"From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes 'the usual.'"

Dr. Hammurabi Malamud Writes:

I found Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood while I was at bn.com probably searching for a book explaining the different mashes used in making whiskey. I saw the stupendous reader ratings, and immediately ordered it for my daughter. Yes, for my daughter.

What exquisite and visual prose the author, Ms. Koren Zailckas, has penned for the Penguin publisher. And ever the more striking, that there are rumors that my own progeny traveled the same alcohol strewn path with less memories and far more trauma, just like dad.

I had my first taste of alcohol, like Koren, at age 14 while I was at a wedding reception. "A little champagne can't hurt the boy."

Soon, in an attempt to get accustomed to the Vernor's soda pop taste without the sweetness, I was choking down one or two Coors in my backyard. After school. Every afternoon. Two years later, I did the same thing again with cigarettes, after I saw how movie-star beautiful I thought my girlfriend looked as she pushed out a cloud of noxious exhaust created by her smoldering Winston.

When I was Ms. Zailckas' age, although not attending college, I found I could still mix, tuition free, with the college crowd at Tempe's multi-leveled Minder-Binder bar. My best friend and I, both lacking the genetics to perceive a hangover any better than either of us could feel-read Braille and wrapping up a hardy night of drinking, as Handel's Hallelujah Chorus shook the high-school-gym-sized-room as if a 737 was taking off from the parking lot, signalling the closing of the establishment in the next quarter hour, we would not leave. Working through the SRO crowd, we'd relocate to the end of the pier-long bar nearest the single exit.

And, as the less thirsty patrons would place their half-full (never "half-empty") bucket-sized, still perspiring pitchers of beer on the counter, Harry and myself, both abhorring the horror of even Hamm's beer being tossed down the drain, would snatch the empty handle of each orphaned vessel and pour its remaining contents into our mouths, down our gullets, and our shirts. (After a few miscues, we learned to look down into the pitchers before we emptied them.)

But I'm reviewing her book here, not reliving all the reasons I know God exists. And Satan.

Smashed is without apology, or notice, written for females. I may have enjoyed it more than most males would have, because I lean heavily on my female sensitivities, while not heavily enough to grab my own ankles.

Norman Mailer once told me that the male sex drive recedes after age 65, but prior to that mark, men think about sex as often as they blink. And it was so shocking to read that women are almost the exact opposite. I guess that is why so many men have to pay women for sex.

Koren details her mostly drunken life in high school, college, and for a bit in the work-a-day world of the Hell-Hole N.Y.C., which is apparently the pot-hole capital of the Western Hemisphere.

At one point she even contrasts her $200 a week habit to her boy friend's $2,000 cocaine addiction. Koren avoided all hard drugs.

Like myself, Ms. Zailckas describes how she arrived at adulthood ignorant of how to experience many things in life when not  under the influence of alcohol. While normal kids were painfully practicing and polishing their social skills, Koren and I were polishing off our 5th St. Pauli Girl.

You might imagine Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, especially for a fellow drunkard, would be a tough read. A read where an accusing finger points out of the pages, or where one is harangued with: "See this could happen to you!", but it is not.

It is so delightfully, clearly, and bare-bones honestly written that once started, like a bottle of Old Humbolt's, it's difficult to put down. So why did it take Dr. Malamud 7 weeks to finish it? I was in the middle of my new infatuation with Kentucky straight rye whiskey and I was a-feared completing Smashed might inspire me to turn away from my love-interest-in-a-bottle.

As I read the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS in the final pages of the book, 'Acknowledgments' that typically go unread due to their unreadableness, and I got to the "[M]y sister, Nikki Zailckas, is the love of my life..." my eyes could no longer keep their tears to themselves and, with a blink, they began to tumble down my cheeks.

