Bernard DeVoto. The Year of Decision, 1846. 1942; Digital History Books, 2018. E-book.

Bernard DeVoto was a highly esteemed historian one or two generations ago. My father owned this book, but I never read it while I lived with my parents. DeVoto’s works still have a lot to say. The Year of Decision, 1846 reads like a novel. In it we get the scope of events that made 1846 so significant in American history.

DeVoto tells us there are some great historical ironies. President Polk achieved most of his goals for the country and could be considered successful, yet he only served a single term. DeVoto considers him the one strong president between Jackson and Lincoln.

Ironically also, probably the least competent military leader in the Mexican War would be seen as a hero and become the next president, Zachary Taylor. He also suggests that the death of Joseph Smith was not a bad thing for Mormonism. Not only was there a new martyr, but the church would be led by a politically savvy organizer who could bring the group to stability—unlike most of the other social and religious experiments of the nineteenth century.

The Year of Decision, 1846 is mostly about the American West. The Mormons succeeded where others like Brook Farm, the Shakers, Oneida, etc. either failed or at best continue to exist on the margins. 1846 saw the fulfillment of Polk’s vision for America “from sea to shining sea.” Texas became a state. California fell into American hands. New Mexico (today’s Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada) was conquered. Oregon, Washington State, and Idaho would become undisputedly American.

Besides heroes of the Mexican War (notably Winfield Scott and Stephen Watts Kearney), the other heroes are the so-called Mountain Men—scouts like like Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith, Moses “Black” Harris, and Jim Clyman—who knew the West and could lead their countrymen westward.

Clyman was an especially interesting character, almost a symbol. He was born in Virginia in 1792 on a farm owned by George Washington (whom he met); he died in Napa, California, in 1881, among the westward vanguard. He was living in Illinois during the Black Hawk War and served in the militia with Abraham Lincoln. He worked as a surveyor with Alexander Hamilton’s son. He seemed to be everywhere and knew his stuff.

There are some villains in the story as well. John C. Fremont does not come off well at all. Neither does a promoter by the name of Lansford Hastings. Hastings had written a book promoting the settlement of California which claimed an easier route there than the Oregon Trail.

Clyman exhorted people in 1846 not to take that route—some, like a former governor of Missouri, listened to Clyman and made the trip with time to spare. One rather large group of around 95 settlers followed Hastings’ route and are collectively known today as the Donner Party. Thirty-five did manage to survive. At least one of those survivors comes across as downright evil.

DeVoto has an interesting and probably accurate analysis of Mormonism. It adopted a number of movements or ideas trending at the time—revival meetings, Adventist prophecies, religious communes, fraternal organizations like the Masons, Transcendentalism, and health fads (think of Sylvester Graham, whose eponymous crackers are still popular today).

The Year of Decision, 1846 also notes the complicated lead-in to the Mexican War. The only time (and it was brief) that I ever studied this 1846 war was in graduate school. The professor called it a theft and an example of naked imperialism. According to DeVoto it was a little more complicated than that.

For obvious if unrealistic reasons, Mexico never recognized the independence of the Texas Republic. Mexico threatened retaliation if Texas were ever admitted as a state of the United States. This took place in 1846.

It appears that Polk and Mexican strongman Santa Anna were approaching an agreement which included payment to Mexico for diplomatic maneuvering as well as money for much of the territory which ultimately would be ceded to the United States after the war. America might have obtained much of that territory without fighting.

However, before an agreement could be reached on the various issues, Santa Anna was overthrown by a nationalist government that called for no compromise and, if possible, a reconquest of Texas.

Since the United States and England were also bickering over the Oregon Territory (54°40′ or fight!), the beginning of 1846 looked like it might introduce the United States to wars with two countries.

Much of DeVoto’s book is the saga of how the Oregon dispute was settled and especially how the Mexican War was won. All of these issues had to do with America’s West. 1846 is really the year that the United States became a continental North American country and power.

We read some about Thoreau and Lincoln—both opposed the Mexican War—and we see how the Democratic Party would be split along sectional lines and how the Whigs would fade away. In spite of all the political compromising that took place in 1846, America would come to compromise less in the next fifteen years.

DeVoto shows how that began in 1846. Since Texas already had slavery, Texas would be admitted as a slave state. But what about all the other new territory? An amendment to a law was passed noting that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery, so the new territory beyond Texas would also prohibit slavery. While a compromise on the issue would be worked out in 1846, that was the last time it happened.

DeVoto shows there would be no further lasting compromise on this issue, a new party would be formed out of the ashes of the Whigs, and many young officers who cut their teeth in battle in Mexico would fight each other fifteen years later.

DeVoto observes or believes that Grant more than anyone would remember the usefulness of artillery and rifles. “Lieutenant Grant learned about firepower” in six hours. (192) He notes that Winfield Scott had an overall understanding of what it would take to win a war more than anyone else. So with Scott’s Anaconda Plan and Grant’s relentless sieges, the Confederacy was surrounded and doomed.

He suggested that both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis (Davis was a West Point grad and a colonel in Mexico) were too “old school” to be as effective as they could be. DeVoto notes sarcastically that Davis was “the one military strategist whom Robert E. Lee was never able to defeat.” (207)

There is a lot of truth in DeVoto’s interpretations as we can see with over a century’s hindsight (not quite a century in the original when DeVoto was writing in 1942). American History classes in the school where I teach used to conduct paper war games for their Civil War units. Because of its larger population and greater industrialization, the students playing for the North usually won the “war.” One year that the South won, the students playing for the South used the Anaconda Plan on the North and chose different military leaders, Longstreet and Forrest instead of Lee and Beauregard, for example. Sure, it is alternate history at the high school level, but it may illustrate some of DeVoto’s points.

