Rick McBee's Writings
Explore the magic of new ideas and books to read as well as see what books I have written, my favorite photos, my opinions on may subjects, including Science, Africa, the Caribbean, the Civil War, my Book Reviews, and Much More!
Book Review: King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschild
King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In the history of humankinds, courageous, idealistic and perfidious human behaviors, there are few stories that match the past 150 years of horror and heroism centered in the Congo of central Africa. Author Adam Hochschild takes us step by step through the plotting, scheming and conniving of King Leopold II of Belgium as he personally gains control of the vast area of South Central Africa which is today known as The Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly known as The Belgian Congo. In addition, Hochschild gives us insight into the peoples of the Congo who were some of the most artistic, musical, linguistically talented peoples of this continent and how the depredations of the colonial power of Belgium and the greed of later corporations, for the wealth of ivory, gold, diamonds and minerals of the country, led to genocidal behaviors by the European masters who essentially turned the Congo into a 900,000+ square mile slave colony to extract massive quantities of ivory, rubber, diamonds and most recently gold, copper and cobalt. Alongside of the terror, whippings, mutilations and chain-gangs, we see the quiet entry into the Congo of Protestant Missionaries who gradually document the crimes to humanity being committed throughout the country. Then over a period of 30 years there is a worldwide awakening to the atrocities being committed through the writing, speaking and lobbying actions of a number of brave American preachers such as George Washington Williams and William H, Sheppard, and British activists, Sir Roger Casement and E.D. Morel to attack the mass killings and mutilations that between 1870 and 1920 reduced the population of the Congo by 50% with the destruction of some ten million lives. The book is a tough read, but should be on the “must read” list for persons who want to understand how easily it is for societies, governments and individuals to descend into the brutality of plunder, murder and maiming for the simple sake of monetary gain. It took 50 years for the plotters, murders, slave drivers and thieves to rape the Congo of it’s wealth of Ivory and Rubber and for the heroes of the era to try to slow the genocidal-like terror that reigned under Leopold. Hochschild then carries the story into the present where much of the rape still continues under different corporate guises and gives us some analogies for modern America’s culpability in the continued exploitation of the Congo, Africa and elsewhere as our own empire scrambles greedily for some of the key minerals on our planet. Worthy of deep thought and discussion.
Book Review: Deception Point by Dan Brown
Deception Point by Dan Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Author Dan Brown has written a truely fascinating book which demonstrates the lengths to which persons in the highest levels of government power will go in order to be elected, stay in power, and collude across party lines at times to prevent scandalous situations from being made public. The scene, an arctic glacial study base which has come across some amazing fossil evidence for other life-forms in the universe. In order to make sure that there is no question about the veracity of the find, President Herney recruits a number of independent specialists to visit the site, review all the documentation, and scientific evidence so that when the time for release of this world-shaking news comes about, it will be both believable and authenticated to a degree that makes it beyond question. Rachael Sexton, daughter of one the President’s fiercest opponents in an upcoming election. His attacks on funding for NASA and scientific research have so undermined the President’s administration, that reelection may be impossible for Mr. Harney. Rachael has been picked as his special envoy to verify the accuracy of the arctic discovery because she will lend credence to any verification for two reasons: first, she is the star reviewer of top secret evidence based research done by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) which oversees NASA and scientific research, while also being seen as a person who would never undermine her own father’s political goal of defeating the administration, unless there was overwhelmingly strong evidence that NASA’s claim for finding interstellar fossils is absolutely bomb proof.
I was totally engrossed in all of the actual scientific research that author Dan Brown had done in order to put together this amazing and thrilling tale of investigation, death, infighting and power struggles between separate branches of our government. In this book, thrilling science fiction leads us through many of the truths behind the wheels of our own government and the lust for power that pervades, and often perverts, our nations highest offices. A great read from beginning to end.
