The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral - And How It Changed the American West

I didn't know much about Wyatt Earp or the O.K. Corral before I picked up Jeff Guinn's Last Gunfight at the Minneapolis airport a few weeks ago - I certainly didn't know that the gunfight wasn't actually at the O.K. Corall, nor that "cowboy" was a slur used to denote the lowest of the low in frontier society - cattle rustlers, stage robbers, and and murderers among them. I also can't claim to have any great interest in Earp and Company - I had just finished reading about Billy the Kid, though, and learned so much about the West that, especially for $2, I decided Last Gunfight was worth a shot.

Indeed, Guinn paints an equally beguiling portrait of an untamed, unrepentant West where, he tells us, if gunfights where not common, the possibility of them always loomed; men, and not a few women, were armed as a matter of course, whiskey flowed, tempers flared, and Guinn seems to have found a record of the shooting skills - real or perceived - of nearly every man in Cochise County circa 1880. Arizona Territory was just that, a territory rather than a state, the Apaches raided somewhat at will, and the railroad had not yet reached the small towns that cropped up around every silver strike. In such a place it was easy for someone who had run afoul of the law in one place - public brawling, petty theft, breaking jail, running prostitutes, you know, typical frontier transgressions - to be the law in another place. Such was the case for Wyatt Earp who, once he mended his ways, began a lifelong obsession with wearing a badge. (This despite a deep and abiding friendship with the "tubercular dentist," Doc Holliday.")

In many ways, the gunfight itself is the least interesting part of Last Gunfight. Far more interesting are the passages about frontier law and courts, the role in Wells Fargo in mounting posses and paying bounties, and politicking in the territories. Still, this is a book for those seriously interested in the West or in the more obscure corners of American history.

Chain of Thunder: A Novel of the Siege of Vicksburg

I almost gave up on this book. It's the sequel, essentially, to Blaze of Glory, and if you read that review, you know I raved about Jeff Shaara and also, if you've read many other reviews, you know that I love historical fiction and am especially drawn to work (fiction and non-fiction) about the Civil War. Nevertheless, I nearly added Chain of Thunder to my "did not finish" list. Had I done so, it would have been a shame, as I was at least half-way through when I was seriously considering quitting, and this is a book whose second half is much stronger than the first half.

The first half is about soldiers slogging through the mud. The food is terrible, the water is such that said soldiers can rarely see through it, the marches are long (and in Mississippi, hot), and the life of a soldier is a hell unto itself, and that's when the enemy isn't trying to pump him full of lead. Which he usually is. And to be completely honest, I was not interested in 490 pages on the tedium of being a soldier or the politics of generals, for that matter. I was drawn to Chain of Thunder in no small part because Shaara mentioned in the opening pages that, for the first time, he was incorporating the viewpoint of civilians. As such, Miss Lucy Spence, a spunky 19-year-old Vicksburg girl was one of the key voices of the story. Only, for the most part, she's absent from the first 200+ pages of the book. I imagine this is because, until the Federals lay siege to the city, there's not much for her to say or do.

Once they do lay siege she, like virtually all other Vicksburg civilians, moves into a cave that's been hand-dug into the side of a cliff, subsists on rat and mule - when there's food at all - and eventually works as a nurse tending the wounded and dying soldiers who are quickly turning against their commanding general, John Pemberton. (That the Pennsylvanian-turned-Southerner known derisively as "Old Pem" formally surrenders the city on the 4th of July is more than the citizens and soldiers alike can swallow.) Lucy's story, which is simultaneously unbelievably horrifying and inspiring, is really the glue that holds Chain of Thunder together. The rest of the book, to be honest, is old hat. Sherman and Grant smoke cigars and spend a lot of time atop horses. The Confederate generals receive conflicting orders from their command structures. There's a lot of mud and musket balls and misery. I believe this would have been a stronger book had Shaara lessened the emphasis on the conflicts leading up to Vicksburg and begun with the siege itself.

That weakness aside, this is well-written, compelling reading for those inclined to focus on the strengths: not only Lucy Spence's story, but the anecdotes that reveal the face of war in the age of the telegraph - when the wires weren't cut. Grant learns of Stonewall Jackson's Chancellorsville death from a Mississippi train engineer. Pemberton cannot write Johnston for a shortage of writing paper. We're a long, long way from the Marshall Plan. Or drones.

Perhaps the most telling detail, though, comes in the afterward, when Shaara informs the reader matter-of-factually that Independence Day was not celebrated in Vicksburg again until 1945. The baby born in the midst of the siege would have been 82 years old.

Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater

A few months ago, one of my friends posted a great review of Alice, Let's Eat. I wasn't familiar with Calvin Trillin, but her "bottom line" was that the book was hilarious, as she had come to expect from Trillin.