Begun: 06/23/2009   Finished: 08/30/2009 Purchased:  June 2009
Where:   barnesandnoble.com

USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
B&N Net Rank:   13,281
Pages:  Trade paperback, 368pp
Cover price:  $15.00
Purchase price:  $1.99 (used)
Genre:  Biography  Addiction

"We have oceans of information at our disposal, yet we increasingly seek knowledge in online headlines glimpsed on the run. We are networked as never before, but we connect with friends and family via e-mail and fleeting face-to-face moments that are rescheduled and interrupted a dozen times. Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

...review in progress 9/13/2009...
Begun: 05/31/2009   Finished: 06/12/2009 Purchased:  May 2009
Where: barnesandnoble.com

B&N Net Rank: 32,246
Pages:  Hardback, 327pp
Cover price:  $25.98
Purchase price:  $20.70 (new)
Genre:  Social Psychology

"In the near future, the only thing growing faster than the criminal population is the Electric Church, a new religion founded by a mysterious man named Dennis Squalor. The Church preaches that life is too brief to contemplate the mysteries of the universe: eternity is required. In order to achieve this, the converted become Monks -- cyborgs with human brains, enhanced robotic bodies, and virtually unlimited life spans.

Enter Avery Cates, a dangerous criminal known as the best killer-for-hire around. The authorities have a special mission in mind for Cates: assassinate Dennis Squalor. But for Cates, the assignment will be the most dangerous job he's ever undertaken -- and it may well be his last."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

The Electric Church has eye-catching cover art placed on a texture that delighted my fingertips as I ran them across it. It is trade paperback-sized and has a little bit larger font for us old people with cataracts whose Cigna $600-a month-health-insurance won't consider repairing before making us wait, and wait, and wait so that in the meantime we may get laid-off, fired, or just plain perish or perhaps have the first ever in the universe spontaneous remission of cataracts.

While I was chasing my grandson, 'The Beast', through the aisles of the Surprise, Arizona Barnes & Noble, accompanied by Mr.Wonderful III and my daughter (the slightly eccentric and tattooed Ms.Wonderful) my son stepped between us and handed me The Electric Church by Jeff Somers.

As my readers know, I appreciate well-designed book covers and The Electric Church, with its trade paperback sized presentation using the basic red, white and black colors, along with eye-tantalizing art on a finely grained surface is very nice. And like the cover any excellent science fiction work should be, as you read more and more of the book, you flip back to the front cover to see more and more in the art that you did not see the first time. Or the second time. Or even the third time.

The Electric Church has as its protagonist, paid assassin Avery Cates, who in his twenties is already considered old. While not nearly the best in his racket, he is good enough  and is known, far and wide, to keep his word. Mr. Cates is soon offered the impossible hit-job of a lifetime along with a promised payoff that even President Obama's pen couldn't write.

The monks are the only visible members of the Electric Church, and they promise eternal life if only the disciple will allow themselves to be changed, by all appearances, into a plastic-masked robed automaton whose whole purpose from then on seems to be to roam the streets offering eternal life.

The monks have never been seen to be coercive or violent even though their ranks grow geometrically while being fed mostly by drunks, drug-addicts, prostitutes and such, who prior to their conversion, demonstrated little religiosity, and usually no interest whatsoever in becoming a monk.

Avery Cates, being a murderer, and a bill collector (albeit, one who walks the streets rather than incessantly dialing from some crowded call-center in Mumbai) is pursued by The Crushers, violent untrained foot soldiers of the government, and also by the System Pigs, highly trained, professionals and efficient members of the world-wide police force.

The Electric Church has numerous and quite plausible gadgets and social scenarios which add greatly to the readers suspension of belief.

At the first mention of the Mulqer Codex, you'll want to read "Extracts from the Mulqer Codex" in the Appendix in the back of the book. I'm thinking this is a touch of the horrible award-winning Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell book that I discovered to be unreadable, but regardless, sported footnotes in gnat-sized print throughout its pages as if it were a book of actual fact, when actually it was less interesting than War and Peace, in the original Russian, which I don't read.

All in all, for the cover art with its fingertip appeal, for predicting the society it appears we are rapidly becoming, the fast-paced, never catch your breath writing, and the multiple mysteries ultimately being revealed, I bestow The Electric Church my highest recommendation, and have awarded it the coveted Five Sun MustoWn (Must Own) Award® from the MW Review of Books.

Typos:

Page 249  "a few softball questions inbetween  quoting the ..."