Thoreau was living at Walden Pond in 1846, and that was the year he was jailed one night for opposing the Mexican War and slavery by not paying his poll tax. Another well-known non-fiction writer, Francis Parkman, was exploring the Oregon Trail. This would become his book entitled The Oregon Trail.

One of the most poignant parts of The Year of Decision, 1846 is Parkman’s observations of the Western Indian tribes, especially the Sioux with whom he lived for about three weeks. Back then the few white trappers, scouts, and settlers made peace with the Indians. The Indian wars in the West would not begin for another decade.

Parkman believed that the Plains Indians he observed could not withstand encounters with civilization because of inherent cultural weaknesses. “…[They] had a culture but no character, they were helpless against the world and even in selfhood—they must go down.” (304) By this he did not mean that whites must fight them, but that they could not possibly even comprehend the culture that was coming. Even most of their leaders had no idea of what it meant to plan for the future.

There are hundreds of such fascinating characters and details. I could go on and on. I wonder, for example, if Uncle Billy in a couple of Bret Harte’s stories including “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” got his name from the nickname of one of the members of the Donner Party.

The Year of Decision, 1846 reads like a novel with many direct quotations and multiple plot lines. The various lines, though, do come together—pointing to what America and especially the American West would become.

Alexander McCall Smith. La’s Orchestra Saves the World. New York: Random, 2008. Print.

While we still enjoy the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency stories the best, Alexander McCall Smith for the most part writes enjoyable stories. Whatever one says about Smith, it is clear that he loves people. It does not mean that there is no villain in his tales—think of the ubiquitous and diabolical Violet Sephoto—but he does present his characters with hope and joy.

Lavender (“La”) Stone is no different. She comes of age right before World War II and, like most Brits, did her part. The title comes from her successful attempt to organize a small band or orchestra in her small town (village in England). The band included some men from a nearby Royal Air Force (RAF) base.

She also does her part by changing her lawn into a vegetable garden and helping an aging neighbor care for his chickens. The villain in this story is Hitler, with some support from her unfaithful husband. Her in-laws, on the other hand, treat her well.

There is a lot more, of course. The novel really is an overview of La’s life in college just before the war until her fifties when she gets involved with the British “Ban the Bomb” movement in the sixties.

Does she literally save the world? Of course not, but she like so many citizens does her part to boost morale and keep things going in spite of what may be going on all around her.

The sentiment is not unlike that of Our Town or even Casablanca‘s Rick Blaine who notes that what we do may not amount to a hill of beans. Yes, but many hills of beans can feed a lot of people and otherwise do good. We are created in God’s image and for that reason alone have potential to make a difference in spite of setbacks and circumstances beyond our control.

Os Guinness. A Free People’s Suicide. Downers Grove IL: Intervarsity P, 2012. Print.

Once many years ago I heard Os Guinness speak. I cannot say that I recall much about it except that he was an Englishman who come to America and one of my friends was excited about him speaking at our college. Though Guinness has an English accent—Oxford and all that—he considers himself Irish. He has lived in the United States for a long time.

A Free People’s Suicide takes its title from a famous speech by Abraham Lincoln which says in part, “As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” This was spoken two decades before the Civil War. Lincoln expressed confidence that size and geography would keep the United States free from foreign conquest. If America were to lose its freedom, it would come from within.

While A Free People’s Suicide can apply generally to Western Civilization, it takes a specific look at the United States. It is thorough and effective.

As an English teacher and reader, what impressed me the most was that this book is simply one of the best examples of nonfiction writing I have read in a long time. I cannot say I believe everything the author does, but I rarely see such good writing. The logic is impeccable. The organization is effective. The sources are not trivial. The language is tight. The reader sees that Guinness knows what he is talking about.

Back in the sixties there was a book called The Suicide of the West. The thesis of that book was that the West’s embrace of socialism and communism under the guise of liberalism would ultimately lead to the decline of Western civilization. A little over a hundred years ago there was a book based on a speech called The Conquest of the United States by Spain which warned about the United States overextending itself through imperialism.

Guinness does touch on these ideas a little. He points out how other empires fell because they had overextended themselves. Rome was of special interest because it had begun as a republic. However, mostly what his book does is explain what freedom is and how Britain and British North America before the Revolution and then the United States afterwards got to be bastions of freedom.

Guinness emphasizes that with freedom comes responsibility. A free society is one in which the people exercise moral self-control. I think of the lines from “America the Beautiful”:

Confirm our soul
With self-control
Our liberty with law

The term Guinness uses to describe this is virtue.

To have virtue, he says, there must be faith. Our culture is rooted in Judaism and Christianity, but even secular philosophers followed Aristotle and Cicero to emphasize that virtue is necessary for mankind’s success and comes from some kind of higher belief or ideal. Guinness himself is a Christian, but he even cites contemporary atheists who promote virtue based on their beliefs.

Then, to have faith, there must be freedom—freedom to embrace and live by a set of beliefs without fear of recrimination or compulsion. Why? So people will have clear consciences and be able to live a virtuous life.

Guinness notes that this triad of freedom, faith, and virtue is more of a cycle than a three-legged stool, but if any of these things fail, then we will lose our freedom. We will lose it not by conquest, at least not at first, but by suicide.

A Free People’s Suicide is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. (Burnham’s Suicide of the West was pessimistic.) It examines history and philosophical truths. Just as with many individuals, there is potential for growth or suicide, so it is with our culture and our country.

Guinness is not especially political. He has strong criticisms of just about every political stripe. Nor does he especially call for religion or religious revival in this book. He is looking at a free society made up of believers of all kinds.

No doubt his biggest concern, unlike Burnham’s in the sixties, is not Communism. He expresses more concern about what is happening in the culture, especially in academia. So much of academia has embraced a simplistic postmodernism—a “philosophy” even more simplistic than Marxism.

