COUNTDOWN 1945: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY of the ATOMIC BOMB and the 116 DAYS THAT CHANGED the WORLD (audiobook) by Chris Wallace and Mitch Weiss

Published by Simon and Schuster in June of 2020.
Read by one of the authors, Chris Wallace.
Duration: 8 hours, 40 minutes.
Unabridged.

The 116 days referred to in the title is the time between the day that Harry S. Truman became President and the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Chris Wallace quickly catches the reader up on what was going on and then uses a countdown for the chapters to add a sense of drama - will the scientists make it on time?

Of course, we know that they do succeed - the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are one of the most well-known historical facts of the 20th century. Wallace's re-telling of the story in Countdown 1945 is full of facts but not particularly told in an interesting way.

For example, there is a great deal of information about the Potsdam Conference (July 17 - August 2, 1945) that met in Germany. The Conference was important because it included the leaders of the USSR, the United States and the UK and in many ways it paved the path for post-war Europe and the Cold War. But, there was so much detail involved (dinner sets, meals, the weather, the cars they rode in) that it began to feel like filler.

Mushroom clouds from the bombings of the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right)

Of course the Potsdam Conference is an important part of the story, but the main story was the construction, testing and deployment of the bombs. If I had been the editor of this book, I would have pushed for more information on the physical results of the bombs and their effects on the residents of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and less on the mundane details of the Potsdam Conference like descriptions of the meals they ate.

Note: I thought the authors did a very good job of explaining both points of view on the atomic bombings of Japan, but eventually settle on the argument that they were horrible weapons, but their use was justified.

The audiobook was read by Chris Wallace, one of the authors. This makes sense considering that Wallace is a nationally known television personality. At first I thought this was a great choice. I enjoy Wallace's Sunday morning political show and I think he is a tough, fair interviewer and I like his style. But, that unique voice of his started to wear on me after a while. Not a bad book - I wouldn't tell someone not to read it or listen to it - but not as good as it could have been.

So, I rate it 3 stars out of 5 because parts of the book felt padded and the narrator's voice wore on me.  This book can be found on Amazon.com here: COUNTDOWN 1945: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY of the ATOMIC BOMB and the 116 DAYS THAT CHANGED the WORLD by Chris Wallace and Mitch Weiss.

INVENTING FREEDOM: HOW the ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES MADE the MODERN WORLD by Daniel Hannan

Published by Broadside Books (a division of HarperCollins) in 2013.

Daniel Hannan is a prominent Conservative Party author and politician in the UK. His book Inventing Freedom is a celebration of the political ideas that are the foundation of what he calls the "Anglosphere".

Hannan's thesis is that the idea of government based on an evolving body of law (he probably would hate the fact that I used the word evolving, but that is what the English Common Law is) that values the rights of the individual before the rights of the state and its leaders is an English invention that has spread and amplified throughout the "Anglosphere". This type of government encourages capitalism due to its influence on the individual.

The Anglosphere consists of The United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, other former British colonies that comprise the Commonwealth. These include Kenya, South Africa, India and dozens of more countries.

The United States is included in the Anglosphere and holds a unique position in Hannan's book. He considers the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to the be the epitome of Anglosphere political theory. He also notes that the United Kingdom learned many lessons from the loss of the American colonies at the end of the American Revolution. The Anglosphere's most influential country is the United States, despite not being a member of the Commonwealth.

The book starts out strong as it emphasizes the common traits of the Anglosphere and their origins in English history. I would give the first third of the book 5 stars. It hums along and offers a fascinating take on the historical development of democracy and capitalism. It includes a very strong look at the development of the English parliamentary system.

The middle of the book gets bogged down in the minutiae of struggles over the English throne (Bonnie Prince Charlie, Oliver Cromwell, various Irish uprisings). The history is slow-paced, often repetitive and, I think, surprisingly dismissive of Irish complaints over the centuries.

