Pacific University Books

The copy of this which I read is the original 1914 edition entitled WAR'S AFTERMATH. It is interesting to me that the author set out in his questionairre with a set of strong assumptions, nearly all of which unravelled from the replies he received from the wide cross-section of Confederate veterans.

With one exception, the obvious and underlying general assumption that war has dysgenic effects. The loss of perhaps one million or more of men of the finest genetic quality during America's Civil War, is indeed irreplaceable. Little did the author know that two major global wars would quickly drawf that figure.

However, one thing I did notice were the author's Germanophobic comments in his introductory essay in which he essentially called for a new war - although he of course was not EXPLICIT in saying that. Thus a lesson perhaps to be absorbed there, is that while it is easy to condemn past wars, it is equally easy to fly into new and more disastrous ones.

Also his comments interspersed throughout his essay, applauding democracy and advocating its adoption everywhere as some sort of 'solution' to the problem of war, seems completely wrong to me. It is not just dictatorships or tyrannies that indulge in war. An argument could be made that democracies lead to an inherent corruption and tend to produce ever more inferior standards of leadership and a correspondening drop in the political quality of the masses, leading in turn to was and conflicts that could and should be more properly avoided as unnecessary.

Best educational book on the climate and weather of New Zealand ( and Australia) ever written. Good for one studying docturates on meteorology.

I was a student at Caltech in the late 60s and the influence of the European emigree community in LA in science, music, literature, and the arts was still very strongly palpable; indeed many of my best professors were themselves emigrees. Reading this book makes far clearer and more comprehensive than anything I have read before the broad outlines of who these people were and what they accomplished while in the US.

Later a student and businessman myself in Germany and Asia, I see even more clearly what an extraordinary European elite blessed LA with their presence. Not all of them are appealing (I personally don't care for Bertold Brecht or Adorno), but even their influence was no less visible, sometimes on well-known radicals like Angela Davis.

University of Houston professor Gerald Horne sets forth an intriguing study into the slave trade in the Pacific during the second half of the 19th Century.
While setting down a well-documented history of Pacific "blackbirding," a euphemism for slave trading, Horne also develops an argument that the shortage of cotton and sugar created by the Civil War set into motion a series of events that gives rise to U.S. Imperialism, which eventually extinguishes Hawaii's sovereignty, fosters the White Australia policy and gives rise to Imperial Japan and ultimately, World War II in the Pacific.
Almost as intriguing is Hawaii's role in the White Pacific. Horne develops the early ambitions of Kamehameha the Great to become the Napoleon of the Pacific, using the fleet assembled for an assault on Kauai to subjugate Tahiti. These ambitions live all the way through Kalakaua, who successfully argued before the legislature for $30,000 to form a Polynesian confederation.
The King sent representatives to Samoa, where the Malietoa, or alii nui, agreed to a confederation between the two kingdoms. However, the arrangement was short-lived as Kalakaua was stripped of his power the following year when he signed the Bayonet Constitution, and a reform party ended the alliance.
Hawaii's distaste for slavery was written into the Constitution of 1852, partially on the advice of Alexander Liholiho, nephew of Kamehameha III. During a visit to the United States in 1849, Alexander Liholiho experienced slavery and racism first hand and vowed that it would never take place in the Hawaiian Kingdom.

The exploration of the Pacific was, in its day, something closely akin to modern space travel - huge risks, huge rewards, vast spaces. This useful guide takes us through encyclopaedia-length entries on both the luminaries (Cook, La Perouse) and the lesser-known Pacific explorers. Dunmore is a leading authority in this field.

I purchased this book from Amazon.com. But, the publisher apparently got confused and this is not a reprint of the 1905 book of the same title by Harry Thurston Peck, in spite of what it says on the cover. This is a reprint of the book of the same title by Rollo Ogden which was published in 1904. However, this book complements both the original 1864 biography by George Ticknor and the 1905 book by Harry Thurston Peck. I have been an admirer of Prescott for some time and I found a number of facts about Prescott in the Ogden book that were not included in the other books. The Table of Contents given at the Amazon.com site is that of Peck's book. The TOC of Ogden's book is:

I. THE CROSSED SWORDS
II. SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
III. `LE TRAVAIL D'AVEIGLE"
IV. THE INWARD EYE
V. PREPARATION
VI. BEGINNING
VII. THE QUEST OF A THEME
VIII. FERDINAND AND ISABELLA
IX. AWAKING FAMOUS
X. THE MAN OF LETTERS
XI. THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO
XII. THE CONQUEST OF PERU
XIII. THE ENGLIASH VISIT
XIV. PERSONAL TRAITS
XV. POLITICAL SYMPHATHIES
XVI. PHILIP II
XVII. THE UNFINISHED WINDOW
INDEX

