Book Review: Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (2012). Arthur Herman.

Freedom’s Forge is a very worthwhile and important history of how American businesses jumped into the fray early in World War II, after more than a decade of the Great Depression, to make America "the arsenal of democracy". The author particularly focuses on the crucial role played by Bill Knudsen (head of of General Motors) and Henry Kaiser (the construction magnate who branched out into many other business areas to serve the war effort).

This story is well-researched and intriguing, as well as inspirational. It's almost unbelievable to learn how fast businesses (both large and small) were able to re-tool and start turning out astonishing quantities of weapons and material once the U.S. went to war.

There is also a fascinating discussion of how many individuals and families were able to start small businesses as parts suppliers for the major manufacturers (with the help of a government office coordinating collection and publication of requirements) and thus escape their Depression-era poverty while aiding the war effort.

It makes one wonder why we moderns, with all our technological wizardry and productivity, don’t seem able to pull off similar overnight industrial miracles with respect to transforming our fossil-fuel based economy and way of life to ward off the worst effects of climate change. Recommended.

Book Review: The Good Lord Bird (2013). James McBride.

This is an amusing and award-winning satire and fictional narrative of the last years of "Osawatomie" John Brown (the famous abolitionist), as told through the eyes and experiences of a young slave boy who is mistaken by Brown for a girl.

Our narrator ends up being freed by Brown, and swept along (now masquerading as a girl) as Brown leads his abolitionist campaign, and his tiny "army" of religious fanatics, from skirmishes in Kansas to their inevitable denouement at the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

Along the way, John Brown and his ragtag group encounter Jeb Stuart, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, as well as other minor heroes and villains of Brown's real-life famous private crusade against slavery that helped spark the Civil War. Recommended.

TV Review: Friday Night Lights, Seasons 1-5. Hulu.

This NBC TV series from 2006-2011 is based on a non-fiction book of the same name from the 1990s, and a 2004 film of the same name. For reasons unknown, this gem of a series slipped by me at the time it was originally broadcast, and then for the past decade on streaming TV.
 

Big oversight! This was one of the better series I've watched in the past several years, and there was a lot of it to binge (five seasons). At the center of the show is a recently-hired high school football coach at a public school with an elite football program in rural Texas (played by Kyle Chandler), and his wife (Connie Britton) and daughter (Aimee Teegarden). But it also features a very strong and diverse ensemble cast of supporting characters, including students, football team members, and local boosters, parents and personalities.

What is fantastic about it is how real it is -- there's hardly a social issue or problem affecting American families, adults and kids (especially teenagers) that doesn't appear, all wrapped around a sports team drama. And those issues are just as contemporary and topical today as they were ten years go.

I also learned from reading an online story about the making of this series that the filming style was quite unusual, in that scripts were used only sparingly. The actors, steeped in their roles and their characters' identities, would usually be told the scene situation, and then would improvise their performances as they filmed. It led to a very moving and believable drama series, extremely well acted -- and thoroughly enjoyable. Highly recommended.

Book Reviews: Blackout (2010) and All Clear (2010). Connie Willis.

I recently re-read these two thick science fiction and historical novels, which were originally intended to be one volume, but grew to be two because Connie Willis couldn't fit the whole grand story into one book. They are built on the same time-travel plot premise introduced in The Doomsday Book, which I reviewed recently.

It's six years after the events of The Doomsday Book (it’s now 2060), and the time travel missions of the student historians at Oxford have proliferated, but trying to manage the complexity of it all is becoming an ever more chaotic process. Planned drops into past eras are being reshuffled by Mr. Dunworthy (the head of time travel historical studies) at the last minute, no one can get the right period outfits from the Costume department because the historians' schedules keep changing, and it seems to be increasingly hard to find drop sites (exact times and places in the past) that will work with the time travel machinery.

Into this organizational maelstrom come three young historian innocents, Merope, Polly and Michael, each headed for different periods and situations in World War II Great Britain, including the children's evacuations from London, the evacuation from Dunkirk, and the Blitz (the German bombing of London). But once they arrive, they slowly discover their return drops won't open, and they eventually have to face the possibility that perhaps there's no way back to their own era.

Is time travel broken? Could they be altering the outcome of the war by their own actions (which isn't supposed to be possible, according to their time travel theory)? What is going on back in future Oxford? And how can they make contact with each other, to figure out what’s wrong and how to return to their future?

Using Connie Willis's trademark plot devices of missed connections, endless frustrated plans, messages not received or answered, and time travelers under unexpected duress having to constantly improvise new solutions, these two books are a truly wonderful tour through the heroism and bravery of the British people in World War II. Marvelous, moving and really fun to read! Highly recommended.

