Vikings in America Book Review

 BOOK REVIEW- Five Stars

Vikings in America by Greame Davis

This book is extensive, superbly documented, and well presented. After reading numerous Scandinavian history related books this one stands out. Edited to flow with the all encompassing continuum of fascinating events of the Viking era, this documented true presentation reads like a great novel.

Excerpts:

Viking archaeological remains have been found in some of the most unlikely locations, in lands no-one would have dreamed the Vikings could ever have reached.

The root cause of the destruction of Viking Greenland is most probably that of pirate raids. The official “royal ships” from Norway came primarily to extort taxes, and became little better than thieves. Over and above these state-sponsored raids, Greenland was increasingly subject to the attentions of pirates. Such ships were numerous in Europe, acting without the overt support of a nation state, trading where they could, and stealing with impunity. For centuries isolated communities on the European littoral feared the arrival of an unknown ship.

Greenlanders were especially vulnerable, for their tiny scattered settlements put them at the mercy of any visiting ship whose crew outnumbered them. Christendom condemned the activities of pirates, but only when they were directed against Christians. There were no restrictions imposed upon pirate activities against non-Christian people, whom the Church explicitly stated could be killed or enslaved,and their property seized. This was the way the Church recommended treating non-Christians. Popes began to assert that the Greenlanders had returned to paganism and the worship of the Norse gods. The import of this view is that it justifies the actions of the pirates, giving papal sanction to the killing and captivity of Greenland Vikings.

The balance of probability is that the Greenland colony in its last years was over-run by European pirates. They operated from Britain, Flanders, Denmark, and even, in 1453, a ship from Portugal. The systematic destruction of a people by Church- and State-supported pirates through theft, through carrying the Greenlanders into captivity as slaves, through burning of farmsteads and through murder.

This genocide was justified on the grounds that the Greenlanders had relapsed into the pagan.

Stand By for Action: The Memoirs of a Small Ship Commander in World War II

Book Review - Five Stars

Stand By for Action: The Memoirs of a Small Ship Commander in World War II by William Donald

This book is a ship commander's biographical account of WWII from the German invasion of Norway to the war years of bombardment, torpedoing, mining the sea and soil on Britten. It moves next to the Mediterranean and the bloody battle of Anzio, Italy, followed by The D-day invasion of Europe, and ultimatley on to Hong Kong and Japanese capitulation. The author was a part of it all, and he eloquently described his personal sediments. An excellent book that reads like a novel.

Excerpts:

29th November, 1941, after a fierce attack by E-boats on a southbound convoy, two ships being sunk, Asperity (699) and Cormash (2,848), a very similar action took place, with an interception off the Dutch coast. Though indecisive with damage and casualties on both sides, the knowledge that on every future sortie against East Coast convoys they were liable to be intercepted on the way home must have given the enemy considerable food for thought. Even so, in 1941, the E-boats sank twenty-three ships, total tonnage 48,888: five of these ships were sunk in one attack on March 7th.

During the winter of 1944-45, the East Coast convoys were virtually unmolested, except for a sudden flare-up in the early months of 1945, when five ships were sunk of tonnage 10,221. Several fierce battles were fought, but by April, 1945, the spirit of the E-boats was broken and all attacks ceased.

The size of the initial force to be landed made me gasp. Five divisions of men of a comparative strength of sixty per cent British and Canadian to forty per cent American.

One day the dawn would come when the Allied Armies set foot in France. For four years the enemy had held the whole Atlantic seaboard from Norway to Spain; for four years, aided by his U-boats, this awful menace had hung over us like a permanent black cloud; for four years, also, millions had waited, desperate for this dawn, the dawn that would lead to their liberation.

After four years, the dawn had come at last, and victory was ours; the day was won, the Army had landed on the shores of France. For whatever the future held in store, whatever setbacks there were to come, however hard the fighting might be, the first and hardest hurdle had been jumped that morning, D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944.

Honoring the Enemy by Robert N. Macomber

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS
Honoring the Enemy by Robert N. Macomber

The Honor series books of Peter Wake’s adventures range from command of a Civil War era sailing schooner in Florida’s primitive Gulf Coast to a turn of the century steam powered confrontation with armor plated steel vessels sporting the latest long range mega canons. 

In Honoring the Enemy the action continues to gain momentum.

I have read them all and eagerly await Macomber’s next thriller.

I am a very satisfied reader with sea adventure in my Viking heritage. John M. Grimsrud

Excerpts:

Listen to me for a moment. Do not equate me with the glory-mongers in Washington or Madrid. You damn well know I’ve devoted years of my life to preventing this war. But politicians in charge on both sides wanted it, and everyone has known for a long time it was going to happen eventually...

