books I've been reading

I haven't done as much reading as of late as I'd like, or at least haven't been making too much headway in anything. As I told Chloe, one of our new employees, I'm always reading like six books at once. For some reason I'd rather dip my toes in several ponds at once rather than plunge headfirst into one of them. Really, the latter is probably optimal: focusing on one book, solely, certainly makes it easier to comprehend. My mind, much like my life, is pretty scatterbrained, so I get ADHD if I spend too much time on a single subject. I'd like to compare myself to Benjamin Franklin (who wouldn't?) for being involved in so many different subjects, but unlike him I have no accomplishments to show for it.

These two books I recently finished were pretty phenomenal. I started reading a different history of World War 2, but I left it on top of Ams' car and she sped away with it. I searched the streets but to no avail. No worries, though: its replacement, Inferno by Max Hastings, was far more enjoyable. I particularly liked his focus on the oft-forgotten Eastern Front, the theater between Russia and Germany. Many histories, written by British or Americans, treat the Eastern Front as a sideshow to what the other Allied powers were doing in France and the Pacific. This is ridiculous, since it was really Russia who brought the Germans to their knees (the other Allied powers pretty much just bit it in its ass). Strange how close to ninety percent of World War Two's casualties can occur in the Eastern Front and yet modern histories treat this as peripheral to the real action. Bias certainly skews things.

The second book, a work of historical fiction, follows prominent characters in World War 2--Eisenhower, Patton, and Rommel, for instance--through the final year of the North African campaign. I've always been partial to Shaara's historical fiction, but I've found that I enjoy his "earlier" works better (those pertaining, no surprise, to the American Revolution and the Civil War). World War 2 fascinates me, and I love reading it, but colonial American history up through the Reconstruction Era is what I'm really into. Consider it an historical fetish, if you will. On that note, I'm putting my reading through Shaara's novels on hold for a bit to satisfy my appetite for colonial matters with Almost A Miracle by the colonial American historian John Ferling.