A fast-paced & nuanced look at a post-war 'verse and its survivors...
598092
WHAT A GREAT BOOK. If you enjoyed The Clone Wars series (which you did, if you watched it) I think this is right up your alley. It's fast-paced and full of richly developed, multifaceted, wildly varying characters. Mr Bones might be the coolest thing to happen to Star Wars in a long time.

Wendig brings a nuance to the politics and people of the post-Endor SW-verse that I find canon often lacks. Yes, the Empire is Bad. Yes, the New Republic is Good. But there are people within both who don't so easily fit in those neat boxes; both sides have their share of devils and angels, opportunists and helpers. Even Jedi and Sith are not forced into a simple dichotomy: There's even mention of one Sith Lord who proclaimed the old ways of Light and Dark dead, and forged a new path. And there are neutral, ordinary, everyday folk, too, people damaged by one or both sides as competing powers make war all around them. There's depth here canon rarely treads, and this 'verse is better for it existing.

ALSO WARNING!!!11!! There are gay folk and people of color and women all doing stuff and having personalities and being vital players in the story, so if that deeply offends you then FETCH YOUR FAINTING COUCH. (And also it's 2016, the world is and has been a very diverse place, pull your head out of your backside.)
3408805
This is one of those books that leaves you thinking long after youve finished it. Its a one-of-a-kind, not exactly a romance, not really a historical novel, not a novel of suspense, and not a mystery, but it has elements of all them in it. Its also a thoughtful, provocative  consideration of the nature of goodness, the nature of evil, and the possibilities and impossibilities of redemption.  And a whole lot of it takes place in a World War Two POW camp (which is well researched)..  Sounds like a heavy slog of a read, doesnt it? But its anything but.  Its an engrossing  fast-moving story with a likeable protagonist, plenty of twists and some some interesting history, and in the authors capable hands, it remains upbeat throughout. Let me make it short: This book is worth reading. Youll be glad you read it.
4504802
A cottage industry of Sept. 11 books is now under construction. Most will cover the same horrific ground. Some will advance our understanding of events leading to the attacks, others might suggest courses of action and new perspectives for a post-9/11 world.
None will have the power of this book. Love Greg & Lauren is being promoted first and foremost as a love story and rightly so. But it is also literature of the first order, in the same way that Samuel Pepys's diaries of London in the time of plague and fire were, as a real-time transcript of people caught in the crosshairs of history. Moreover, it follows the edict of great factual narrative: Report Truly and Well.
This Greg Manning does, in a book notable for its honesty and its eye for detail. The Mannings' lives were changed irrevocably that day, and just the sheer cruel swing of fortune takes your breath away: Greg is late to work and so survives, though most of his colleagues die, while Lauren, despite not being at her desk in the doomed Cantor Fitzgerald offices, is engulfed by a fireball anyway.
The grim tally of the thousands who died that day excludes the far smaller group of attack victims who lived but required hospitalization. And few of those hospitalized were as badly injured as Lauren Manning.
These daily emails are dispatches from a front line lived out over months in a place past the headlines -- a burn unit that, as Greg writes, became "Sub Zero" for the families who were frozen in place praying for their loved ones' recovery and insulated from the swirl of events beyond the hospital doors.
At times, the dispatches are dry eyed and clinical, patiently explaining the complicated yet fascinating recovery process for burn victims. But they also include a widening circle of individuals and events, life in a Manhattan remade by 9/11. Greg's description of his visit to Ground Zero three weeks after the attacks is particularly memorable.
Even so, the letters are restrained and almost laconic; they merely describe the events and actions, never telling you how to feel. And the humor -- yes, there is humor -- is playful and sly. It all makes for great reading, with several dramatic swings, even though we know how things turn out. Indeed, it's the daily reports of how Lauren claws her way to recovery that give this book its power. When Lauren, weeks in a medicated coma, first speaks, it's absolutely transporting.
Those posters who don't like Love, Greg and Lauren are entitled to their opinions, but their reasonings are curiously incomplete. One says the book wouldn't have been published if not for its connection to Sept. 11. Yes, and your point would be?
Another says the book should have covered other issues, but never says what those are.
And for those who feel it somewhat problematic that the Mannings are comparatively well-heeled (or were before the hospital bills), well, that's the thing about history. It rarely selects its chroniclers according to our wishes. As it is, we are very fortunate that Greg Manning is so gifted a writer. Day by day, he produced a book that is both a sweetly intimate account and a document for the ages. Well done.
3040309
One of the lessons I learned very early in my three-decade-long career writing fundraising appeals was that statistics numb the brain while a gripping tale of one individual can unlock torrents of emotion in the reader. So it was no surprise to me that the story of one young refugee Jewish family in London in 1945 could bring home the chilling reality of the Holocaust more powerfully than any recitation of the numbers of Hitlers victims could ever possibly do.

