Fatima for Today, by Father Andrew Apostoli

We've just passed the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, so I wanted to learn more about them.  This book makes an excellent one stop shop about the apparitions.  Everything you could possibly want to know about them is in here.  Fr. Apostoli relates the content of what the three children saw, the historical context in which they happened, biographical information about the children and their families, and about the history of their town and of Portugal, how the Fatima apparitions were determined to be reliable, how they meshed with other preceding and contemporaneous apparitions given to other visionaries, the Church's interpretation of the visions, how successfully the Church has followed the instructions of our Lady, and how the predictions came to pass.  There is also practical information in the book about how to do the devotions properly, as well as the prayers taught to the three children.

Tortured for Christ, by Richard Wurmbrand

In his  1978 Harvard commencement speech, Solzhenitsyn said:

Through intense suffering, our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive...A fact that cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger.  68 years for our people, and 30 years for the people of Eastern Europe: during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience.

If you were to become curious about the nature of the spiritual training Solzhenitsyn means, Richard Wurmbrand's life provides a good example.  Wurmbrand was a Romanian who grew up in a secular Jewish family, converted to Christianity as a young man, and became a Lutheran pastor.  When the Soviets took control of Romania after driving out the Nazis, they established a Communist totalitarian government that drove the genuine churches underground.  For standing up to them, Wurmbrand and his wife were both sentenced to lengthy terms in what can only be described as a torture camp.  Despite the horrific conditions, this is an inspiring story of hope, endurance, and the great consolation of faith in God.

Understanding Europe, by Christopher Dawson

This is an outstanding analysis of Europe and Western civilization.  The book is divided in two parts.

In the first part, Dawson describes what Europe is: a society of peoples whose culture was shaped both by Christianity and the Greco-Roman heritage.  Through comparisons, he explains what differentiates it from Asia, describes the special case of Russia, and discusses the regional differences among the different peoples.  These were produced by the splintering of Christianity during the Reformation and the different styles of government in the different regions, contrasting the parliamentary governments that sprung up in Western Europe with the large military empires that developed in Central and Eastern Europe.  He also devotes two chapters to Europe's overseas colonies: the dual nature of European colonialism and how each nation's colonial effort differed in character from one another.

The second part of the book is about the decline of Western culture and the revolt, starting in the eighteenth century, against the ideas and norms that used to unify Europe.  He describes the rise of the large totalitarian and authoritarian states, how the ideas behind this style of government originated in Hegelian philosophy, and how the two world wars came about.

For a relatively short (230 page) book, he covers a lot of ground, and it's definitely a book that you have to read more than once in order to properly digest the material.  It's best to have a reasonably good general knowledge of the history of the various European countries in order to appreciate this book properly.

The Judgment of the Nations, by Christopher Dawson

This book is my introduction to British historian Christopher Dawson, and I think it's brilliant. Definitely going to be reading more of his work. He finished this in 1942, so he was working on it when WW2 broke out and in those tense and depressing years leading up to it. His purpose in writing it was to offer some reasons why the countries of the West, whose culture and values were formed by Christianity and the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome ended up fighting two horribly self-destructive world wars. 

He discusses the tensions that began to develop between nations as their styles of government diverged (constitutional vs. autocratic monarchies, nation-states vs. multilingual multiethnic empires, fundamentally civilian vs. military states), and as Christianity splintered into multiple denominations. Differences in belief do cause differences in worldview, which have practical ramifications. He also expounds on the Enlightenment, the scientific materialist world view that came with it, the impact of the Industrial Revolution, and of the Socialist movements of all stripes that aspired to bring the rapidly growing economies under state control.

Tombeau de la Rouerie, par Michel Mohrt

Ce livre est à la fois une courte introduction à la vie d'Armand Tuffin, Marquis de la Rouerie, et une réflexion sur les parallèles entre sa vie et celle de l’auteur, Michel Mohrt, aussi Breton, soldat français pendant la 2eme guerre mondiale.  Le Marquis de la Rouerie n’est pas assez connu aux Etats-Unis pour son service dans l’armée de Washington.  C’etait dans les livres et les discours de l’historien et journaliste autrichien, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, que j’ai appris quelque chose de lui pour la premiere fois.   Le marquis était un homme qui aimait la liberté, et comme Edmund Burke, il reconnaissait que la révolution française a ete détourné par un mouvement qui n’avait rien à voir avec les idées libérales de la guerre d’indépendence américaine.  Avec le comte de Noyan, il fondait l’association bretonne pour sauvegarder les libertés de sa province, quelle association deviendrait plus tard la Chouannerie dont le but était de renverser le gouvernement révolutionnaire.

