I REMEMBER WELL the first time I got into trouble for disrupting a class. It began with a simple question to the teacher. I raised my hand and asked, “Do you seriously believe that?” The teacher was conducting a class in history and had described early sailors as “ignorant and superstitious.” I was a sailor and took offense.  

For one thing, she claimed that sailors didn't want to voyage out of sight of land for fear of monsters or sailing off the edge of the world. As evidence, she produced copies of their charts, decorated with sea serpents. She was not happy when I pointed out that sailors didn't draw the charts. They were drawn by men who had never been to sea. “Well,” she demanded, “where did they get the idea from? Didn't sailors tell stories of the monsters they had seen and battled?”

I had to laugh. Of course, sailors told fantastical tales when they came ashore. How else were they going to persuade an inn keeper to provide them with free drink, or wheedle their way into young ladies' beds? And, as for sailing off the edge of the world? No one believed in a flat earth since Hellenic times. Although, we have  recently  seen an example of a Harvard graduate, our President, who still believes that myth. 

The truth is that the Spain's court scholars didn't argue that the earth was flat when Columbus applied for a grant to go exploring. They disagreed with Columbus's estimates of the size of the world. Indeed, their estimates were less than one percent short of the actual size. Columbus had mistakenly estimated the earth to be far smaller than it actually is. Had he not run into another continent between Spain and China, he would never have survived. In fact, the “New World” was already known before Columbus's voyage, but that's another story.

Also, if the teacher had bothered to listen to my explanation, she would have learned that the thing sailors fear most is being anywhere in sight of land. The vast majority of shipwrecks occur when a vessel runs out of sea room and is pushed aground or onto a reef on a lee shore. Just pick up a newspaper when a hurricane approaches a port and you'll learn that all ships, including warships, are racing to get as far to sea as possible where they will be safe.

The truth is that history has been the purview of academics too long. Flesh and blood personalities from history have been turned into mythological characters in schools and universities for political purposes and anyone seeking a passing grade dares not question the stories they are told.

Indeed, academicians have become the new priests, punishing anyone who seeks to confirm or disprove the facts as they are presented in the cathedrals of learning, much as the prelates of the church abused the early scientists,  such as Galileo and Copernicus, who proposed outlandish theories.

So, my grades suffered and I resented the scholars who tried to blow smoke up my posterior orifice. 

Just about fifteen years ago, I found an academician who was challenging the establishment. He wrote of history with an open mind. Using common sense and scientific methods of inquiry, he wrote a new guide to history. He wrote about The Discovers, The Seekers, The Americans, and The Creators among others. His name was Daniel Boorstin (1914 - 2004). An attorney, a professor, a historian, and a writer, he was appointed the twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress (1975 to 1987). 

I discovered Boorstin's books at a critical point in my life. I was thoroughly convinced that all that I had been taught was generally rubbish, but didn't have any clue as to where to look for the truth. Boorstin didn't provide the answers, but he helped me frame the questions and set me off in the direction I needed to answer them.

For example, one of the more fascinating stories he set me in search of was the voyages of the Chinese Treasure Fleets. Imagine Asian explorers circling the globe and charting the world so accurately that some have hypothesized that they were drawn by aliens hovering in spacecraft over the earth. Even more incredible is the fact that the Chinese didn't make contact with other peoples to take treasure from them, but rather to give it to them as a demonstration of the superiority of the Chinese culture. I had to laugh as I read stories of the Portuguese explorer, Vasco de Gama, trying to impress natives on Madagascar with tin mirrors and beads after the Chinese had already arrived and given them gold, silk, and porcelain.

Be forewarned: Boorstin's books will disillusion you. He possibly will offend your Western sensibilities. He doesn't pull punches as he exposes the intellectual crimes of Europeans, especially Christians, as they substituted superstition and pseudoscience for real knowledge. Indeed, Boorstin opened the case that the European Renaissance was inspired by visits from the Chinese Treasure Fleets, and that what the little intellectual progress occurred in Medieval Europe was handed to them by Jewish and Persian scholars who were free to inquire into the true nature of reality without fear of offending religious leaders. Of course, these scholars were persecuted whenever they accumulated enough wealth and the avarice of European princes overcame their need for medicine that actually healed and maps that actually led their merchants to profitable markets.

Read Boorstin only if you dare.