Begun: 03/26/2009   Finished: 04/18/2009 Purchased:  March 2009
Where:   barnesandnoble.com

B&N Net Rank:   255,531
Pages:  Trade:  353pp
Cover price:  $12.99
Purchase price:  $11.69 (new)
Genre:  Science Fiction

"Who Moved My Secret? satirizes every aspect of The Secret, including the historical manuscripts in which it was supposedly found and the famous people who used it throughout history (as well as hypothesizing about the other famous people who wished they'd known of it, but didn't and paid the price).

It explains the Law of Attraction, which means that if you're gullible enough to believe in it, Rhonda Byrne and her ilk will be attracted to your credit card number. In addition to its comic riffs, Who Moved My Secret? is augmented by lists, charts, monologue “editorials” by Harry Kurtzman — the atheist insult comic, dialogue sketches and affirmations, and choice bits of spiritual wisdom from the great teachers (such as the Great Chicken who provides all that soup for your soul) in an entertaining mélange."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Who Moved My Secret? displaying chapter titles such as: Life--It's All Your Fault, Why You Are Such a Loser, Be Grateful Asshole! and Everything is Energy, Whoa! tells you right where it's coming from. And where could you find a more awe-inspiring cadre of counselors than, B. Al Endall, Sheyna Butterfly (Past Life Caterer), Mark Creedmore (Author: Rubber Chicken Soup for the Soul) and "Just call me, 'Doctor Bobby'" (Graduate DeVry Medical School).

Author Jim Gerard noticed like I did, that the original Secret (not the ladies-only deodorant, but the teeny-tiny matchbox-sized book) repeated the same maxims over and over and over again as it struggled to fill more pages than a user's guide that comes with a free cellphone. As a matter of fact, his chapter five is titled, "Same Shit as in the First Four Chapters" and consists of one page.

If you've not read The Secret by Rhonda Bryne (which is what she will do in Hell) read it, (please purchase a used copy) or better yet read my review the one that Barnes & Noble would not post on their site. Go figure.

After having read The Secret and marvelling at the idea that millions of individuals could actually even kinda sorta-little-bit believe that prosperity and all other good things could be brought into being simply by the power of thought, Who Moved My Secret? became a book that had to be written.

It's too bad the The Secret franchise has generated so much lucre for so many entities, both here among the living, and also with the dead, the possessed and the recently again-popular Zombie crowd, because I'm certain that this same roiling river of gold, if you know what I mean, has managed to somehow wash this title into the brackish backwaters of bookland.

Begun: 05/02/2009   Finished: 05/05/2009 Purchased:  January 2008
Where:  

barnesandnoble.com

USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS

B&N Net Rank:  149,474
Pages:  Trade paperback, 117pp
Cover price:  $9.99
Purchase price:  $2.00(used)
Genre:  Parody

"THE EXTRAORDINARY AND TRUE STORY OF OXYCONTIN" --- Equal parts crime thriller, medical detective story, and business exposé, Pain Killer takes a hard-hitting look at how a powerful drug touted as the salvation for millions triggered a national tragedy. At its inception, the legal narcotic OxyContin was seen as a pharmaceutical dream, a "wonder" drug that would herald a sea change in medical care while reaping vast profits for its maker. It did do that; but it also unleashed a public health crisis that cut a swath of despair and crime through unsuspecting small towns, suburbs, and cities across the country"

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Pain Killer: A 'Wonder' Drug's Trail of Addiction and Death by Barry Meier had to cause multiple migraines in the halls of OxyContin's® creator, the Purdue Frederick Company, Inc.

Since Pain Killer was penned with zero input from Purdue Frederick, who did not respond to the author's offer of the same, the work reads like a proposed indictment before a grand jury. Although, I do think that author Meier presented the company and the drug industry in general, in a fair light.

You might be thinking that this is a book about OxyContin®, and how in the world could some author write 313 pages about it and expect anyone  not intimately involved with pain and its treatment to actually finish reading it?

Yes, I admit that Rush Limbaugh's unprecedented confession of OxyContin dependence whetted my appetite, and after having been seated on a grand jury for 18 months earlier in this century, where every single week we handed out indictments involving OxyContin, I developed a definite hunger to learn more about this extremely powerful and addicting pain-killing break-thru pharmaceutical.