Postmodernism tells us that truth does not exist, and every moral or logical appeal is simply meaningless words in a power play. I am correct not because I have used deductive reasoning or the scientific method or even divine revelation. Truth does not exist anyhow. The only way people are persuaded is by force.

This reminds me of another speech by Lincoln, the 1860 Address at the Cooper Institute:

…what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly—done in acts as well as words. Silence will not be tolerated—we must place ourselves avowedly with them. [Italics in original]

The ramifications are clear. If we are forced to think a certain way, then we are not free.

That perhaps is a fear, but there is also a hope. If we truly understand what freedom means—that it is not a mere social construct devised by dead white males, that we understand history and its importance—then we can continue to be free.

I once had a friend who liked to use yellow highlighter when he read. He occasionally would say that he read a book or article that he just wanted to dip in a bucket of yellow ink. A Free People’s Suicide is like that. It is direct, it is unified, it is inspiring. It is looking for truth. It is eminently quotable, but it is not merely clever. It is serious thinking by a serious thinker to get the rest of us to think seriously, too.

Ken Wiley. D-Days in the Pacific with the U. S. Coast Guard. Havertown PA: Casemate, 2010. E-book.

This is a folksy, honest account of one man’s experience in the Pacific during World War II. Anyone in the Coast Guard will tell you that one of the Coast Guard heroes is Douglas Munro, the only Coastie to received the Congressional Medal of Honor. (He has had two cutters and one Navy ship named after him). Munro received his medal as a result of bravery while piloting a landing craft full of Marines during World War II.

Even in the seventies, when I was in the Coast Guard, the Marines retained a certain memory and respect for the Coast Guard because they were guys that had to have their heads above the gunwales of landing craft while they were navigating the craft ashore. During the war, many such craft were manned by Coasties because they had had experience and training in small craft because of their everyday port safety and rescue operations.

Mr. Wiley tells us of his experience in the Pacific. He begins with a famous quotation: “The Coast Guard and Marines stopped the Japs while the Army and Navy mobilized.” (196)

Wiley was the fourth of five sons from a small Texas town. All five would join the military, one was killed in the war. He enlisted in 1943. Within a year he would be in charge of an LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel) a.k.a. a Higgins Boat. As is typical of the Coast Guard, he abbreviates certain words to indicate the way they are pronounced, so coxswain becomes cox’n and boatswain becomes bos’n.

This is a story of maturity. He begins by describing his rather innocent and carefree life in small-town America in the thirties. Even though he was not quite twenty when the war ended, he had become a man. He had seen a lot and done a lot.

The title suggests his activity. The term d-day in the military simply referred to the day when a certain activity, usually an invasion, would begin. Today when we speak of D-Day, capitalized, we think of June 6, 1944, when the Allies began their amphibious invasion of mainland Europe.

But in the Pacific, there were many D-Days, many days when the invasion of a particular island or land area would begin. Wiley himself was involved in a total of seventeen different such landings or invasions in the Pacific. Even though he was too young to have been involved in Guadalcanal, he does tell of some co-workers who had stories about that. He reminds us that “The Guadalcanal and Tulagi operations was all Coast Guard and Marines…It was the same up the Solomon chain, new Guinea, North Africa, and Italy. The Coast Guard led the way.” (181-187)

Like many raw recruits, Wiley was pretty naive about what even basic training would be like. He was brought to reality fairly quickly. (This reviewer was similarly naive. A Coast Guard friend once said to me, “You looked like you thought you were coming to summer camp.” I thought I was.)

D-Days in the Pacific has many anecdotes illustrating the savagery and commitment the Japanese fighters displayed. When they saw the way they treated captives, “It was little wonder American troops hardened their emotions toward this sort of enemy.” (2032) My father was a veteran of the Pacific War, too. Whenever he spoke of people or products from Japan, he always used the word Japanese. But whenever he spoke the enemy he fought in the war, they were Japs. Wiley’s language is similar and typical of the men of their generation.

While there are plenty of descriptions of intense fighting and some very clever strategic landings, there is also much humor. The men learned to get along and trust each other. Humor lightened things up. Wiley’s LCVP was attached to the USS Middleton a troop transport ship. One evening when the men were listening to Tokyo Rose, she bragged that the Japanese had sunk the Middleton with all hands on board. “We all had a good laugh at that bit of news.” (2130) Propaganda, indeed.

They had many close calls. One rescue involved going behind Japanese lines to get some American commandos. Several times Japanese units tried to disguise themselves as Americans. Once, one such unit gave an outdated password. They said they had been out of touch for a few days. So then one of the men asked, “Who did slinging Sammy Baugh play for?” They guessed a number of baseball teams, all not even close.

Another time someone asked a similar Japanese infiltrator who pitched for the Dodgers in the last World Series. He answered, “Joe DiMaggio.”

Another time one of the men on a landing craft recognized that a few soldiers on shore were Japanese, not American. How could he tell? By the scent of the cigarettes they were smoking.

Wiley does refer briefly to the Battle of Leyte Gulf. His observation is similar to that of Hornfischer’s:

Admiral Halsey’ decision to pull his main battle fleet out of Leyte to chase empty enemy carriers allowed the main Japanese fleet the opportunity to sail in and destroy the Leyte beachhead…Only Jap mistakes saved us from a potentially devastating defeat.” (3510-3514)

The harrowing details of some of the landings—Eniewetok, Saipan, Okinawa among them—give us a sense of what the fighting was like and the challenges that both sides had to face. At Okinawa especially when he witnessed even civilians committing suicide, Wiley “became convinced it would take us ten years to subdue mainland Japan.” (4669) As indicated in my last Pacific War review, while it is not a politically correct attitude these days, any veteran would say he was thankful for the atomic bomb. It saved thousands of American lives and probably millions of Japanese lives as well.

