Day 59 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

Well, I couldn’t decide what to read next, so I started four books.
Endurance by Alfred Lansing about the 1915 adventure of Ernest Shackleton.
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie about the last Tsar of Russia: Nicholas II.
Hitler: A Biography by Ian Kershaw (pretty evident what this is about).
Get Off the Unicorn by Anne McCaffrey (sci-fi/fantasy collection of short stories).

I probably won’t comment on Get Off the Unicorn until I’m finished with it – since it’s a collection of short stories, not a novel. Anne McCaffrey is in my top ten list of favorite authors – and I’ve only read her Pern series (well, most of it – I still have four books left). She was the first influential female sci-fi author… and her Pern series is brilliant, so I fully expect to like this collection.

Next up: Endurance by Alfred Lansing. There’s a rather long story behind my interest in this, so get comfy. It all begins with my love of Shakespeare. One day, not so long ago, my friend Aimee asked me if I’d ever seen Kenneth Branagh’s movie adaptation of Hamlet. I hadn’t. So I ordered it. I watched it. I was blown away. All of that led me to pick up other movies directed or starring Kenneth Branagh.

On top of all of that, I love history and when I saw there was an A&E miniseries called Shackleton – The Greatest Survival Story of All Time, starring Kenneth Branagh… well, what was I to do? I bought it. I watched it. I was blown away. This true story is mind blowing. I then picked up a documentary entitled The Endurance, narrated by Liam Neeson. Amazing.

Ernest Shackleton was an explorer and wanted to be the first to reach the South Pole. Having failed in the attempt, he raised money for what he called the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. He wanted to traverse Antarctica. In October of 1915, his ship, the Endurance, gets stuck in an ice floe in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. The ship is unable to break free and eventually sinks. They are 1,200 miles away from the nearest outpost. On ice, on the sea, with limited supplies. No one back in civilization knows where they are, let alone that they’re in trouble.

He and his 27 men had only one recourse: to get themselves out. The disasters that piled up – one after another – are nothing short of incredible. Their feats of courage – legendary. And despite the odds and the obstacles they face for over a year on the ice, Shackleton got his men to safety – not one perished.

Well, okay, now you know the story, so I’m not sure how much commentary I’ll have on the book. Chapter one starts with the sinking and abandonment of the ship. I haven’t read further, but there are a number of photos included in the book (which are also in the documentary above). The expedition’s photographer saved a number of plates and it’s amazing to see history: the snow, the ice, the ship clothed with both. Good stuff!

Anyway, I can’t wait to see what little tidbits of Lansing has uncovered in his research on the expedition.

The biography on Hitler by Ian Kershaw is the one book I’ve delved the deepest into – and that only about 80 pages (out of nearly 1,000 – and this is the abridged edition).

So far he has covered (briefly) Hitler’s childhood, and more in-depth, his years in Vienna, Munich and World War I. What I have come to like about this book is that Kershaw presents several views, opinions and eye-witness accounts. He points out who/what is credible or not – and more importantly, why they are or are not credible. Then he sums everything up with what he believes to be the truth about the topic at hand.

I find it interesting, and yet not totally unexpected, is that Hitler was considered polite (but distant), self-contained, withdrawn and had few, if any, real friends.

During his time in Vienna and Munich, he lived primarily off of his ‘orphan’s pension’ and money from his aunt. He only worked (and that was his painting) when he had to. He was considered lazy by his roommates during those years.

Interestingly enough, most people recounted him as not being antisemitic – at least no more than anyone else in Vienna at that time. They say the two subjects that roused him from his dour state were the Jesuits and the “Reds.” He even had Jewish business acquaintances and “friends.”

According to Kershaw, it wasn’t until WWI, when he enlisted in the army at the age of twenty-five that, “it gave him for the first time in his life a cause, a commitment, comradeship, an external discipline, a sort of regular employment, a sense of well-being, and – more than that – a sense of belonging” (page 51).

He was held in high regard by his superiors, he was a committed and courageous soldier but he was still seen as an oddity. His comrades knew that if they wanted to get a rise out of him, all they had to do was say something defeatist (real or imagined) about the war. This sent Hitler “off the deep end.”

This should be an interesting read.

Finally we have Robert K. Massie’s 1967 Nicholas and Alexandra. I’ve always been interested in the story of the last of the Romanov’s – and this is considered the ‘definitive’ work on the imperial family. Massie is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and in his introduction, he talks about how he came to investigate and write about the Romanovs.

It had been speculated that Imperial Russia fell because of Alexis: the only son of Nicholas and Alexandra. Alexis had hemophilia. The author’s oldest son also suffered from hemophilia. Thus the study of this empire took on more of a personal note. It is because of Alexis’ hemophilia that his mother, Empress Alexandra, turned to Gregory Rasputin to deal with the agonies inflicted by the disease on her son.

Rasputin, seemingly able to alleviate Alexis from the disease, also caused havoc for the imperial family. As Massie quotes in his introduction, “Alexander Kerensky, the last prime minister of the post-tsarist Provisional Government said, ‘If there had been no Rasputin, there would have been no Lenin.’ If this is true, it is also true that if there had been no hemophilia, there would have been no Rasputin” (page xi).

The first chapter of the book sets the stage. Massie describes Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg in particular) in 1894, and the life of the imperial family at that time. Chapter two covers the early years of Nicholas II – and touches on the influence of the dogma of one of his tutors.

I can’t wait to get deeper into this book!

Happy reading!