And, as soon as Pain Killer popped up at Hamilton Books.com, I purchased it. And, after ripping through its shaped cardboard shipping package like a three year old tearing through Christmas wrapping, I immediately set it on my bookshelf and forgot about it. It didn't help that the obnoxious orange and yellow dust cover is about as inviting as opening a jury summons notice.

I had buyer's remorse, and thought, "How could a book about one drug (albeit, probably the most well-known opiate since the heroin craze of the 1950s and 60s) be all that interesting?" Months later when Pain Killer found its way into my reading rotation, I picked it up and read it in four days.

Rather odd, that it had no index pages whatsoever. Not that I actually normally read through the index pages.

Interesting, compelling, and eye-opening, Pain Killer weaves the so-sad story of Lindsay Meyers, an early victim of OxyContin around the history of the search to end intractable 24-hour-a-day pain and the all-consuming greed of a few individuals in few drug companies.

Read it, you'll be glad you did. You will come away knowing about the intricate and delicately balanced fight against chronic pain and dependence on pain killers, and the less than efficacious means that some drug companies merchandise their wares.

Typos:

Page 151  "[d]uring the second half of 2000  threre  were more overdose deaths..."
Page 282  "[a] warning letter saying   thy  believed the ad implied that OxyContin..."
Page 286  "[a]s more interested in busting doctors  that  bettering pain care."

Begun: 04/10/2009   Finished: 04/14/2009 Purchased:  November 2007
Where:   HamiltonBook.com

B&N Net Rank:  455,553
Pages:  Hardback, 323pp
Cover price:  $24.95
Purchase price:  $3.95 (new)
Genre:  History  Conspiracy & Scandal Investigations   Medication abuse  Oxycontin  Drug industry

"We take it for granted today that babies need love. But less than a century ago, psychologists warned women against showing their children "too much affection"-predicting dire consequences ranging from deadly disease to sexual dysfunction in adulthood. The story of how this conventional wisdom was finally shattered takes us into the life and the laboratory of Harry Harlow-workaholic, alcoholic, brilliant and brave, capable of caustic wit and cruelty-and into an era in which the scientific establishment was just beginning to understand the power of human emotion."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

For those of us born in the 1950s who've also spent our lives battling depression and reading wheel-barrow loads of self-improvement books in an incessant effort to simply bring us up to feeling some sort of normal, Love at GOON Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection will finally deliver a dollop of understanding, albeit decades too late.

At the risk of sounding sexist, this is a book that even though its about science, typically not a subject females are all that interested in, Love at Goon Park, being written by a woman, will, find many women who will discover this book to be even more interesting, intriguing and enlightening than the very macho Mr. Wonderful did.

(The only reason there is even a shred of decency or civility in me is due to the very few moments my mother spent with me when I was a very young child. You will not find a male who worships women more than I do. And, as lonely, since I don't treat them like crap, they all assume I am gay.)

My father, with thirteen brothers and sisters, and my mother, with twelve siblings, were in a situation where a parent being there for the infant or child was not that  crucial since there were so many other caregiver-relatives in their small farmhouses, along with the fact that everyone was working all day together, both on the land, and in the living room.

Love at Goon Park is a 336-paged biography of monkey-test pioneer Harry Harlow. It has the end notes I so dread, but they really aren't necessary to understand what author Deborah Blum has penned. There are also eight pages of black and white photos that help flesh-out the mind's eye.

If you've heard of a 'nameless' (and usually 'evil') monkey testing scientist, it was probably Dr. Harry Harlow. He was the leader in monkey testing, and, largely ignored, also the pioneer in humane monkey housing, feeding and care. His life's thrust was to determine, in a scientific manner, how early motherly love affected the adult life of a mammal.

In the final pages of the book, the author, leaning towards the Left political spectrum, tries to suggest that "it takes a village to raise a child." But then she apparently remembers the evidence refuting this failed idea that she presented in her previous 290 pages.

Dr. Harlow's work was begun in the middle of last century, when the prevailing scientific and societal attitude was that it was harmful to hug and hold your child. To love your children too much  was to render them weak and ineffectual adults.

I will forever remember in the late 1950s, as a second-grader, when I visited my first school psychologist and she asked me if my parents ever cuddled me. I told her I did not know if they did or not.

