Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first read this novella many years ago, and it was a pleasure to read it again. The basics of the plot are pretty well known, but I will try to avoid any spoilers. I confess that having seen the episode of Gilligan’s Island entitled “And Then There Were None” I knew how the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ended long before I read it for the first time.

The novella has three narrators; the first is a lawyer, who learns of some violent incidents involving a man named Hyde. The lawyer knows Dr Jekyll, and there seems to be some relationship between Dr Jekyll and the man Hyde. The second narrator is a doctor who is a friend of Dr Jekyll. And the third narrator is Dr Jekyll himself. It is only during Dr Jekyll’s narrative that we learn the nature of the relationship between him and Hyde.

I highly recommend this book. It’s a very easy read, and the novella is fairly short. The other short stories are also worth reading.

The Shortest History of Japan: From Mythical Origins to Pop Culture Powerhouse―The Global Drama of an Ancient Island Nation by Lesley Downer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I visited Japan this year, and I quickly realized how little I really knew about Japanese history. Sure, I know some bits and pieces from the Meiji Restoration to the present, but that’s about it. So I decided to read this book, to at least get a good overview of the history of Japan.

It’s pretty good; it does not go into a lot of details, but it provides a nice overview of Japanese history and culture from the mythical origins to the current emperor. It’s very well written and easy to read. I certainly learned a lot, and I feel that I’m ready to take on a more in depth history of Japan. If you are interested in Japanese history, I recommend this book

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Night to Remember is the story of the night in April 1912 when the Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank. This book was originally published in 1955 so the author had the opportunity to talk with more than 60 survivors of the Titanic and also with people from the Carpathia which rescued the survivors.

Walter Lord does an amazing job of presenting almost a minute by minute account of the sinking and the rescue, using the accounts from the survivors as well as some written accounts that were published by survivors. It is a compelling story and well worth the effort to read it. However there are some gaps in the story, as the author points out – there is just not a lot of information about the passengers in Third Class. This mainly because the survival rate of the steerage passengers was not nearly as good as it was for the First and Second Class passengers.

I read this book for the first time when I was in grade school. It is a very easy read – the author has a great sense of the narrative. I highly recommend this book!

The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe by Mark Mazower
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Greek Revolution is a comprehensive look at the struggle for the independence of Greece. It is a complicated story, to say the least, and the author does a very good job of explaining what happened and why. There are a lot of aspects to the story, but one that struck me was right at the start: who is Greek? That is, what sets the Greek people apart from the other ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire? It was not always an easy question to answer.

The story begins with the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna. With the restoration of the Bourbons in France and the formation of the Holy Alliance, the major powers were conservative, and unlikely to support any changes to the status quo in Europe, whether among the Italian states or in the Ottoman borderlands. But a secret society, Etaireia, was formed by some Greeks looking to secure independence for Greece. And so it begins.

The armed struggle began in 1821, and the Greek forces had a lot of initial success, especially in the islands and on the Peloponnesian peninsula. But the Greek efforts were complicated by the lack of a strong central government; most of the local chieftains and notables were in it for themselves and the provisional government was not strong enough to compel them to obey. The result was a civil war.

I’m not going to summarize the rest of the story – not because of spoilers, but because it would take up too much space. There are many battles and sieges, an invasion from Egypt. There are volunteers from across Europe who join the Greek forces; Lord Byron is probably the most famous. And there are massacres, and mistreatment of the civilian population on both sides. This eventually prompts the powers – the UK, France and Russia – to intervene by sending naval squadrons to Greece. At the battle of Navarino, the combined fleet crushed the Ottoman fleet, in the last major battle between sailing ships.

The Great Powers victory at Navarino eventually leads to an independent Greece in 1828, with all three of the powers guaranteeing Greek independence. Of course, the new Greece was much smaller than it is now, but as the Ottoman Empire declined, other areas were annexed by Greece.

I really liked this book a lot. It is comprehensive and has good footnotes and suggestions for further reading. I knew the basics of the Greek Revolution, courtesy of an Intro to Modern Europe history class, but this book really explains what happened and how it came about. It’s not an easy read because there is a lot of detail, but it’s well worth the effort.

Mavericks: Life stories and lessons of history’s most extraordinary misfits by Jenny Draper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mavericks is a collection of 24 short biographical sketches of “extraordinary misfits” – people who we might call eccentrics. All of them have a connection with the United Kingdom, where the author is based. The mavericks stories come from many different periods of history, and while most are from the UK, there are people from other countries as well, such as the United States and France.

The mavericks are somewhat obscure, of the 24 I think there were 2 or 3 that I had heard of before. But all of them have an interesting story, and their experiences shed light on their times and ours.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s well-written and fun to read. The author has a YouTube channel about London and the UK which is also a lot of fun.

The Princes in the Tower: How History’s Greatest Cold Case Was Solved by Philippa Langley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve been interested in the case of the princes in the tower for many years, and I’ve read a lot of books about them and their uncle Richard III. The young princes, Edward V and Richard Duke of York disappeared sometime in 1483 after their uncle became king. Richard III is commonly held to be responsible for the deaths of the two boys – this has been the theory promoted by Tudor historians since Henry Tudor defeated Richard at Bosworth in 1485. And of course this was picked up by Shakespeare and so this theory became pretty much accepted as fact.

However, there is a considerable amount of evidence that one or both of the boys survived past 1485. The author is one of the founders of the “Missing Princes Project” which is searching out evidence to find out what really happened to the princes. This volume is sort of a “work in progress” report on the project so far. Most of the surviving evidence comes from archives outside of the United Kingdom – Henry VII and his historians destroyed an amazing amount of documents in the archives in England and Ireland. So it has been a struggle to find and evaluate documents in the Netherlands and other countries as well.

I don’t want to go into too much detail for fear of spoilers, but the working theory is that two of the “feigned boys” that the Tudors complained about for causing disruption by invading England, were actually the missing princes.

This is a familiar period of history to me, and so I’ve read a lot of books on the princes and their uncle and the Tudors. I do not recommend this book for someone who is unfamiliar with this era. But if you do have some background knowledge of the story of the princes, I think you may find this to be an interesting read. I liked this book, but it can be a little difficult to read – it is set up like a missing persons case folder, so there is no real narrative line. And at this point, anyway, there is no final resolution of the question.

In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors by Doug Stanton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In Harm’s Way is the story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis just before the end of World War 2 in the Pacific. The Indianapolis had delivered parts of the “Little Boy” atomic bomb to the island of Tinian, and then was making its way to Leyte in the Philippines when it was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58. The ship sank rapidly with heavy loss of life. Many sailors were able to get off the ship, but then were stranded in the water for four days because the Navy had lost track of the Indianapolis, and no alarm was raised when she didn’t arrive in Leyte on time.

The fact that over 300 men were eventually rescued is amazing, but the four days they spent in the ocean battling, thirst, hunger, the sun, their own injuries and sharks is horrifying. Hundreds of men died in the water before the rescue planes and ships arrived.

It remains a puzzle as to why the Navy decided to court martial Captain McVay for the loss of the ship. He was the only ship’s captain to face a court martial solely for the loss of his ship. The base of the charge against him was that the Indianapolis wasn’t zigzagging when it was torpedoed, so the captain was somehow at fault. One of the prosecution witnesses was the captain of the I-58 and he explained that zigzagging wouldn’t have made any difference. McVay was found guilty regardless.

It is a compelling story, but I have some reservations about this book. There are many, many minor errors that should have been caught by proofreading. None of them affect the main story though. I also found the author’s repeated use of the word “boys” to describe the crew to be somewhat annoying. There are better books than this one about the USS Indianapolis