I’ve wanted to tell this story for many years. It took a lot of research, which led me to Washington, Tampa, Havana, and eastern Cuba. After five years of research and writing, and a lot of help along the way, it is finally finished.

The German Invasion of Norway, April 1940

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

The German Invasion of Norway, April 1940 by Geirr H. Haarr

Neutral Norway would be sucked into a war they didn’t want or need. This fascinating historical story is interwoven with numerous tales of blunders, bravado, bushwhacking, deceptions, deceit, power grabbing, plunder, and pillage., driven by a narcissistic Nazi.

My father’s first cousin Martin Grimsrud was there to point the Krupp canon and sink the first German war ship in the Oslo fjord April 1940.

This book answered many questions not spoken about today in Norway that had divided the country and gave the hard-headed and determined Norwegians reasons to resist.

Excerpts:

Around 8,850 men would be on board the warships heading for Norway in the first attack wave, while the airborne contingent would be some 3,500 men. The transport ships would land an additional 3,900 men, 742 horses, 942 vehicles and four tanks on the invasion day. Altogether there would be less than sixteen thousand men in the first wave, roughly the size of a regular German division. Not much to seize a whole country, but reinforcements of men and material would follow by air and sea as fast as possible. Most of these would go to Oslo in the ships of the sea transport echelons. The route east of Denmark to the Oslofjord would be the shortest and furthest away from the Royal Navy and the RAF. Weather was also less hazardous here than in the North Sea. Within three days, eight thousand troops were to be transported by air and sea, and an additional 16,700 during the subsequent week. In all a hundred thousand men would be brought to Norway in a continuous shuttle.

German war ships flew British flags as a subterfuge

Few Norwegian officers would open fire on British ships; in the initial operation order, signed on 6 March, the warships were instructed to fly British flags until just before disembarkation commenced. All challenges from patrol vessels or coastguard stations should be answered in English. The exception was Narvik, where the local commander, Oberst Sundlo, was known to be German-friendly

The Norwegian Declaration of Neutrality was convenient for Germany only as long as it was respected by the Allies. Hitler had no respect for international law and it is inconceivable that he held any moral obligation to respect Norway’s desire to be outside the European conflict any longer than it served his own purposes. Norwegian neutrality was convenient, as it allowed blockade-runners, ore ships, trawlers and other civilian vessels to move safely inside the Leads between the Skagerrak and the Norwegian Sea.

On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey

BOOK REVIEW- FIVE STARS

On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey by Paul Theroux

This journey in Mexico by Paul Theroux is an up to the minute look away from glitter and glitz to their dirty neighbor’s wall running from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico plus a trip down seldom traveled country roads deep into the country.

I came away deeply impressed with the author's perceptive observations and magnificent personal profiles, political insights, and culinary regional idiosyncrasies all honed with extensive years of traveling.

The book is worthy of more than five stars because the author has something to say and says it well.

I have lived in Mexico over thirty five years, traveled the country extensively, and written two books on the subject...trust me this book is better than good.

Excerpts:

The fat cats and petrocrats in Mexico City, thirty listed billionaires, including the seventh-richest man in the world, Senor Carlos Slim, who together have more money than every other Mexican combined. But the campesinos in certain states in southern Mexico, such as Oaxaca and Chiapas, in terms of personal income, are poorer than their counterparts in Bangladesh or Kenya, languishing in an air of stagnant melancholy on hillsides without topsoil, but with seasonal outbursts of fantastical masquerade to lighten the severities and stupefactions of village life. Famine victims, desperadoes, and voluptuaries, all more or less occupying the same space, and that vast space, that Mexican landscape, squalid and lush and primal and majestic.

Mexican hospitality to gringos is in ironic contrast to the present ubiquity of Mexicans who are demonized and fenced in, stamped as undesirable, considered suspect, and unwelcome in America.

It’s a mistake to disclose that you’re passionate about going anywhere, because everyone will give you ten reasons for not going, they want you to stay home and eat meatloaf and play with a computer, which is what they’re doing.

The eagles soar in the sky alone, but we Mexicans share the land with snakes.

NAFTA, he said, was a tool of the sort of globalization that he characterized as a sinister power grab by international corporations to subvert governments all over the world. “The world’s new masters have no need to govern directly. National governments take on the role of running things on their behalf. This is what the new order means, unification of the world into one single market. States are simply enterprises with managers in the guise of governments, and the new regional alliances bear more of a resemblance to shopping malls than to political federations.

Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, 1851-1852

BOOK REVIEW: Five-Stars

Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, 1851-1852 by William Lewis Herndon

The author of this book was a naval officer from the State of Virginia with expansionist and slavery inclinations: a reflection of the times, 1851. I found the book an excellent look into the explorer mentality of Americanism, eminent domain, and manifest destiny. Unbounded exploitation of indigenous jungle would reach its finite limits before the year 2020. As early as 1800 Humboldt warned the world of these consequences, that would go unheeded. It is now too late.

Excerpts:

In 1850 the Secretary of the Navy had appointed Herndon to lead the first American expedition into the mysterious and foreboding territory known as the Valley of the Amazon. Arriving in Lima on the sixth of February. This city has changed greatly since I was here twenty years ago. Though we had bullfights on the accession of the new president, yet the noble amphitheater was not crowded as in old times with the alite and fashion of Lima, but seemed abandoned to the vulgar. The ladies have given up their peculiar and most graceful national costume, the Saya y Manto, and it is now the mark of a ragged reputation. They dress in the French style, frequent the opera, and, instead of the Yerba de Paraguay, called matte, of which they used a great quantity formerly, they now take tea. These are causes for regret, for one likes to see nationality preserved; but there is one cause for congratulation (especially on the part of sea-going men, who have sometimes suffered), the railroad between Lima and Callao has broken up the robbers.

The Valley of the Amazon as one of the most enchanting regions on the face of the earth. From its mountains you may dig silver, iron, coal, copper, quicksilver, zinc, and tin; from the sands of its tributaries you may wash gold, diamonds, and precious stones; from its forests you may gather drugs of virtues the most rare, spices of aroma the most exquisite, gums and resins of the most varied and useful properties, dyes of hues the most brilliant, with cabinet and building-woods of the finest polish and most enduring texture. Its climate is an everlasting summer, and its harvest perennial.

Forgotten Fatherland: The True Story of Nietzsche's Sister and Her Lost Aryan Colony

BOOK REVIEW – FIVE STARS

Forgotten Fatherland: The True Story of Nietzsche's Sister and Her Lost Aryan Colony by Ben Macintyre

Nietzches’s sister had a zealot mentality and was driven by self-motivated and focused determination. She hitched her wagon to political fanaticism. Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth was a natural born promoter who unabashedly strove to steal all the thunder of the xenophobic Fascist movements and became deeply loved by the leasers she exploited.

A great read!

Excerpts:

Elisabeth was finally someone to be reckoned with in her own right, the wife of a brave pioneer, mistress of a large mansion, mother of an Aryan colony and Queen of a potential new Germany. The descriptions are all her own.

Mussolini certainly read Nietzsche, to say that I think he misunderstood him perhaps falsely implies that I do. My point is simply that Nietzsche would have despised Mussolini, although he might initially have applauded his bravado.

For Elisabeth, Mussolini represented the triumph of her interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought. She called him “the genius who rediscovered the values of Nietzsche’s spirit,” and wrote long letters stating how “my brother loved Italy more than any other country. How happy he would be now that this country has been so closely connected with his thoughts and ideas by your Excellency’s wonderful influence.” If Mussolini came to think of himself as some sort of Superman, it was partly at Elisabeth’s urging.

“The National Socialist Party is strong in the colony,” she wrote. “One day they will all become National Socialists. Our wonderful Chancellor Adolf Hitler is such a splendid gift from heaven that Germany cannot be grateful enough.”

Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya

BOOK REVIEW – FIVE STARS

Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya by William Carlsen

This is an overview of truly classic books still in print since 1842. John L. Stephens and Fredrick Catherwood’s travel books are essential reading for all dedicated history buffs. Having read and enjoyed their books several times I took special interest in Jungle of Stone that expanded positive aspects of the authors exceptionally adventuresome lives.

I only found one discrepancy in Carlsen’s book, the depiction of the Mexican Caste War:

What followed was eight years of conflict and fanatical slaughter that came to be known as the “War of the Castes.”

The War of the Castes actually began in 1847 and the continued armed conflict lasted until 1934 making it the longest armed insurgancy in the history of the Americas.

This is a five star book that is very interesting.

