The On The Bookshelf Podcast

Tom Cleaver return with Mediterranean Sweep USAAF in Italian Campaign WWII

With the defeat of the Germans and Italians on Sicily in mid-July 1943, all eyes turned towards the battle for the Italian mainland itself. This campaign has been called “forgotten” by many, with many of the best units from the North African and Sicilian campaigns withdrawn to prepare for the coming invasion of France, while those units that remained had a lower priority for replacements of men and material.

 Despite these difficulties, the air war in the Italian campaign is a study in the successful application of tactical air power. Mediterranean Sweep describes how USAAF forces, alongside Free French, Italian co-belligerent forces, British and Commonwealth units and even a squadron of the Brazilian Air Force, took the war to the Axis in both the fighter-bomber war as well as Operation Bingo, the successful bombing campaign to strangle supplies to the German forces fighting on the Gothic Line.

 Building on the story of the USAAF in North Africa and over Sicily told in his previous work Turning the Tide, renowned aviation expert Tom Cleaver uses a wide range of first-hand accounts form American, Allied, German and Italian pilots and other aircrew to bring to life the bitter struggle in the skies over Italy from mid-1943 through to the end of World War II.

  Tom Cleaver is a US Navy vet of Vietnam, and has written on military history for Osprey for over 4 decades.

Larry Tye returns with "The JazzMen" how Louis, Basie and the Duke Transformed America

Although each of them died over a generation ago, it would be a mistake to believe that Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie are truly gone. Instead, their legacies live on through the cultural influences of Motown and Hip Hop, the Beatles and Bob Dylan; as well as the political and social achievements of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin and Barack Obama, among so many others. 

 In The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America, journalist and best-selling biographer Larry Tye opens a new window onto the lives of these jazz greats, “reveal[ing] so much more about their musical journeys and personal experiences” off the bandstand than Grammy Award-winning jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton imagined possible. “It’s like meeting them all over again.”

 But the volume is at its most profound in clarifying the trio’s impact on the unfolding movement for racial equality, contending that they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights revolution by taking their tunes into white households that wouldn’t let a Black man through the front door. “The sound of their evolving jazz dialect,” writes Tye, “formed a cultural fulcrum that no outraged protestor or government-issued desegregation order could begin to achieve.”

 The Jazzmen offers a potent opportunity to look back at the lives and times of these three figures who quietly worked for racial as well as musical harmony.

Matt Bernstein on the Team of Giants who took us to the Spanish-American War

“Team of Giants: The Making of the Spanish-American War” by Matthew Bernstein (The University of Oklahoma Press)

Take an Ivy League-educated former cowboy turned NYC Police Commissioner to Asst. Secretary of the Navy, add a former Confederate general and Congressman from North Alabama, and a millionaire newspaper publisher from California now taking The Big Apple by storm; throw in a pair of superior journalist/authors, and send them to the tail-end of a 30-year struggle for independence in Cuba, and you get the shortest significant war of US History.

This was a conflict that reunited parts of the nation that had been in a vicious and destructive civil war 33 years earlier; brought together westerners and easterners, buffalo soldiers, Yankee vets and former Rebels, all united for a singular cause: Cuba Libre! We were taking on one of the nations that helped us earn our freedom from England 125 years earlier, as the 400-year-old Spanish Empire was breathing its last.

The ex-cowboy was a rising politician who would become President a few years later (his descendent would accept the Congressional Medal of Honor for him in 2001). The ex-Confederate general was a successful Congressman from Alabama who ditched the Lost Cause diatribe in favor of a truly united nation who could respect brave men in uniforms North and South. And the millionaire newspaperman was so determined to be involved he took his yacht to Cuba to help provision the troops AND a portable press for covering the war (after putting pressure on the Us government to join the Cubans in their long fight for freedom.)

The writers were Stephen Crane (of “The Red Badge of Courage” fame) and Richard Harding Davis (who was “the greatest living war correspondent of his generation”). Crane almost perished in 1897 trying to smuggle guns, ammo and supplies to the Cuban rebels, but it was tuberculosis that took him to an early grave after the war. Davis wrote the most important war reports, was a personal friend of TR and Crane, and took up a sniper’s rifle while embedded with the Rough Riders.

The spark for the American involvement came when the USS Main mysteriously exploded and sank in Havana Harbor Feb. 15, 1898.  Amid growing pressure, McKinley asked Congress to declare war April 25, and troops were trained and outfitted. The conflict actually only lasted six weeks, from the first engagement of US Marines vs Spanish on June 14, the Battle of La Guasimas on June 23^rd, the Battle of San Juan Hill on July 1^st, and the Naval Battle of Santiago on July 3^rd, followed by the Spanish surrender July 16. Heart had his “splendid little war” and Cuba was finally free.