In The List, Martin Fletcher, an NBC foreign correspondent who is the son of an Austrian refugee couple named Edith and Georg, borrows their names for his protagonists in a fictional tale of a small group of Holocaust survivors scratching out a living in a boardinghouse in post-war London amid the violent conflict over Britains pro-Arab policy toward Palestine.

The story unfolds in London beginning on May 8, 1945  VE Day (Victory in Europe, should you be too young to know)  and concludes in the days before Christmas that same fateful year. The narrators focus shifts to Palestine from time to time to visit the increasingly desperate struggle between the three leading groups of the Zionist insurgency (Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi) and the British occupation forces. The two threads of the tale converge, as they tend to do in novels, bringing home to the apolitical refugees in peacetime England some of the grim choices facing Jews in what is to become, within three years, the Israeli homeland.

The list of the title is Georgs long, handwritten list of his family members, who are crossed out, one by one, as news emerges of their deaths from the chaos of the DP (displaced person) camps and migrating refugees across the devastation of Europe. This homely but powerful metaphor for what we all lost in the Holocaust reawakened childhood memories of my New York cousins sitting me down to tell me about the lives of my own relatives who perished in the death camps.

Fletchers grim but fascinating tale centers around two central events drawn from history: an anti-Semitic petition movement to expel Jewish refugees from the borough of Hampstead, driven by fascists recently released from wartime prisons, and the attempted assassination of Aneurin Bevin, the Foreign Minister in the Labour Government that came to power in Britain following Winston Churchills rejection at the polls.

The List is a searing tale, beautifully told, brimming over with suspense that drives the reader forward to the end.
4149644
This book is about a young girl (Kim Ha) and her family's life in Saigon, South Vietnam in 1975. Without giving too much away, I can say that evntually the family is forced to flee Saigon and go to Alabama, where thye face a whole new set of challenges. I reallt liked the historical context of the novel. Everything is accurate and research based which is nice. I usually dislike poetry, but I kind of liked this book. It was not bad. It wasn't too full of symbolism and hippy-dippy.

I feel like the author chose to include both "inside out" and "back again" to show her experiences and the full universal refugee experience. It was to show that it isn't all about your lifed being ruined or turned "inside out". It's also about afterwards, how you get "back again". How you find family and a sense of community.

I would recommend this novel in verse to any poetry-reading history lovers. it definitely isn't too symbolic which is nice for me. I like literal things, that is why I don't really love poetry. But this, for sure, is poetry and exhibits other trats shwing that. There is a nice balance with ressearch-based info on that time period.

Good Luck!
1522650
"Binder was a pitiful place, worn thin from years of want."  Nonetheless, Ollivene  Love, oldest daughter of itinerant preacher Reverend Everlasting Love, was desperate to stay there beyond  her father's normal three days to a town.  An innocent woman's life depended on it, and Ollie yearned  for `a fixed to the ground house' instead of life in a travel trailer and tent.  Besides, what would happen to Jimmy Koppel, Ollie's new friend, with his father dead and his mother  pending trial for his murder?  What starts out as a lyrically written nostalgia piece about  a closely-knit family in the late 1950's becomes a murder mystery by page twelve and a tribute to the transformative power of music by the end.  Do not miss this book - powerful!
4091828
Told as an easily read poem, this is the story of Ha` and of her family's harrowing escape to a refugee camp after the fall of Saigon.  Just ten, her father MIA, she soon finds herself, with her older brothers and her mother, a stranger in a very strange land - Alabama.  Here, struggling with the new language, her color--neither "black" nor "white"--she is taunted, chased and mocked. Here, eggs and bricks are thrown at her house. Here, her family discovers that it is safer be baptized at their big-hearted sponsor's evangelical church than to admit they are Buddhists. So far, this sounds pretty grim, not the usual 8-12 year old fare, but I was entirely enthralled by Ha`'s story. Her insights about her new country and the people in it are witty, out-of-the-mouths-of-babes spot on, all while remaining utterly true to the heart and mind of her age group.  Funny, heart-breaking, uplifting, melancholy, joyous--it's all in here. I highly recommend this book. It should be read in schools, placed in libraries, and used by Sunday School teachers, too.
* Review first appeared in The Historical Novel Society magazine
2669438
Benjamin Busch pens a haunting memoir of a boyhood filled with martial glories, tempered by the adult reality of military service.  As a child in Maine and New York, he balances a rich fantasy life with an obsession for building makeshift forts, hides and castles.

