A knowledgeable study of Washington’s extensive “bag of tricks” to secure victory.
One intriguing, little-known facet of the first general of the Continental Army: his wholehearted embrace of the art of deception against the British.
A cryptology specialist of the Colonial period, Nagy (Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy: A Case of Espionage on the Eve of the American Revolution, 2013, etc.), who died this year, found that the Founding Father famed for his inability to tell a lie actually embarked on wartime espionage “with childlike glee.” Working with a ragtag army that was no match for the professionalism of the enemy, Washington used espionage to “level the playing field and then exploit it to the best advantage possible.” He honed these skills as a young lieutenant colonel working for Gen. Edward Braddock in the war against the French, rebuffing French raiding parties and making allies with the Indians. As war against Britain became inevitable by 1775, Washington, now the Virginia “gentleman farmer” chosen by the Continental Congress to “lead the mob of Massachusetts malcontents surrounding Boston,” needed spies to infiltrate British ranks in Boston so he could be prepared for their attacks. One of his methods was to use the observances of local fisherman. Uncovering spies for the British presented another problem—e.g., the revelation of Massachusetts revolutionary leader Dr. Benjamin Church Jr.’s traitorous cipher; he had apparently been playing both sides. On the other hand, an important seeker of intelligence on British positions in New York, young Nathan Hale was caught and hanged by the British as a spy. Washington fed false information to British spies, prepared a standardized set of questions to root out real spies, used misdirection in attacking the British, and promoted the ingenious fabrication of invisible ink. Over several chapters, Nagy effectively lays out Washington’s “Deception Battle Plan”—i.e., obscuring where exactly he would attack New York City in 1781, a plan similarly executed so many years later in Operation Overlord (1944) and in Operation Desert Storm (1990-1991).
A knowledgeable study of Washington’s extensive “bag of tricks” to secure victory.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-09681-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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