The Korean War is one that is often forgotten and when mentioned, the comments about it are often incorrect. This pamphlet is about how the United States used air power in the Korean War and as the title implies, much is said about how it was not used. While the Korean War was not the first one fought by America with limited objectives, the war against the British in 1812 fills that role, observers lacking a historical perspective often claim that it was.
The use of American air power in Korea is one more instance of the often forgotten fact about air power. "Unless you use nuclear weapons to utterly annihilate an area, aerial bombardment alone is not enough to force a nation to surrender." As is mentioned in this book, very early in the war General Douglas MacArthur stated that American air power would be enough to defeat the North Koreans. This of course was false, although it is arguably true that the massive use of air power prevented the United Nations forces from being expelled from the Korean peninsula by the initial North Korean offensive.
Despite the occasional arguments that the political limits placed on the U. S. Air Force damaged the United Nations war effort in Korea, this pamphlet is reasonably balanced. In the final analysis, the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin probably had more to do with the end of the Korean War than anything done by any western leader. While Eisenhower made it clear to the Chinese that he was willing to use nuclear weapons in Korea, there is little indication that Stalin was moved by that fact. Any targets struck by American nuclear weapons would have been in Korea and China and Stalin would have been happy to use that as a propaganda weapon. The deaths of millions of Chinese or Koreans would have meant nothing to him.
Finally, one of the best points made in this book is the major failure of the American Air Force in the Korean War. The Chinese were able to move hundreds of thousands of troops into Korea undetected by aerial surveillance. Had these movements been detected, many of the major mistakes made by United Nations commanders would have been avoided. Unfortunately, it is most unlikely that the outcome would have been different.

David Mech is the "alpha male" of wolf scientists, and Isle Royale is one of the most important locations for the study of wolves. This book is essentially his doctoral dissertation, based on field research under Durward Allen in 1959-1961.

Both Mech and wolf research have come a long way since then. As a result, this book provides an interesting snapshot of how little leading scientists knew in the 1960s. Note to skeptics: science really does advance.

That's not to say that there are any big mistakes here, just that Mech often comments that he didn't know something and that future research needs to figure it out.

Of more lasting value, his appendix includes 71 summaries of wolf-moose interactions (successful and unsuccessful hunts) drawn directly from his field notes. These could be incorporated into any future study you like.

The book has lots of interesting anecdotes on Thackeray, Hawthorne, Dickens, Wordsworth, "Miss Mitford" and others, many from the author's personal interactions. He seems to enjoy dropping names and letting you know where he has been! He is a bit wordy, and admits as much, himself, in the preface. Few others would have been as well-equipped to offer personal observations on well-known authors of this period.
. . . . some have suggested that his wife, an outstanding literary person in her own right, may have been the source of more of his insights into the authors' thought than he acknowledges . . .

(I have included below some excepts on the author, from Wikipedia, for the edification of browsers):
Fields was the publisher of the foremost contemporary American writers, with whom he was on terms of close personal friendship, and he was the American publisher of some of the best-known British writers of his time, some of whom he also knew intimately. The first collected edition of De Quincey's works (20 vols., 1850-1855) was published by his firm. As a publisher he was characterized by a somewhat rare combination of keen business acumen and sound, discriminating literary taste, and as a man he was known for his geniality and charm of manner.

In 1862-1870, as the successor of James Russell Lowell, he edited the Atlantic Monthly. In 1871 Fields retired from business and from his editorial duties, and devoted himself to lecturing and writing. He also edited, with Edwin P. Whipple, A Family Library of British Poetry (1878). His chief works were the collection of sketches and essays entitled Underbrush (1877) and the chapters of reminiscence composing Yesterdays with Authors (1871) in which he recorded his personal friendship with Wordsworth, Thackeray, Dickens, Hawthorne and others. He died in Boston on the 24th of April 1881

"Zanzibar: City, Island, and Coast" by Richard F. Burton is a well-titled book. It describes Burton's exploration at a time when a good part of the East African mainland was more-or-less under the control of the Omani rulers of Zanzibar, after they had moved their capital from Oman, begun the cultivation of cloves, and achieved control of the East African slave trade. Burton made the journey in 1857, however publication of the book was delayed until 1871 (he shares his ideas as to why). Burton begins with a valuable review of "How the Nile Question Stood in 1856", which summarizes the various theories about the source of the Nile at that time, a question which he and his colleague John Hanning Speke played large parts in solving. The book continues in typical Burton fashion: observations on Zanzibar city, its fauna and flora, industry ("closely akin to nil"), government, rulers, foreign residents, and the ethnology of the "Arabs" and "Wasawahili and Slave Races". Continuing on the East African mainland (present Kenya and mainland Tanzania) he covers the city of "Mombasah", as well as the geography and ethnology of the interior. Much has changed since Burton's time, especially the spellings of places and peoples. The book closes with a touching biographical chapter about the aforementioned John Hanning Speke. Appendixes cover "Commercial Matters at Zanzibar" (exports, imports, prices); "Thermometric Observations in East Africa"; "Meteorological Observations"; etc. This is a very good book for those interested in first-hand accounts of exploration or East African history, but it is not an introduction to the subject.