[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“]
Diary of the Dark Years by Jean Guéhenno
Augustus by Adrian Goldsworthy
The Nixon Tapes edited by Douglas Brinkley & Luke Nichter
Japanese Swordsmanship: Technique and Practice by Gordon Warner & Donn F. Draeger
The French Secret Services by Douglas Porch
Russia, the Atom and the West by George F. Kennan
I have numerous reviews to write on books already read, but I keep buying more, skimming them, and tossing them on the bookpile.
Diary of the Dark Years is a much quoted primary source about Paris under Nazi occupation. It is the French equivalent to the diaries of Victor Klemperer and shows the agony of citizens of a once mighty great power, humbled by a conqueror and deeply divided in defeat. The Germans governed occupied France more leniently than nearly any other state except Denmark, until the end of the war when the urgent German need for manpower and the irritation of the French Resistance provoked draconian measures by the Gestapo and SS to provide slave labor and deport Jews to “the East”. Much of the dirty work was done by Vichy officials or the extreme Fascist French ultra-collaborators who were even further to the Right.
The Kennan book, a very slim volume of 116 pages, is derived from Kennan’s Reith Lectures, given past the apex of his diplomatic career when Kennan’s policy influence was waning but his fame and reputation were still rising with the general public. I’ve read several chapter already. Classic Kennan in the certitude of his assumptions, which included deep skepticism about the capacity for effective response, much less a forceful “rollback” of Soviet power, on the part of the West.
One of the authors of Japanese Swordsmanship, an early pioneer of American judo and Western study of Eastern martial arts, Donn Draeger, was most likely murdered by poison while visiting the restive tribes of Aceh in Indonesia during the early years of the insurgency.
What are you reading or buying?