I HAD LIVED on Oahu, one of the Hawaiian Islands, for about three months when I developed island fever. It came as a recurring dream. I was driving around the island when I saw a bridge. I could see cars crossing it but couldn't find any means of accessing it. For some reason, I was certain that the bridge connected to San Francisco and I desperately wanted onto it. The frustration continued into my waking hours. I grew restless and slightly depressed. A lot of people gave up and returned to the mainland under the spell of island fever. Then, as suddenly as the affliction appeared, it abated after about six months, and I settled into island life. 

Oahu is about forty-four miles long and thirty miles across. Image then how much worse it would have been had I been trapped on the tiny island of Run, an insignificant speck in the middle of the Indonesian archipelago. Just two miles long and half a mile wide, it is remote, tranquil, and these days largely ignored.

Those who would study history, as well as understand current events, would do well to pause and take note of Run. Although it is no longer significant, the impact of the shot and shell fired to capture and retain it still echo today. This tiny island was the center of a war between Britain and the Netherlands. In settling this war, the Dutch ceded Manhattan to the English, thus establishing the beginning of the British Empire and setting in motion the events that would culminate in the creation of the United States.

How could this infinitesimal spot of land in the middle of an ocean on the other side of the world have such significance. Well, it was the most productive of the Spice Islands. Each pound of Run's harvest of nutmeg yielded a 3200% profit. It's price was inflated by inflated claims that it could cure the plague and other dread diseases. At the very least, it could render putrid meat palatable. And, it was rare. Indeed, its source was a mystery to all but a very few.

Nathaniel's Nutmeg is the story of Nathaniel Courthope who was sent by King James I in 1616 to discover its location. In addition to the perils of navigating his way through uncharted waters to an island located more than six hundred miles from the nearest landmass, Courthope had to elude the massive armed fleet of the Dutch East India Company that was hellbent on preventing him or anyone else from encroaching on their profits.

Once there, Courthope also had to deal with the indigenous natives, cannibals who guarded their home fiercely from all but the Dutch with whom they had trade agreements. Also, the island was ringed with razor sharp corral reefs and the shattered remains of others who had been lucky enough to find the place but not skilled enough to land on it.

Despite all these obstacles, Courthope and his band of adventurers arrived and took hold of the island. Even more incredibly, they fought off every attack by the Dutch for more than four years until the peace agreement with the British was negotiated.

Giles Milton has reminded us in his novel, Nathaniel's Nutmeg, that a even a small band of adventurers, or a seemingly insignificant event, or a tiny place can have a great impact on the fabric of history. These small things are the threads from which the tapestry of our world is woven. Take any one away or alter it in any way, and our world may be a vastly different place than the one we see around us today.

WINSTON'S WAR IS NOT a novel about World War II. It is hardly even a novel about Winston Churchill. It ends when Churchill becomes Prime Minister. 

It is rather a lesson that is oft repeated in history, never forgotten, simply ignored out of fear. There are always bullies. They haunt children's playgrounds. They infect workplaces. They lurk on street corners. They rape, murder, and pillage whole nations. And, all bullies love a peacemaker – an appeaser – who believes that the best way of handling a bully is by letting them have what they want. Or, maybe reasoning with them is the best course of action. The sad truth, revealed eloquently in Winston's War: A Novel of Conspiracy by Michael Dobbs, is that the peacemakers may be equally responsible for the crimes of the bully. 

If all you know about the prelude to World War II is that Neville Chamberlain negotiated a peace treaty with Adolf Hitler, you are seriously missing this lesson. As Prime Minister of Great Britain, Chamberlain not only sought to compromise with Hitler, but also did everything in his power to prevent Churchill from leading the nation in mounting an effective defense. The most frightening aspect of this story is that he almost succeeded. 

Today's appeasers probably will argue that Chamberlain may have been correct. War, they may aver, is never justified. It only became inevitable when Churchill took the reins of government and Great Britain began to strike back. Maybe Hitler would have been satisfied with simply dominating Europe. It matters not that England promised to stand by Czechoslovakia and then allowed Hitler to annex it. One's honor is a small price to pay for peace, even when Poles died in the hundreds of thousands while England hesitated to keep its word to come to their defense. And, what of Norway, Belgium, and Holland? They were such small countries, no one missed them as they disappeared down the maw of Hitler's gluttony for power. At least, Chamberlain kept England out of war, and he might have succeeded keeping it out of war forever had he persisted in compromising with this evil man.

