My neighbor gave me a stack of Smithsonian magazines. Been reading through them.
The most interesting story was from Britt, Iowa. In the summer they host the Hobo’s Convention. Britt has a Hobo Museum. Each convention a new King & Queen of the Hobos is elected.
Hobo - someone who travels looking for work
Tramp - someone who looks for work but doesn’t travel
Bum - doesn’t travel nor look for work
I’m powering through Lincoln on the Verge - Thirteen Days to Washington by Ted Widmer.
It chronicles all the events up to and around Lincoln’s train trip from Springfield to Washington to take office. I’ve learned lots I never knew. Just getting Lincoln inaugurated was a dicey thing. Plots, subplots, conspiracies (real ones), revolts inside Congress, etc. Wow!!
This isn’t about a book — but I’ve found a number of good history books in this thread — so I’m sharing this WWII history-related tweet link: It’s ~2 min. video about a heroic Polish Resistance leader:
Today in Poland we commemorate the Cursed Soldiers National Remembrance Day. The memory of soldiers who fought against Nazi and Communist totalitarians, is still remembered. Listen to the story of Łukasz Ciepliński, one of their leaders, whose life was brutally taken in 1951.
https://twitter.com/Poland/status/1630851352019587073?s=20
Poland.pl worth a follow on Twitter.
david baldacci best fiction writer i have read, vince flynn best spy book fiction writer, highly recommend both.
Historical fiction/detective.
This is good w a wild plot twist. I have not seen the Netflix movie.
In the authors acknowledgement the end of ‘Pale Blue Eye’ he references this one.
Now THAT was a bender.
I read all of Flynn’s stuff. Some was a little over the top but great for the beach.
Sometimes real life is greater than fiction. “The Filthy 13” were Rangers/Pathfinders in WWII. Simply incredible story. They were basis for “The Dirty Dozen” although Hollywood completely destroyed the narrative. The only thing in the movie that was part of their story was the party with women before shipping out and the subterfuge during war games.
I won’t ruin the book but tell you during training they left base, got drunk and to get back to base they stole a train. Well worth the read. Jake McNiece was the badest badass of the greatest generation.
Just finished reading this excellent book.
You know, it was great. I think I’ll read it again
I read Chickenhawk probably 30 years or so ago, but a great book.
So I checked Ft. Bend Libraries and they didn’t have a copy. Went to biblio.com and found one cheap. I just started reading it and it looks like it’s been autographed by Jake “McNasty” McNiece himself!
Anecdote: After 78 days of battle in Operation Market Garden, Jake was granted 72 hours leave in a nearby town but took two weeks in Paris!
Jake was entitled to wear a Paratrooper’s Wings with 4 stars for his 4 combat jumps: D-day (demolition/saboteur), Operation Market Garden (demolition/saboteur), Bastogne-Battle of the Bulge (Pathfinder), and Prume, Germany (Pathfinder). Pathfinders were all-volunteer units due to the high casualty rates.
EDIT: With the high casualty rates, four combat jumps is a very large number. I’ve got two buddies who’s Dad did 4 landings in the Pacific — that, too, is a very high number. On one of the landings a mix of veteran fighters and rookies went ashore late in the day. The veterans told everyone to dig a foxhole & keep their heads down. There was gunfire all night long and casualties. In the morning they found no Japanese on the island. All the fighting had been scared rookies shooting at each other. Their Dad trained in the Mojave desert chasing Gen. Patton around to prepare for N. Africa. In classic US Army fashion, his first assignment was in the Aleutians.
That is so cool. You’ll soon realize what a badass Jake was
My favorite was when he steals a train
Filthy 13 — Beginning of Ch. 5 —
RESCUE OF A DIVISION (Bastogne) / MOURMELON, FRANCE / December 5, 1944
When I returned from AWOL, they immediately put me under arrest of quarters. Shorty Milan was Charge of Quarters that day. He came in and asked, "Jake, how would you like to go to England?
I said, “Oh, is England where they are going to hang me? I don’t like them French guillotines.”
He said, “That’s not exactly it, Jake. It’s almost. They would like for you to volunteer for parachute pathfinding service.” I said, “Oh, they would, would they?”
He said, “Yeah.”
So I went down to the orderly room and Browny asked me if I would volunteer for pathfinding service. It was just nearly straight suicide. Pathfinding service generally had a loss of 80 percent. They jumped ten men to a stick (group) figuring they would lose eight of them.
The two men left would operate one of two CRN-4 (radio) sets. They believed that one out of the two sets would still operate after the jump. It was so dangerous an assignment that no one could assign anyone to it. A paratrooper had to volunteer to become a Pathfinder.
Such a badass.
I found a site called Bookbub. It emails me offers on many books. Lots of free books via kindle. I just got some FBI agent thriller volumes 1-6 for free. Should cover my beach reading June.
There’s also coffee. Coffee is one of the greatest pleasures in life. Hey, what would happen if I combined BOTH! That would be awesome!
If you’re looking for a novel, the best I’ve read in years is “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. About a Russian aristocrat just after the Reds take over. He’s sentenced to house arrest in a Moscow hotel, watches the next several decades of Russian history happen from a unique vantage point. This is my first Towles book, but the guy’s a spectacular writer. He makes his characters so vivid, you enjoy hanging out with them…especially the main character, Count Rostov. I read it twice, which is something I NEVER do.
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