If the author is dismissive of the Irish, he is enamored with the United States - to a point. It is clear that he loves my country from afar. He loves the theory of America more than actual American history. He quotes historical facts that didn't really happen, such as his claim that the American word "hillbilly" comes as a reference to the Battle of Boyne and a victory by King William III in 1690. He claims that residents of Appalachia would gather and march in remembrance of the victory every July 12. I simply cannot imagine that this would ever happen. No one in Appalachia cares a wit about a dead English king enough to march around to celebrate his victory, certainly not after the American Revolution. Or maybe they were supposed to be mourning his victory. I don't know, I lost track of what king was fighting what pretender to the throne.  Besides, the first time this supposedly old word ever appeared in print was in 1898 - more than 200 years after the battle.

When it comes to the Boston Tea Party, he misses the point completely. He notes that the taxes on tea were actually lowered before the Boston Tea Party but perhaps he doesn't realize that the same legislative flurry that lowered taxes on tea also made it legal to only purchase from a single vendor that set an artificially high price. The government giveth and the government taketh away.

He studies the larger conflicts within the Anglosphere (the English Civil War, the American Revolution) but is surprisingly silent on the American Civil War - the bloodiest conflict in American history (equal to all of our other wars COMBINED).  This war has often been labeled as THE most important event in the history of the United States and the author labeled the United States as THE must important member of the Anglosphere at this time. I expected more than a few random comments.

The author, Daniel Hannan.
Photo by Gage Skidmore

In one of those comments he claims the Confederacy tried to save itself by asking Queen Victoria to extend her protectorate over the the rebellious states. I have been studying the American Civil War for 30 years and I have never heard this before. It doesn't make any sense. One of the cornerstones of the Confederacy was slavery and by the 1860's, the English navy had been actively seizing slave ships for 50 years in an active attempt to stop the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery was the main reason the English didn't recognize the Confederacy - the English public wouldn't let them, especially after the Emancipation Proclamation.

I strongly agree with the author on his enthusiasm for bringing India more closely into the Anglosphere. India is a stable democracy, has a commitment to multiculturalism and is becoming more capitalistic. Bringing 1 billion more people who share many of your values into closer political and economic cooperation can only be a plus. Sadly, the last two Presidents (Trump and Obama) have mostly ignored India.

So, the short version - the book starts out strong, gets bogged down in English dynastic struggles, gets repetitive and ignores most of American history after the Revolutionary War era. I agree with the thesis of the book, but it needed editing and fact-checking. All of that makes it tough to rate, but I am going to give the edge to the strong thesis and rate it 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: INVENTING FREEDOM: HOW the ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES MADE the MODERN WORLD.

LAST HOPE ISLAND: BRITAIN, OCCUPIED EUROPE, and the BROTHERHOOD THAT HELPED TURN the TIDE of WAR (audiobook) by Lynne Olson

An Exceedingly Well-Written History

Published in April of 2017 by Random House Audio
Read by Arthur Morey
Duration: 18 hours, 46 minutes
Unabridged

As Europe collapsed before the Nazi onslaught several governments-in-exile retreated to the United Kingdom in an effort to support their struggling underground resistance movements and to remind the world of their plight. Some brought a lot of soldiers (Poland), some brought money, some brought civilian ships and some brought not much more than a loud voice and the will to use it.

This was not an easy alliance. The UK was xenophobic and stunned at the rapid fall of France and many of the governments in exile were being ripped apart from their own internal politics. Misunderstandings, patronizing attitudes and differing agendas make everything more difficult.

When America and the Soviets joined the war the UK shifted its attention away from the governments-in-exile to its new, much more potent allies and those new allies had different agendas. Those new agendas often did not match those of the governments-in-exile. President Roosevelt was surprisingly indifferent to them and the Soviet Union was only interested in gobbling up as many of them as it could.

Olson begins Last Hope Island with the stories of how each country fell to Nazi Germany and their government's reacted. Most fled, but not all did. France did both with both Vichy France and Charles de Gaulle claiming supremacy. These stories are extremely well told and quite gripping.

The middle part of the book deals with Britain's intelligence or outright military operations in the conquered countries. 