After school that day, once home, first thing I did was to grab the family dictionary and looked up the word 'cuddle.'

And then I cried.

Thank God for Harry Harlow proving what every mammal mother already knew from the beginning of time: "...if the monkey or the human doesn't learn love in infancy, he or she 'may never learn love at all.'"

Begun: 03/25/2009   Finished: 04/10/2009 Purchased:  July 2007
Where:   Daedalus Books

B&N Net Rank:   620,208
Pages:  Trade paperback, 336pp
Cover price:  $16.00
Purchase price:  unknown (new)
Genre:  Love: Psychological aspects   Love: Research

"In his provocative and compelling new book, America’s most widely read and most influential commentator casts his gimlet eye on our singular nation. Moving far beyond the strict confines of politics, George F. Will offers a fascinating look at the people, stories, and events–often unheralded–that make the American drama so endlessly entertaining and instructive."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation by George Will is simply re-prints of his newspaper columns and, being so, is quite good; I just wish it had been advertised as such.

Instead, I should have known when newspaper columns are repeated in book-form, they become the more lofty-sounding 'essays'.

The book is gathered into chapters such as: 'People', 'Governing', and "The  Game'.

Probably the most eloquent book review I could write is simply to repeat some of his sentences.

From his 'People' chapter:
"...[George] Washington pioneered a civic etiquette suitable for a democracy in which pre-eminence was to be based on behavior, not birth.  And of the nine presidents who owned slaves, only Washington freed his at his death."
(You might say he was a president setting a precedence...M.W.)

From his 'Governing' chapter:
"In 1973, Supreme Court justice and liberal icon William Douglas said:  'The Fairness Doctrine has no place in our First Amendment regime. It puts the head of the camel inside the tent and enables administration after administration to toy with TV and radio.'"

From his 'The Game' chapter:
(Writing about Ted Williams, whose noggin is frozen hard-as-a-carp, at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, in my own Scottsdale, Arizona, literally a stone's throw away from where I am typing this review)  "He hit a home run in his last time at bat--twice. He assumed his career was over--and he homered--when the Marine Corps called him to Korea (where No.9 flew an F-9 jet as wingman for a squadron commander named John Glenn). And on September 26, 1960, in the final at bat of his final game, in Boston's gray autumnal gloom, he homered."

One Man's America would be a good book for the bathroom, (that is unless you are regularly constipated) because these former newspaper columns are able to be easily read within the normal time of a squat.

It would also be a swell item to carry with you in your handbag to read between business appointments (nowadays, job interviews), and to read once, and then put away for the grandkids to peruse one-half century from now.

If you're partial to essays or, short-stories that wrap up within two or three pages, you'll love One Man's America.

reviewed: March 31, 2009

Begun: 07/23/2008   Finished: 08/14/2008 Typos:

Page 22  "In 1938  a there  was a back-lash in congressional elections..."

Purchased:  June 2008
Where:   barnesandnoble.com

B&N Net Rank:  1,719
Pages:  Hardback, 416pp
Cover price:  $26.95
Purchase price:  $16.97 (new)
Genre:  Popular Culture   Journalists

"The sleek, 222-foot, black auxiliary steamer Sea King left London on October 8, 1864, ostensibly bound for Bombay. The subterfuge was ended off the shores of Madeira, where the ship was outfitted for war. The newly christened CSS Shenandoah then commenced the last, most quixotic sea story of the Civil War: the 58,000-mile, around-the-world cruise of the Confederacy’s second most successful commerce raider. Before its voyage was over, thirty-two Union merchant and whaling ships and their cargoes would be destroyed. But it was only after ship and crew embarked on the last leg of their journey that the excursion took its most fearful turn."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Sea of Gray by Tom Chaffin is a work of love, from the delicious cover art to the intricate drawings of the many multiples of sails that a wind powered ship utilizes. If you like me, always wondered why ships on sailing never had illustrations of the sails, one look at the inside cover of this book will make it clear.

The Shenandoah, was a Confederate warship commissioned to damage U.S. merchant and whaling ships and thereby cause the citizens of the Union to petition for an early end to the first U.S. Civil War.