American Diplomacy, by George F. Kennan

This book consists of six Walgreen lectures Kennan gave in the 1950's about the major wars the U.S. participated in, including the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II, and his observations about American foreign policy during that time.  Also included is the famous "Long Telegram," which he sent to the State Department during his service as an ambassador.  It is a concise explanation of the ideology of the Soviet Union, their motivations, and how best to deal with them--apparently given as the answer to the question of why the Soviets were becoming less and less cooperative after World War II.

One of the main ideas behind the book is the warning that moral considerations should not be relied upon too much when determining foreign policy or entering wars.  He favors the approach more common in the 19th century and earlier of pursuing national interests because it limits military engagements to the accomplishment of well defined goals, rather than the unconditional surrender and regime change that characterized 20th century wars.  He got a (figurative) black eye for this idea from Alexander Solzhenitsyn during the latter's 1978 Harvard Commencement Address.  While the narrow pursuit of national interest made sense during the 19th century, when there was a strong moral consensus among the nations, it may be inadequate when dealing with totalitarian regimes whose moral outlook (or lack of one) is very different from one's own and lies at the very root of the war.

A Train of Powder, by Rebecca West

A group I belong to was doing a challenge throughout the month of October to read books by or about people or places in Ireland.  Since Rebecca West, the journalist, travel writer, and novelist was part Irish and she was born in Kerry, this was one of the books I read for it.  As is probably obvious from the cover art, <i>A Train of Powder</i> is a collection of six articles she wrote while covering various criminal trials.  They read more like short stories than like magazine articles because the author really develops the characters, their background, the circumstances of the crimes, and also her own thoughts on the situations.

Three of the articles make up a series called <i> Greenhouse with Cyclamens</i>, where she relates her thoughts during the closing sessions of the Nuremberg Trials and the rebuilding of Germany, including her observations of the personalities of top Nazi leaders like Goering and Hess as they sat in the dock, differences between German and American/British law, growing tensions between the Soviet Union and the other three Allies who shared control of Germany, leading up to the Soviets’ attempt to isolate Berlin from the West and the resulting Berlin Airlift, and the nascent West German government’s insistence on a free market economy despite pressure from the occupying Allies to adopt a more statist model.

 <i>Opera in Greenville</i> is about a lynching in Greenville, South Carolina in 1947.  A mob of about 30 people, mostly cabdrivers, convinced the prison warden to hand over a young black man named Willie Earle, in jail on suspicion of having killed the disabled white cabdriver who was driving him home.  After some days of no results from the local police, the FBI was called in to find the perpetrators.  West does a good job of sketching out what life was like in 1940’s Greenville and situating the crime in a society undergoing a transition in its attitudes towards race relations and vigilante justice.  

<i>Mr. Setty and Mr. Hume</i> is about a 1949 London murder case.   A man who enjoys hunting on weekends goes out in his boat to the marshlands at the mouth of the Thames hoping to bag some duck.  Instead, he comes across a bag full of a more grisly type of meat.  The remains turn out to be those of Mr. Setty, a shady businessman and member of a well-to-do immigrant family.  Mr. Hume is the ex-R.A.F. pilot with a checkered past charged with the murder and disposal of the body.

<i>A Better Mousetrap</i> is the story of an espionage case involving a young British radio telegraph operator employed at the Diplomatic Wireless Service suspected of passing information to a high official in the Soviet embassy.

The Snow Goose, by Paul Gallico

Beautiful World War II story set in the British Isles about a lonely artist with a great love for animals, and a little girl who comes to his doorstep with an injured (and rare in those parts) Canadian snow goose.  The artist became one of the hundreds of British civilians who came to the aid of the stranded British army on the beaches of Dunkirk, helping to get the soldiers off the beach in little fishing boats, pleasure cruisers, yachts, and any kind of small craft they could find.

You'll need a box of Kleenex within arm's reach for this one.

Between the Alps and a Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and the Rewriting of History, by Angelo Codevilla

Switzerland is a small, landlocked country surrounded by Germany, Austria, Italy, and France.  During World War II, with the German annexation of Austria, Mussolini's Italy deciding to side with Germany during the war, and the fall of France in 1940, Switzerland's desire to remain as a neutral and independent nation would have seemed impossible to anyone. This book is a very interesting account of the military, economic, and diplomatric strategies used by Switzerland to do just that.

