The Empire Books

Abbe Jules is quite simply the best novel i have read to date. One of a trilogy of angry young men novels, Abbe Jules is narrated by a young boy growing up in the bourgeas (i don't know how to spell that) of a small french town. His uncle is the priest of the title, a complicated man, viscious, mean sprited, oppressed by his chastity - not your average priest. Basically the gist of the story is that the young boy is taught by his Oncle l'Abbe Jules....and that's it really - you have to read it yourself - which is a joyous task. The language Mirbeau uses is the purest poetry in parts, even if he does get carried away at times. This isn't a very good review.

Read Abbe Jules, I urge you i urge you i urge you.

It's astonishing that this landmark achievement in WW I aviation history has not garnered a slew of 5-star reviews over the years. When "ATT" appeared in 1991 it ushered in a renaissance in Great War aero history, and the subsequent titles in the series only enhanced the authors' already sterling reputations.

Building on the format previously established in "Aces High," the RAF WW II volume, ATT proved a winner. With some 800 entries on individual pilots plus a wealth of squadron information, it offers a one-stop shopping center (centre?) for Great War students. It also opened many eyes, as the long-accepted victory scores were laid bare for study. the peculiar British victory credit system gave an inflated impression in terms of raw numbers, but ATT showed the details. For instance, the always controversial Billy Bishop's 72 included "only" 55 destroyed or captured, the rest being "out of control." Though a minority of the WW I "aces" listed here would have been considered as such in WW II, the enormous amount of data remains tremendously impressive.

Hours and hours and hours of informative perusal await the owner of Above the Trenches.

This book is a 3-in-1 by 3 Hugo-Winning authors.

The Trouble With Tycho by Clifford D. Simak

Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany

The Last Castle by Jack Vance

Statesman Dean Acheson once said, "Always remember that the future comes one day at a time." In reading James Chase's hagiography of the former Secretary of State, I was painfully reminded of this axiom in that the conclusion of his account of Acheson comes very slowly, one page at a time. Chock full of overt flowery adulations, this ode to all things Acheson left me with the lingering urge to read Melville or some other bromide better left relegated to the dusty echelons of my lower bookshelf.

And so, it came pleasing to the palate and with great relish reading John T. McNay's Acheson and Empire, the British Accent in American Foreign Policy in which he presents the dark underbelly of Acheson that Chase leaves covered. Whereas Chase's account reads as a love song to this formative character in the origins of the Cold War, McNay acts as a Woodward and Bernstein tour-de-force, exposing Acheson's prevailing biasness towards the interests of the British Empire in which he often flies in the face of America's own better welfare.

Often referred to as "this pompous diplomat in striped pants, with the phony British accent," by Senator Joseph McCarthy, Acheson's dialect may have been phony but his intentions were anything but. McNay contends Acheson's Ulster Protestant family roots contributed to an unconcealed inclination favoring British colonialism. Harboring a romantic view of British imperialism, Acheson's actions served to undermine the American identity and presence in countries emerging from under British rule such as Iran, India, Egypt, and Ireland.

Mingling a dash of creative writing and a surprising show of subtle wit, McNay's narrative is an engaging read and an important one which offers a never before considered reassessment of Acheson's foreign politics and reconsideration of his dubious legacy as a "Cold Warrior." But not only relevant to those studying the Cold War, McNay's account also offers up a plausible rationale to the continuing hostility of mid-Eastern countries towards the United States.

Documenting his thesis with extensive references to materials gleaned from obvious intense scrutiny and study, McNay strips away the veneer often held of Acheson, presenting an alternate view of the pin-striped exemplar. Acheson and Empire, the British Accent in American Foreign Policy is chronicle well deserving of a place on one's top bookshelf.

In this book the reader is introduced to Adam, an Outback man of few words. Adam enters the boxing ring at the start of this novel and becomes friends with Jimmy, a Australian Aborigine.Jimmy and Adam are then on the run from a corrupt Policeman and eventually arrive in the Outback Opal Mining Town of Coober Pedy.Adam then finds an opal the size of a loaf of bread and his Destiny is forever changed. This book is a wonderful epic from a very talented writer who sadly passed away a few years ago. I have actually visited Coober Pedy and Mr. Green's vivid description of the town brought back some treasured memories.