These were the days of harsh rules for the sailors and gentlemanly conduct towards the victims of war.

Since the CSS Shenandoah had a 200 horsepower coal-fed steam engine once spotted, it could easily catch up with any ship. The 'catching' sometimes took days, but catch they did. Once near, they would launch a cannon ball over the bow of the unarmed whaler or merchant ship, the ship would halt, and the process of determining whether the ship was Union-owned or not would begin.

If the vessel was not Union-owned, it would be set free undisturbed. If the ship was determined to be Union, all the supplies that the Confederate sailors could use were transferred to the Shenandoah along with the crew and passengers and then the ship was set afire and scuttled.

As you read the amounts of goods sent to the bottom of the ocean, along with the ships, it breaks your heart. We are once again reminded of the insanity of war.

The crew from the sunken ship is then offered to become members of the CSS Shenandoah or spend the rest of the sail in chains until they are dropped off at a convenient island, or transferred to another sailing ship.

Just a wonderful story that I found so easily readable I tore through it in three days.

If you're interested about the U.S. Civil War, sailing, or whaling this book will not disappoint you.

Typos:

Page 52  "...capable of producing two hundred  pounds   of horsepower..."
(horsepower is measured in watts, not pounds)
Page 122  "...the brass bearing of the  couppling  was cracked..."

Begun: 01/17/2009   Finished: 01/20/2009 Purchased:  January 2009
Where:   HamiltonBook.com

B&N Net Rank:   67,168
Pages:  Hardcover:  432pp
Cover price:  $25.00
Purchase price:  $3.95 (new)
Genre:   History  U.S. Civil War #1

"They were told as little as possible.

Their orders were to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and report for work at a classified Manhattan Project site, a location so covert it was known to them only by the mysterious address: 109 East Palace. There, behind a wrought-iron gate and narrow passageway just off the touristy old plaza, they were greeted by Dorothy McKibbin, an attractive widow who was the least likely person imaginable to run a front for a clandestine defense laboratory. They stepped across her threshold into a parallel universe--the desert hideaway where Robert Oppenheimer and a team of world-famous scientists raced to build the first atomic bomb before Germany and bring World War II to an end..."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Alone with him in the car on the way to the post office in 1967, my then 59 year old father, an electrical engineer out of the Milwaukee School of Engineering, in a frightened whisper told my middle brother that during World War Two he had worked for the Manhattan Project. That was all he ever revealed and the subject was never broached again.

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant tells an engaging and entertaining story of the atomic bomb design, assembly, and testing end of the vast Manhattan Project. Sixteen pages of glossy black and white photos help flesh out what words do not. Not one footnote makes it a delightful read.

Women! don't switch off, because this is a book written by  a woman of the New Mexico segment of the WWII British-U.S. atomic bomb race seen through the eyes and efforts of a woman who was actually there, Dorothy McKibbin. After all, only a woman could give title to such chapters as: 'The Bluest Eyes I've Ever Seen' and 'Baby Boom.'

Anyone with a brain the size of gnat can quickly dismiss the author's thoughts in the preface of a safer world had the incredibly expensive nuclear secrets painstakingly ferreted out at Los Alamos only been placed under the care of a 'strong international authority'.

A 'strong international authority' such as the Israel and U.S.A. hating United Nations, maybe? I could see it now, the U.N. with the atomic bomb:

Their Secretary General, Rama Lama Ding Dong, solemnly intoning, "America must halt support of the Zionists in their suppression of the peace-loving Palestinian farmers, basket weavers and rocket tossers, or by the authority vested in these United Nations we will be forced to explode an atomic weapon over the city of New York."

Dorothy McKibbin's mate died in 1931. In 1932, using the proceeds of a life insurance policy her young husband had wisely purchased, she and her infant son moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where earlier in her life, she had spent several months recovering from tuberculosis.

After being there for about ten years she was chosen by the visiting Robert Oppenheimer to man the portal to the ultra-secret Los Alamos atomic bomb lab.

This was at a time when the Allies strongly believed that Hitler's scientists, under the guidance of the as-genius-as-Einstein, non-Jew, Werner Heisenberg, were frantically working towards their own atom bomb. Our scientists and our military knew that the first nation to develop atomic weapons would win the war.

