William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp, 1587-1968
Simon Hawke, The Merchant of Vengeance
J.H. Patterson, The Man-eaters of Tsavo ***in progress***
Jung Chang & Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
I greatly enjoyed The Arms of Krupp, but the fact remains that it is 1,000 pages long. 1,000 single-spaced pages in a small font. It is, and this is not a criticism but a statement of fact, dense. And the chapters on Alfried Krupp's use of slave labor during the Second World War are heartbreaking and quite taxing. So, The Merchant of Vengeance's 250 pages of frivolity were a most welcome change of pace. No expert on the Elizabethan Era am I, but the anachronisms within the text are readily evident; yet, the whole tenor of the book, even while dealing with murder and anti-Semitism, is so lighthearted and carefree that all historical inconsistencies, normally quite a burr under my saddle, are immediately forgiven. I'm thinking I may need to break up Mao, Moby-Dick, and The 900 Days with lighter fare, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, man-eating lions and the Scramble for Africa await!
Geographica: South America
Though some of the island nations of the Caribbean sea are more geographically proximal to South America, for our purposes they shall be catalogued, at least those I can recall without consulting an reference materials, as part of North America.
Colombia
Venezuela
Guyana
Suriname
Brazil
Equador
Peru
Bolivia
Paraguay
Uraguay
Argentina
Chile
Tomorrow: North America.
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