Book Reviews New York Times: 3 Picks

      The NYT Sunday Book Review is always worth the effort whether one prefers fiction, or nonfiction,etc.  This edition reviewed three titles that caught the eye of the Mayor:
1)The Second World War by Antony Beevor.  It seems as though the topic is inexhaustible as the coverage seems to go on and on, no matter the topic.  Of course, much material remains to be uncovered, and some new material invariably alters certain perceptions and "truths". But the outcome will not change.  Insights and opinions may change, but not much of the known facts.  The author is a well respected writer.
      2)Little America-The war Within the war for Afghanistan, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.  The book was reviewed by Linda Robinson, adjunct senior fellow at the Council  on Foreign Relations.  She recently wrote a book about Gen. Petraeus and Iraq.  The book focuses on the American effort to date, the problems with money, local government, Afghani leadership, and the American military effort.  It's a subject that despite its headline grabbing topics, few know much more than cursory information.
      3). Perhaps the most interesting of the three is "Embers of war", by Fredrik Logevall.  Logevall is a professor of history at Cornell and has drawn on many years of his own scholarship.  To quote the reviewer,"He has produced a powerful portrait of the terrible and futile French war from which Americans learned little as they moved toward their own engagement in Vietnam".   A friend of the Mayor has a collection running to over 1 thousand titles concerned with Vietnam.  It is by no means complete.  Very little has found its way into English from the official or unofficial Vietnamese experience.  Until that happens, our effort will always be incomplete when writing that history.  The reviewer, Alan Brinkley, is the Allan Nevins professor of history at Columbia U.  The usual names are there: John Foster Dulles, Pres. Eisenhower, Ho Chi Mihn, Ngo Dinh Diem, and  Gen.Vo Giap.      
       The effort to open the French files is of great interest for Americans so that we can see the unfolding of the political trap we eventually fell into in the lowland rice paddies, upland forests, and the coastal plains along the South China Sea.  Are we learning anything?  Look above.