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Keep your Eyes on the Tiger! “Russia’s Wagner Mercenaries”
The Current “Tiff” between Russia’s Leader, Vladimir Putin and the Wagner Mercenaries could very well be a very nicely orchestrated “Draw Play” in the Ukranian war. Look at the map Map below! Where is the “Tiger” Going? TO A COUNTRY FRIENDLY WITH RUSSIA AND ONLY A FEW HOURS NORTH OF KIEV, UKRAINE!
It’s a bit too much for me to believe that thieves fall apart so easily and make up so well as we have seen in the past week. Watch the Wagner fighters in the video of the capture of Rostov, Ministry of Defense.
Do you see running civilians? No way! Do you see three men with automatic rifles on tripods lie down in the plain open sidewalk and settle in as if they are going to shoot something in the building? Do you see the brief visual of the guy in brown uniform near the Ministry? Is he looking scared or taking cover? And the civilians all just casually watch and politely step out of the way for any attacking soldiers and sit down and watch? DUH! WORLD! WHAT ARE WE THINKING? THIS ISN’T A BATTLE TO TAKE OVER A MAJOR COUNTRY? WHERE ARE ALL THE TROOPS THAT WAGNER JUST HAD TO GET THROUGH TO BEGIN THE MARCH ON MOSCOW! THEN THEY DRIVE THERI TANKS HALF-WAY TO MOSCOW WITH NO OPPOSITION? BIG TIME DUH – WATCHING WORLD!
Now Mr. Putin has forgiven all, the Wagner guys can go to Belarus with their leader and then decide whether to join up with the Russian Army for get home to Russia free pass. Eh What?
No! Russia’s toughest Mercenaries will now be in a Pincher position to drive south into the long valley that will take them to where they join the southern troops and cut off 1/3 of Ukraine.
I don’t thing we better believe that the Leopard has lost his Spots!
Just my opinion, but we have been duped in war before and it will happen again!
Book Review: The Feather Thief, by Kirk Wallace Johnson
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
An absolutely amazing book! Here we have a three part well written book that gives one of the best pictures of the consequences of rampant human greed in the past from the historical perspective and in today’s obsessive cult-like behaviors as seen in the decorative fly tying world. I enjoyed ever facet of author Kirk Wallace Johnson’s journey as he went back into the early days of trout/salmon fly tying and documents the similarities and differences of making flies used for the different fish. I loved his descriptions of the epic journeys of the obsessive biologist Alfred Russel Wallace. The failures, successes and the conclusions he drew from his collections which paralleled those of Charles Darwin as to the origin of species. Then in Part II of the book, Johnson recreates and elucidates for us, from court and police documents, as well as interviews with numerous acquaintences, the 2009 theft of some of the rarest bird specimens on earth from the British Museum of Natural History in Tring, England. Following the theft and eventual capture of Edwin Rist for the crime. the author gives us excellent insight into the workings of the British system of justice and the kinds of pleas that can bring conviction or dismissal in such a case. This was simplly amazing to me. Finally in Part III of the book, the author does his best to follow up on the still hundreds of missing bird skins and feathers that are obviously still floating around the world within the fly tying community. Again an eye opener as to the methods of investigation, internet sleuthing and the closing up of ranks within the fly tying cult and rationalizations made to justify those who continue to deal in illegal feathers. All in all, I think anyone ages 15 through 90 would enjoy this book. A great one for a serious discussion on the whys and wherefores of the values that are portrayed by all concerned in the making of this work of art. Read, enjoy and discuss, you’ll love it!
