The Burning Mountain – Alfred Coppel, 1982 ★★

The Longest Day that Never Was

For those who balk at the morality of using A-bombs on Japan at the end of World War II, The Burning Mountain presents a hellish alternative: mass waves of suicide boats and planes, gas warfare, hordes of crying children wearing explosives, and much more.

Between 150,000 to 250,000 people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Alfred Coppel imagined a death toll at least as high in the hypothetical event the atom bomb failed to work. The invasion of the Japanese Home Islands becomes a series of endless battles fought with bamboo sticks and flamethrowers; one side full of people eager to die, the other side worn out both by their own casualties and those they must inflict.

As a worst-case scenario, The Burning Mountain convinces. As a story, it mostly misses the mark with a handful of distinctive yet dull characters and an uninvolving, shapeless narrative.

All’s Well That Ends Well – William Shakespeare, 1598-1608? ★★★

Stand by Your Man

The verdict on this play over the years can be summed up in a single word: Meh.

Its existence went unnoticed from available evidence until 1623’s publication of the First Folio. Its origins are murky, at least as far as Shakespeare’s composition is concerned. Its performance history is rather slight for a comedy by the Bard; not even a movie adaptation.

Beyond that, it is a comedy that is not that funny and a romance which leaves a bad taste in many mouths. There are many fine things about it, particularly an engaging heroine and a villain who doubles as comic relief. It has an experimental quality about it one can either go with or not, trusting in the title not to be led astray.

Whether it delivers on that title isn’t clearly answered. Since that is the one thing people know about the play going in, let’s look into it.

The Dead Zone – Stephen King, 1979 ★★★★½

Wake Me When It's 1975

This was the novel that started it all for Stephen King. It wasn’t his first book, nor his first great book, but it was the first King book to top The New York Times bestseller list, a feat he has repeated over 30 times since. It’s the book where his reign of terror really began.

People say King is a sloppy writer, an indifferent craftsman, that he goes for big scares and brand-name placement in place of things like tone and character. Yes, sometimes I am one of those people. But The Dead Zone forces a reappraisal. It has a powerful human intimacy, a sense of what makes people tick, that makes for a very credible horror tale.

John Smith has a problem other people would kill for: An ability to see the future. Precognitive insight has been part of his life as long as he can remember; after a five-year coma it metastasizes to a point where he can discern the fates of other people by touching their hands.

Scoop – Evelyn Waugh, 1938 ★★

Fleet Street Follies

When it came to media bashing, Evelyn Waugh got his licks in early and often. Scoop is his acid take on the artful folly of foreign correspondents competing for the big story, not really caring if it isn’t there.

Based on his recent experience as a war correspondent covering the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia), Waugh presents Ishmaelia, an East African land of no cultural or material importance. Here is sent, completely by accident, one William Boot, nature correspondent for the Beast.

Can this gormless rustic bumpkin accustomed to writing about great-crested grebes possibly land the big story? To quote Mr. Salter, a toady to the Beast’s overbearing publisher Lord Copper, “Up to a point.”

Green Hills Of Africa – Ernest Hemingway, 1935 ★★½

The Hangover Strikes

The 1920s gave us Hemingway’s legacy, the 1930s left us the legend. Green Hills Of Africa is how that legend is often remembered, opinionated, self-glorifying, often a mean drunk toting a loaded gun.

How much you enjoy this travel/hunting memoir depends on your tolerance for its brilliant but often solipsistic prose. Sure, there are quotes aplenty, but also a reason for seeing in it the beginning of serious decline.

For one thing, the man was beginning to let himself go:

The Frumious Bandersnatch – Ed McBain, 2004 ★★

Late McBain Leaves Bitter Taste

Pop music has always been a rough business, but how about this: a young singer’s major-label debut is transformed into a violent kidnapping. Despite the Lewis Carroll-inspired title, this is one of the grimmest and edgiest 87^th Precinct novels Ed McBain ever penned.

Did he go too far this time?

I think so, though I didn’t hate this one as much on a second read. It has a clever, suspenseful plot once it gets going and offers some memorable highlights. It’s just that McBain’s increasingly bleak outlook and his willingness to indulge himself too much on matters away from the main story make this one tough to like.

Gettysburg – Stephen W. Sears, 2003 ★★★★½

Teaching Lee Humility

It began a brazen demonstration of contempt and wound up a history-altering mistake. In between, over three days, came intense carnage. Still, who won Gettysburg was not decided immediately; much of the how and why parts of the battle are still being debated.

Today we see Gettysburg as the turning point in the bloodiest of American wars. Back then, concrete conclusions were harder to reach. Stephen W. Sears offers readers something the people who fought at Gettysburg didn’t have: clarity.

For the Confederates, what was at stake was clear enough. They needed to stay on the attack and put the fight to the North. The commander of their Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee, put it so: “There is always hazard in military movements, but we must decide between the positive loss of inactivity and the risk of action.”