In 1943, U.S. victory was far from certain and one gifted physicist chosen to work at Los Alamos, and recently having fled from Nazi-controlled Europe, refused to be finger-printed for fear if the Allies lost the war, Hitler would be coming after the scientists who had worked on the bomb, and his finger-print record would only help in his own demise.

(After the end of the war, Dr. Heisenberg, while being held in a safe-house in England, was told that a joint United States and British effort had exploded two atomic bombs over Japan. When supplied with one fact, the weight of the plutonium used in the bomb, twenty minutes later he had drawn a blueprint of essentially the same device that the Allies had used to encourage Japan to surrender.)

Robert Oppenheimer designed the town of Los Alamos and directed the thousands of scientists, engineers, and normal folks into a team focused on building the atom bomb and 109 East Palace is the story of this tremendous national effort and successful result, and how one woman without a gun, without a rank, and without a husband, Dorothy McKibbin, held much of it together and mightily contributed to the effort.

reviewed: January 24th, 2009

Typos:

Page 68  "But there was another matter  than  bothered him as much,..." Begun: 01/11/2009   Finished: 01/13/2009 Purchased:  January 2009
Where:   barnesandnoble.com

USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
B&N Net Rank:  124,836
Pages:  Trade paperback, 424pp
Cover price:  $14.00
Purchase price:  $3.59 (new)
Genre:  History - United States: 20th Century
Military: Nuclear Warfare

"Stimulating, fluently written, and filled with fascinating analyses, here is a history of the Second World War that bridges the gap between accounts that overwhelm with detail and those that are simply too spare. A broad, busy canvas reveals what happened during the war and why, with political and strategic background, cogent discussions of battles and campaigns, and the importance of military intelligence. It offers new and considered insights into this vast conflict."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

If you knew nothing about World War II, and wanted to get up to speed quickly World War Two: The Untold Story would be an excellent primer with its maps, eight pages of b&w photos and the so many facts its pages are packed with. Don't be fooled by its rough-hewn appearance and large font, this twenty year old book is one of the finest books I have read on The War.

Being part of the 'Baby Boom' that resulted with the end of World War II, I grew up playing army, devouring war comic books, reading library books about the war, watching war movies and seeing b&w broadcast television series such as 'Combat'. And even I  learned many things I did not know about the 1939 to 1945 war with Germany and Japan.

• Things such as the American-made P-51 Mustang didn't become a viable fighter aircraft until it was mated with an English Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.
• That our 'breaking' of the Enigma-machine code was not due to a captured machine from a sinking German U-Boat, but was because Polish refugees fled to England with the commercially-available encoding device and immediately began working with British military intelligence.
• That an April 1945 bombing raid on Tokyo killed more people than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
• Lastly I learned that the real reason Japan finally surrendered was because the Mandarins in Tokyo didn't take long to figure out that they could not dig a bomb shelter deep enough for them to survive a direct hit from Oppenheimer's bomb.

Author Philip Warner has done an incredible job with his so easy to read writing style and by sticking to the facts, never taking a side. Although, being English, he was vehemently upset with British union dockworkers going on strike after the June 6th, 1944 D-Day and refusing to load re-supply ships bound for France.

Speaking of France, once you learn what many of its 110,000 soldiers did after being rescued with the British Expeditionary Force after the Dunkirk evacuation to England in May of 1940, you will completely understand why, in the 21st Century, France is doomed to become a Muslim nation ruled by Sharia Law.

World War Two: The Untold Story is simply a marvelously complete book about this horrible war that took tens of millions of lives.

reviewed: January 17, 2009

Typos:

Page 169  "It was assumed that anti- sumbarine devices, such as ..."
Page 227  "...was to arrange for a totally convincing service of messages to be sent..." (believe it should be series)
Page 257  "Wingate had made a spectacular foraye in 1943..." Begun: 01/13/2009   Finished: 01/16/2009 Purchased:  July 2007
Where:  Daedalus Books
B&N Net Rank:   541,015
Pages:  Trade paperback, 322pp
Cover price:  $9.95
Purchase price:  unknown (new)
Genre:  Military History World War: 1939-1945