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
 and Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

 Interestingly, the UK's intelligence service thought that it was brilliant, but the reality was far from that. If you have seen the old TV show Hogan's Heroes, the reality is that the UK was far more like Colonel Klink than like Colonel Hogan. Truly embarrassing and idiotic mistakes were made for years on end.

The end of the book is very moving as it features the return of the different governments and what happened when they returned. For some, they were hailed as heroes, some were derided and some just disappeared behind the Iron Curtain.

Lynne Olson has a real talent for writing history and the reader, Arthur Morey did an excellent job as well. This was an informative, entertaining and often very moving history.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: LAST HOPE ISLAND: BRITAIN, OCCUPIED EUROPE, and the BROTHERHOOD THAT HELPED TURN the TIDE of WAR (audiobook) by Lynne Olson

1944: FDR and the YEAR THAT CHANGED HISTORY (audiobook) by Jay Winik

A Review of the Audiobook

Published in 2015 by Simon and Schuster Audio
Read by Arthur Morey
Duration: 21 Hours, 10 minutes
Unabridged

The premise of 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History is that 1944 is the most important year of World War II - the year that the Allies grew certain that they were going to win the war, the year that post-War plans were laid out, the year of the D-Day invasion and more.

This effort by Jay Winik is very readable and was an informative and entertaining listen. There are times when he creates fabulous images in the listener's mind that are worthy of any novelist. His description of the extent of anti-Jewish operations throughout Europe and particularly in Auschwitz and other death camps are so vivid and so striking that I can readily recommend this book as a good place to start for anyone who wants a serious look.

The book focuses on FDR, his personality and how he shaped the war effort and post-War institutions like the United Nations. Winik details Roosevelt's health problems and points out how Roosevelt's health affected his efforts and possibly affected his judgment.

However, there is a problem with the book and that is the title - what he wrote about does not match the title.

Josef Stalin (1878-1953), FDR (1882-1945) and Winston
Churchill (1874-1965) at the Tehran Conference in 1943.

He has written an excellent book, but I don't think that he proved his assertion of the title that 1944 was THE YEAR. The book covers all of FDR's life and spends a lot of time in every year of the war but 1944. The topics he covered were important and he covers them well. A great deal of the book covers the holocaust and FDR's response to the proof that the "final solution" was underway. I have no problem with this as a topic (I already noted this above) but I do have a problem with a book that purports to talk about the importance of 1944 to world history and goes on to literally spend more time talking about Anne Frank than the entire Pacific Theater of World War II. I am not kidding. Don't get me wrong - Anne Frank's story is compelling, but it is not, in and of itself, worthy of more mention than all of the fighting in Korea, China, the Philippines, the attempted invasion of Australia, the use of the atomic bombs, the war atrocities throughout the theater and the millions of soldiers and sailors involved in fighting throughout the theater.

The reader, Arthur Morey, did an excellent job, even going so far as to mimic the voice of FDR when he read quotes from him.

This is a well-written and immensely informative book that is simply mistitled. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 because of the misleading title.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History.

Great Tales from English History, Volume III: Cheddar Man to DNA (audiobook) by Robert Lacey

An Entertaining Take on English History

Published in 2007 by W.F. Howes Ltd.
Read by the author, Robert Lacey
Duration: 6 hours, 15 minutes

Abridged.

Robert Lacey's quirky 3 volume collection Great Tales from English History was truly a joy to listen to. Volume III ran from the late 17th century to the 1990s and covered such topics as John Locke, The Boston Tea Party (a remarkably even-handed presentation of the American Revolution in general), King George III, the beginnings of the Methodist movement, the Industrial Revolution, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Charge of the Light Brigade, Darwin, Queen Victoria and World Wars I and II.

If you are listening to this audiobook to get a complete history of England, you will be sorely disappointed. This series cherry picks the interesting and fun stories (the type I love to tell  in the classroom) and strings them together for a most entertaining listen.

Lacey reads the book himself and does a very good job. Sometimes it can be a problem when the author reads his or her own work in an audiobook format but as a reader Lacey was everything a listener could ask for.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Great Tales from English History Volume III: Cheddar Man to DNA by Robert Lacey.