Look, too, at the price Great Britain paid for defending itself. It lost an empire. It lost hundreds of thousands of its children. Think about it. If Churchill had not interfered, Europe would have been united under Hitler's leadership. The Jewish question would have been resolved for all times. Communism would have been eradicated from the face of the planet. America could not have stood alone once Hitler dominated the rest of the world. By this time, America would have been a socialist paradise. Need you be reminded that Nazism was a socialist movement?

Yes, those who believe in appeasement might well argue with the outcome of Churchill's rise to power. As the author notes in his novel, the appeasers are still among us, still making the same arguments “...such as whether we should appease or confront the forces of terror... how many of today's leaders in Europe and the United States can be found echoing Chamberlain's plaintiff words that their world had been turned upside down by 'a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.'”

Some might argue that we may be excused for missing this lesson of history. We are speaking of events that occurred midway through the last century. However, the lesson was repeated in our own time. 

Look at all the ways we attempted to appease the Soviets. The Truman Doctrine of “containment” was nothing more than a compromise that allowed them to persecute the peoples they had already enslaved. The Nixon Doctrine of “detente” was an elaboration of the Truman Doctrine with the same result. Only the Reagan Doctrine of “confrontation” worked, and the Soviet's will to bully was broken. Curiously, the appeasers argue to this day that Reagan's confrontational policy had nothing to do with the demise of the Soviet Union. They aver that the Soviets, led by Gorbachev, tore down “That Wall” of their own volition. That may be, but I agree with schoolchildren who know that the only effective method of handling bullies is to stand up to them, to confront them, to meet force with overwhelming force.

Forgive me for wandering so far afield. Mr. Dobbs, the author of Winston's War did not. He restrained his story to the past and we must infer its implications for the future. However, if it was his purpose to cause a reader to think, he has succeeded with me. He has caused me to reflect on the war that we find ourselves now engaged in. Not just the war with strange people in strange lands, but also, the war for the Republic. 

I can only hope that someone in Congress will rise and utter the same words that helped depose Prime Minister Chamberlain, words uttered centuries before by Oliver Cromwell:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you! In the name of God – go!”

WHAT BINDS A NATION together? Religion? Schisms within the same religion often tear theocracies apart. Geography? The world simply isn't divided into convenient parcels and peoples often spill into one another's domains in search of resources. Loyalty? Loyalties to family, tribe, and king never lasted more than a few generations as nations, especially those with an abundance of ambitious hereditary leaders, ripped themselves apart with internecine strife. 

This question haunted the leaders of the United States in the early part of the 19th century as its citizens began pouring through passes in the Allegheny Mountains. What would bind these pioneers to Washington? It was a valid question. These were the people, or the first generation descendants of people, who had fled motherlands to find liberty and opportunity in the new world. They didn't share one religion. They felt trapped by the Allegheny Mountains as they were trapped in their motherlands. They had long before cast off loyalties, most recently to England. To the west they saw vast unclaimed territories where they could own property and escape the yoke of established landowners in the east. 

Poor communications threatened to isolate these early pioneers from the new nation and America's leaders in Washington knew that they would lose control as they lost touch with them.

Enter Robert Fulton and his little steamboat, the Clermont. Few could have foreseen that the wake of its passage up the Hudson in 1807 would ripple across the nation. The technology that it demonstrated was quickly employed to establish lines of communication along the waterways of the nation's interior, between the Allegheny and the Rocky Mountains. Thus, Fulton provided the answer. We would be one nation bound by commerce.

Indeed, it seemed that the men who drafted the Constitution were prescient in adding the commerce clause. They not only insured freedom of commerce between the several states, but also between the nation and its territories. 

Thus, The Fire of His Genius is more than a story of a man and his invention, it is the story of an invention and its ability to unite a nation.

OUR SHELVES USED to be stacked with every book Dean Koontz ever wrote. My wife and I were both fans. Then we got rid of them all. Why? Our daughter bought us a Kindle. My wife had resisted. “I like the feel of holding a book in my hands.” “I like the smell of the binding.” “I can't read computer text as well as paper.” I held off buying one for myself because it was an extravagance we couldn't afford, buying traditional books for her and the same ones in eBook format for me. However, once she got the Kindle I couldn't get it away from her and I had to buy a second one for me. 

