In honor of Veterans Day, we asked several staff
members to name a book they would think appropriate for the day. Here are their responses:
Nicki: Mila
18 by Leon Uris is a book I read
years ago but it has stayed with me all this time. It takes place during World
War II, in Poland. Mila 18 is the name of a street, and it’s where a Jewish
resistance group in the Warsaw ghetto had their headquarters.
Brenda G.: I
always think of Lord Jim by Joseph
Conrad. It’s not a war story per se, but it
deals with the honor and duty in a thoughtful way. As the story opens, a young seaman abandons
ship with the rest of the crew, leaving their passengers on a sinking
ship. The consequences of that action
make up the rest of the story.
Brenda D.: For me, the book is Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation. It’s a collection of
personal interviews with people who lived through the Great Depression,
survived World War II, and then came home to build their lives and
families. It’s a real tribute.
Ambrea: When I think about books for Veteran’s Day,
I often think about The Things They
Carried by Tim O’Brien.
Although I read O’Brien’s novel several years ago as a junior in high school, The Things They Carried has
stayed with me since then as a quintessential war story. I know it’s just
fiction. I know Kiowa, Norman Bowker, Jimmy Cross, and even the Tim
O’Brien as we know him in the book does not actually exist—but they
could. The Things They
Carried is a collection of stories based during and after the
Vietnam War and, while largely fiction, it has a thread of truth to it that
made it feel profound and, truthfully, jarring. It’s not an autobiography
or a memoir, as we might normally think of it, but so much of it feels like the
real thing. It’s a heart-wrenching story of loss and guilt, hope and
desperation, and living with the knowledge that you were the one who didn’t get
left behind.
Kristin: I
have two books. Liar, Temptress,
Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott is a well written history
of four women who broke free from the societal expectations of their day.
Alternating chapters draw the strings of the stories together as the book
progresses.
Next, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story
of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernen shows the lives of the workers who were brought into
Oak Ridge, Tennessee in order to enrich uranium for the first atomic bombs.
Nestled within the mountainous ridges and cut off from the surrounding
towns, the complex became a community of thousands practically overnight.
After reading this, I visited the American Museum of Science and Industry
in Oak Ridge and was fascinated to see exhibits explaining the science of the
uranium refinement and the housing and social opportunities available to
workers.
Jeanne: I also have two that quickly came to
mind. One is Edie Ernst, Allied Spy
by Brooke McEldowney which is
actually a collection of comic strips from his comic 9 Chickweed Lane which
revolves around the lives of the Burber women: daughter Edda, mother Juliette,
and grandmother Edna aka “Edie.” Readers
know Edna as a cranky old woman, always ready with a harsh word for her
daughter or granddaughter. This series
of strips tells us about Edie as young woman during World War II and gave me a
whole new view of the character. I did a longer review which you can read here.
The other book—or books, because the story is in two
parts—is Connie Willis’ Blackout
and All Clear. In the future,
students at Oxford can travel back in time to observe important historical
events. The books follow several
students who are in different parts of England during World War II,
experiencing what it was like for ordinary people, civilians and soldiers on the British home front, during the Blitz. The full
review of these books is here.
No comments:
Post a Comment