As a young man, he pursues those visions of military grandeur by becoming a Marine officer and serving tours in Iraq.  He learns that boyhood dreams give way to chaos, blood and death.  Youth's sense of invincibility yields to life lessons learned in combat and then while witnessing the demise of his aging parents.

Busch's prose is lean and sparse, almost Hemingway-esque.  At times, it ventures into the poetic and elegiac.

Moody, reflective, meditative, "Dust to Dust" at many points made me think, "Holy @#$%$ -- that's good!"
1472429
The book tells the story of the Berkun family in patches over 40 years. Centering on the rather self-absorbed father & his inability to make connections with his own kin, this story charts the impacts of his insularity & betrayal on his family - his wife & 3 children. They cope, largely, & learn, at least in Scott's case, to recalibrate their own relationship with him.

As with all Berkun books, the writing & the research are remarkable. Constructed mainly from remembrances, memory & its interpretation remain both the prime protagonist & the chief culprit across the 200 pages. In examining how memory defines us, in continual efforts to make memory cohere with our ideas, failing, & trying again, in abysmal depths of analysis & interpretations of the unsaid & the undone, in nature's seeming upper-hand over nurture, in sudden flashes of all-consuming insights, in all of this, we'll find our own lives reflected.

This writing, I suspect, is somewhat cathartic for Scott Berkun; I felt that for those of us with a less-than-visceral experience of his life, the story itself - constructed from over four decades of memory - is slightly short on detail & interconnectedness.

The reason I recommend this book is because I'm going to flip through its pages again. It's the duel - man versus memory - that fascinates me.

Disclosure: I received this book from Scott Berkun without making a payment.
2827393
The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook depicts a time and place not often depicted in literature: post-WWII Germanyspecifically, Hamburg in 1946. The Aftermath tells the story of a British officer, his wife, and their young son sharing a requisitioned home with a German man and his teenaged daughter. This situation proves ripe for drama and clashing relationships and tensions, and Brook delivers. A note at the back of the book explains that the author got the idea from his Grandfather who hared a house with a German family after the war, which from what I understand, was certainly not the norm.

English couple Lewis and Rachael are distanced after the war, Lewis rather hung up on the idea of Rachael, and Rachael suffering from most likely a form of PTSD after the loss of someone close (I won't say who due to spoilers). Lewis and Rachael are almost foils to each other: Lewis holds everything in while Rachael lets everything out despite her best efforts at the typical English stiff upper lip. Their son, Edmund, on the other hand, is relatively upbeat and curious despite the impacts of the war and witnessing the devastation of post-war Germany. Orphans of all ages run free in hodge-podge found clothes, scavenging food and belongings, squatting in abandoned homes, and desperately seeking prized cigarettes or food from the British soldiers. The orphans engage in a type of black market trade, with cigarettes being the main currency, and Edmund getting caught up in the plight of the Orphans.

Brook offers brief vignettes of the German family, Stefan and Freda, but I found their characters thinly painted. More time seems to have been spent fleshing out the English family. I would have liked to have gotten to know Stefan and Freda much more than Brook offered.

The Aftermath, at times, falls into the trope of the emotionally frozen marriage and the subsequent actions of husband and wife; one party inevitably being awakened by adultery. I won't speak too much on that subject given the spoiler-territory, but I will say that while that aspect was enjoyable to read, it was predictable.

I found myself distracted by the authors thesaurus-happy tendencies, perhaps because I don't like writing that tries to elevate itself by posh language rather than theme at the risk of becoming pretentious. Maybe thats just my egalitarian outlook in general, although I do obviously understand the importance of people learning new words from reading.

My main issue with The Aftermath is that is seems to be an incomplete book. The ending was quite abrupt and although there is allusion to closure, I felt there was no closure for any of the characters, which was very unsatisfying.
4182431
War is undoubtedly hell but it is a particularly poignant cruelty when it is waged on civilians - men, women and children alike - as it was during the 900 days of the Nazi's bitter siege of Leningrad in 1941. Marina Anatolyevna Krasnova remembers her time as a young girl in a bitterly cold war torn city in astonishingly vivid detail. A former tour guide of the now renowned Hermitage Museum, she has mentally preserved the details of every room and every painting in the museum in her mind's eye with crystal clarity - a "memory palace" as it were. She remembers her breathless efforts along with the rest of the museum staff to remove the museum's priceless artifacts into safekeeping in the museum cellars to protect them from the relentless pounding of the Luftwaffe bombers. The bittersweet lovemaking with her best friend, Dmitri, is an anchor she desperately clutches to with ever diminishing hopes for a future as his wife when he is shipped out of the city to wage battle against the advancing German army.

