The Greek Adventure -- by David Howarth

 

Author David Howarth sailed his own personal research boat right into the storm some called The Greek War For Independence.

It wasn't easy to try and make sense of that conflict, essentially between Greek rebels, and their Turkish Ottoman Empire overlords. What the world knew as Greece disappeared under the sultan's thumb for some 350 years. When these Greeks realized that they wanted their own country back in 1821, it was far from that land made famous by the likes of Aristotle, Archimedes, and those numerous robed philosophers and teachers. The Greeks even had two civil wars in the long course of independence. The English, French, and Russians eventually stepped in to help the Greeks reach their goal, but this was nothing like liberating Belgium in 1944-45 from the Nazis. Nothing close to that.
Howarth might have been understood if others had given up, using that overworked cliche, "It's complicated."
It really was. The books tend to end the war in 1832, but some earlier than that.
Questions and curiosity still abound about this war for the books.
The troublesome Ottoman royal guard -- The Janissaries -- was disbanded in 1826 by the sultan in office. He'd had too much of their disloyalty and ambition for their own power.
Here in the U.S. the city of Ypsilanti, Michigan was named for a Greek general after a miraculous victory, and escape with almost all of his men from Ottoman clutches. Just how those Michiganders chose that name isn't clear. A phone call to the local historical society won't necessarily clarify the issue. Immediately.
Some accounts place the naming in 1825, others in 1829.
I'm glad Howarth tried to climb this slipery-slope Mt. Olympus, and that other adventurous writers did, too. More coming.
Watch this space...

A Pledge Of Silence -- by Flora J. Solomon

 

It really was one of the best I've read in quite a while, and I hope this isn't all from Author Flora J. Solomon, but I can see that she might still be trying to recharge after this historical fiction/action/romance/tearjerker. 

This came out in 2015, and she did write a somewhat similar book, but the really best efforts don't often leave us with much else. Unless something new and envigorating comes along. We have to hope so.

Her grip on the continuity, content, and empathy with the reader, and those who knew that time intimately was so strong. It really was hard to put down.

WWII U.S. Army nurse Marge Bauer from Michigan joined the service just in time to be in the thick of it when Japan invaded the Philippines. That also left her in the Manila-based Santo Tomas University prison camp with still plenty of death at her feet, but not expiring at a battlefield rate as it was earlier on Corregidor.

She was a young, single woman at the time, losing lovers where she was, and eventually her original love back home in Michigan.

Marge was one of so many from that event and time who survived physically, but not completely mentally. War kills in so many ways.

Marge eventually had a family, but she became one of those killers to achieve her marital status. The end plays out beautifully in her twilight time at home in the 1990s. 

If you also intimately knew survivors of that war who told us what they could, despite the pain, it could haunt you, too.

Out Of Ireland -- by Mark O'Neill

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I have a bias toward Mark O'Neill's work. He and I were colleagues at United International College in China just a few years ago, and this is not the first time I have read one of his 15 books. I hope to catch up with the rest, too.

Mark was originally a journalist and was thrown right into the thick of "The Troubles" of Northern Ireland. His perspective in that troubled era mostly in the 1970s was strong, worth any trouble you might go through to get a copy of the book, and vastly more than anything I remember in our six years in China. There's a lot to read and understand here. It was essentially a battle of Protestants against Catholics, but it brought in the UK government, the world press, and too many needless deaths.

I've been to Ireland three times and to Londonderry (Derry), once. I was with a friend on that trip, in the 1990s. He is Catholic, I wasn't, and we could feel a difference in the general atmosphere when we traveled back into The Republic. I also found the area in Derry where the British army shot down several residents in the early 1970s, just for my own personal marker.

Mark also said more about his Presbyterian missionary grandfather who was based in Manchuria when the Japanese invaded in 1942. He was one of several noted in Out Of Ireland who contributed to the cultural history of East Asia from Ireland.

Reading Out Of Ireland increased my understanding of where my father's side originated from in Northern Ireland, and where I had been in China for six years.

When America First Met China -- by Eric Jay Dolin

 

It's good to catch an author at the top of his/her game, and Eric Jay Dolin is there and has been for some time.

It was a very good read. My only suggestion is possible there could have been more shorter chapters. I had to fight myself to do other things like laundry or go to the bathroom. The content was pretty engrossing for me, especially after having lived a relatively short distance from Guangzhou, old Canton, for six years.

Dolan's extensive research revealed much of the accidental, and intentional events in The China Trade. More people involved in current events involving that country owe it to themselves to deepen their basic knowledge, and Dolin leads a good study of several reasons why the people, and attitudes are as they are.

There were many things in business, the military, and social things that occurred to shape this relationship between the U.S. and China, as well as the other countries involved.

One very important chapter in this relationship was the shameful Coolie Trade. I don't remember reading about in school, not even in California. Dolin reminds us here that you aren't going to learn much history only reading what you get in school textbooks. Too much politics there.

America's role in the English-dominated Opium Trade is also exposed. It wasn't a nice, quiet little story here. It was rather grisly. Some people got rich, but a lot of people also died.