Blog Archives
When the World Dies: Life and Death in an Age of Infamy
When the World Dies: Life and Death in an Age of Infamy is a sweeping mix of cultural criticism, personal memory, and political history. Author D. E. Davis tracks how bright hopes at the start of the twentieth century slid into world wars, genocide, and the nuclear age. He moves from early modernist art and literature to the trenches of the First World War, through Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Nanking, Auschwitz, Tiananmen Square, and the firebombing and atomic destruction of cities, then on into Cold War strategy and our current nuclear standoff. Throughout, he keeps circling one big claim. We live in an “Age of Infamy” in which totalitarian rule and total war still shape our lives and may yet end our civilization.
Davis has a clear, steady voice, and when he slows down to tell a story from his own life, like the bells at Berkeley on Armistice Day or his family’s memory of a lost doughboy, the prose hits hard and feels human. His summaries of films and novels, from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to The Sun Also Rises, are lively and often fun to read, and I liked how he treats them as warning shots rather than as homework from a syllabus. At times, the book felt quite full to me, with names, titles, dates, and quotations arriving in quick succession, so I occasionally felt like I was moving through a dense lecture. The tone stays serious and controlled, and every section is clearly considered, although a few transitions between cultural critique and military history felt a little quick.
I admire how blunt Davis is about the crimes of every side. He refuses to keep infamy only with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and he includes Allied firebombing and the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki inside the same moral frame. He treats Oppenheimer not as a stock tragic genius but as a figure who forces us to look straight at what we built and what we keep ready to use. I felt the fear behind his talk of a “dangerous precipice,” and his description of nuclear tests and policy debates left me with a knot in my stomach. I appreciate how boldly he argues that we have slipped into an almost permanent moral abyss, and it pushed me to think hard about where we really stand.
The call for “new Charlemagnes” who might sponsor learning, art, and a kind of recivilization stayed with me after I finished the book. I liked the image, and I liked his insistence that culture, truth, and moral courage are not soft extras but the only real tools we have against nuclear and political ruin. The problems he lays out feel huge, and the rescue he imagines is noble. I would recommend When the World Dies to readers who enjoy big, idea-heavy history, people who like to see novels and films woven into discussions of war and politics, and anyone who wants a passionate, worried, thoughtful guide to the past century’s worst impulses and our present risks. It is not light reading, but if you are willing to sit with deep questions, I think you’ll enjoy this book.
Pages: 339 | ASIN : B0GHCHQK5T
Escape From Kolyma
![Escape from Kolyma: Aborigin Is a Bear Region by [Litvin PhD, Chester]](https://i0.wp.com/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51iGty7PlPL.jpg?w=604&ssl=1)
Chester Litvin, PhD has woven together an Orwellian world of doctrine, dogma, and propaganda in his book, Escape from Kolyma: Aborigin is a Bear Region. Psychological warfare has run rampant in the form of super-viruses that attack the psyche. Citizens are forced to beg, steal, borrow, and worse just to get by. Concentration camps and dictatorship have come back into fashion, and the people of Aborigin are suffering. The super-viruses are turning good people bad, and stripping the people of their personalities. They are being brainwashed and turning on each other. Professor Kryvoruchko is aware of the widespread infection, and may be Aborigin’s and the world’s only hope.
Many parts of the book are reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany, complete with propaganda and concentration camps. The cultural rift present is also indicative of a Hitler-like state. Convince one man he is better than another and he will let you pick his pocket. Give him someone to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. That’s a paraphrase of a Lyndon B. Johnson quote about racism, but it applies here. Readers will draw many similarities between the culture of Litvin’s Aborigin and racism and “otherism” still found present all over the world. This is a divide-and-conquer mentality that worked wonders for Hilter, and still works in politics and socially in other areas.
The book is scary to me in its realism. I don’t believe that these are things that could never happen. I think psychological warfare isn’t a half-step from where we are now. In America, in particular, racism is still alive and well. People still continue to look down on groups of people they see as “less thans.” In the book, groups of people are stripped of every possession and jailed. They are killed. This kind of hatred for others is contagious. This kind of infection continues to spread if it isn’t stopped. I’m afraid we are closer to this kind of thing happening than I’d like to admit.
