The Collaborator by Diane Armstrong Book Review-Five Stars

 

BOOK REVIEW FIVE STARS

The Collaborator by Diane Armstrong

The Collaborator is a captivating historical novel laced with factual incidents that build suspense while enticing you with apprehension. This fast moving story is spellbinding from beginning to end, edited with surprising twists and turns.

EXCERPTS;

She learns that in 1944 the Nazis invaded Hungary and disenfranchised the Jews with the co-operation of the government. Horrified, she tries to imagine a world where your government turns against you, where phones are disconnected, radios confiscated, car and bus travel forbidden, bank accounts frozen, and employment terminated. You wake up one day and discover that you are a despised nonperson in your own country. He knows that for most people, denying reality is preferable to confronting a disturbing truth.

One way or another, for noble motives or base ones, or merely from self-interest and the urge to survive, war turns us all into collaborators.

‘Everyone believes in peace in theory,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s the reality that’s the problem. For peace to take place, both parties have to want it, not just one.

We believe that if you wait for the other side to give in nothing will ever change. And if we let our government keep stealing Palestinian land and building more settlements, things will only get worse.’

They call themselves Israel First. They reckon we’re Palestinian collaborators, and threaten us with divine vengeance because we’re agitating for a two-state solution,’ he said. ‘They could be connected with the extremists who killed my grandfather, but even if they’re not, they might know something about Moshe Binsztok. Just tread carefully. They’re zealots with fundamentalist ideas and they don’t take kindly to opposing views.’

‘It’s like what George Bernard Shaw said about communism. If you’re not a communist when you’re young, you have no heart, but if you’re still a communist when you’re old, you have no brain.’

A point to ponder: When a slave finally over throws his master the first thing the freed slave does is go out and get himself a slave.

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November's Fury: The Deadly Great Lakes Hurricane of 1913 by Michel Schumacher-book Review-Five Stars

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

November's Fury: The Deadly Great Lakes Hurricane of 1913 by Michel Schumacher

I loved this fact-filled true story. My wife Jane and I have sailed the Great Lakes, their connecting rivers and locks to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway. Our first voyage starting in Superior, Wisconsin, was on our home built and designed 46 foot sailing vessel Dursmirg. We have also transited the Atlantic, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Great Lakes by freighter.

We have witnessed in a November windstorm a large lake freighters broached sideways by a single wave through the Superior, Wisconsin, entry, and then miraculously straighten up in the blink of an eye to glide through the entry channel unscathed. That episode gave us everlasting nightmares.

EXCERPTS:

A “PERFECT STORM” on the Great Lakes, it would be the one that pounded the lakes from November 7 through November 10, 1913, leaving a wake of destruction unlike anything ever seen on freshwater at any point in recorded history. By the time the storm had blown out of the region, twelve boats had sunk, thirty-one more had been grounded on rocks or beaches, and dozens more were severely damaged. More than 250 men lost their lives. Eight boats, with their entire crews, were lost in a single day on Lake Huron alone.

Out on the lakes, hurricane-force winds built thirty- to forty-foot waves that mercilessly assaulted vessels unfortunate enough to be out on the water—

Similar weather conditions might revisit the lakes, but advances in science, technology, and communications have made it easier to stay out of harm’s way.

Larson described the sheer force generated by the kind of waves on Lakes Michigan and Superior and, later, Lake Huron: “A single cubic yard of water weighs about fifteen hundred pounds,” Larson wrote. “A wave fifty feet long and ten feet high has a static weight of over eighty thousand pounds. Moving at thirty miles an hour, it generates forward momentum of over two million pounds.”

The wind velocity on the open water vastly exceeded the velocities recorded on land.

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