Tag: war

Steve Mumford’s Baghdad Journal

This is my brother Steve’s book, published in 2005. I still think its a stunning achievement. Why my brother felt a need to go to Iraq during wartime and draw pictures I can’t understand, but nevertheless he was called to this project, studied Arabic, grew a mustache, and went off armed with pen and paper and watercolors. That’s commitment. Of course I’m biased but I think these drawings are very strong.…

Trek

by Mary Hunt Jentsch Trek is the memoir of world war II written by my grandmother, Mary Hunt.  She was american, and a Radcliffe college girl when she fell in love with my grandfather, a German man studying at Harvard. After they graduated they married and went to live in Switzerland, and then Germany. They had two children: my mother, Erika, and my uncle Jerry.  Trek recounts the story of the nearly idyllic pastoral life of my grandfather’s family In rural Eastern Germany.…

Master and Commander

by Patrick O’Brien For any reader who has a soft spot for 18th Century historical fiction, the Aubrey-Maturin series, by Patrick O’Brien, are essential. These are written with vivid detail combined with a curiously modern sense of plot: the plots seem to meander in a realistically random way.…

The Cellist Of Sarajevo

by Steven Galloway I have morbid curiosity for what evil deeds humans can do to each other. The siege of Sarajevo was easily one of the most brutal wars of the late 20th century, almost as horrific as the Rawandan genocide. This small novel puts one in that terrifying time and place and asks how could one retain one’s humanity amid senseless cruelty and murder? I assume it is essentially historically accurate.  …