EXCERPTS:

Stephens and Catherwood plunged headlong into a region racked by civil war. They endured relentless bouts of tropical fever, close calls, and physical hardships, and emerged to publish two bestsellers: the first works of American archaeology, so enchantingly written and illustrated that they have become classics and remain in print today. In 1839, they found the remains of what would come to be known as the Maya civilization. More than discovering them, they made sense of them, reaching conclusions that defied the conventional thinking of their time and initiated a century and a half of excavations and investigations, which continue today. After publication of their books, the mysterious stone ruins in Central America, the vast, sophisticated road network of the Inca in South America, and the monuments and temples of the Aztecs could no longer be viewed as vestiges of the Lost Tribes of Israel, the ancient seafaring Phoenicians, or the survivors of lost Atlantis. They were understood to be solely indigenous in origin, the products of the imagination, intelligence, and creativity of Native Americans.

The Spanish saw the Indians as pagan savages who indulged in human sacrifice and idolatry. Their culture and all vestiges of their religion were to be obliterated and the people converted to Christianity. Total submission was essential, according to the Spanish priests who accompanied the conquistadors, to save Indians’ souls.

Most scholars now agree that Europe’s discovery of America almost certainly resulted in the greatest demographic calamity in human history.

The next day they were in Mérida, a handsome city of thirty-five thousand residents, with a hotel on the main plaza that reminded them of the comforts of Europe. Stephens was hoping to meet another acquaintance from New York, a Mérida resident named Simon Peon, whom he had encountered the year before at a Fulton Street hotel where Stephens often dined. When Stephens had mentioned that he was soon heading south in search of ruins, Peon invited him to his hacienda, where some ruins were located, the remains of the old city of Uxmal. Stephens and Catherwood went to pay Don Peon a visit and were taken aback to see that the Peon family lived in a mansion that took up nearly half of one side of the central Plaza de Armas. The building had been constructed hundreds of years earlier by Francisco de Montéjo, the Spanish conquistador who subdued most of the Yucatan Peninsula in 1546, after nineteen years of bloody fighting.

The entrance to the residence was one of the most imposing in all of Mexico. It was framed by Corinthian columns and topped by an ornate balcony. The Montéjo coat of arms was set in the wall, flanked on each side by sculptured figures of two giant Spanish soldiers holding pikes and crushing under their feet the heads of four howling Indians.

Secret Societies: Inside the Freemasons, the Yakuza, Skull and Bones, and the World's Most Notorious Secret Organizations

BOOK REVIEW - Five Stars

Secret Societies: Inside the Freemasons, the Yakuza, Skull and Bones, and the World's Most Notorious Secret Organizations by John Lawrence Reynolds

Fact-filled and extensive, the book was a real eye opener from beginning to end. Recommended reading that will give you innumerable thought provoking points to ponder.

Excerpts:

The tactic of embedding followers into a targeted society as ”sleepers,” suicidal fanatics prepared to slaughter as many people as necessary in the name of their cause, is another element inherited from a millennium ago. Both the promise of Paradise and adherents immersing themselves for years in the very culture they have vowed to destroy are familiar to everyone aware of Al Qaeda.

The even more pious Bernard of Clairvaux had declared that the killing of Muslims was not homicide but malicide, the killing of evil. Thousands of dead Muslims in the Holy Land may have begged to differ, but their opinions were rarely sought.

Why did a good and merciful God introduce evil into the world He created? How could an infinite God create a finite world? How is it possible for humans to know the Unknowable?

Concerned about the socialist waves that swept his country following Germany's surrender in 1918 and the hyperinflation that followed it, Fritz Thyssen began searching for two saviors: an effective political leader for Germany, and an offshore bank that would serve as an economic anchor in future perilous times. He found them in Adolf Hitler and George Herbert Walker. Hitler mesmerized Thyssen as, in fact, he mesmerized virtually an entire country desperately in need of strong, decisive leadership. At their first meeting in late 1923, Hitler informed Thyssen that the Nazi Party urgently needed money to grow into a national party, defend itself against attacks from the Communist/Jewish conspiracy, and realize its dream of a fascist state capable of returning the country to its glory.

The Great Depression in the early 1930s sent Germany and the rest of the world on a slide towards disaster. Through a series of political manipulations and the application of brute force, by 1934 Hitler completely controlled Germany, promising to build an intricate system of high-speed highways and launch “rebirth of the German army.”

Make 'Em Laugh by Debbie Reynolds

BOOK REVIEW - Five Stars

Make 'Em Laugh by Debbie Reynolds

An upbeat in-depth autobiography of a self-motivated entertainer who positively impacted my entire life from the 1940s. My wife Jane and I had the good fortune to visit the Debbie Reynolds live performance at Las Vegas. While we waited in line the jovial ushers asked where we were from, and I told them Yucatan, Mexico. What happened next was amazing. We were ushered to the front row center. Dynamic Debbie came on stage, bouncy, and bubbly. She centered the show around her Mexican family connection. She came down to shake our hands and welcome us. The audience felt her spontaneous and energizing entertainment abilities. This lady was a world-class performer, and we were totally impressed.

