Texas Books

Sincerely,

Gabriel Tejeira

Lose yourself and confront the problems of the early Texas frontier in Kelton's most thoughtful novel. Gideon, a former slave, flees the post-Civil-War south and finds himself in the Cavalry at the West Texas outpost of Fort Concho where he faces himself, white prejudice, and the fierce Comanche.
Many blacks served as enlisted cavalrymen on frontier posts in Texas. Because of the African American dark skin and hairtype, the Comanches gave them the name "Buffalo Soldiers." The name was a term of respect and awe, for the Comanche revered the buffalo and depended on it for survival.
Though highly entertaining adventure, "Wolf" retains historical and geographical accuracy, and Kelton attains a sensitive characterization that makes the story both touching and satisfying.

He begins to suspect the retiring architect does not treat his female companion with as much respect as she deserves. He retreats into his home for a time, trying to get away from the world, in a fit of general agitation and anxiety, but eventually returns to his friends' company, and deepens his friendship with the Persian woman, who seems to be growing apart from her companion. The novel ends with an emotional shock, summarizing the story's happenings, and explaining it in highly dramatic terms.

This novel is unequivocally brilliant. Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) does not employ a style easy to understand at first, but it is worth every ounce of energy invested. For example, he has written this short novel with no paragraph breaks whatsoever. (The book is 135 pages long, but the type is larger than usual and the pages shorter than usual.)

Bernhard writes in an overflowing, fulsome style, not unlike Samuel Beckett, full of language, full of description, incessant, and captivating. This is exactly his strategy: he is trying to capture the reader by forcing them to expend so much energy following his text, his narrative, his story, and his unusual style, that the final words of the story will hit the reader like a ton of bricks. This is Bernhard's signature, and this novel is a fantastic example.

Any reader should try this novel who is interested in an inventive, experimental novel, but one which does not veer too far from normal story-telling. Berhard's novels, for all their roller-coaster style, are actually quite conventional, and "Yes" is a great introduction to his literary work. His vocabulary is sharp, his characters are well spun, his occasional insights are spectacular, and his stories are intruiguing. This novel is highly recommended for anyone wishing to sharpen their mind, find a new adventure after having enjoyed Beckett's works, or introduce themself to one of the finest writers of the 20th century.

This is a great novel. I have never seen the mindset of isolation and the depression that follows better portrayed. The style of the piece lends itself to a breathless reading. You don't notice that periods are scarce after a while. It has an exquisite flow to it. All the characters are nicely done. The translation is excellent. I really have nothing negative to say about it.

Denounced by the extreme right and extreme left, Steinem's life has taken her from Ohio to Massachusetts to India, Washington DC and NY. Having cofounded Ms. the National Women's Political Caucus, the Women's Action Alliance and Voters for Choice, Steinem is truly an example of a good role model.

Heilbrum's superb prose takes us into the infamous resentment born by Betty Friedan and Kathie Sarahchild. Although both of these women are famous in their own right, their inexcusable and childish tantrums undid their own feminist reputation without any help from Steinem. Also deserving of their repuation is Betty Harris who's paranoid delusions and lax work ethic jepordaized the working environment at the early MS. Steinem is a saint for having dealt with these crazies and still keeping cool.

Odom shows an army essentially paralyzed and left in a state of suspended animation from which it was aroused only on the brink of war. Remembering the agonizing difficulties of raising, training, and equipping a mass army after America's entry into World War I, the Army's leaders and their civilian masters placed first priority on an expansible force. At the same time, shortsightedly pennypinching Republican administrations in the 1920s and the first FDR administration's absorption in the Depression kept military expenditures and manning meager. The handful of Regulars who remained after meeting needs for deployed forces in China, the Philippines, the Canal Zone, Hawaii, and on the Mexican border were scattered across America to train Guard and Reserve forces. What little money the Army had for R&D and equipment procurement went almost entirely to an Air Corps with little interest in supporting the ground forces it wanted only to break away from. With widely scattered forces, no modern equipment, and no money for "luxuries" like transportation, the rare exercises amounted to little more than musters.

Deprived of the stimulus of real-world experience in the field and muffled by senior officers and civilians unwilling to hear critical or even novel views, the Army's officers were left with little but their memories of World War I to guide them, with the natural result that the service remained backward-looking. Had the United States been drawn into World War II in 1939 or 1940 rather than late in 1941, it would have found the Army catastrophically unprepared -- not simply in terms of manpower and matériel but in ideas about how to organize and fight. Bad as the Army's condition was in December of 1941, it vastly better than it had been two years before.