A part of the book that particularly bothered me was the children emulating the adults that they watched. Apparently, the children were also infected. They, too, were brainwashed. They mimicked what they saw being done before them down to raping and killing others. The children became thugs. There seemed to be an entire loss of innocence. This may be disturbing for readers, but it’s important. Children become what they know. They imitate what they see. This serves as a reminder for people to be worthy of emulation.
I will say that the book is complex. This wasn’t an easy Sunday afternoon kind of read, and with its subject matter, it shouldn’t be. I found myself re-reading parts that I didn’t understand. It was not always easy for me to follow. It requires some time and thought to get through. With that being said, sentence structure, grammar, and spelling were pretty impeccable.
Litvin delves into some unpleasant scenarios for the sake of opening eyes it seems to me. He gives some reminders about how easily it is for us, as humans, to lose our humanity or to follow blindly as sheep. He keeps some underdogs in there for us to cling to as we grapple through the book. It’s not an easy read, but serves as an important reminder. As Churchill once said, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” This sentiment echos through these pages.
Pages: 432 | ASIN: B07N3SXLYV
Outlawry
Dr. Jerry Hammersmith Author Interview
Letters to Mary Susan chronicles the life and adventures of a Missouri outlaw that is in prison for manslaughter and is trying to reconnect with his daughter through letters. What was your inspiration behind this story?
The book’s main character, Jim Howard, was one of my father’s boyhood heroes and he’d retained “Jim Howard stories” for over 70 years. I’d promised him, in 2002 to make these stories central to a book with Jim Howard as its main character.
This is a great historical fiction novel that got a lot of the details right. What kind of research did you do for this novel to keep things accurate?
I did a lot of online and library research re: pre-Civil War, Civil War, post-Civil War “outlawry (“guerilla warfare”), Cattle drives, the rise of Montana outlawry and the “Wild Bunch,” Big Muddy outlawry, leading to personal interviews and old newspaper/library reviews regarding homesteading and personal interviews with prison personnel regarding prison characteristics as well as older individuals with recollections of the Prison Chaplain’s, Howard’s lawyer’s and Howard’s daughter’s roles in his release from jail.
What I liked about James’s character was that he held nothing back and didn’t try to cast himself in a good light, just told it like it is. What themes did you want to capture while you were writing his character?
That redemption and a new start is possible for us all.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
A book of poetry that I hope to have ready before the end of this year.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Twitter
![Letters to Mary Susan: From her Outlaw Father by [Hammersmith, Jerry]](https://i0.wp.com/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51zCd62rq4L.jpg?w=604&ssl=1)
A historical fiction that draws the reader into the near past
In his historical novel, LETTERS TO MARY SUSAN, Jerry Hammersmith chronicles the life and adventures of a Missouri outlaw, James Marion Howard. The novel is narrated by an aging Jim Howard as he begins to serve a sentence of fifteen years for Manslaughter. His lonely prison cell in the newly built Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert is the impetus to repent and reconnect with his past.
Through Jim’s reflections and letters to his long-estranged daughter, Mary Susan, the novel becomes a chronicle of the life of a Missouri outlaw who fled post Civil War America, leaving behind his wife and family and seeking escape from the law by racing across the western states, robbing stage coaches, trains and banks, until a posse chases him across the 49th parallel and into the newly formed Saskatchewan, Canada. He finds a new life and becomes a citizen of Canada after fulfilling the homestead requirements and establishing a new identity there.
As Howard recalls his outlaw past, Hammersmith leads the reader into the saga of the American Civil War, the tragedy of post war devastation and the flight of an insurgent guerrilla on the run to homestead in the ‘promised land’ of Canada. The surprising identity of that outlaw and his place in the small community of Teddington, Saskatchewan provides a tale of adventure, mystery and passion.
The twists and turns of this amazing story offer a glimpse into the ravages of the Civil War and the aftermath of the brutal and senseless vengeance that stole the lives of many young men. It leads the reader to an understanding of the path of a man’s choices and the hope that redemption is possible for us all.
