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• Current

Type: documentary

Status: I recommend

Author: A.J.P. Taylor

Tags: nonfiction 50books2006 ww1

2006-09-05

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: finished

Author: Len Deighton

Tags: mystery 50books2006

2006-09-05

  & 9 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: liked

Author: Alastair Reynolds

Tags: scifi series science_fiction 50books2006

2006-09-05

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: neutral

Author: Domenic Stansberry

Tags: mystery 50books2006

2006-09-05

  & 35 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: liked

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Tags: sci-fi 50books2006

2006-09-05

  & 8 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: Dalton Trumbo

Tags: war anti-war 50books2006 pacifism ww1

2006-03-15

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: Michael Francis Gilbert

Tags: mystery 50books2006

2006-03-05

• Current

Type: documentary

Status: —

Author: Rob Ferguson

Tags: nonfiction 50books2006 centralasia

Description: I've always had a fascination with Central Asia. The region has an amazingly rich historyI've always had a fascination with Central Asia. The region has an amazingly rich history including being integral to the Great Game in the 19th century. I'm also intrigued with the post-Soviet states. Talk about colonialism; these new countries are going to be dealing with the legacy of the USSR for many years to come.

This book, then, immediately grabbed my eye in the used bookstore. This is a memoir written by a Canadian who went to The Aral Sea region in 2000 to lead an environmental awareness campaign about one of the great ecological disasters of our time. The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest inland water body on the planet with about 67,000 square km of lightly salted water. By the end of this century, the water level had dropped 19m, it had lost 80% of it's volume and the salinity increased to 40%.



The tragedy of the Aral Sea is really about cotton. The Soviet Union poured money into the region and constructed massive irrigation projects which removed most of the water from the tributaries to the sea. The Cold War competition with the USA surprisingly also involved cotton production and this was where it was most intensively farmed on the collectives. Post breakup, the newly formed countries surrounding the Aral Sea (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan)had no hard currency and continued to produce the cotton that ruined the land and drained the rivers.

Rob Ferguson writes a book that is mainly his recollections of the time he spent in the area but also has fairly good history and context. His project is stymied at every turn by corruption, Russian mafia, old Soviet apparatchiks, and a general anti-Western mindset found in the Central Asian psyche. It's a terrifying and tragic story that for the most part is well told. The author, as the book goes on, gets caught up in the machinations of the NGO world and the book begins to lose touch with the larger, more interesting, story. He has an eye for detail in his travels around the various countries but often his writing skill is unable to keep up with the color of the moment.

A very interesting book about a severely under-exposed area of the world....

2006-02-28

• Current

Type: documentary

Status: —

Authors: R.E. Gillman D.F.C D.F.M

Tags: wwii war memoir 50books2006

Description: This book is a memoir of an RAF pilot. The author served in WW2 as a Blenheim pilot in theThis book is a memoir of an RAF pilot. The author served in WW2 as a Blenheim pilot in the Mediterranean (awarded D.F.C. and D.F.M.). The Bristol Blenheim Mark IV (seen above) was a medium range bomber used extensively throughout the war. The plane held 3 - the pilot, the gunner and the navigator. The pilot controlled the bomb release and the wing mounted guns. The main gunner was in the perspex bubble on the top of the plane and provided covering fire. Located infront of and below the pilot, the nav man lined up the bombing run and got them to the target and home again.

The author writes about his experiences joining the air force and the training in the UK. When he eventually gets his qualifications (in a very accelerated manner) they send him to Gibraltar and then ultimately on to Malta. Malta is located basically in the middle of the Mediterranean and during the war was essentially surrounded by the German army in North Africa and Italy.

This memoir chronicles the various missions that the pilot and his tight-knit crew had to run in and around the tiny island. The fascinating thing about the Blenheim ship hunters was their MO. When the British got intel on a convoy of Axis ships, a group of as many planes would head out in formation. These guys flew up high until they neared their target and then would come down to near sea level often so close that there would be a wake from the planes. They'd come screaming into the convoy which was usually a bunch of military boats surrounding a tanker or supply ship. Literally flying underneath and between the escort boats, the bombers would fly straight at the target boat and pull up at the last second releasing the 250 pound bombs they carried. All this went on under the heavy fire of the escort boats. Needless to say, many planes never made it back to base.

The biggest shortcoming of the book is that Gillman wrote it from memory almost 30 years after he was demobbed and the memoir is unnaturally vague in some areas and vivid in others. He survived many missions that often went against common sense like attacking a heavily fortified port in coastal Italy and comes across with a sense of amazement that war survivors sometimes have....

2006-02-28

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Pat Frank

Tags: sci-fi post-apocalyptic 50books2006

2006-02-28