I’ve been lucky lately in that I’ve actually had time to read for pleasure.  On recommendation from friends and family, I indulged my inner history geek and bought “Unbroken” and “With The Old Breed:  At Okinawa and Peleliu”.

Unbroken, by Lauren Hillebrand, is primarily about the life of Louis Zamperini, a reformed juvenile menace, Olympic runner, World War II bombardier, and POW.  The first part of the book deals with Zamperini’s childhood and adolescence, where he finds a way off the path to prison by becoming a track star.  He does well enough that he becomes a member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic track team, and competes in Berlin.  As it became more and more apparent that the United States would become involved in World War II, he joined the Army Air Force and became a bombardier on B-24 bombers.  During a search and rescue mission over the Pacific, his airplane crashed.  Zamperini and his pilot survive the crash and an almost 2000 mile trip drifting across the Pacific.  The Japanese capture them, and they spend the rest of the war in Japanese prison camps, much of it without being declared as captured.  After the war, Zamperini falls into depression and alcoholism, but eventually finds his way toward redemption and a good life through the love of his wife and an awakening of his relationship with God.

With The New Breed:  At Okinawa and Peleliu, a memoir by E.B. Sledge, discusses his life as a Marine  in the Pacific Theater of World War II.  Sledge gave up a safe slot in college to join the Marines, and joined the 1st Marine Division as they prepared for the invasion of Peleliu.  The book details his training and preparation for this campaign, as well as the campaign on Okinawa.  He does an excellent job describing how Marine Corps training led to the excellent esprit de corps that has marked Marines for over two centuries, and how that spirit and dedication to each other kept men alive in the hard fighting of the Pacific island campaigns.  Sledge also brings the horror, insanity, and fear that he faced in these two campaigns to vivid life as he describes both battles from the perspective of someone watching it over a gunsight.

While these two books deal with the same over-arching event, World War II in the Pacific, their over-arching messages are far apart.   Unbroken, even though it deals with how inhumanely man can treat his fellow man, is a story of hope.  Zamperini and his fellow prisoners lived through privation and abuse, but still kept up hope of deliverance.  With The Old Breed, on the other hand, deals in detail with the tension of extended battle and the despair felt by Sledge as he survived it.

Both stories are important.  Knowing the horrors of war and the impact that it has on those who carry it out, is of utmost importance.  When we forget these things, sending our young men and women off to war becomes much easier, and the shock at the cost of such decisions is much worse.  However, knowing that even in the worst of times that hope, along with a lot of hard work, can bring things to a good ending is just as important.

Both of these books are well worth your time, and I heartily suggest that you read them if you haven’t already.  They will both lead you to think about war and how it affects human beings, but in different ways.  These are definitely going on my list of books that I recommend to others and I will have them both available for my kids to read when they are ready.

Larry Correia and Mike Kupari have produced a sequel to their 2011 work, Dead Six, and it’s a roller coaster from start to finish.

Swords of Exodus opens a few months after the close of Dead Six.  Lorenzo, the master thief and assassin, has retired to what he hopes is comfortable obscurity, and Valentine, the soldier of fortune, is rotting in a government torture chamber after being snatched at the end of the first book.   After the events of Dead Six, the criminal world has fragmented, and an exquisitely evil man has taken over a criminal territory in the border region of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China, and Lorenzo and Valentine reluctantly join forces to help Exodus wipe him and his slave army out.  I won’t give things away, but the action starts early in the book and doesn’t stop until the very end.  We also get some more back story on Val and Lorenzo, which fills in the characters quite nicely.

Like I said, this is a rollercoaster ride of a good yarn.  You get a few pages of quiet, followed by 10 pages of action, followed by more quiet.  The second half of the book is pretty much action to the very end.  The book ends with two cliffhangers, which already has me convinced that I will be buying the inevitable third book.  Honestly, I had to put the book down and stop from crying out when I read the last sentence.  I just wanted the story to continue.

One distraction in the book’s writing is what I call “brand dropping”.  Rather than “I pulled out my pistol and shot him twice in the head.”, at a few points in the story you read “I pulled out my STI 9mm with the six-inch SilenceCo suppressor on it and put two  Hornady TAP bullets into his brain.”  Both read well, but the authors put such references in just often enough for me to notice, but not enough to irritate.

The first book set up the universe the story lives in, which is a “decade after this one” kind of place where the world has fractured and chaos makes live lucrative for people like Lorenzo and Valentine.    The second book fills in some of the gaps on this world, but that leaves a lot more room for character development.  The characters of Lorenzo, Valentine, and Ling fleshed out quite nicely through the course of Swords.

One thing I like about both books is that I would feel comfortable lending them to Girlie Bear.  Yes, there’s quite a bit of blood and violence in them, but it’s not gratuitous, and while there is implied sex on a couple of occasions, it’s done tastefully and the story shifts away from it before it becomes too graphic.

If you’re looking for a great book to curl up with for a couple of evenings, and you like action thrillers, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

Peter Grant, the proprietor, punmaster, and chief cook and bottle washer over at Bayou Renaissance Man, has put out another book, and this one is a thought provoker.  His other two books, “Take the Star Road” and “Ride the Rising Tide“, are space opera centered around a young Heinleinian character finding his way in the world.   This one, “Walls, Wire, Bars, and Souls” is Peter’s memoir of his time as  a prison chaplain.  It gives an outstanding insight into the workings of a federal prison, looks at the issues our society is reacting to and creating through our prison, crime, and drug policy, and adds in vignettes that show us some of the perspective of those who live behind bars.

Peter separates the book out into cycles of three chapter styles.  The first style discusses the events of one of his days as a chaplain at a federal prison in the American south.  Peter recounts how the necessity of security and control of a prison was brought into practice as he tried to minister to his flock, a flock that probably needed it more than most.  The second style of chapter delves into prison life and routine, prison gangs, and Peter’s opinions and suggestions on how our criminal justice system and prisons could be better used to truly help those who wish to reform.  The third style of chapters are recitations of the prisoner’s side of conversations with Peter, and range from people trying to con him or intimidate him, to people who truly need and want his help to find a better way in life.

Peter pulls few punches in this book, but keeps out of the nitty-gritty titillation about life in prison.  While he discusses such things as prison violence, rape, and slavery, he does an excellent job of walking the fine line between informative and indulgent.

Peter spends quite a bit of time in the second half of the book discussing his ideas for reform and improvement in the prison and criminal justice systems.  While I don’t agree with everything he proposes, I can agree with him that something needs to be changed before the system either becomes nothing more than an extended graduate course in violent crime or collapses under its own weight.  He definitely challenges the reader to take what he has to say, provides links to resources that will provide more information, and form their own opinion.

If you’re looking for an informative, and thought-provoking book that’s a good read, you ought to check this one out.  It’s quite evident that Peter viewed this as a labor of love and put maximum effort into making his points without putting the reader into a daze, as well as telling the story without delving too deeply into the gory details.

Now if we can just get Peter to write his memoirs about his life in Africa, then the circle will be complete.