Reviewed on February 18, 2012.

Note: The links provided here are to an abridged re-working of the audiobook I listened to. I could not find the exact version I listened to. This would also be a great listen, but not of all of the same stories in the same volume. It looks like the has publisher rearranged the same stories into different volumes.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (P.I.G. Series) by H. W. Crocker III

A breezy look at a worthy topic

Published in 2011 by Regnery Publishing, Inc.
394 pages including extensive notes and an index.

Generally intended as an antidote to the slanted education that many of us have received, the Politically Incorrect Guide (P.I.G.) series is an entertaining series loosely based on the "Idiots Guide..." and the "Dummies..." books.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire is an immensely readable look at the British Empire - it's origins, its ideals, its controversies and its rather abrupt ending after World War II. The format of the book is pretty simple. Crocker picks an area of the British Empire and than gives a brief (15-25 pages) history of the Empire in that part of the world, from beginning to end. Then, he focuses on several of the personalities mentioned in the brief history with biographies that go into greater detail.

Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596)

Those personalities are way more interesting than bland descriptions of policy edicts issued from the Lord such-and-such from the Ministry of This-and-that. The focus on the men that made the Empire makes this an interesting book from one end to the other. I especially enjoyed Sir Francis Drake, Sir Henry Morgan and General Charles George Gordon. Throw in sidebar articles with titles like "Nearly 1,000 Englishman against more than 55,000 soldiers of the nawab of Bengal = advantage England", "Kipling on the American War of Ingratitude - er, Independence" and "Films about British Africa That Anti-Colonialists Don't Want You to See" and you have the recipe for an entertaining, surprisingly breezy book that gives an interesting counter-argument to the crowd that argues that Western colonization ruined the world.

The question is, does the argument succeed? Was the British Empire a positive force for good? Is it like the front cover says: "Three cheers for colonialism!"

Well, yes and no. Did the British Empire spread the ideas of free speech, democracy, rights and responsible government around the world? Certainly. This book champions those notions and makes a series of strong arguments. But, rarely it is asked, "But, at what cost?" I can be certain that if I lived in Africa and if I were going to be colonized by a European power, I would want it to have been the British Empire. By far, they were the most humane, most generous and did their best to impart their ideals to their subjects. The proof is in the relative success of the former British colonies compared to the former colonies of other European powers. But, the caveat here is "If I were going to be colonized..." I would prefer not, thanks just the same.

But, this is a worthy counterpoint to the stuff that is dribbled out in most college classes (I took a few myself - "everything from the West is evil" , blah, blah, blah.) Read that stuff, read this book and you have a more realistic idea of what happened - everything was not evil, nor was it all wonderful. Like most things, Western colonization was a mixed bag. Colonization can be generally listed as a bad thing, but one can be certain that the British colonies, as a group, got a much better deal than the other colonies.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on January 6, 2012

Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning: Churchill's First Year as Prime Minister by John R. Lukacs

A speech, little noted at the time, becomes a powerful gift to the ages

Published in 2009 by Basic Books

One of Churchill's most famous phrases comes from one of his shortest speeches - his first speech as Prime Minister delivered in Parliament as German forces were literally destroying the French army. The first paragraphs are administrative, describing his assembled government.

The last paragraph is gold, pure gold.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) flashing his
famed "V" for victory.

Churchill lays out his war aims and makes it clear that it will be hard, "an ordeal of the most grievous kind." He identifies the Nazis as "a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime" and notes the policy as victory no matter the cost because "without victory, there is no survival." He bids any and all allies to come join Britain.

There, in a few powerful sentences written by Churchill himself (oh, if only that were done nowadays...), is a summary of the situation, the goals and a strategy to win.

Unfortunately, it was not broadcast live and only edited snippets were broadcast over the BBC.

Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning: Churchill's First Year as Prime Minister is a short (147 pages), well-written history of the Churchill's war years. The focus, as the title implies, is his first few days as Prime Minister, but he follows through to the end of the war.

Nicely done.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed October 9, 2009.