Wiley was nearby when McArthur made his photo-op “return.” He also tells a little about boxer Jack Dempsey who was commissioned by the Coast Guard in order to make films about their role in the fighting, not unlike actor Ronald Regan’s Hellcats of the Navy.

This lively personal account of an ordinary sailor is well worth reading. It helps us appreciate what the military in the Pacific War went through and, frankly, gives us a sense of what the Coast Guard can do. It is an inside look at what television reporter Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation.

One bonus. Wiley got to know Kenneth P. Riley, a fellow Coastie who would become a well-known magazine artist. The book is illustrated throughout with Riley’s drawings, both of everyday shipboard life and details from various landings.

Lee Miller. Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony. New York: Arcade, 2011. E-book.

I had to read this book. About a dozen years ago on a family vacation, we saw The Lost Colony, a historical pageant that has been going on every year in North Carolina since 1937. Like others, Miller claims to have solved the mystery of the disappearance of the first English settlers in what would become the United States.

A fort was established on Roanoke Island in North Carolina in 1585. Two years later 117 people from England settled there to start a colony. Its governor, John White, would return to England the same year, the 115 who remained (one had died) were never heard from by any Europeans again.

So what happened?

There have been a number of theories and various testimonies on the subject over the years. Even John Smith of Jamestown fame was commissioned at one point to investigate their disappearance.

There are really three parts to this story. The first has to do with the circumstances of the original settlement in 1587. Sir Walter Raleigh was its sponsor and had himself been to Virginia and the Carolinas. The original plan was to settle in the Chesapeake Bay area where there was plenty of fresh water, good soil, and fish and game. The voyage had a number of unusual delays, so the settlers ended up by the now abandoned fort on Roanoke Island.

Miller makes a case that the delays were deliberate. Raleigh had plenty of enemies in the court. Even though he was seen as the mastermind behind the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, as soon as Queen Elizabeth died, King James had him put on trial and eventually executed. Miller even shows how the men who spoiled the settlement patterned their plot after a similar one that thwarted an early attempt to settle Newfoundland.

Of course, since nobody ever boasted about making sure the Carolina settlement failed, all we have are inferences. Miller makes a case that seems to make as much sense as any other one. He notes that, like the Plymouth pilgrims, a number of the settlers were probably religious separatists or Dissenters. They did not believe there should be a state church, whether Anglican or Catholic, and may have gone there to practice their religion freely.

Raleigh was not a Dissenter, but he had friends and relatives who were. One of the charges that led to his execution was atheism. He was not so much an atheist as one who expressed skepticism about some things the state churches did.

Miller also makes a pretty good case about who the person was who was behind the sabotage of the settlement. That perhaps brings the reader on a little more solid ground. No spoilers here.

Miller then makes a case that many of the Roanoke settlers survived as slaves or wives to the Indians in the area. He is not the first to make such a claim, but he does bring a lot of evidence to bear and this is probably the most convincing portion of the book.

Numerous accounts tell of encounters with Indians in Virginia or North Carolina where Indians tell Europeans about white people who live in various settlements. One well-known account from the 1600s tells of an Indian boy with blond hair. Another account of Croatoan Indians tell that they saw an Englishman with a book and said that some of their ancestors had books like that. Some of the people in that town had gray eyes. Others reported Indians who had beards.

Miller brings in one account that is often dismissed. A Welsh clergyman and five others were captured by some Indians in 1669. They were told they were going to be executed. This Rev. Jones began to pray in his native Welsh and some of the Indians understood him. I recall reading this years ago in a highly speculative book that was saying that the Tuscaroran language was Celtic and evidence that Europeans had settled North America long ago.

Miller’s explanation is a little more mundane. Several of the Roanoke settlers were Welsh. They could have spoken that language among themselves, especially as it seems that the white people were scattered among various towns and tribes to the south and west of Virginia.

Indeed, we learn that there was a very significant trade route that today’s Interstate 85 follows part of that extended from southern Virginia to Augusta, Georgia. Trade along this route is probably the source of copper that both Roanoke and Jamestown settlers were interested in discovering. However, no Indian guides that the Jamestown people knew were allowed to use the road—or they were afraid to use it—which is why Smith and others never found Roanoke survivors.

The trade route also was used to sell slaves. That would explain why the many tales of white people always are about a small number, one to five, in a certain town or village. In the Indian culture of the region, using and selling captives as slaves was as common as it was in most other places in the world back then.

There are numerous other things that Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony notes. Why did John Smith, for example, change some of his testimony about his experiences in Jamestown in his later writings when compared to his earlier writings? Miller suggest that there may have been another cover-up.

While it is likely true that no Jamestown settler ever came across a Roanoke survivor, it is also true that the story that the colony had been wiped out by Indians did not appear until Virginia settlers were fighting the Native Americans near them.

Truly, there are some speculative things in this book, but one would be hard to put to find a case that makes as much sense or is as widely documented.

One interesting detail that Miller notes has to do with the Indian languages. He attempts to try to figure out the significance of place names to help him locate some of the places the Indians mention to Europeans. He notes that some of the tribal groups spoke Algonquian and some spoke Iroquoian. However, there were also tribes that spoke Sioux languages in the region as well.

We usually think of the Sioux as Plains Indians—Montana and the Little Bighorn is quite a distance from the Carolina Piedmont. But they were a woodland tribe until tribes to the East such as the Cree and Iroquois obtained firearms from Europeans and drove them to the plains.

Although the politics and testimonies surrounding the Lost Colony may seems like a focused topic, the scope of Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony is not at all narrow.

