Literary historical fiction: C.M. Mayo’s Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
Highly recommended to readers of historical fiction drawn to either a mother’s relentless quest to regain her child or to a convincing example of self-delusional hubris among the on-high.
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Best histories and biographies read during 2015
First post in a good while. Been busy polishing up my manuscript, The Girl in the Iron Box: Tucson’s 1934 June Robles Kidnapping, & the Myth of J. Edgar Hoover’s Infallible FBI, and sending it off to a publisher for consideration. More on this in a future post. Here is my annual list of best biographies and histories read during the previous year. As in recent years, I have been reconnecting with aspects of European (including Beatles!) history that held my interest prior to my own turn to writing Southwest Borderlands history. Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, Vol III: 1705-1708. This 4-volume biography, certainly Churchill’s finest work of history (rather than memoir), just keeps getting better and better. Winston’s ancestor, John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, was condemned to live in interesting times, never more so than...
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Part III of III: How Many Books Did Winston Churchill Write?
In 1974, in Sword and Pen: A Survey of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, author Mannfred Weidhorn listed 33 books written by Winston Churchill. This was nine years after Churchill’s death, so you’d think the listing would be comprehensive. But it isn’t. There are more. Here we go. 1940: Addresses Delivered in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Forty to the People of Great Britain, of France, and to the Members of the English House of Commons, by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. (1940) Includes five speeches, including the “Blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech, and the “Never was so much owed by so many to so few” speech. Only 250 copies printed, but it’s a book! 1941: Broadcast Addresses to the Peoples of Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia, and the United States, by the Prime Minister of the...
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How Many Books Did Winston Churchill Write – Part II
Winston Churchill was a busy man. He gallivanted around the British Empire as both British cavalry officer and, simultaneously, war correspondent, sat over the course of seven decades in Parliament, holding virtually every cabinet post in the British government, from First Lord of the Admiralty to Prime Minister (twice), and saved the world from Hitler in a way no other person on the planet could have done. He wooed prospective brides, downed mass quantities of champagne, painted hundreds of canvasses, smoked uncounted big cigars, and flew three-quarters of the way to the moon (well, its equivalent, by air, to direct the British war effort and negotiate with FDR and Stalin). He also wrote. By one account, he “produced thirty-three titles in fifty-one volumes. [They] consist of eighteen collections of speeches, one of newspaper articles, four of war dispatches, two...
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If you read only one book about Churchill
THE CHURCHILL FACTOR by Boris Johnson (Riverhead Books, NY, 2014) Mayor of London Boris Johnson, like Churchill a journalist, historian, and rogue elephant of a Tory politician, has produced a wonderfully chatty book on Sir Winston Churchill. Not a cradle-to-grave biography, it’s instead an illuminating study of what it was that made Churchill different. Not just different from every other British politician or world statesman of the 20th century (and beyond), but the only man who could have saved democracy and its benefits for all peoples in 1940. And did. Johnson attacks his subject thematically, and with great dollops of humor. His chapters open with an evocative scene that introduces some revealing aspect of Churchill’s character. Johnson visits the graveyard of Winston’s nanny as a way of answering a question, “Was he a nice guy.” Yes, Johnson tells us...
Read MoreMy thanks to True West Magazine
I just received my copy of the December 2014 issue of True West magazine, which includes — on page 58 — an author profile of yours truly and my recommendations for five books on conflict, greed, and corruption on the Western frontier. (I had not yet finished reading Larry Ball’s TOM HORN bio and would certainly have added that!) The piece is the result of an entertaining — I know I was thoroughly entertained — and wide-ranging 90-minute interview conducted by True West’s Senior Editor Stuart Rosebrook. I was sorry that the conversation came to its inevitable end. But a hint of the result is in True West, the new issue with the unforgettably tattooed Olive Oatman on the cover. I’d post the cover image, but not online yet. Anyway, again I give my thanks to Stuart, Executive Editor Bob...
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