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David Zindell's Neverness, A Requiem for Homo Sapiens and all things Science Fiction and Fantasy
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 6:02 pm 
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I just finished a very sobering book called The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. It accounts of how that Chinese city was taken by the Japanese forces in WW2, and how at least 300,000 civilians were butchered or tortured then butchered and untold numbers of women were raped and tortured, and often then either killed outright or kidnapped and forced to become sex slaves. Another some odd 300,000 people were saved by a small band of people from other countries (German Nazis and American religious people for the most part), at enormous risk to themselves, who attempted to set up "safe zones" for refugees. One of these people, an American woman, committed suicide after her return to America and saftely. She could not bear the weight of the things she had witnessed. She had saved so many women that she has been called a living Buddha by the survivors of the city. Another, a member of the Nazi party, tried to bring the plight of the Chinese refugees even unto the ears of Hitler upon his return to Germany, and faced Nazi persecution as a result, followed by discrimination as a Nazi party member at the hands of the Aliies after the war. His detailed diaries are one of the greatest resources of historians trying to piece together exactly what happened...especially as he copied the diaries of some of the Americans who were in Nanking into his diary, and therefore corraborates their versions, word for word, translated into German at the time the events happened.
The author explores how such atrocities are possible...both this, the Nazi Holocaust, what has happened more recently in the Balkans and Rwanda. One of her conclusions is that governments can sometimes hold too much power, that they become corrupted with it, that power can allow them to sanction killing, and that absolute power can sanction absolute killing.
Of the some 600,000 people in the city of Nanking at the point in time when it was taken, some 300,000 were saved in the "safe zones". Most of the rest died terrible and brutal deaths. In places the military trucks, including the ones carrying the last American press correspondants out of the city, travelled over corpses piled five feet deep in the streets. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi  at: 2/22/04 11:05 am
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 4:52 pm 
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Yeah, I remember seeing a short documentary based on that book when it first came out. Pretty gruesome stuff. Almost unimaginable that you could get people into the state of mind required to do such things. ******************

To seek the sacred river Alph, to walk the caves of ice ...<i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2004 8:36 pm 
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What makes the book amazing is that she tells the story from so many points of view -- the victims who survived -- the Americans and Germans who tried to help -- and the soldiers who participated. The ones who were new to the front were indoctrinated to the killing. They were ordered to kill unarmed people with bayonets, etc. until they became used to it. Even though at first they were sickened, they became hardened to it after enough time. Some of them even played games with the killings. There were two Japanese officers who made a game of who could behead 100 people first in the march from Shainghai to Nanking. One of the newspapers in Japan carried photos and a daily tally for them. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2005 5:27 am 
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Started reading a book called Tobacco; A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Iain Gately today.

The first chapter was pretty interesting. It tells how tobacco was first domesticated in South America and some of the uses to which it was put. Besides smoking and chewing, it was also used topically, nasally, and in a liquid form was drunk and as enemas. Shamans used it in their vision quests, and would deliberately take near fatal doses for near death experiences. It also told how it spread to North America, where is was usually smoked, and how it was the only plant some tribes cultivated. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi  at: 6/23/05 10:28 pm
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 4:53 pm 
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Have started to slowly make my way through a book called La Belle France, A Short History by Alistair Horne. It tells of 2000 years of French history, beginning with the foundings of a little village on a muddy island in the Seine by the Romans and on to the current day. Notre Dame has just been completed. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:34 pm 
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I have started reading a book called A Crack in the Edge of the World; America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester. It tells about the San Francisco earthquake and its aftermath. In San Franciso alone, about 700 people were killed in the quake and the following fires, and about 250,000 people were made homeless. Interesting and grim stuff, especially right now in the months right after Katrina... ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 5:43 am 
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Well, I finished the earthquake book, though I am still working my way through the French history. It's like a textbook, and I am unfamiliar with French history per se (until the Revolution) except where it directly impacts English history (Eleanor of Aquitaine, 100 Years War, etc.)

Its actually somewhat amazing that France even came to exist, as there was so much fighting between the crown and the more powerful nobles throughout the centuries. There were many times when the crown only controlled the areas right around Paris... ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: history books
PostPosted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:31 am 
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I made great strides with La Belle France this morning.

I was woken up by a phone call at 7AM, and managed to read all the way from Napoleon III to World War I.

Maybe I will finish this book this year after all. <i></i>


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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 6:10 pm 
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I did manage to finish La Belle France last year, as I hoped I would.