This book has a curious style. It reads like a television documentary. I can almost hear a PBS or History Channel voice-over. That means many sentence fragments. Phrases without both a subject and verb. Most of the time there is not a problem with the effect, but it is distinctive.

Jim W. Goll. The Seer. Shippensburg PA: Destiny Image, 2004. Print.

In a reversal of the last book we reviewed here, this book title sounds like it might be a work of fiction, but it is not. It actually is a biblical teaching of the work and ministry of the seer.

I am familiar with the author. A Christian friend who used to lead a men’s discipleship group would occasionally share a teaching tape or CD by Mr. Goll. Here as in other instances, Goll has taught on a subject that others avoid or skim over.

While most of the book uses examples from the Bible, it occasionally illustrates its points from historical or contemporary examples.

The foundation of The Seer has at least two angles. The first is a Scripture from Joel quoted by Peter in Acts:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams… (Acts 2:17; cf. Joel 2:28)

(As an aside, the leader of the men’s group that I mentioned had a license plate that read Acts II.) The Seer also notes that the Bible in its original languages and in most translations distinguishes between prophets and seers.

If we understand even what these words mean in English, we can see the distinction. Prophets prophesy. They speak or write the words God gives them. Seers see things. They work in the realm of imagery rather than words, whether a visual impression in the mind, a dream, or some kind of vision.

The Seer is thorough. It notes the different ways people see things. It notes how a vision can sustain a person. Both Jacob and Joseph had dreams that directed their lives. In spite of threats from his brother and tricks played by his father-in-law, Jacob remained faithful to God. In spite of his unjust imprisonment, Joseph would understand that his dream and other dreams that he interpreted would become fulfilled. Even today people are looking at world events to help them understand the visions of Daniel, Ezekiel, and John.

There a couple of chapters on discernment. As with any kind of speech or ministry, this is crucial. Goll notes that visual impressions or dreams can come from the self, from evil spirits, from angels, or from the Holy Spirit. How can we tell the difference?

Goll also notes that there are eight different words the New Testament uses to describe different kinds of dreams and visions. One example I mention because it has become very popular and people may have lost sight of what it really means—apocalypsis (αποκαλυψις), usually translated revelation, including the title of the last book of the Bible. The word literally means “unveiling,” so the word revelation is a decent translation.

Goll also writes about visionary states. He notes that certain new age, oriental, and animistic religions also promote or claim visionary states in their leaders or adherents. He tells us how to distinguish the work of the Holy Spirit and notes the various terms and many examples that the Bible uses to discuss these things. One of the most important of these occurs in Genesis 15:12-21 when God cuts his covenant with Abram.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

There are also a couple of chapters on dreams and interpreting dreams for those to whom God speaks this way.

The purpose of all these things is a rhema (ρημα), a specific word to address a specific situation, person, or group of people. The goal is encouragement, even over great periods of time: at least 13 years for Joseph, 21 for Jacob, 25 for Abraham, and 1878 years for the Jews as a nation! The ultimate goal is intimacy with God. What can be better than that?

As read this book, I thought of two people I know to whom God seems to speak this way. I recommended it to one—she said that she had already read it, and it had given her some confidence in understanding her relationship with the Lord. The other I have not seen yet, but I hope to recommend it to him as well.

One piece was a personal encouragement to me, even though I have rarely had any of the experiences noted in this book. Goll describes an experience he had some time after his father had passed away. Twice he heard a voice from Heaven say, “I have a word to give you from your father”:

I looked at the vision of my father’s smiling face right at me: “I understand you now!” Healing flowed into my being. (64)

Yes, brother, I understand. My own father was a faithful and loyal member of his conservative mainline church, but never understood his son’s “born-againism.” This testimony could help others as well.

The Seer can be a help or encouragement to many. As I meditate on this book, I cannot help thinking of the opening of the Book of Hebrews:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…

Isn’t that what life is ultimately about?

For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:10)

Amen.

Octavia E. Butler. Parable of the Talents. 1998; New York: Open Road, 2012. E-book.

Radio evangelist Chuck Swindoll once wrote a book about what the Bible says about service. He titled it Improving Your Serve. He reported that a number of people bought the book thinking that it was about tennis. A student of the Bible might think Parable of the Talents was about the story Jesus tells in Matthew 25:14-30. It is not.

I first heard of Octavia E. Butler when I read Calls and Responses, which tells quite a bit about Butler’s most famous work, Kindred. The main character in that science-fiction piece is a contemporary black woman who travels back in time. She ends up saving the life of the Legree-type slave owner because he is one of her ancestors. The whole novel is a tale about slavery written from the perspective of slaves and former slaves with a Heinlein-like twist (think of his Lazarus Long stories).

Parable of the Talents, though, is futuristic and even post-apocalyptic but at its heart is also about slavery.

Written in 1996 and published in 1998, Parable of the Talents tells us that there was a worldwide epidemic known as the Pox that lasted from 2015 to 2030. As with the Plague in the Middle Ages in the Old World, things in America descended to near anarchy. Alaska seceded, and a war began that pitted Alaska and Canada against the remaining states. Ironically, the Canadian dollar is considered hard currency, not the American dollar.

Though not as extreme as The Road, there are nevertheless roaming gangs and other lawless people taking advantage of the chaos. A successful presidential candidate in the year 2032 actually has the campaign slogan “Help us to make America great again.” (20) It is not giving much away by noting that he is ultimately fairly weak and ends up defecting to Alaska himself. Butler died in 2006, but clearly she understood some sentiment among “the Deplorables.”

In spite of the political backdrop, the story itself goes beyond politics. Lauren Olamina’s California neighborhood is burned during the chaotic times. She meets and marries an older man whose story is similar to hers: His California neighborhood was also destroyed, and its survivors are on the run. She is the educated daughter of a Christian minister. He is a medical doctor.