The author also talks about some of the criticisms leveled at Switzerland in the 1990's about her conduct during the war, by those who wanted to profit by it.

This Age of Fable: The Political and Economic World We Live In, by Gustav Stolper

Gustav Stolper has the ability to explain complicated concepts in clear concise language that is very accessible to the general reader who is not a specialist in politics and economics.  This book was published in the 1940's during World War II and some of the fables he debunks are still widely believed in today, particularly the ones about European colonialism, how capitalism works, the business cycle, and what really makes a "have" vs. a "have not" nation.  It's a great choice if you are a layman wishing to learn more about these topics (all listed in the book description above) or have a historical interest in what public opinion was like in the 1940's when the war was going on and its outcome was uncertain.

The book appears to be out of print, which is a shame.  The edition I was able to find is a vintage hardback one from 1942.

The Second World War: Milestones to Disaster, by Sir Winston Churchill

This is the first volume of the abridged version of Winston Churchill's series on the Second World War.  It mostly covers the events leading up to the war, from the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the formation of the League of Nations, the defense treaties of Locarno, and the unwise manner in which the treaties were enforced, with the former Allies putting undue emphasis on Germany's reparations payments while at the same time being lenient about seeing to it that Germany stayed disarmed.  Churchill also discusses how the economic conditions of the 1920's and 1930's destabilized German society and brought about conditions favoring Hitler's rise to the chancellorship and also the presidency after the death of Hindenburg. This book spans all the way up to the German takeover of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Churchill's own rise to the prime ministership.  I would say that the most important lesson of the book is how the biggest war in history was brought about by an inordinate desire for peace.

Besides his knowledge and being one of the major players in World War II, Churchill is an excellent writer and storyteller.  I listened to the CD twice.  The reader of this audiobook, Christian Rodska, does an excellent job and his voice is somewhat like Churchill's so that you feel rather like the author himself is reading the book to you.

Alone: The Second World War Series, Book 2, by Sir Winston Churchill

This is the second volume in the audiobook version of the abridged World War II series by Winston Churchill.  It spans from Churchill's rise to Prime Minister in Britain and his formation of a government to the start of the German invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa).  On the way it includes an account of the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, and the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern battles.

Until I listened to this audiobook, I did not realize how important the Middle Eastern and North African battles were to the British war effort, as they were determined to keep the Germans and Italians from taking control of the Mediterranean, the Suez canal, and the oil fields in the Middle East.

Churchill is in top form as a writer and storyteller, as in <i>Milestones to Disaster</i>. The main drawback to listening to this as an audiobook is that you don't have maps to reference as you probably would have in the book. I had to look up many of the towns on the Internet with whose location I was not familiar. Christian Rodska does an excellent job as reader.

Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner

If you ever wondered about how a highly educated, highly civilized country like Germany could fall under the power of a barbarian regime such as that of the Nazis, this is a very interesting book to read.  It is the memoir of a man who lived through World War I as a child and then through the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich as a young lawyer and aspiring judge. He

He draws connections between his childhood experiences during World War I and how they instilled a peculiar outlook towards war in him and in others of his generation.  He writes of the surreal atmosphere and loosened morality that prevailed during the runaway inflation of the early 1920's and how the military training/political indoctrination camps young judicial candidates were required to attend before they could get their credentials helped make them more receptive to regimentation under the Nazis.

The book is well written and I couldn't put it down.  I finished it in one weekend and will probably be rereading it in the near future.

Triumph and Tragedy, by Sir Winston Churchill

Brilliant last installment of Winston Churchill's World War II series that clearly outlines the surrenders of Germany and Japan to the Allies, the fateful decisions made about strategy and troop allocations among the different operations, from the Normandy landing to the Mediterranean to the Pacific theater and how these decisions shaped postwar Europe, particularly the formation of the Iron Curtain, the partition of Germany, and Soviet efforts to grab even territories that had been liberated by the Americans and British.  Churchill remarks on the differences between how Roosevelt and Truman handled the war, how the invention of the atomic bomb and its use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed not only how wars could be fought, but the calculations behind the decisions connected with war.  Also included are accounts of the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek against the Chinese communists, India gaining independence from Britain, its partition into India and Pakistan, and Churchill's thoughts on Gandhi and Nehru (given how we tend to lionize Gandhi today I was surprised at some of these!).

I listened to the audiobook of the abridged version and am now motivated to read the full version because there are so many things just touched on briefly that I want to learn about in more detail!  In sum, an extremely interesting book that I know will take much re-listening to digest since it covers so much ground, and quickly too.