Alice, Let's Eat is a memoir in which Trillin recounts many of the great meals and delicacies he has enjoyed over the years, mostly (but not always) in the company of his dear wife, Alice. As many of the meals and regional delicacies he recounts are tied closely to one corner of this world or another, Alice, Let's Eat is a bit of a travelogue as well as food log. I like to travel. I like good food. And I especially like to eat good food when I travel (it's quite possible that the best meal I've ever eaten was at the Blue Pig Tavern in Cape May, New Jersey...unless it was at 82 Queen in Charleston, South Carolina...or, well you get the idea). Frankly, I thought I'd be hard-pressed to find more appropriate Thanksgiving reading than Alice, Let's Eat - which I kept thinking of as "Let's Eat, Alice," not to be confused with "Let's Eat Alice," a very Eats, Shoots & Leaves mistake, but I digress.

In any case, I found Alice, Let's Eat to be amusing, if not hilarious. It took until the end of one chapter for me to realize that, yes, country ham was evidently a real dish, that it did come was remnants of mother earth still clinging to the meat, and yes, Alice is obviously a much more adventurous cook - and eater - than I. And if I hadn't already figured that out, it would have been hard to miss when she attended a church picnic where the fixings included healthy helpings of beaver, coon, and bear chops.

This is a quick, fun read for anyone who likes food, travel, memoirs, or some combination thereof. Strict vegetarians may be appalled by the quantity of meat consumed within these pages; everyone else is more likely to mesmerized.

Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh

Years ago, I read  - and loved - Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels about the Battle of Gettysburg, follow up by Jeff Shaara's Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measures (the bookends to the father-son trilogy as J. Shaara refers to them in the introduction to Blaze of Glory). More recently, I read Gone for Soldiers, about the war with Mexico and the ways that it shaped nearly every Civil War general of consequence, North and South. And, as I said in my review of the latter book, no one writes war like Jeff Shaara (except his father, Michael, now deceased). In any case, I like Jeff Shaara's style, his body of work, and his topic area.

Nevertheless, Blaze of Glory was not quite all I hoped it might be. Part of that, certainly, is no fault of the author: Albert Sidney Johnston (whose death was the defining moment of Shiloh, if not the entire Civil War) and James Seeley are no R.E. Lee or "Stonewall" Jackson - they are not the gripping characters whose history has become part of the national conscience, references to whom any educated person might be expected to recognize without too much trouble. Shaara includes narratives from the perspective of a Wisconsin private, Fritz Bauer, as well, and to good effect. Fritz (whose parents are German immigrants but who has been nicknamed "Dutchie" by the more Euro-challenged members of his regiment) is a likeable soldier, and his angle as a foot soldier rather than a general is a nice addition. He is, however, deeply memorable the way Joshua Chamberlain or Ulysses Grant or even Nathan Bedford Forrest is memorable, though.

More than the characters, the pacing felt uneven. Many chapters were gripping - not least when Sherman (he of the infamous March to the Sea) realizes his camps have been completely taken by surprise after telling his pickets time and again that they are imagining the sights and sounds before them. In other places, the story seems to plod, Shaara taking as long to tell some part of the battle as it might have taken to fight it.

At the end of the day, this is a fine  read, but is best suited to those with a deep interest in the war in the West, as the battles beyond the Appalachians were known, or an absolutely unquenchable thirst for material on the Civil War.

The Cartographer of No Man's Land

The Cartographer of No Man's Land is another World War I story, so read no further if you're tired of the Great War. Canadian Angus MacGrath enlists after his brother-in-law is reported MIA; their bond is such that he is determined to find his BIL, regardless of the fact that there's a war on. Angus is told he'll be a cartographer in London, but naturally ends up on the front lines (all the better for searching for a missing soldier, no doubt). The book, P. S. Duffy's debut novel, alternates viewpoints between Angus in France and his son, Simon Peter, home in Nova Scotia. In that way, The Cartographer of No Man's Land becomes as much a coming-of-age story as a war story, and maybe more so.

I didn't love this book. I liked it, but it began very slowly and I was well, well into the book's 384 pages before I cared about the characters. I believe this is partly owing to the fact that there are a lot of characters, both in France and in Canada, and because of the perspective switching I'd have to jump back to previous chapters to remind myself who someone was; it was also, partly, owing to the fact that the story unfolds slowly, with much key history sprinkled here and there throughout the book. The book begins in February 1917 and ends in April 1918, which actually seems quite (too) compressed given all that happens.

Duffy does a nice job weaving in one of the greatest disasters to ever befall Canada's Maritime provinces, the Halifax Explosion in December 1917. Nova Scotia is beautiful land; it is surprising that, as prominently as Mahone Bay figures into the story, frequently I felt The Cartographer of No Man's Land could have been happening anywhere. In describing the Halifax Explosion, Duffy gives the reader the strongest sense of what this place - Nova Scotia, 1917 - was really like.

Ultimately, I liked Cartographer well enough, but unless you absolutely can't get enough of World War I fiction, you probably aren't missing too much.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

Several months ago, my friend Clio wrote a mostly glowing review of Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. Unfortunately, at about the same time my mom read the book and gave me a less-than-glowing report. Good daughter that I am, I listened to my mom. My bad.