Lauren has an unusual ability. If this were the Marvel universe, she would probably join the X-Men. She has hyperempathy syndrome. These “sharers” automatically feel what others are feeling, whether pleasure or pain. “And in spite of our vulnerability and high mortality rate, there are still a few of us,” she says. (13)

The high mortality has two causes. The intensity of pain that sharers feel can overload their nervous system. Usually, though, the mortality is caused by some of the lawless types who consider them freaks and kill them. Lauren and most of the other sharers have learned to mask their reactions.

Based on her own observations of the world, Olamina starts her own religion. She does not have the faith in God that her father or her younger brother Marcus have. All she notes is that things are always changing. She does not know if God is an entity with any kind of personality or even if he exists. Her basic creed is God is change. Her more orthodox brother reminds her that the Bible says something different: “I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6 KJV) and “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8 KJV)

The second doctrine of what Olamina calls Earthseed is that if human beings are to survive, they are going to have to colonize other planets and other solar systems. They are the seed from earth to be sown all over the universe.

Olamina, her husband Bankole, and a group of other survivors have decided to build an Earthseed community in northern California on some property that they own. For a few years they do all right. They survive. They make a living. They are able to protect each other from marauders. Dr. Bankole occasionally is called out to nearby towns to take care of the sick and injured, so they are generally tolerated if not respected.

After about five years, their little town of Acorn (the seed for a mighty oak) is invaded and taken over by a militia group loosely affiliated with the Federal government. The people who are not killed are enslaved. The means of slavery are collars similar to the electronic collars some dog owners use to keep their pets in their yards. The collars shock people into submission but also are used by their handlers to spy on them.

A collar, my brother was saying, makes you turn traitor against your kind, against your freedom, against yourself. (131)

The invaders of Acorn have taken over their homes and buildings. The previous residents are forced to their bidding by means of the collars. Much of the tale is how the people live as slaves. It is very similar to the way slaves lived on antebellum plantations. The setting may be in the future, but slavery is slavery even if it is not based on race. Indeed, one line from the book is virtually a word-for-word quotation from a former American slave who was interviewed in the 1930s: “I’d rather blow my own brains out than wear a collar again.” (300)

Olamina also notes:

My ancestors in this hemisphere were, by law, chattel slaves. In the U. S., they were chattel slaves for two and a half centuries—at least ten generations. I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I realize that I can’t begin to imagine the many terrible things that it must have done to them. How did they survive it all and keep their humanity? Certainly, they were never intended to keep it, just as we weren’t. (270)

To allude to the title, it is impossible to imagine what talents slavery kept buried.

Even though the Constitution prohibits slavery, people are able to manipulate the law to say that the slaves are being rehabilitated. That reminds this reader of the slave labor in Communist countries from so-called re-education camps. Butler comes across as a Constitutionalist:

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments—the one abolishing slavery and guaranteeing citizenship rights—still exist, but they have been so weakened by custom, by Congress and the various state legislatures, and by recent Supreme Court decisions that they don’t much matter. (40)

Activist courts!

In this case, their captors justify themselves because to them Earthseed is a cult. If we note that this was published in 1998, that might not be too much of a stretch. Just a few years before in 1993, the United States government raided and destroyed a relatively harmless communal group near Waco, Texas. The so-called Branch Davidians were an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists. It would not be too difficult for Butler or anyone else to imagine something like that becoming more common in the not too distant future.

The somewhat anarchic government in the early 2030s has a Christian pretext. It is not quite as ridiculous as the Gilead of The Handmaid’s Tale, and some of the more orthodox characters like Marcus realize that it is not based on a biblical model.

Indeed, while Parable of the Talents certainly shows the dangers of anarchy, it is not especially sanguine about most governments either. Marcus says, “[W]e were caught between these two groups of goddamn saviors of the poor.” (117)

How does Olamina’s vision pan out? Perhaps there are some biblical parallels. Yes, Olamina does make use of her talents and abilities as the biblical parable exhorts. But the Earthseed teaching also has a kind of heavenly hope. In this case the Celestial City is in the same universe and same dimension, if you will. The Bible promises “a new heaven and a new earth.” (Revelation 21:1, Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22, II Peter 3:13) God Himself stays the same, but he does have some changes planned.

Vendela Vida. The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty. New York: Harper, 2015. E-book.

I had read some glowing reviews of Vendela Vida and that The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty reminded one reviewer of Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith was the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, both made into famous films.

The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty did not strike this reviewer as clever quite like the Highsmith novels, but it was a wild read. There were enough twists in the tale to make the book disorient the reader.

The first thing that stands out is that the story is told in the second person. We see that in poems and songs, but I can only name two works of prose fiction that do that (for what it is worth, Bright Lights Big City and parts of “A White Heron”). That in itself is disorienting enough.

This might force the reader to identify with the character, but it is hard to do that completely. Is she clever or stupid? Does she have real survival skills? Is it impossible for her to see the consequences of her actions? Is she simply caught up in circumstances beyond her control?

“You” have just flown from your home state of Florida to spend an exotic vacation in Casablanca, Morocco. You get a sense that this might have been a mistake since the guide book you pick up tells you that “The first thing to do upon arriving in Casablanca is to get out of Casablanca.”

It goes from bad to worse; or, perhaps, from inconvenient to insane. The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty is a Moroccan The Out of Towners. The original film by that name with Sandy Dennis is one of the funniest movies ever made. One bad thing happens after another. Yet unlike the film’s Ohio couple on their first trip to New York City, we realize that most of the things that happen to “you” are not beyond her control. Yes, you can rationalize your behavior, and no doubt some bad things happened, but you do complicate things to make them worse.