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Book review: The Enemy, by Lee Child (Jack Reacher Series #8)
The Enemy by Lee Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lee Child as always does a great job of opening and closing a book. This tale fills us in on a lot of Jack Reacher’s life prior to departing the military for his walk-about stories. The stage for the story is set with a seemingly routine death investigation that then leads into a murder that is in no way on the ordinary scale. Reacher gets a strange transfer from a seemingly important foreign site job to an out of the way station for no apparent reason and soon finds out that a whole lot of his colleagues have also been transferred. Something is brewing in the higher echelons of the military and the MP commanding officers are being spread out in strange posts. Reacher disobeys a direct order from his commanding officer in order to follow up on leads that will eventually reveal how his commander is mixed up in a very complex scheme of murder and control of the new military order that is coming down the pipeline in the next few years. I recomment the book for readers who want to know a bit more about how Jack Reacher thinks and the quirks of his personality that bring him into conflict with higher authroities and ultimately lead to his leaving avtive duty. The book is a bit wordy in the middle with side stories that are unrealated to the overall central story of the book and don’t require the number of pages devoted to them to get across the message. I felt the book jumped hither and yon a bit too much. There was a bit too much of forging commanding officers signatures and jumping of the plane at a momnent’s notice, but it’s a good read and certainly a great escape novel for travelers or those on vacation in between more adventurous things like scuba diving. Enjoy once again a book written by a master of the genre.
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The Bomber Mafia, by Malcolm Gladwell – A Book Review
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars 
How big of bombs, and how many of them are necessary to win a war? Will Bombing civilian populations lead to the capitulation of an enemy and end a war sooner than targeted bombing? These are some of the questions this historical book: “The Bomber Mafia” brings to light.
Author Gladwell has taken a single theme, the Norden Bomb Site, and given us an excellent set of historical data that show us how far our technology has advanced since WW2 to give accuracy in bombing runs and instances when we would like to have pinpoint accuracy for the delivery of an explosive device that can take out anywhere from a single person ot a factory to a city to a sip on the high seas. All these things which we can do today, almost with impunity, were impossible during the second world war. The bomb site gave the American Air Corps the false illusion, for a period of time on both the Eastern and Western Fronts of the war, that pinpoint accuracy during daylight bombing raids could be achieved, and thus be more effective in knocking out the enemy’s ability to wage war. In the end on both fronts, the delusion had to be overcome by hard headed pragmatism of what our early air corps was capable of acheiving. In many ways the author tries to show how the idealists who wished to lower the collateral damage on civilians and the loss of innocent lives, finally lost out to the need to do broadcast bombing and the creation of firestorms, starvation and famine within opposing nations to achieve a victory in a major world conflict. it brings to light some discussion questions which still exist today and have not been answered, including the question of: How can we contain war to keep it small enough so that a victory can be acheived and the war doesn’t blow up into a world wide conflict that will kill hundreds of millions of people. Is it possible, or are we just postponing the inevitable which may be more deadly in the future than if we went all out in the present. Perhaps there is no “right” anwer.
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Book Review: Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Over one hundred years before the Revolutionary War, the pilgrims and the other settlers along the Massechusets colony along with the Puritans were just finishing up with a twentyfive year war with the Native American Indians known as “King Phillip’s War”. It’s a war I never hear about, and the lead-up to that war, as described by renowned author Nathaniel Philbrick, tells a completely different story of the Pilgrims and their settling along Plymouth coast from the one that I and many North Americans were taught during our upbringing. It begins with the fascinating tale of a religiously conservative group of English Protestants who are outcasts in their Roman Catholic governed nation. Their flight to Holland, then back to England and on to the Colonies in 1616 to 1620 gives us a picture of a tighly knit religious sect of Christianity whose members were completely unprepared and unaware of the challenges they would face in getting to and upon arrival in, the New World. The well researched opening tale drew me into the story and even then, I was unprepared for the kinds of hardships of cold, hunger, and disease that these folks would encounter upon reaching the wild coasts of the North American continent and simply trying to find a place to land, build a small stockade and weather the first year near starvation. The understanding that the first contacts with Native Americans were far from cordial took me by surprise. The fortunate outcome of some complex negotiations between the two peoples with vastly different world views wold not have happened save for the appearance of Squanto. We see how Squanto’s years as an English captive, coupled with his ability to persuade Massasoit, a revered sachem of the greater Wampanoag peoples probably saved the Pilgrims from a similar fate of several previous attempts at American colonization which had resulted in the wiping out of the entire colony. Thus almost two years after their arrival in the New World, the Pilgrims are able to have a blow-out feast with the native Indians, which has come down to us today in what we call Thanksgiving. Author Philbrick has again done an amazing job of enlightening us about a little known piece of our history that should take it’s place in numerous classes and on our bookshelves as we learn and teach about our own country’s past and the local and immigrant peoples who worked and fought each other to make it what it is today.