Right now I am working my way through 1491 by Charles Mann. In the last few decades, studies of Native Americans by historians, archivists working in dusty rooms in various old colonial towns, arcaheologists, anthropologists, geographers, etc. have been turning everything we thought we knew about the Americas on its head.

I've been reading about this in various magazines in a variety of disciplines, and finally someone has gone through a lot of the new research and issued a book about the new findings.

The Americas were probably populated long before it has been traditionally thought (sites down in South America have turned out to be a lot older than Clovis). The population of the Americas in 1491 was probably higher than Europe's. Some of the cities were much larger and much more advanced than anything in Europe at that time (some major American cities had enclosed sewer systems and public botanical gardens, for example). The agriculture, with the exception of domestication of animals (there were not many "candidate" animals for domestication in the Americas) was actually probably more advanced (creating corn was an act of genetic manipulation/breeding that might not be able to be matched today). There is new evidence that the first major civilisations down in Peru might have been the second to develop after Mesopotamia - and that rather than being founded on agriculture it was founded on seafood and cotton!

Anyway, its fascinating stuff. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:27 pm 
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The last couple of days I have been reading Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade by James Reson, Jr. It's a very interesting story, and brings the historical figures of Saladin and Richard the Lion Hearted springing to life.

Quote:
Warriors of God is the rich and engaging account to the Third Crusade (1187-1192), a conflict that would shape world history for centuries and which can still be felt in the Middle East and throughout the world today. Acclaimed writer James Reston, Jr., offers a gripping narrative of he epic battle that left Jerusalem in Muslim hands until the twentieth century, bringing an objective persepective to the gallantry, greed, and religious fervor that fueled the bloody clash between Christians and Muslims.

As he recounts this rousing story, Reston brings to life the two legendary figures who led their armies against each other. He offers compelling potraits of Saladin, the wise and highly cultured leader who created a united empire, and Richard the Lionheart, the romantic personification of chivalry who emerges here in his full complexity and contradictions. From its riveting scenes of blood soaked battles to its pageant of fascinating, larger-than-life characters, Warriors of God is essential history, history that helps us understand today's world. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:55 pm 
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I am reading The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin.

I had picked it up, seeing that is was about a devastating blizzard in the northern plains, thinking it might be about the winter described in Laura Ingalls Wilder's children's classic The Long Winter. It turns out that this storm took place a few years later; Laura's horrible winter was in 1880-81 and is now known in history as the Snow Winter. The storm this book is about took place in 1888.

The Children's Blizzard was a terrible storm that struck very quickly, killing hundreds of people in the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Many of the dead were children trying to get home from school and caught in the instantaneous white out and were killed by the brutally cold temperatures that came with the storm.

It's depressing stuff, but well written and interesting. The author picks out individual families and follows their stories. One family is from Norway, another from the Ukraine, another from Ohio. All come out to the plains as homesteaders; none had any idea the winters were so brutal or the conditions so primitive when they moved to the prairies. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:00 pm 
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I have been reading Night, by Elie Wiesel. It is his account of Nazi atrocities he witnessed as a child in the concentration/death camps. He went to the camps at age 14, where he lost his mother and his sisters; his father lived to nearly the end of the war at his side in those camps.

Wiesel wrote his account not only to honor the millions who were murdered, but also to reach out to the living in hopes that nothing like the Holocaust will ever happen again.

It is difficult to read this book, as the horrible crimes are completely unfathomable. But if we do not learn from the past, are we not destined to repeat those mistakes? ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 5:13 am 
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Right now I am reading The Ways of the Samurai by Carol Gaskin and Vince Hawkins. It tells of the history and customs of Japan's legendary warrior caste. There's some pretty interesting information that I had not known, such as women of the Samurai caste also receiving weapons training and often fighting in battles alongside their husbands. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 10:54 pm 
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Recently read Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick. It tells the story of the colonization of Plymouth by the Pilgrims, beginning with their roots in England, and then following them to first Holland and then to Plymouth in the new world. It especially concentrates on the relationship between the English and the local Native Americans. From what was a beneficial mutual relationship in the beginning, things devolved in the space of two generations to the bloodiest fighting (per percentage of soldiers killed in battle) ever seen on North America (yes- in percantage of the population King Phillip's War even outstrips the American Civil War). ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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 Post subject: Re: history books
PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 2:41 pm 
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I've been into biographies & autobiographies lately; I recently read the wartime memiors by Major Dick Winters (leader of the famous WW2 Band of Brothers and am now working on a biography of Leonardo da Vinci. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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