Without giving too much away, as you check into your hotel, your backpack containing all your money, credit cards, identification, computer, and passport is stolen. Naturally, you complain to the hotel and report it to the police. In a day or two, the police say they have found a backpack that matches the description of the one you reported missing.

It is not your backpack, but it has the American passport of a woman who looks like you. It has money and credit cards that have not been canceled yet, so you accept it. You sense (or claim to feel pressured) that you should take it so that the police chief can close the case.

Even from this little episode we note two things. One, like A Tale of Two Cities, there is a lot of doubling. You look like Sabine Alyse, the owner of the returned backpack. You are a twin, but you suffered from acne that your twin sister escaped. You even change hotels after this—you have been very conscious of the difference between first and second class hotels.

Second, although Casablanca has a romantic aura about it in the Western mind, it is in a Muslim-majority country. Islam is a fatalistic religion—inshallah (“if Allah wills it”) is a universal expression. So are “you” a victim of fate, of kismet?

It turns out that you also resemble—except for the facial acne—a famous actress who is filming in Casablanca. Under still another new name (not from the passport lest the real Sabine discovers you), you get a job as a stand-in for the actress on the movie set. They pay you good money in cash, so it seems like this could be an opportunity to get back on your feet.

But nothing is that simple.

The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty is not only second person but stream of consciousness. Like Faulkner’s work using this technique, your backstory reveals itself. Why did you decide to go to Casablanca in the first place? (It has little to do with the film by that name…).

Virtually every detail is important. The story begins while you are still the plane and about to land in Casablanca. There is a group of women of a certain age (older than your thirty-three years) who appear to be alumnae of Florida State on some kind of reunion holiday. One woman among them looks vaguely familiar. There is a reason for that, but it takes quite a while for us to find out what it is.

Typical of stream of consciousness, the real story gradually unfolds. Some readers may find “you” annoying or exasperating. As with The Out of Towners, others may find you funny. Either way, go with the flow and enjoy the craziness and disorientation and, perhaps, not a little bit of sympathy. It might begin like The Out of Towners, but it ends maybe a little more like Topaze.

P.S. The unusual title is from a line of a poem by Rumi about a woman the poet loves but whom he finds elusive—maybe like “you” imagines herself. Of course, like many love poems, it is suitably written in the second person.

Robin Morgan and Ariel Leve. 1963: The Year of Revolution. New York: Harper, 2013. E-book.

I confess that this book was not at all what I thought it would be, but it is something that might interest certain readers.

Usually when we think of “the sixties” or the 1960s, the era and zeitgeist really begins in 1963 and ends around 1973. This year a lot of ink and electrons have been used about 1968—assassinations, protests, hippies—but those trends began in 1963. 1963 certainly notes that well. There is virtually nothing about politics or high culture. It is mostly about the three things that still characterize the sixties the most: sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

The authors note a singular event on January 13, 1963, in England. Back then there were only two television networks in the country. One of them carried the first televised performance of “an attractive young boy band” named the Beatles. The other network carried the first television performance of the “more cerebral” Bob Dylan. (In Dylan’s case, he was acting as an American folk singer in a television drama.) The Beatles and Dylan would come to characterize the sixties as much as anyone.

1963 is an oral history. It is a collection of many anecdotes by numerous people (my guess at least 50) whom the authors interviewed to get a sense of what the arts, especially music, was up to in 1963. Most of the stories are from England and include reminiscences of promoters and members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, the Yardbirds, the Hollies, Jeff Beck, Marianne Faithfull, and so on.

There are some items about film and fashion—especially Carnaby Street and the miniskirt—and a few things about the visual arts. Many names are dropped. Most of these people knew each other within one or two degrees of separation.

As the subtitle suggests, there was a sense of rebellion and revolution. Mick Jagger famously once said that the root of rock music was “familial conflict.” Most of the British musicians were inspired by African-American blues artists, especially from Chicago. Indeed, the Rolling Stones named themselves after a song by Muddy Waters.

The music in America was either folk-based protest like Dylan and Joan Baez or rhythm and blues going mainstream like the Beach Boys and the Supremes.

Besides the distinctive music, especially in England there was a new emphasis on sex and drugs. Jackie Collins, the writer, notes “The pill changed a lot.” (84) People who had few moral qualms about sex now did not have to worry about becoming or making someone pregnant.

It was not all fun and games. One actress complained:

Whenever you went out with a boy they always wanted to sleep with you. I just wished that you could go out with men and not have this dreadful threat that you had to sleep with them. They were very predatory all the time. (90)

Well, not everyone. We are told that Michael Caine was a gentleman, and in America Motown producers tried to maintain a clean image. The testimonies of the people who worked for Barry Gordy and Smokey Robinson give us the impression that the Detroit recording company was more like a family.

Except for the Motown scene, we also read about the rise in drug use. Indeed some of the most famous people in this book would die from drug abuse.

Even later, if they survived, it was not fun. I recall about 1968 or 1969 seeing one of the men interviewed in this book in concert with his band at the time. My friends and I loved their recordings and we were excited to be able to get some tickets. Sadly, the band phoned it in. The concert was terrible. The band members were all so stoned that they did not know what they were doing. One player did clean up his act and is still recording today. The book tells us that one of them was doing heroin even back in 1963.

A number of interviewees make the point that what was happening was a movement. There were no leaders, no George Soros or Koch brother financiers pulling strings. “The Beatles did not lead their generation…they went along with their generation.” (206)

1963 also quotes Philip Larkin’s poem “Annus Mirabilis” (Miraculous Year) which humorously summarizes the cultural changes. Yes, it is a “pop” culture phenomenon. Eliot may be correct in saying that a mass culture is a substitute culture, but does seem that a lot changed, whether for better or for worse, in that year.

James D. Hornfischer. The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. New York: Bantam, 2010. E-book.