So how did I even come to read Catherine the Great? My local library is currently closed for renovations, so the only library books I have access to are e-books; evidently, many people find themselves in this predicament (the library is a popular place) and every week it seems fewer title are available. I downloaded it and never looked back. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed Massie's meticulously researched and engagingly written portrait of Russia's last female ruler.

Catherine, Massie informs his readers, entered the world as a minor German princess by the name of Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg (but not too minor: two of her first cousins did become kings of Sweden!). In any case, she was plucked from relative obscurity when Russia's Empress Elizabeth summoned her, at the age of 14, to travel to Russia and marry the Empress's nephew, the future Peter III. 

To say the marriage was unhappy is a bit of an understatement - it's not entirely clear that the marriage was ever consummated, to say nothing of the small matter of Peter's death, which Catherine may or may not have orchestrated in order to become Empress. (Based on the few days I spent in St. Petersburg this summer, I can report that the locals still appear divided as to Catherine's role.) Not surprisingly, once in power, Catherine proved a formidable ruler. Her years on the throne included some of the most momentous years in Russia's history. From the partition of Poland, which brought Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine under Russian control, to the wars with Turkey, which gave Catherine the Crimean peninsula and ports on the Black Sea, she presided over Russia's physical enlargement, and the accompanying growth in its spheres of influence. 

Her reign was also notable for its length. Catherine ruled longer than Peter the Great, and longer than virtually all of her contemporaries - certainly longer Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whose removal from the throne (and subsequent beheadings) upset Catherine's view of the world and, arguably, from which she never fully recovered. Certainly, Catherine was concerned with the politics of an ever-shifting world. A complex woman, she was also a consummate art collector, friend of the great philosophes and, at least in the beginning, an enlightened thinker and reformist. (Also, she had many lovers, including more than one near the end of her life who were something like one-third her age.)

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman is, on the whole, an extremely interesting biography of a fascinating woman. I do feel the first part of the book, which focuses on Catherine's years as a German princes and Russian archduchess, is slightly better than the part of the book focused on her years as Empress. The reason is that, in order for the reader to understand the magnitude of the challenges facing Catherine, Massie provides an in-depth analysis of many of the issues. On the one hand, this is useful, and does make for an informative read. On the other hand, I didn't really need so many details on, say, serfdom or the politics of the French Revolution, and I occasionally felt a bit bogged down by the level of detail Massie provides. Still, this is small complaint, and shouldn't hold back an otherwise-interested reader. Speaking of which, who should read this book? Those interested in European history, certainly, but also anyone who loves a good biography, strong writing, and an author who can transport the reader to a world that can be hard to imagine.

The Tinsmith

I can only assume that I am not the target audience for Tim Bowling's The Tinsmith.

This is odd, given that I've long devoured any Civil War-themed reading I encountered. For example? you ask. April, 1865; 1861; anything written by Jeff Shaara; and of course, my all-time favorite, Gone with the Wind, (which needs no blog post by me) and Rhett Butler's People and presumably you get the idea. Also odd since I seem to be on Wild West kick (To Hell on a Fast Horse, Hell on Wheels, and high on my reading list, The Last Gunfight). Bowling's Tinsmith is a Civil War mystery that follows the two main protagonists for 20 years, from the battlefield of Antietam, where their bond was forged, to the salmon canneries of British Columbia, where they find themselves fighting many of the same forces they tried to vanquish when they wore the blue of the Union army.

The story sounded promising. So what's the problem? To begin with, it's just too bloody. From a gruesome death that is central to the story (and as the backdrop of the story is the bloodiest day in American history, you can be sure the death is pretty damn gruesome) to what seems to be gratuitous gore at the canneries (and, yes, I know it was bloody work, but still), I found myself regularly skimming chunks of the narrative, lest I see too clearly the scene being presented to me. Also, Bowling simply has too many characters. It is particularly difficult to keep up with the ones who appear on a handful of pages, disappear for 100 pages and then reappear, as if by magic, leaving the reader scratching their head at one too many coincidences (or in plain confusion). Worse, in several cases, there are sub-plots that seem to serve no greater purpose. At one point, a spiritualist arrives on the scene, but I never did figure out why (or how she was part of the larger story).

Lastly, Bowling, through his characters, seems to feel the need to remind the reader every few pages of past events, namely that the protagonists, Dr. Baird and John, first encountered one another at Antietam, that Antietam was bloody hell, and that it was a (the?) defining moment in their lives. And just for good measure, the chapters are told from different perspectives...also meaning that we hear, for example, about Antietam, over and over from different characters. More than once I thought, didn't I read those lines of dialogue 200 pages ago only to flip back and confirm that, yes, 200 pages ago I read the lines from Dr. Baird's perspective. Now I am reading them from John's.

I wanted to like this book. Very much so. But I couldn't and I didn't. If you want a fine Antietam mystery, I can highly recommend Jim Lehrer's No Certain Rest. But pass on The Tinsmith.