This is a very well researched and written book. Lots of rare photos that detail the rise and fall of the mighty Empire. I also recommend "Last of the Flying Clippers: The Boeing B-314 Story" which is a book with (unfortunately) a similar sad ending.

After Empire is a revealing window into identity and displaced cultures. The novelists featured are themselves unique writers and have interesting personal journies that are reflected in the book. While at first reading the book may appear academic in approach, it is certainly not an intimidating read for those with an interest in literature and the way in which race, ethnicity and culture form individual and national identity. An intellectually challenging and fascinating exploration of the perspectives of the colonisers and the colonised .

This is a great study into the difficult field of the transition in Europe from the Roman Empire into the world of what we call the Middle Ages. It tries to combine such field as archaeology, ethnology, language, religion and history, with major contributors such as D.N.Dumville, D.H.Green, J.Hines, J.D.Richards and Ian Wood. Though the invividual contributions are good enough a reason for acquiring this book, it is the discussions at the end of each paper that make it exemplary. These dicussions between the authors are stimulating and challenging, giving far more insight to the reader into the matter discussed . I'll be looking forward to the second volume.

Now into its fourth decade, C.D. Gordon's collection of translations from ancient sources concerning the Huns in Europe, interspersed with modern narrative and interpretation, remains an almost indispensable introduction to its subject. The limits of "The Age of Attila" (1960) become clearer with repeated use, but it was never intended as a profound contribution to historical literature. It covers one of the more dramatic aspects of the "Barbarian Invasions" that marked the final stages of the Roman Empire in the West, and the final shift of imperial power to Constantinople (Byzantium) in the East, offering a good selection of the surviving narratives of the events.

Although "The Age of Attila: Fifth-Century Byzantium and the Barbarians" does not contain all of the relevant ancient sources (mostly fragments surviving in later works), it has most of them, gathered in one place, and set in context with each other and with relatively recent ideas about the period. For one major source, Priscus' narrative of an embassy to the Huns, it gave the first complete English translation of all of the surviving fragments. Such direct translations are offered in italics, often mixed with Gordon's own observations in roman type, or, in the case of brief fragments, dropped into his narrative as illustrations and examples. This provides a unified reading experience, instead of a mere collection of disjointed extracts. (Appendix A gives the dates and sources of fragments, and the pages where the translations appear, and Appendix B describes the Historians themselves.) Technical problems with texts are confined to the Notes, and the glossary of "Geographical Names" deals with the special problems they present.

The coverage is selective, since the focus is kept on the Huns, not the Roman Empire, or the other "Barbarian" tribes, during Attila's lifetime; however, as pointed out in the Foreword by Arthur E.R. Boak, it does cover the major political events of the period, as the Huns were involved with most of them, one way or another.

I was delighted to find a copy of the 1966 Ann Arbor paperback reprint shortly after discovering the book, and there have been later reprintings in hard cover, some fairly recent. Although there is a huge literature on the subject, surprisingly few books in English deal with the Huns as their primary focus. A more up-to-date work of similar scope is certainly desirable; but Gordon's work can't be faulted for it. And in that light the lack of a detailed, but ever-more-obsolete, bibliography is less important. The narrative is sometimes confusing, because the sources are less than reliable, and the events chaotic, but Gordon manages to keep the main lines clear, while indicating some of the problems.

Beyond the matter of the collapse of Rome, and the rise of the Barbarian kingdoms, is the long after-life of these events in song and story. Those interested in the Nibelungs and the Volsungs, and the Dietrich von Bern cycle, prominent in medieval German and Scandinavian literatures, will find here many of the original events and personages, among the Burgundians, Goths, and Huns, and some less familiar peoples. (Dietrich is based mainly on the later Theodoric the Great "of Verona", but in medieval legend his story has been confused with that of his father Theudomir, an actual contemporary of Attila, among other anachronisms.)