“This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.” (2661)

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is a thriller. Hornfischer knows how to tell a story. I read this book right after reading the latest Tom Clancy novel. The Clancy novel was entertaining as usual, but The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors was a real page-turner. And it is nonfiction!

This book focuses on United States and Japan naval action in the first part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, especially on October 24-25, 1944. There are probably more than one reason why the author chose the words Last Stand in the title.

(1) It turned out to be Japan’s last major naval push in the war. After this, Japan’s sea power was negligible.

(2) The American forces that fought in this part of the Battle, a.k.a. the Battle off Samar, were greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the Japanese fleet they were facing. While American casualties were significant, the Japanese were turned back.

(3) It echoes Custer, of course, and here probably the most heroic ship captain was an American Indian.

(4) It was a battle of some “firsts”: the first U.S. aircraft carrier destroyed by surface gunfire, the first ship sinking via suicide airplane, and the first time the largest battleship ever fired on enemy ships. It had, however, some “lasts”: “the last massed ship-versus-ship action in naval history; the last time a battleship fired its main batteries at an enemy”; (6449) and the last time small destroyers and escorts attacked an enemy line of ships. Tin Can is a navy term for smaller vessels of war like destroyers and destroyer escorts as opposed to cruisers, frigates, or battleships.

Here we learn how the Japanese planned to rout the American Navy. McArthur had begun his “return” to the Philippines. It would be much more difficult without naval support.

The Japanese plan was actually a three-pronged attack, one from the South and West towards Leyte Gulf, one from the North, and a decoy from the North and East. It is not giving too much away by saying that the decoy worked. Admiral Halsey refused to send ships to aid Admiral Sprague’s small task force (Task Unit 77.4.3 or “Taffy 3”) because he anticipated a Japanese attack from the North. Indeed, if there is an American heel in this story, it is Halsey, with maybe some blame to Admiral Kinkaid, who apparently misinterpreted the information Taffy 3 was sending him.

Halsey’s own command was radioed asking for help, even specifically asking “Where is Task Force 34 [the nearest large fleet, Kinkaid’s] the world wonders,” an well-known allusion to Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” about a suicidal mission in another war.

I confess that I was not familiar with this Pacific battle. It seems like everyone has heard of Pearl Harbor, Midway, and the Coral Sea. Leyte Gulf was the biggest—some say it was the largest naval battle in terms of men, ships, and scope in history. But perhaps because of the above admirals’ mistakes and General McArthur’s personal emphasis on the land battles by this time, this battle is often overlooked.

Hornfischer himself acknowledges that it was probably not as decisive as Midway in the overall direction of the war, but it opened the way to Manila and kept many Japanese from getting closer to their homeland to defend the inevitable invasion there.

Most of the story focuses on the relatively small task force of Admiral Sprague. There were six small escort aircraft carriers (often nicknamed “jeep carriers” or “baby flattops”), three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts (the seven “tin cans”). Because of their tenacity and effective use of smoke screens, the Japanese thought it was a “gigantic enemy task force of six or seven [full-sized] carriers accompanied by many cruisers and destroyers.” (6704)

What we read about mostly is the tenacity. The brave escorts simply would not quit. Enough planes from the small carriers contributed. At this point in the war, the Americans had a foothold on Mindinao and pilots from the carriers would refuel at an improvised army airstrips on land. Most of the planes did not have anti-ship weapons until they received torpedoes and bombs from those bases.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors paints a real David versus Goliath picture. The much larger Japanese task force was turned back. But the fighting was brutal. Many men and ships were lost on both sides. A few chapters are devoted to the stories of men from several ships that were sunk who had to survive at sea for days before being rescued or coming ashore.

While there were individual suicide planes and torpedo boats before October 25, 1944, this was actually the inauguration of the formal kamikaze attacks by Japanese airmen. The author also notes that Japanese sailors who abandoned their ships refused to be rescued or captured by American ships in the area.

There is so much more. Here it worth quoting author and war veteran Herman Wouk in his sprawling War and Remembrance:

The vision of Sprague’s three destroyers—the Johnston, the Hoel, and the Heermann—charging out of the smoke and rain straight toward the main batteries of Kurita’s battleships and cruisers, can endure as a picture of the way Americans fight when they don’t have superiority. Our schoolchildren should know about that incident, and our enemies should ponder it. (6457)

Well said, Mr. Wouk. Mr. Hornfischer has done his best to make it a reality to the reader. Let us not forget. Alas, that may not be easy. A book of recommended reading for schoolchildren that I had to read when taking education classes only had books on Hiroshima and the Atom Bomb in its World War II listings. (The Holocaust was a separate listing, which in the compilers’ minds must have taken care of the European Theater.) Remembrance is in Wouk’s title, too.

One side note: The book mentions in passing that Admiral Sprague’s brother-in-law was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Their careers went in very different directions, so they were not close. Read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors to see how Admiral Sprague himself summed up the events off Samar.

For readers like us who are using Kindles or other smaller devices, the publisher included a link, rhlink.com/tin001, for the maps and charts so we can see them on a larger screen.

P.S. I chose this book because my late father served in the Navy in the Pacific, mostly around Borneo and the Philippines. As he told it, he graduated from high school one day (in 1944) and the next day joined the Navy. At the time of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, he was still attending Quartermaster School. By the time he arrived on scene, the naval battle was nearly over.

He did take part in supporting Australians in Brunei and some “mop-up” (his words) in the Philippines. I am sure that he would have appreciated this book. Hornfischer gives a lot of attention to the ordinary sailors and what they endured. Because the fighting had devastated the islands that he saw so much, my father had no romantic ideas about the South Pacific. After reading this book, the reader may also have few romantic notions about war left in his or her mind, but most readers will probably have a great appreciation of what Americans working together can accomplish.