Fancy Book Learnin discussion

This is where you can talk about fancy books, pardner, whether your own or someone else's.

I'll break the ice by recommending two books, both by a friend of mine and published by Persimmon Alley Press, which my friend and I run. So this is shameless self-promotion, just not directly shameless in that they're not books I wrote.

Mother’s Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times is the “bio-history” of Margarete Sobel Hermann, the author’s mother and role model, who lived 101 tumultuous and productive years. Her life spanned 95 percent of the twentieth century, during which she and her family experienced much of the good, the bad and the exceptionally ugly that marked that most violent of eras. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Imperial Vienna, she survived the First World War, famine and starvation, runaway inflation, political turmoil that makes what we are undergoing today pale in comparison, discrimination, street violence, the Great Depression, the Nazi takeover of Austria, the Holocaust during which scores of her relatives perished in the death camps, and the daunting task of getting herself and her family out of Europe to America. Once in the United States, she faced and overcame the formidable task of creating a new life for herself. The first two-thirds of this chronicle is about the initial one-third of her life—the European phase. The last third of this book is an account of the last two-thirds of her life—the American story. The theme that carries through this remarkable life is one of perseverance, grit in the face of often overwhelming odds and obstacles.

Author Richard Hermann had a front-row seat during the Cold War. Close Encounters with the Cold War: Personal Battles with Evil Empires, Cold Warriors and Others is his bio-history of his and his Cold Warrior colleagues’ experiences during that nail-biting half-century. From childhood memories of being trained to “duck and cover” at the first sign of a nuclear detonation to growing up and participating in a world gone MAD—“Mutually Assured Destruction” being both an agreed-upon strategy by reputedly responsible political leaders on both sides of the nuclear divide as well as an acronym describing a planet driven to the brink of insanity by the ever-present threat of annihilation—meant a constant stream of news that kept us in a state of high anxiety. A drumbeat of fear-inducing headlines like those during the McCarthy era swirled, with absurdities like swimwear named after the location—Bikini Atoll—of 23 nuclear weapons tests. Periodic reminders that the Cold War was, indeed, a war included the Soviet Union’s successful Sputnik launch—a harmless orbiting metal ball that nevertheless sent the United States into a panic and launched the space race—the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, various other proxy wars around the globe, and the occasional arrest of spies in our midst. Indeed, the Cold War left a lasting legacy, including dangerous lingering radiation levels from bomb testing and nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. This last effect will plague life on planet Earth for generations, assuming of course we don’t all die first from the effects of man-made climate change. Indeed, the post-World War II era, viewed at its onset as a promising dawn of new prosperity and innovation, has left us a toxic legacy. That mankind avoided self-extermination during these decades was more dumb luck than a testament to human wisdom.Richard Hermann, author of 12 prior books, was involved in much of the Cold War history described above, from his service in an Army Atomic Demolition Munitions unit to later assignments as an Army and then civilian lawyer working on national security issues. Close Encounters with the Cold War recounts many of his personal experiences against the broader backdrop of this crucial era. Occasionally humorous, often frightening, and always insightful, this memoir will resonate with anyone who experienced the Cold War while providing an enjoyable yet educational read for those who came later.

I’d call it tactful self-promotion. Very different thing.

Melvin wrote: "I’d call it tactful self-promotion. Very different thing."

Lol, usually I call my efforts futile self-promotion!