I read Gordon's treatment with pleasure, and considerable profit, in about 1970. At that date, as when it appeared, E.A. Thompson's "A History of Attila and the Huns" (1948) was the main alternative, and it often gave quotations in the original Greek and Latin, so Gordon was at minimum an essential aide for most readers. (In its 1996 revised incarnation as "The Huns" in the "Peoples of Europe" Series, with an interesting Afterword by Peter Heather, such passages are translated, following Thompson's [d. 1994] instructions.) Thompson tended to favor materialist views of history, which sometimes fits a little oddly with how little we actually know of the economy of the Huns. Indeed, he presented them as almost entirely predatory, lacking such skills as metal-working, and even weaving, although it is hard to imagine Eurasian nomads without cloth. Gordon doesn't address such issues, beyond the goods the Huns demanded as tribute.

The serious student of the nomadic peoples will want to go on to the material, literary, and linguistic evidence painstakingly assessed in "The World of the Huns: Studies in their History and Culture" (1973) by Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen (1894-1969). This somewhat ponderous work had to be edited from the author's unfinished manuscript, despite his assurances to the publisher, shortly before his death, that it was all but completed. It is filled with otherwise difficult-to-find information, has a copious bibliography, and 75 illustrations. Many common identifications of the Huns with other peoples are mentioned only to be dismissed; in the 1940s Maenchen-Helfen had already disproved the accepted equation with the Hsiung-nu, enemies of Han Dynasty China when the Roman Empire was young. (Their name was probably pronounced something like "Hong" at the time, so the equation looks plausible, but has other difficulties.) Although out of print, "World of the Huns" was a book club selection, and used copies seem to be readily available.

It is a marked contrast to Gordon's more novice-friendly approach, but Maenchen-Helfen briefly mentions Gordon's book with respect, if not always agreement, unlike any number of more ambitious works which he is at pains to refute. Frankly, given the limitations on languages I can read, I can't imagine understanding Maenchen-Helfen's references to the sources *without* Gordon.

Those who find Thompson's interpretation of the decline of Rome and the nature of Barbarian economies too Marxist may enjoy Maenchen-Helfen's sniping at his, and Soviet (mainly Stalinist-era), readings of their history. In Eastern Bloc histories, as in older Slavophile views, the Huns were generally rather identified with the image of the Mongols, monsters to be hated for oppressing the Slavs -- except in Hungary, of course, where there was a tradition (not linguistically sound) of ethnic identification, or the rare instances when the Huns were allowed to be freedom-loving opponents of the wicked Imperialists ... . A more general difficulty in assimilating pastoral nomads to Soviet versions of Marxist ideology was also involved. But the Huns have had a variety of modern political "meanings" (see Maenchen-Helfen's "Fragments from the Author's Preface").

A comparison of Gordon, or any of these modern versions, with the comparable chapters of Gibbon's eighteenth-century vision of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" may be left as an exercise for the curious. And if you are still confused by the USA Network's 2001 cable television movie "Attila," it is likely that any of these books will help replace its fictional problems with genuine historical ones.

[Addendum: Those seriously interested in the history of the Roman Empire during this period, beyond the Huns and other "barbarian" peoples, or those who need to consult the actual texts, will find all the extant fragments of Gordon's major sources in R. C. Blockley, "Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus" (volumes one and two; Francis Cairns, Liverpool 1981 and 1983). This includes notes and a new translation. Unfortunately, the material assigned to an important compiler, John of Antioch, also used by Gordon, is not available in complete form in English, and excerpts like his are based on an edition about 150 years old. However, a new critical edition, with an Italian translation, has recently appeared, edited by Umberto Roberto, "Ioannis Antiocheni Fragmenta Ex Historia Chronica" (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2005). Between them, they cover almost all of the classical texts translated in "The Age of Attila." (Both books are listed by Amazon.)]

[With thanks to Alan Cameron's review in the on-line 'Bryn Mawr Classical Review," July 2006 [BMCR 2006.07.37], for information on Roberto's edition, and reminding me of Blockley's volumes, which I haven't seen in at least ten years, and couldn't identify by memory.]

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