The North won the Civil War for many reasons: more manpower, greater industrial strength, tremendous capital, a better idea. They also won because they had three generals who believed in total war. It was not enough to defeat an enemy in the field; no, one had to tear the insides out of the enemy. Bring war with its flames and cruelty to the very hearths of the enemy to make them realize what war really was and is to this day. Those three generals are Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip H. Sheridan. These men knew that with the material, industrial and manpower strength of the Union, they could win and were determined to ensure that there could be no future Civil War.

Having previously read Goldsworthy’s biography of Augustus Caesar this biography is in my opinion, much better; perhaps it is because Julius Caesar led a much more active life being involved directly in years of military campaigns, writing massive volumes of poetry, literature and laws as opposed to Augustus Caesar who was not as robust (physically) and had the invaluable help of Marcus Agrippa for decades to share the burdens of rule.

Severus is sometimes called the last of the “Good Emperors” for his ability to bring stability and success to the mid-Roman empire (he was emperor A.D. 193-211).  Born in Tripolitania in North Africa (no, he was not black), he was of that stock from which sprang Carthage and Hannibal.  He has also been called a typical cosmopolitan Roman bureaucrat, the destroyer of the existing social order and (by Gibbon), the principal author of Rome’s decline.  Take your pick.  But he did represent the ability of the empire to pull on its subjects to infuse new blood and energy into its body from time to time and this kept the empire from fading away for an extra hundred years.

A restless man, he traveled across the empire and early on, name one of his sons and trained him to succeed him.  Unfortunately, that son, later know as Caracalla also known by historians as “the enemy of mankind”.  But Severus coming after Commodus and Pertinax brought a period of peace, often by simply scaring the corrupt Senate and the power of his personality.

This book is a bit heavy for the casual reader interested in this period and unless you are familiar with the period, may not be a good read.  Yet there are excellent passages, and the author feels free to criticize other historians, arguing that they have misrepresented or misunderstood various facts.

There are a couple of interesting side notes about Severus.  As he lay on his death bed, his sons asked him what they should do; his words in this book were “Do not disagree between yourselves, give money to the soldiers and despise everyone else”, although other translations quote him in a more “earthy” manner. 

Another tidbit I have often thought that F. Scott Fitzgerald plagiarized when he had his main character in The Great Gatsby say: “I have been everywhere and seen everything, god oh god am I sophisticated”.  Although this author disputes the accuracy of Severus’ quote, I remember reading it when I was in my early 20’s and feeling a bit depressed, for he said, “I have been everywhere and seen everything and it is not really much”.  If a Roman emperor could say that what hope was there for me!  But Birley says the quote (again, disputed) was that “I have been everything and what has it profited me”.

For anyone who has read books which deal with how men react in wartime, this novel is often referred to as a realistic description of military life. In a sense, it could in certain parts, be an English version of Joseph Hellers novel, Catch-22 with better character development and a darker form of humor. Evelyn Waugh is best known for his novel, Brideshead Revisited, but this novel is a semi-biographical account of his war time experiences as well as his relationship with his Catholicism (he converted to Catholicism in 1930 after the failure of his first marriage).

In December 1936, the United Kingdom was rocked by the abdication of King Edward VIII.  Shortly thereafter, he married a twice divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson. For decades, the former King was viewed as a weak-willed man, dominated by a self-centered gold digger who thought she could marry the King and become Queen of England.  The story is much more complex, and Anna Pasternak takes a much different view of the entire episode; fortunately, she provides excellent support to her contention that Wallis Simpson was battled to keep the King, who was weak willed, on the throne.

There was a seried called “Wolf Hall” on PBS which painted a vavorable impression of this man who has been painted as the arch-enemy of a saintly Thomas More.  I have read two bios of Thomas More and have come to see him as an early totalitarian; he dogmatic, given to wearing horse hair shirts, and given to burning heretics while enjoying the company and debates with Erasmus. In “A Man for All Seasons”, Cromwell was painted as the money grubbing, sneaky servant of the King, so I looked forward to this book. If the movies favorable to More could be so slanted, what is the truth about Cromwell?

      Borman paints Cromwell as a complex, self-made man in an age where such talents and drive, coming from a “common man” were seen as a danger to the established order, represented by the old noble families in Europe.  Yes, he was corrupt but not outside the accepted bounds of his time.  Yet he was generous to the poor and helped even the families who fell from favor (often with his help) of an egotistical, paranoid and shallow king.

      A fighter who succeed despite the prejudices of his day, he was a faithful servant of the king as the king only realized after Cromwell’s fall from power. 

      A well written book, the hardest part reading some of the passages written in Old English (if you read quickly Old English is not that difficult, it is merely that the words are often spelled according to the writer; it is before standardized English was adopted).  One comes away with a respect for the man who survived in a harsh political atmosphere; his faults were exaggerated by history and his enemies.  A worthwhile read.

Born in the late 18^th century, Francois Eugene Vidocq began life poor and uneducated and spent many years in various types of petty crime.  He shunned violence and spent years as a pickpocket, army deserter, grifter and convict.  His numerous escapes from all sorts of prisons, attempted to lead a “straight” life but was always sucked back into the criminal life, sometimes by his own weakness, sometimes by circumstance. His fame among the underworld was turned to his advantage as he become first a police informer, responsible for the capture of dozens of his former associates, then as head of detectives.  Forming his own person group, he worked both sides of the street, moving against the worse criminals while hiring himself out to the growing middle class and upper classes as local businessmen and others attempted to gain advantage over rivals.

Balzac, Dumas and Victor Hugo freely borrowed from his memoirs to create many of their most famous characters, including Valjean in Les Miserables’ while Conan Doyle used Vidocq’s techniques to create the enemies of Holmes.  Other authors who used his exploits included Melville, Poe and Dickens.

An interesting look at the underworld of France at the time; a time of anarchy, corruption, brutality and a society in which class and circumstance cemented one into a life cycle that had little opportunity for self-improvement.

This book provides case studies of some of the major minds which shaped the modern world. These individuals were driving forces in literature, politics, economics and morals, not by the force of their expertise, but rather by their self belief that they had found secrets about mankind that no one else had found in thousands of years. Their egos were sufficient that they never bothered to ask, like Nietzsche, “if no God, then what?” for their answer was that they had become god, capable of constructing laws and rules for others. Each of them created their own universe at which they were the steady light, and despite their lack of morals, ability to lie outrageously, often lie around in their own filth and not pay back borrowed money, they found followers who hung on their every utterance.

Why would a man join the French Foreign Legion?  For some, it is to hide, to escape a wife, a prison sentence, bad debts.  For Simon Murray, at the age of twenty, it was simply because he could not think of anything else to do with his life.  Thus, he signed a contract for five years in what is often considered the most disciplined military in the world.  The Legion needs to be disciplined given the nature of the recruits, the location of its bases, the brutality of the wars it wages and the harshness of its discipline.

Legends die hard and when this book originally came out, there still existed a legend of the golden time when John F Kennedy was President; youthful, good looking with a glamorous wife, he represented to many a time of idealism and vigor before the Viet Nam war.  Those who were with him in the White House during those famous “thousand days” wished to make sure that his image, and thus theirs was preserved for they had been called “the best and the brightest”.  They all worked hard but had a hardy manly mystique and wherever they went, people could feel their energy and purpose. But was the reality close to the legend?