All of this is made vividly clear in this well written and well structured book. Some may feel that the author pulls his punches a little bit with respect to the responsibility of the Army's own leaders. As he makes clear, they found themselves in a very difficult corner. But I think it is fair to say that they could have prepared the Army somewhat better had they been more willing to make and defend painful tradeoffs within the limited resources they were granted. (For instance, unmentioned by Odom, the Army spent relatively substantial sums on construction of buildings in the mid to late 1930s -- badly needed, to be sure, but how badly compared to other things?) Still, Odom provides us with much of the information needed to make up our own minds on these issues.

I found this book both valuable and enjoyable. I would recommend pairing it with David E. Johnson's _Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945_ (Cornell U. Press, 1998), which complements it in many ways. Hopefully, Odom's publishers will follow the lead of Johnson's in issuing an affordable paperbound edition. When they do so, they might consider dropping the "doctrine" from the subtitle; it will still be strictly accurate, and less likely to confuse non-professional readers.

Will O'Neil

William Odom has captured the essence of the tumultuous transformation of our Army during the period between the two World Wars in his superlative treatise After the Trenches. The transformation of our Army during the inter-war years was as profound as the transformation we are experiencing now. If you are looking for a guide that explains the importance of doctrine, weapons, and organizations to transformation, you must read Odom's After the Trenches.

Imagine the challenges facing the US Army of 1919, one year after the end of the War to End All Wars. The years 1914 to 1918 were years of profound and dramatic change. The methods of warfare that the Army had practiced before the Great War had been completely overturned. The Army went into World War I with a tradition that was largely formed from the frontier Army of he Indian Wars and the brief fighting in the Spanish American War. Armed with revolvers, sabers and wearing campaign hats in 1914, the Army finished 1918 wearing tin helmets and armed with gas masks, machine guns, rapid firing artillery, airplanes, and tanks.

True to our American tradition, after the Great War, the Army was largely disbanded. Only a small corps of professional soldiers was retained during the period from 1919 to 1939. In that time, however, warfare continued to change. In the meantime, Germany studied the lessons of the Great War, improved on the methods and weapons of WWI, and transformed its doctrine and training.

This historical appreciation is what Odom brings so masterfully to print in After the Trenches. The author explains the evolution of Army doctrine throughout this period and traces the intellectual action of an Army trying to find its way in a brave new world. He describes how the thinkers of that time guarded their uniquely American approach to war and rejected many of the European, and particularly the French, concepts that grew out of the horror of the trench warfare.

In the inter-war years, the US Army, guided by men such as General John Pershing, Hugh Drum, George Lynch, Frank Parker, and Lesley McNair tried to balance technology and the human dimension of war, and came up short. Rapid changes in the methods of war during the interwar years changed military doctrine form one "built on infantry-artillery coordination to one based on a highly mobile combined arms team." Army doctrine did not keep pace with these changes. With few men, little material, almost no funding, and no maneuvers during the years 1919-1939, it is not surprising that Army doctrine was so inadequate. Bureaucratic hassling, friction between the branches of the Army, and an inept doctrinal development process combined to create a situation that was so bad that the Army failed to coordinate a combined arms doctrine up to the eve of World War II. With the German victories in Poland, Norway, and France at the outbreak of WWII providing a blueprint for doctrine, the US Army raced to catch up. In the end, our Army paid a price in blood for its inability to transform more rapidly.

The lesson that Odom provides us is that this period of rapid change almost left the Army unprepared for the kind of combat that was to characterize World War II. Odom clearly shows in After the Trenches that the single most important reason US Army doctrine lagged so far behind was the Army's institutional deficiency to employ a tightly-run, well-coordinated doctrine development process. He provides us with a very valuable precautionary story, one that is well written and thoroughly researched

Now, imagine the challenges that our Army faces today, more than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. As Odom points out in his conclusion: "Establishment of an organization dedicated to monitoring and accommodating change is the most important element in successful modernization. This organization must address weapons, organizations, and doctrine to avoid the same calamity that befell the Army from 1919-1939. With that in mind, anyone involved in the transformation of today's Army will find After the Trenches an account worth studying.