Excerpts:

I love slapstick, physical humor, and being spontaneous. And, as I’ve said before, I’ll do anything to get a laugh. Sometimes talk shows offered the perfect opportunity to do this.

I was seated next to Jack Benny at the desk. During our conversation, I admired his tie, which had a lot of bright colors, like pink and orange. Jack took it off and handed it to me. “It doesn’t match your handkerchief,” I said. He handed me his handkerchief. Emphatically, I pushed it back into Jack’s pocket. Jack took a pause, looked at the audience with a grin, then turned to me. “Were you that rough on Eddie Fisher?” he cracked. I’m sure I blushed, but instead of answering him, I dove under the desk. I reached up and grabbed Jack by his jacket, pulled him to the floor, undid the jacket, and threw it over the desk, followed closely by his wastebasket. I tossed my shoes in the air. A sock or two flew over the desk. The audience screamed at our mock striptease. When we came up from beneath the desk, Jack’s shirt was open to the waist. I was now holding his jacket. He pulled himself back together while the audience continued howling with laughter. At the end of the segment, he helped me put on my shoe. I didn’t feel like Cinderella, despite his gallant move.

“I didn’t plan it,” I told him. “I just thought I ought to do something amusing as nothing much was happening on the show.”

Survivors in Mexico by Rebecca West

BOOK REVIEW - Five Stars
Survivors in Mexico by Rebecca West
This book is an overview of Mexico’s transition from Conquistador to revolutionary conversion. It is well-written and with insight. Some chapters are monumentally revealing such as Revolution or Trotsky.

Excerpts;
The word “revolutionary”? in its Mexican sense, which denotes any person who initiates against opposition any action or course of actions beneficial to his people.
Territories in the New World just discovered by Columbus, on condition that the natives were converted to Christianity. This was not the best of introductions to the Christian faith. Alexander Borgia was one of the popes whose election can be reasonably supposed to have surprised Christ. He was one of the greatest scoundrels who ever succeeded in dying in bed, and that a bed which had served too many other purposes. Today we despise the mitred bishops and the crowned kings who paid obeisance to Alexander VI for maintaining that it did not matter that he was a lecher and a murderer with incest on his conscience, he was nevertheless the elected pope.



Pancho Villa, a cattle-rustler and bandit and genuine populist, a blood-and-thunder Robin Hood. There was Zapata, a pure Indian, who cared nothing for the central government and simply wanted to reconstitute the vanished Indian social system; his armies ranged Mexico, seizing the land which had been alienated from the Indian villages and killing the usurpers and, when they had done that, dropped their arms and set about cultivating the fields without another thought for fighting, unless attempts were made to dispossess them. There was Obregon, the nearest to a modern man, a trained mechanic, who became a victorious general not by courage or cunning but by sheer efficiency, and when he had to write a constitution he produced something that would, on the whole, have been passed by the Labor Parties of most countries that had an effective Labor Party.

The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes: The Ancient World Economy & the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia & Han China

Book Review: Five Stars


The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes: The Ancient World Economy & the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia & Han China by Raoul McLaughlin
This text book standard of in-depth information covers an immense subject. The book reveals fascinating facts of scientific advancements, political struggles and strategies, plus geographic logistics that marked this intriguing transitional era of international commerce.

Excerpts:
Trade that could be conducted between China, the Tarim kingdoms and Transoxiana. Chinese accounts suggest that an Iranian caravan leaving China could consist of 600 camels loaded with 10,000 silk rolls (4 tons of fabric). Ten caravans this size could export 100,000 rolls or 40 tons of silk. There were over 50 million people in Han China, so exports weighing 40 tons would represent under 1 ton of silk per million people. This is not a large figure compared with the regular tribute that the Han Empire gave to the Xiongnu nation to maintain peace on its northern frontiers.
The second century BC the Han Empire was the largest regime in the ancient world with a population revealed by census records to be greater than 50 million people. But the Han had powerful rivals on the Asian steppe lands that lay to the north and west of central China, including a confederation of mounted nomads known as the Xiongnu (“Hun-nu” or Huns). Faced with these opponents, the Han government used silk to devise commercial strategies that would guarantee the long-term supremacy of their empire. In particular, Han policymakers believed they could use trade exports to cause foreign powers to be economically reliant on Chinese products and manufactured items. Then, if the foreign regime did not comply with Chinese authority, the Han could impose trade sanctions that would cause economic damage.