These are familiar events, but Allport’s interpretation is superb.
The first of two volumes in which British historian Allport delivers his opinionated analysis that carries a modest whiff of revisionism.
Though Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sometimes gave the impression that he was “a weak and timid politician,” Allport emphasizes that he was a combative, dynamic prime minister who considered himself “an acute judge of character and a sharp negotiator.” The author condemns him for betraying Czechoslovakia to Hitler at the October Munich talks, but he adds that Britons dreaded repeating the slaughter of World War I. “Chamberlain’s error was not to hate war,” writes Allport, “but to assume that everyone hated it as much as he did.” In fact, Hitler yearned to invade Czechoslovakia and eventually considered the Munich agreement a defeat. The author, a fluid, incisive historian, reminds readers that Chamberlain returned from Munich to almost unanimous acclaim. Despite his early denunciation of Hitler, Churchill, in 1938 “was seen by the nation as a reactionary Tory turncoat...who was widely unpopular and roundly distrusted.” He was definitely not prescient in sharing (along with Chamberlain) the fantasy that mass bombing would determine a future war, so both starved the army to support the air force. The British look back on the “phony war” from September 1939 to June 1940 as a mistake—not of their own making—that concluded with the heroism of Dunkirk and then their “Finest Hour” while the French collapsed. Allport’s provocative view will intrigue American readers, if not his countrymen, as he maintains that France’s army was not demoralized, poorly equipped, or led by incompetents. French historians point out (to this day) that Britain intended for its ally to bear the brunt of the fighting and then held back its air force when the issue was in doubt, made the decision to evacuate without consulting them, and insisted that British troops take priority at Dunkirk. There followed a year of mostly defeats until Hitler’s June 1941 invasion of Russia relieved the pressure.
These are familiar events, but Allport’s interpretation is superb.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-451-49474-0
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.
A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.
Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798228309890
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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