Book roundup, part 40

I’ve been re-reading mostly Discworld novels lately and am marveling once again at the genius and decency of Sir Terry Pratchett. GNU. So only two new novels in the fiction area for this installment, but hey, might be a good time to revisit your favorite Discworld novels.

Non-fiction

American Gun, by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson ★★★★☆

Excellent, deeply researched history of the AR-15, including why it was created, its rocky beginnings in the Vietnam war with the army introducing changes to the design that gave the M-16 a tendency to jam, causing the deaths of many American soldiers.

From a letter from a Marine in Vietnam, read into the record during the Senate hearings on the fiasco of the M-16 in Vietnam: “Believe it or not, do you know what killed most of us? Our own rifle.”

(The AR-15 and M-16 are functionally the same except for the M-16 having full-auto capability and there are myriad cosmetic tweaks to the AR-15. You can famously get one in pink if you so choose.)

The book then tracks how the weapon went from a symbol of failure in Vietnam to a symbol of protection and strength in the post-9/11 era, while at first being met with disgust by hunters in its introduction to the civilian market. No self-respecting hunter wanted to use a battlefield weapon system to hunt. A hunter was a marksman, not a lead sprayer.

A more innocent time.

American Gun is full of nuggets like that the name assault rifle is a translation of the German Sturmgewehr, storm rifle. (The Nazis loved using the term Sturm for all kinds of war things. Much strength, such fascist.) While a German invention in response to changing battlefield conditions, they never managed to produce it in large enough numbers to matter, but the idea, a lighter rifle with smaller-calibre ammunition and a high rate of fire, was an idea whose time had come, as research showed that most soldiers used their weapons at short distances and indiscriminately. And most soldiers were and are terrible shots. A terrified 19-year-old is not going to excel at target shooting.

Contrary to the public perception of soldiers as coolheaded marksmen, many fighters in battle were frightened young men pouring lead not at specific targets but in the general direction of the enemy. Combat was often at fairly close range—several hundred yards. Though statistical support for his assertions was criticized in later years, Marshall held great sway with the Pentagon. His message: whoever fired the most lead at the enemy in a battle won.

Also, and the book swears this is true, guess who was the first person outside Armalite Research to fire a prototype AR-15?

John Wayne.

I Want to Burn This Place Down, by Maris Kreizman ★★★☆☆

Kreizman grew up in a well-off family in a New York suburb as a good, bookish kid determined to do the right things to succeed in life. She also had type I diabetes, the management of which took up a vast amount of energy in her and her parents’ life.

I Want to Burn This Place Down is a thoughtful and somehow light and pleasant description of her growing radicalization on learning about how American society really works and the types of people it rewards. As we are all learning every day these days.

I had no reason not to trust authority. Authority was the police and the evening news and the three newspapers my parents got delivered every day. We were their target audience. It did not occur to me to consider their biases and blind spots, and certainly, I never bothered to get anyone else’s perspective. Newspapers were not inclined to report on police abuses, and local news made the world look like a dangerous place, with kidnappings and robberies and police bravely fighting on the front lines of the war on drugs that was turning city streets into chaos. In the pre-internet days, it took a lot of effort to find out how the world actually worked. Especially if you had no reason to question the facts put before you. Especially if you were a sheltered kid, living in a New York City suburb. Especially if you were white.

Recommended.

Blood Royal, by Eric Jager ★★★★☆

Blood Royal is fascinating and well worth your time if you have even a smidge of interest in history, though the marketing is a bit misleading as it implies a whodunit. This is not a whodunit, but a detailed record of a criminal investigation in Paris in 1407 with a really obvious suspect.

On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans, controversial brother of the French king, had been hacked to death in a Paris street by a band of masked assassins. After knocking him from his mount, they split open his head with an ax, splattered his brains on the pavement, and stabbed his body to a bloody pulp before throwing it on a pile of mud and disappearing into the dark. The crime stunned the nation and paralyzed the government, since Louis had often ruled in place of the periodically insane king, Charles VI. As panic seized Paris, an investigation began. In charge was Guillaume de Tignonville, provost of Paris—the city’s chief of police. Knight, diplomat, man of letters, and man of law, he was also very likely one of history’s first detectives.

It’s amazing that de Tignonville’s account has survived to present day and been analyzed like this. Marvelous. A few things about life in Paris in 1407 that struck out at me include that the nights were truly dark. There was a severely enforced lights out at 8 p.m. due to the fear of fire. Also, people didn’t know their birthdays or their exact age, just vaguely how old they were. Also, the superstition that underlies everything is astonishing.

If you have any kind of interest in history, Blood Royal is highly recommended.

Fiction

Scorpio, by Marko Kloos ★★★☆☆

Corvus, by Marko Kloos ★★★☆☆

Scorpio and Corvus continues Kloos’s Frontlines series about humanity’s war with the mysterious and terrifying Lankies. This continuation is now called Frontlines: Evolution, and it does make sense for Kloos to swap out our previous protagonist Andrew Grayson as he’s aging out of combat duties. Instead we get Alex Archer, a young woman who grew up literally hiding from the Lankies on the colony world Corvus, which the Lankies had retaken from humanity.

Let’s be clear that if you’ve enjoyed the rest of the series, this evolution capably continues the story and as usual Kloos is deft at both character development and thrilling battle sequences with an eye to the effects of combat on the human spirit.

My one note is that the mysteriousness of the Lankies is getting old. Humanity has been at war with them for decades and still hasn’t figured out how the Lankies communicate or how their technology works? Maybe more researchers and fewer huge battleships?

Be that as it may, Scorpio and Corvus are engaging and humane military sci-fi.

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