Beyond all reasonable expectations in the constricted, difficult world that was wartime Russia, both Marina and Dmitri survive into their old age and THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD also tells the story of now elderly Marina's present day battle with an entirely different enemy - the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. Slowly but inevitably, Marina loses the recent memories of her family, her children, the coming wedding of her grand-daughter and any meaningful sense of where she is and what she is doing.

Debut author Debra Dean has told two magnificent stories that evoke compassion without being maudlin, that convey the meaning and importance of beauty, loyalty, patience, caring and love in our lives and, of course, that demonstrate the futility, horror and destruction that war brings to the world. Despite the very obvious literary and artistic content of the novel, her writing is simple and never pretentious or overbearing:

"Aside from the sirens, it is quiet tonight, no planes yet. But the moon is rising, so they will come. She hates the moon. It is dead, and its flat, dead light draws in Fascist planes like moths. Though she knows her perspective has been poisoned by the war, it is hard to see why poets make such a romantic fuss over an ugly, pockmarked disk."

What adjectives does one apply to THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD? Warm, compelling, compassionate, literary, moving, poetic, evocative and disturbing are just a few of the words that come to mind. It might be a short novel but it is powerful and you won't soon forget it.

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss
3215897
(4.5/5 "Running Moms")

Busy moms (and dads), "Between Shades of Gray" will slip between your thoughts and the moments of your day in that way of truly great books. Ms. Sepetys grabs a hold of your attention on the first page and maintains an iron-fisted grip until the very end. What amazes me most is that she does so with beautiful prose about horrific events. The book is simultaneously harrowing and heartwarming, haunting and inspiring. Based on the true history of Ms. Sepetys' family, it's a story you will not soon forget.

The story is fiction but based on true history not widely discussed or known, relative to the history of central Europe during World War Two. The book has a natural flow, taking the reader along with Lina and her family from their comfortable lives in Lithuania all the way to the North Pole. Along the way, they experience the extremes of human behavior, from the beyond-words depraved actions of Soviet soldiers to the sacrifices that friends and strangers alike will make for their fellow man. The story will keep you from sleeping, first because its a darn difficult book to put down and then as you ponder the inevitable moral questions it raises. What would you do if it was your family? What would you do if this was happening to your friends and neighbors? Would you resist, or keep silent and hope that doing so would protect you and your family?

A level of tension is maintained through the book, from the moment Lina and her family are removed from their home. The only time I noted a disruption in the tension was for the flashbacks to their pre-invasion lives. Though the details were important for grounding the reader in history of actual events and fictional ones, the persistent appearance of flashbacks, and their physical separation from the rest of the prose were the details of the book I most disliked, and found distracting. They are the reason I did not give the book five "Running Moms," but four and a half.

The flashbacks aside, Ms. Sepetys has developed her characters and story to the point that they're almost tangible, and it seems harder to reconcile that they did not exist. By the end of the book, I would have believed this was not a historical fiction by someone a full generation removed from the events, but the memoir of a survivor. This is a credit to Ms. Sepetys research of the era and recording of stories from those who were survivors. She weaves together fact and fiction into a story that will captivate young and old readers alike. I read this book in six days, which I am almost never able to do with my current schedule. The pages of "Between Shades of Gray' flew by and I found myself unable to resist turning the page and starting the next chapter. With this recommendation, I will end my review: Buy a copy of this excellent book. Plan to carve out some time in your day wherever you can. Read it yourself, read it with your kids and share it with others. You won't regret the time or money you invest in this book!

Book received by: Recommended and loaned to me by another busy mom! (But I will be buying my own copy!)
695426
Three novellas make up this triptych, all centered around the Vietnam War and how it affects the lives of a disparate cast of characters: protestors, enlisters, sisters of combat victims, and friends and family members of combat survivors. Author Alice Boatwright has a deft touch as she probes this sensitive subject, and is neither sentimental nor judgmental. Instead, she looks at a variety of ways the same event might effect different people. The fact that many of the characters here are women gives a new and necessary perspective on the ripple effect of war.