My wife has a friend who also resisted buying a Kindle. Same reasons. She didn't have a daughter to tempt her away. Her husband wanted to read my book but couldn't because it's available in eBook format only and they didn't have a Kindle. It was an extravagance to purchase one just to read my book. However, now he'll get to read Rebels on the Mountain because Mr. Koontz published a Kindle single, The Moonlit Mind, and she can't get it in hard cover or paperback. I guess a Kindle was an extravagance for my book but not Mr. Koontz's.

What's all the fuss about? If you have to ask that question, you haven't read Dean Koontz yet. He writes thrillers, believable thrillers populated with characters you can identify with. I would almost read any book by him rather than my book. Almost, but not quite. Mine is a really good read, too. But, I don't write thrillers. I write historical fiction. I wouldn't attempt to compete with him.

Where do you begin? You can pick up any Dean Koontz book you like and enjoy it as a standalone novel. However, he wrote two series that are enjoyed best when read in their correct order: The Odd Thomas books and the Frankenstein books. Odd Thomas is a gentle character with a quirky “super-power,” one he cannot control. If he gives himself over to it, it leads him where he needs to be to prevent a tragedy or solve a crime. If he attempts to force it, he may not only fail but also cause a tragedy for which he suffers greatly. The Frankenstein series is a sympathetic treatment of a man made monster (I could have written "man-made" - I didn't on purpose - think about it). Dean will make you think about Mary Shelley's monster in a whole new way.

I suppose that a journalist will knock at Mr. Koontz's door and ask why he did it – publish a Kindle single without a companion book in hardcover or paperback – if such a thing as a journalist still exists. (Please forgive the editorial comment there.) Maybe one already has. I suppose that Amazon might have paid him to do it to help promote sales of Kindles. I know of at least one case in which the strategy worked. He might have done it as an act of curiosity. He appears to have a very curious mind. Whatever the reason, he certainly helped me sell at least one copy of my book.

Thank you, Mr. Koontz. 

YOU AND I may not be looking for the same things in a story. In other words, the books I like, you may hate. So, let me run it down for you before I attempt to get you all excited about Jack Whyte. 

I like three-dimensional characters. I can't drum up much interest in a story if I'm not interested in the characters. My wife and I walked out on Fatal Attraction, a hugely popular movie, because we didn't like the Michael Douglas character and pretty much figured that he deserved whatever happened to him.

I like well-narrated exposition. I want the author's words to transport me to that time and place in which the story is set, much like Michener did in his early works. Hawaii and The Source were great examples.

Basic mistakes jar us back to reality and the spell is broken by bad spelling. I'm not too concerned with the literary quality of a book, but basic rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation should be observed. People who really enjoy books, like me, drift with the story, identifying with the characters and imagining themselves in its milieu. Simple mistakes are speed bumps that simply destroy the mood.

Finally, I find it easier to become engrossed in a story when it is believable. Yes, I can accept elves and ogres, especially when they are crafted by a genius such as Tolkien. Unfortunately, few writers are able to engage in believable flights of fantasy and should stick with the real world – the one they live within.

That being said, Jack Whyte took a fantasy, the legend of King Arthur, and wove it into the fabric of real history, the fall of the Roman Empire, and created a series of stories that I can recommend enthusiastically and without reservation. He populated them with magnificent heroes, and crafted a sense of time and place that is unparalleled in the genre of historical fiction. As an author working in the same genre, he inspires me.

The Camulod Chronicles – yes, Camulod is an actual place, the site of a Roman fort that the author chose as the historical precedent for Camelot – is a series of seven books that must be read in their correct order to fully appreciate the flow of history from the contraction of the Roman Empire to the rise of a society built on the foundations the legionnaires left behind.

Jack Whyte breathes life into mythical characters as only a creative genius can. Merlin's spells are simply explained as scientifically sound applications of physics and chemistry that would have seemed magical to primitive peoples. Arthur is a boy raised with the discipline of a legionnaire and a love of the native Britains he is taught to serve as their lord.

The author also reveals the myth of Excalibur as a leap in the technology of the weapons of war. He even creates a believable etymology for its name. Indeed, his treatment of Arthur's famous sword is just one example of the details that he infused into his novels to explain the legend without destroying the wonder of it.

If you have gotten this far in my tirade, you must now click this link and begin acquiring and reading these books.

Oh and when you're done, read his trilogy about the Knights Templar.

Good reading.

I HAVE LONG been a fan of stories of action and adventure on the high seas, especially stories about iron men and wooden ships of the Napoleonic Wars. The Hornblower saga by C. S. Forester and the Jack Aubrey saga by Patrick O'Brian are classics of the genre. 

