Patriot Battles (Book #80)

When I was growing up, we were taught that the American Revolution was all about scrappy frontier riflemen beating the robotic soldiers of an empire against incredible odds, mostly because the soldiers were so, well, robotic. You know, too stupid to realize that wearing bright red coats made them targets for those daring riflemen and so on. As an adult, and particularly an adult who's becoming something of an expert on the Napoleonic Wars, I'd figured that school history was a myth. The British were far from stupid, after all. 18th century battlefield tactics actually make a lot of sense when you understand the technology available then. E.g. rifles of the time had serious disadvantages compared to a musket--a much slower rate of fire, and frontier hunting rifles couldn't be fitted with bayonets, leaving a sharpshooter vulnerable when unloaded. Ideally you want a small number of rifles to supplement your musket-armed infantry with their sniper mojo. Which is what the Americans actually had during the Revolution, and what the British used so successfully in the Napoleonic Wars.

Anyway. That's one small myth of the many busted in Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought (Michael Stephenson, 2007). A larger one is the idea that the odds were against the Patriots, what with Britain being one of the great superpowers of the day and all. Actually, the odds were stacked against the British to begin with, because they never had anything like enough soldiers available to garrison a large, hostile territory far from home. Sound familiar? It should. Stephenson draws the obvious parallel and gets excoriated for it by Amazon reviewers, but I think he's right. It's not an exact parallel, but there is a lesson there to be learned.

Oh, and it's a good, readable introduction to the realities of 18th century warfare, if you're interested in such things.

What the Lady Wants (Book #79)

What the Lady Wants (Jennifer Crusie, 1995) is vintage early Crusie--a quick, frothy, but utterly intelligent read. I read it on the plane coming back to Seattle and enjoyed it thoroughly.

The English (Book #78)

While living in England I became inordinately fond of Jeremy Paxman's work on Newsnight (basically, Nightline with a bit more bite), so I snapped up The English (1998) when I recently discovered it in a used bookstore. It's a good read. If I weren't limiting myself to brief posts, I could go on about it at length, but what stood out to me was in how many ways the English and American peoples are more alike than different--individualistic, independent, in their hearts more rural than urban despite living in cities and suburbs, etc. Basically, Americans are Englishmen, given a whole continent to be individualistic and independent in, and with more religion and less aristocracy. Which, of course, is exactly what you'd expect.

Redcoat (Book #77)

A very brief review of Redcoat (Bernard Cornwell, 1988), since I'm still in the land of slow dial-up modems and am trying to keep all my internet usage brief.

It's a standalone Revolutionary War story set in and around Philadelphia in 1776-77. As you might expect of a novel in this era written by an Englishman who married an American and became a US citizen, he neither lionizes nor demonizes either side, which I generally like. It's a bit sweeter and more romantic than most of Cornwell's work, and I can't help wondering if his own experience of True Love with an American blonde came into play. :-)

A week in an oven

My husband, daughter, and I are at my mom's house in Alabama this week. She's having chemo for lung cancer, so it's not the happiest visit, but I'm glad we came. The internet connection here is a terribly slow dial-up, so I'll be posting less frequently and with more brevity than normal till I'm back in Seattle.

As for the title of the post? It's been over 100F every day since we got here on Tuesday, and it's forecast to continue for at least one more day before "cooling" into the upper 90's.

Women and Money (Book #76)

Despite having a spicy brain and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School, I tend to go running in the opposite direction when asked to contemplate long-term financial planning. Hearing Suze Orman on NPR a few months ago convinced me that this was a Bad Idea. Ignoring retirement planning, debt issues, etc. will not make them go away. So I checked out her Women & Money (2007) to get a sense of her approach. And I'm convinced. I'll buy my own copy. I'll shop for a better bank, find lower-interest credit cards, and re-evaluate how I've allocated the money in my 401(k). I promise. Because she's right. I'm too smart to be stupid about money, and it's too important to ignore.

Princesses (Book #75)

Did you know that George III and his queen had fifteen children, six of them daughters? If you didn't, it's because by royal standards--I take that back, by ANY standard--those daughters led dull, restricted lives. Because of that, Princesses: the Six Daughters of George III (Flora Fraser, 2004) is a strange read--compelling, but depressing. The novelist in me wants to find a way to write the girls out of their predicament--which, basically, is that they reached marriageable age just as their father's grip on sanity was loosening and the long upheaval of the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars got going. Since George III didn't approve of his children marrying even a little bit below royal rank, they had no opportunities to marry in England. For the most part, they were conventional young women who wanted families, and they just didn't get a chance. Though four of the six eventually married, they married late and left no legitimate descendants. (One of the two who never married gave birth to an illegitimate child by a commoner lover while a young woman.)

Anyway, it was an informative read, if you need information on British court life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.