I found the characters' stories to be both realistic and heartbreaking, and I read the book straight through over the course of one weekend. And yet I would say it is essentially a hopeful book. Events might damage us but we can survive, and we can be loved, and we can overcome our ghosts against all odds.
1555258
Flashes of War is a terrifically well-paced, well-told collection of short fictional vignettes about the toll war takes on soldiers and civilians. Schultz's characters are believable, and are either effectively-rendered portraits in the shorter stories, or comprehensible expositions on various emotional states. The fiction works best when Schultz focuses on the "who" of her characters, rather than the "what" - as a combat veteran of Afghanistan, the landscapes and actions were not always accurately portrayed, but the characters always came across to me as essentially true. Schultz's most impressive abilities as an author are her pitch-perfect endings, and her uncanny, haunting knack for magical realism. Furthermore, the book is short enough, and segmented enough, that if you're busy, and only have time to read a short while during (for example) a commute, this book will suit your reading habits.
3169167
This is a fast paced, historically accurate spy thriller.  It provides insight into well-known events and places, within the context of early post-war Washington D.C.  Tinged with the faint glow of faded memories, the music, dress, mannerisms, and lingo of the era recall bygone days of the Truman and Eisenhower years.  The character development is highly descriptive but not overdone, with flashbacks woven into both dreamlike memories and white-hot action sequences.

Fans of Tom Clancy and Harold Coyle (Team Yankee) will instantly recognize the details of post-war undercover equipment and techniques, with fascinating depictions of weapons, munitions, close combat, and the physical and mental demands of early-CIA and WWII Office of Strategic Services tradecraft, including the sixth-sense that develops over many years of clandestine work.  Unwavering loyalty among battle-tested companions is challenged by exciting new romance, as well as the unexpected appearance of an old flame.

Thankfully, the author has seen fit to dispense with the ambiguity, weasel-wording, and bureaucratic paralysis of current big government, and in doing so, has breathed new life into behind-the-scenes geopolitics and international capitalism.  Get ready for a lot of excitement in a book that ends too soon!
2709773
As those familiar with Jewish history may know, the Siege of Masada refers to the siege of the Roman soldiers on rebels and Jewish families in the Masada fortress. In this work, Kosta Kafarakis captures this heroic last stand from the perspective of a grandmother retelling the tale to her grandson. Although the narrative itself is fiction, the details the tale come from historical artifacts and sociopolitical currents of the time.

Here the author breathes fresh life into a tale worn old in the minds of the Jewish community. The radical Sicarii rebels and the corruption among political officials bred an unrest that only escalated. Soon the Sicarii rebels and Jewish women who followed them retreated to the Masada fortress, which is brought more to life with the descriptions of the baths and architecture. The rest of the story contains the events of the night that led to the mass killing--from the perspective of the two adults and five children who escaped by hiding in the cistern.

I appreciated the contrast between the full-text of the rallying speeches that inspired the suicide and the terror described by the survivors, giving some gray area to a tale often retold in Jewish families. Although a short read, I appreciated this historical glimpse of a traumatic affair.
3378332
D.D. Chant's post-apocalyptic world is one that remembers six-packs, appreciates the beauty of which poets speak, plays chess, and keeps its Tribe in a tower-block while warriors fight for survival on the streets. Warriors protect, and the weak and helpless, the untouched, are treasured--kept safe or kept prisoner, depending on your point of view. The narrator of D. D. Chant's Broken City surely wishes she could go outside and see it all. But Tom and her father forbid it.

The novel opens with a nicely lyrical remembrance of a long-gone time, setting the scene for what's to come. Future history is swiftly and unobtrusively described through the eyes of Deeta, a young adult, unattached, whose voice is pleasingly normal--restless, unsure of the future, feeling the steady ache of wanting something more. The author's use of present tense first-person narration provides a convincing sense of innocent detachment, though it does tend to accentuate the lack of action at the start. Still, when Deeta ends up imprisoned in a different world of post-apocalyptic contrasts, and death and murder loom, then the present tense narration lends a convincing immediacy.

In early scenes Deeta reflects "that I must be pathetic to be so self-indulgent," but everything changes and, as war approaches, "my startled eyes collide with my Mother's," writes Deeta as she learns to make her own decisions. For myself, I was surprised to learn how old Deeta was, but perhaps that just reflects my lazy reading. Parts of her world seemed so well-preserved I wanted to know how, but the author does a good job of not revealing or reveling in background, keeping the need for logical questioning at bay. I was interested in, but not entirely convinced by the remnants of civilization, and I enjoyed the interplay of a large number of characters, the various separate worlds of a broken city, and the intriguing mystery of the hidden murderer. A fun story with action, innocent romance, mystery, concern for neighbors, and children spared from danger, Broken City offers entertaining reading and intriguing food for thought.

Disclosure: I was given a free ecopy of this novel by the author.