not more of a journalist and point this out.
Roger Crowley - "Empires of the Sea"
I'm not done with this one yet but so far I am enjoying it.
Crowley traces the wars between the Turk and Christendom in the Mediterranean from the fall of Rhodes, the siege of Malta to Lepanto.
It is a chatty, vivid history, which usually makes me suspicious. The 1500s were a very different time to ours and authors writing chatty, vivid accounts may be skimping on the history part and playing up the juicier parts. Still it beats a dry slog through the history of different era (I am about halfway through "God's War: A New History of the Crusades" and have been so for a long time).
What strikes me about EotS is how Islam has been written out of much of European history. From the fall of Constantinople to the 1700's, the wars against the Turk were the great conflict in Europe, the pivot of history. Yet when I read "The Grand Strategy of Phillip II" a few years ago, I can recall no mention the Ottoman Empire, instead it was all about Phillip's wars against England and the Protestants in Northern Europe.
"Empires of the Sea" certainly is a corrective to an overly Anglo or Euro view of history but is a little too fluffy to be authoritative.