Interestingly, both series are based on the real life adventures of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, whose life is found in a free book on Amazon Kindle, The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane.

Lord Cochrane's exploits first inspired another British sea captain, Frederick Marryat, who served under Cochrane as a midshipman. Marryat rose to command his own frigate and engaged in more than fifty sea battles during his career. Thus, he knows better than any other author of fiction, the terror and exhilaration of standing on an open deck amid a hail of canon and small arms fire.

Marryat focuses on character, much like his contemporary, Charles Dickens. The plots are often fanciful, however, the authenticity of his narrative is unsurpassed. Reading a book by Marryat is like sitting by the fire, surrounded by children, listening to the exploits of an aging great grandfather or uncle.

For me, the most pleasurable part of reading a work by Marryat are those times when he lapses into personal recollections in the middle of a story. For example, in one book, the fictional captain performs a wedding at sea, and Marryat wanders off into a tale wherein he performed such a ceremony during one of his commands.

I am certain that a critic would be happy to tear apart a work by Marryat, and they are welcome to it. However, I will still read, and sometimes reread, my favorite Marryat books.  

by Paul Anthony  The author almost lost me in the first chapter with an errant cultural reference- he confused the Menorah with the Ner Tamid and sustituted "kill" for "murder" in the Commandment. (Yes, I'm that picky.) But, I pressed on and he didn't make any such error thereafter. Boy, am I glad that I did.

I began reading The Legacy of the Ninth thinking that it was a story of the Roman Empire, but was not disappointed when it morphed into present day England where an artifact carried there from the Middle East by the Ninth Legion is uncovered. Its discovery becomes the catalyst for a new battle in the continuing conflict between Arabs and Jews.

Paul Anthony populated this story with a host of three-dimensional characters engaged in the conflict from different venues, England, Istanbul, Lebanon, and Israel. One in particular, a British policeman reassigned from undercover work in London to leading Bobbies in Cumbria, faces the daunting task of reigniting pride in a group that has been allowed to languish in mediocrity. This challenge alone would be sufficient foundation for a good story. In The Legacy of the Ninth, it is but one facet of a complex tale with plots within plots.

Lastly, I was pleased with the author's style. Thank God, I read it on Kindle and had a copy of the Oxford Dictionary built in to help be with the language (I am American and don't speakEnglish). That aside, Paul Anthony varies his pace, lingering on details to establish the milieu, and racing ahead with action to make it exciting.

Yes, I can recommend this one without reservation. 

by Philip Catshill  This book could become a classic of its genre. I don't say that lightly. I am extremely critical of storytelling, especially in the realm of "whodunnits." All too often they are poorly crafted. My most frequent complaints are conflict arising from stupidity; surprise endings without any logical justification; and, illogical behavior. "Who Else Is There" avoids all of these pitfalls. Indeed, it weaves an intricate labyrinth of plot twists and turns that conclude in a neatly wrapped package of resolution that leaves you to wonder how you missed all the clues that the author scattered along the way, and why you didn't deduct it yourself. 

Beyond that, it introduces us to a host of three-dimensional characters living in a well constructed world. The principal protagonist, Mike Newman, was terrifyingly real for me. He suffers from debilities that I narrowly avoided when I had a massive stroke a few years ago. Unfortunately for Mike (and the author as well, I suspect), they were not as lucky as I. The descriptions of Mike's physical limitations and aphasia left me emotionally spent as I realized that I had dodged those bullets only because my stroke occurred within minutes of a well-staffed hospital where my clot was cleared within less than an hour and I recovered fully. 
The bottom line is that I have already purchased the next installment in the Mike Newman series, "Suffer Little Children" and bumped it to next in my queue of books to be read. 

by Stephen WoodfinI didn't think that I was going to be able to read Sickle's Compass past the first chapter. It left me too emotionally drained. But I persisted and was rewarded with a satisfying though sad tale that made me feel good about humanity and gave me hope that the human spirit to rise to any challenge. 

Woody, a World War II veteran and victim of Alzheimer's Disease, is kidnapped by a shadowy character from his past. No one, not his wife, his children, nor the police understand the true nature of Woody's predicament, and they pursue him, his family to rescue him and the police to indict him for crimes they believe he has committed. 

This is a poignant tale crafted by an author who all too well understands the nature of Alzheimer's and our nation's ignorance of its nature and impact.