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Book Review: From the Center of the Earth (Stories out of the Peace Corps) edited by Geraldine Kennedy
From the Center of the Earth: Stories Out of the Peace Corps by Geraldine Kennedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This excellent 13 story compendium of a variety of Peace Corps Volunteer stories, tales and activities gives a broad picture of how varied the Peace Corps experience can be. Much depends on where a volunteer serves, what job they are assigned to, and the local people with whom they work. Often the experience is tied into the individual’s growth and maturation as their inventiveness, and ability to stick it out when the going gets tough is tested on a daily basis in situations where thee is no backup or support during the random chaos that attends life in the bush, city, or slums with transport, disease or civil authorities in over 60 developing nations, worldwide. Every volunteer’s stint in Peace Corps is different. My own story and experience in Peace Corps intersects with the 1966 era tale told on page 169 by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, in West Cameroon. I can empathize deeply with that tale, although my experiences there were as vastly different from hers as were the six miles of tropical rainforest that separated our postings. Definitely a book to read for those who would still have that urgent desire to cut the reins and go “out there.” These are the tales born while doing “The toughest job you’ll ever love.”
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Book Review: Evan Help Us by Rhys Bowen
Evan Help Us by Rhys Bowen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of the nice things about reading one of Rhys Bowen’s Constable Evans books is that you pick up a lot of Welsh country lore. When a book is set in a tiny inbred village where half of the people are cousins and may have the same surname if not the same first name, it becomes important to identify personalities by their tasks in the village so it can be Evans “the butcher”, or Evans “the policemen” that distinguishes the characters rather than some unique first and second name as seen in the more cosmopolitan parts of the British Isles. Of course, this also means that outsiders like Annie Pigeon and Ted Morgan are always objects of comment and perhaps suspicion when it comes to murder and solving the mystery. I certainly enjoyed the easy read about the tiny village of Llanfair nestled in the shadows of Mt. Snowdon. Pay attention to the characters, the culprit can be deduced from the story, but it’s a canny novel.
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Book Review: RESOLUTION by Robert B. Parker
Resolution by Robert B. Parker
As you can see from this review, I have had two books going at once, the serious History from WW2 in “Sea Cobra as reviewed by me in my last posting and by bedtime story reading which is generally an escape from the real world in order to have sweet dreams. So here is your recommended next bedtime story for “those trying times”.
Resolution, a town just waiting to be taken over by someone who feels the need to own their world. A fellow named Wolfson owns the Blackfoot Saloon and has that kind of ambition. But of course he needs a little more back-up to accomplish his life goal. So when Everett Hitch rides into town looking for a place to rest his saddle sores, Wolfson hires him right then and there to be the saloon lookout and keep the peace, there being no marshal or sheriff within a day’s ride. It’s a typical set-up for a former West Pointer and Civil War veteran with a Wells Fargo background. Hitch sits in the high chair cradeling his sawed off eight guage and watchs the fun, until it isn’t. Then Hitch makes his point about where the power in the saloon sits. After a set-to with a local gunney, it’s only a matter of time before some power struggles take place between the local miners and their boss, the homesteaders arriving to take over new land, the cattlemen and of course the man who really wants it all, Wolfson. Wolfson begins to hire more gun slingers so about this time Hitch’s friend and partner in legalized crime, Virgil Cole arrives. As locals are shot or run out of town and gangsters brought in by Wolfson take charge of the town it becomes time for a bit more law and order to protect the common citizen. Virgil and Everett eventually have to take a stand with the local citizenry to stop a man who will only respect the law of the gun to check his greed and averice.
Once again, Author Robert B. Parker, R.I.P., has written a fast reading book that is just what you need to end the day’s worries and anxietes about the world we live in. Enjoy the ride, Virgil Cole still hasn’t been beaten when it comes to a shootout. That’s why he keeps coming back.
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