Book Review: Indestructible: One Man’s Rescue Mission that Changed the Course of WW II (2017). John R. Bruning.

This is the story of "Pappy" Gunn, a legendary air force officer in World War II, who was forced by his military obligations to leave his family behind in Japanese-conquered Manila, then waged a virtual one-man war in the Pacific to rebuild, redesign and improve American aircraft as ground and sea attack weapons delivery systems, fight the war himself as a decorated combat and transport pilot, and at the same time try desperately to rescue his family from brutal Japanese internment in the Philippines.

The stirring story of a brave and unstoppable pirate, pilot, engineer, warrior and military leader to many in the South Pacific theater, and a moving family story of survival against impossible odds. Recommended.

Book Review: Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II (2017). Liza Mundy.

This story is reminiscent of the excellent book and movie Hidden Figures, but without the racial discrimination component to the story. It tells the story of how young women (mostly white) with high math and language aptitudes were recruited by both the Army and the Navy from top American women's colleges in the early 1940s, and then went on to play a crucial role in cracking enemy codes throughout World War II.

It’s yet another inspirational story about previously-unheralded women who contributed to the victories and legacies of the Greatest Generation at war. Recommended.

TV Review: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Season 1 (2022). Disney+.

The first two live-action streaming TV series that Disney launched, based on the Star Wars universe, were The Mandalorian (Seasons 1 and 2, so far), and The Book of Boba Fett (Season 1). Both stories are set in the Star Wars galaxy and timeline, but at least initially have little connection to any of the main plots and central characters of the eleven feature-length Star Wars movies that have been made.

Although there are aspects to both of these Disney TV series that will appeal to die-hard Star Wars enthusiasts, these first two Disney Star Wars TV shows have left me (as a dedicated Star Wars fan who has enjoyed all the big-screen films since the first one was released in 1977) feeling distinctly underwhelmed, and missing some of the vital appeal and magic of the movies.

This is all just background and prelude to the new (and third) Disney Star Wars live-action streaming TV series Obi-Wan Kenobi. And I am happy to say: “This is the droid (oops, I mean, the Star Wars TV show) you are looking for”. Thus far, I’ve only seen the first four of six episodes of Season 1 (and I do hope they make a bunch of seasons). But they have been extremely enjoyable, and fully worthy additions to the Star Wars canon.

To begin: having Ewan McGregor reprise his role as the (then-young) Obi-Wan Kenobi from the prequel trilogy is marvelous good fortune. He is appropriately aged in real life to be playing Obi-Wan as he is now, as his story resumes, ten years after he defeated Anakin Skywalker in The Revenge of the Sith, but then was forced to flee as a Jedi refugee from the Empire just to stay alive, and to guard the life of the hidden child Luke Skywalker on Tatooine.

McGregor is a wonderful actor, who captures perfectly the defeated, discouraged and isolated former hero he has become, now hiding out alone in a desert wasteland, with only a tiny spark of his former brilliance or his many talents visible. Watching him carve off and hide small bits of alien meat product every day for his trusty mount, at his dead-end meat-packing job on Tatooine, conveys better than any words how far he has fallen from the glory of his former Jedi Master days.

But there are plenty of new adventures awaiting Obi-Wan. He will have to confront new and old enemies, and he'll be drawn into unexpected events, and a dangerous plot initiated from the planet Alderaan, which will bring Luke’s hidden twin sister Leia into the story.

And the young Leia Organa (as played by Vivien Lyra Blair) is a delight – a petite, 10-year old girl with preternatural awareness of the adult world around her, a kind and generous spirit toward droids and other lesser beings, a wise guy mouth, and an irreverent, non-compliant attitude that is completely consistent with the young adult Carrie Fisher version of Princess Leia we have all come to know and love from the original trilogy.

I can’t say how this series will end, or whether we will have more seasons ahead to which we can look forward (I would assume so). But for now, it's looking good! If you love Star Wars, watch Obi-Wan Kenobi as soon as you can on Disney+ (new episodes each Wednesday). And May the Force Be With You.

Book Review: Kindness Goes Unpunished (2008). Craig Johnson.

This is the third Walt Longmire mystery novel. Sheriff Walt’s daughter Katie is viciously attacked and put into a potentially fatal coma in Philadelphia, where she has been working as a young lawyer and has an apparently abusive boyfriend.

Walt and his best friend Henry Standing Bear, in town for a display of Native American cultural artifacts, go looking for her attacker, while meeting Walt’s deputy Vic's whole family of Philly cops. Vic comes back from Wyoming to help Walt, and there is a race to see whether she or her divorced mother (or both) might end up in bed with Walt. No spoilers here! But another worthy addition to the Longmire saga, this time in an East Coast urban environment. Recommended.