The Spanish Civil War

I was recommended this work by a poster on a baseball forum, which I suppose is as good a place as any to get history recommendations. Recognized (not just by baseball enthusiasts!) as a comprehensive place to begin study of the Spanish Civil War, it's long(ish), detailed, heavily footnoted, with an extensive bibliography, and revised several times (most recently in 2011) to ensure that it reflects the most up-to-date scholarship on the subject.

Am I enough of an expert on the Spanish Civil War that I can say whether or not this is the best introductory work on the subject? No, of course not. Thomas doesn't trip my bullshit detector, for the most part (which is worth something in a conflict that still arouses strong feelings among late era partisans), and he generally does try to puncture some of the myths told about the conflict. Where he does appear to get a lot of criticism is for glossing over the Spanish Revolution (the anarchist movement in Catalonia, among other places), but I feel he covers this in a decent amount of detail. (Although I will reserve further judgment until I've read some more).

I'd recommend this, potentially to another reader on a baseball forum.

The Man in the High Castle

As with all of Philip K. Dick's work, the question has to do with the nature of reality, and our relation to reality. The reality here is an alternate history in which Giuseppe Zangara succeeded in assassinating FDR, leading to the Axis triumphing over the Allies in the Second World War.

How realistic is the alternate reality? I'm not sure I buy the Nazis on Mars (!) in 1962. The scope of their projects? Absolutely. Our setting is the Western United States, though, an area controlled by the conquering Japanese.

One device that I really like is the incorporation of the I Ching, which several of the characters use to guide their actions; "should I follow the suggested course?" or "what is going to happen next?"

A nod at the nature of reality is that there's a popular novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy (paraphrased from a line in Ecclesiastes) in which Roosevelt survives the assassination (as he does in our reality) and through his strong leadership, the US is prepared for World War II, and the Allies win. As more of this novel-within-a-novel is revealed, it's clear that the world of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is not our own -- Roosevelt doesn't seek a third term, and there are other important points of divergence.

The climax of the novel is (perhaps) a Japanese diplomat slipping into another reality after contemplating a piece of jewelry made by American artisans. Left unsaid is if the reality is the one of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, of our reality, or another one entirely. (One would think the reality would be one of the above. A third reality, resembling both of those, would be needlessly complicated, right?)

Or perhaps the climax could be said to be the end, which implies (of course, this being Dick) that the world of the novel isn't the true reality, but a false one. As to whether true reality is the world of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy (thus implying our world is false, as well), our world, or another one entirely is left unsaid.

I really enjoyed this -- I thought the characters moved the plot well and were better put together than some of Dick's other stories, and the interweaving of Japanese culture into American really worked for me. The questions as to the nature of reality and the prophecy of the Book of Changes were well incorporated, as well. Recommended.

HHhH

Per Laurent Binet (in the text of the novel, no less!), HHhH was not his preferred title. ". . .I never thought of giving it any other title than Operation Anthropoid (and if that's not the title you see on the cover you will know that I gave in to the demands of my publisher, who didn't like it: too SF, too Robert Ludlum, apparently)." Ostensibly, it's the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by Czech and Slovak resistance fighters. More accurately, it's the story of Binet researching, contemplating, and writing that story.

In this part of the review, I will explain who Reinhard Heydrich was, and why the Czechs wanted to kill him (well, they wanted to kill him because he was a Nazi, but there were many Nazis in the country at the time). I was dimly aware of Heydrich prior to reading this novel; this of course speaks not to Heydrich's obscurity, but to my appalling ignorance of the players in the Nazi regime. Anyway, Reinhard Heydrich, was at the time of his assassination Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (effectively military dictator, as the man he had replaced was sent on leave, due to what Hitler felt was a soft approach). Obviously, the Czechs and the Slovaks were less than thrilled about this. As if this wasn't bad enough, Heydrich was also in chief of an intelligence/counterintelligence organization (the SD), as well as the Gestapo. He had a significant hand in the Holocaust, as well. Overall, Heydrich just wasn't a nice guy.

HHhH (which takes its name from a contemporary German witticism meaning "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich") begins with Binet apologizing for fictionalizing a true story, and continues in that vein. Binet intersperses facts with speculation with commentary on Heydrich's place in the Nazi hierarchy, the background of Operation Anthropoid, the situation in Prague, and general World War II-era history. It's a quick, easy, and interesting read, one that I would recommend.