An original and often affecting perspective on one of the major wars of the 20th century.
A historical account of pairs of brothers who fought and died in World War II and were buried together overseas.
For much of early American history, the interment of soldiers was a private, family affair, but given the extraordinary number of casualties produced by the Civil War, national cemeteries became necessary, observes debut author and historian Callahan. The solemn tradition of leaving no soldier behind, alive or dead, includes a commitment to burying each and every fallen soldier, wherever found. In many instances, this entailed doing so on foreign land, very far from the places of the soldiers’ birth. The author provides a meticulously researched overview into this historical phenomenon, focusing specifically on the side-by-side burials of sibling soldiers of the Second World War. In total, he provides more than 70 brief accounts of these pairs along with descriptions and beautifully shot photos of cemeteries in Normandy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and North Africa, among other locations. Callahan’s research brought him into contact with members of a number of different families, and the book is festooned with images of these interview subjects. The author was clearly motivated by more than mere scholarly curiosity, and he’s obviously moved by the sacrifices of the soldiers and the families that lost them. Indeed, the book’s inspiration came roughly 10 years ago, after he saw the gravesite of two American siblings in Italy and wondered: “Who were these brothers? Where did they come from? How did they die? Who did they leave behind?”
The author discovered many stories with considerable dramatic power, and he ably conveys them in these pages. At one point, for instance, he tells the tale of the Niland brothers from New York, whose plight inspired the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan; one could easily argue that the real-life story is more fascinating than its cinematic homage. At the core of Callahan’s study is the theme of sacrifice: The soldiers gave up their lives, often when they were only teenagers, and whole families were devastated by the profound losses. Nevertheless, the young men’s sacrifices are often proudly embraced in a way that is incredibly moving, as when a chaplain, in a letter to a grieving mother, tells of an exchange he once overheard: A woman told an ex-soldier, “It’s a shame you lost your leg,” and he replied, “Ma’am...I didn’t lose it, I gave it.” However, some of the vignettes in this book are so brief that one may wonder why they were included at all. Also, as the author candidly concedes, the scope of the study is exceedingly narrow and doesn’t describe the sacrifices of female or African American soldiers or of any servicemen buried in the United States. Despite this, Callahan manages to capture a little-studied sliver of the Second World War—not an easy task to accomplish given the massive body of historical scholarship already available—and lucidly offers readers a look at the human costs of the conflict.
An original and often affecting perspective on one of the major wars of the 20th century.Pub Date: July 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-46885-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Brothers in Arms Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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