We’ll talk to author Matt Bernstein Sunday June 29^th about his book!

John Stamper with "Courage to Stand: Profiles of Enduring Faith" ancient to modern

“Courage to Stand: Profiles of Enduring Faith” by John Stamper (New Leaf Press)

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie ten Boom, Josh Alexander, Jessica Tapia, William Tyndale, the Apostle Paul, Esther, Joshua & Caleb, and the Three Hebrew children Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego: all these faithful followers of the Lord God faced the wrath of the nation in which they lived or still live because of their firm commitment to God. This book tells their stories and their triumphs through God.

 

“This is a book of profiles containing inspirational stories of biblical figures, historical figures, and contemporaries who stood on God’s Word in the face of intense spiritual conflicts.” Some lived in Bible times, some during WWII, and some are heroes of our day. All had critical qualities: faith, conviction, courage and strength. You must believe in something or someone before you can have a moral or spiritual conflict; conviction follows faith; courage follows; and finally the level of quality and measure of your conviction and courage.

 

Dr. Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer could have stayed in America or England as his native Germany plunged into lethal anti-Semitism in the 1930s but he felt called to stand up against the Nazis among his fellow Christians. Eventually arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned for two years, Bonhoeffer was hanged days before the Allies liberated the death camp. But his words still challenge us and inspire us.

Corrie ten Boom came from a long line of devout Christians and clockmakers, who defended Jews whenever they were threatened. As Nazi German overran their native Denmark in WWII, the ten Booms hid Jews from the Gestapo until father, sister and Corrie were arrested and sent to the death camps. Corrie survived to tell their story, and to offer grace to the repentant oppressors. William Tyndale’s only crime was translating the Bible into English, but he was strangled by the Crown. It wasn’t long before the King led England from the Catholic Church and adopted Tyndale’s translation as the English Bible!

 

The 3 Hebrew Youth thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s firey furnace, Queen Esther who asked King Xerxes to save her people, the Apostle Paul who proclaimed Christ despite the Roman Empire’s persecution, Joshua & Caleb who went against the 10 other spies’ opinion by declaring the Children of God could defeat the Promised Land’s evil inhabitants, were all examples of heroic God-followers who risked everything for the LORD.

 

There are two modern examples of Christians who stood up for their beliefs against the politically-correct stances which were anti-Biblical positions on gender ideology: teacher Jessica Tapia and student Josh Alexander.

 

“The culture pressures us and seeks to invade our lives on every level and pressure us into using a new language that’s contrary to God’s Word and is meant to change our biblical worldview into a secular one.” These people stood up against that political and cultural pressure, despite the danger. Some paid with their lives, others lost positions or homes or family members, but all were faithful no matter what the cost might be. They are heroes for our age who we should copy!

 

Check the author’s website, johnstamper.org.

Multi-Tony Winner Jeffrey Seller on his Career and love of musical theater

 THEATER KID (Simon & Schuster)  is a coming-of-age tale from one of the most successful American producers of our time, Jeffrey Seller, who is the only producer to have mounted two Pulitzer Prize-winning musicals-Hamilton and Rent. Before he was producing the musical hits of our generation, Jeffrey was just a kid coming to terms with his adoption, trying to understand his sexuality, and determined to escape his dysfunctional household in a poor neighborhood just outside Detroit. We see him find his voice through musical theater and move to New York, where he is determined to shed his past and make a name for himself on Broadway. But moving to the big city is never easy-especially not at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis-and Jeffrey learns to survive and thrive in the colorful and cutthroat world of commercial theater.

 From his childhood falling in love with theater. his early days as an office assistant, to meeting Jonathan Larson and experiencing the triumph and tragedy of Rent, to working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights and Hamilton, Jeffrey completely pulls back the curtain on the joyous and gut-wrenching process of making new musicals, finding new audiences, and winning a Tony Award-all the while finding himself. Told with Jeffrey's candid and captivating voice, THEATER KID is a gripping memoir about fighting through a hardscrabble childhood to make art on one's own terms, chasing a dream against many odds, and finding acceptance and community.

  Jeffrey Seller is one of the most successful American producers of our time. He produced the Tony Award-winning musicals Rent, Avenue Q, In the Heights, and Hamilton. His shows have garnered twenty-two Tony Awards, including four for Best Musical, and his Broadway productions and tours have grossed over $4.6 billion and reached more than 43 million attendees. Jeffrey is the only producer to have mounted two Pulitzer Prize-winning musicals-Hamilton and Rent. He also revolutionized theater accessibility with the $20 ticket lottery for Rent, making theater affordable for all.