Review: The Long Way Home

The Long Way Home

An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

Author: David Laskin
Narrator: Erik Synnestvedt
Publisher/Format: Tantor Media audio discs; 416 page equivalent
Subject: Immigrants who served in World War I
Genre: narrative history
Source: public library

I saw Ellis Island in the title and picked up this book because my grandfather arrived at Ellis Island in 1910.  He was 25, single, and his papers said his last residence was Avellino Italy.  I thought it might shed some light on what he went through when he came to America.

So I expected that this was going to be the story of how immigrants who arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s became assimilated into American society.  Laskin certainly does cover that subject, and covers it very well.  However, in addition to the specific stories of 12 different immigrants he follows from their birthplaces in various countries, their immigration and landing at Ellis Island, their first jobs in America, and then their participation in WWI, to their return to the US, their later lives and their deaths, he gives us a detailed overview of US immigration policy, and the role and influence of immigrants in US society.

As he expounds on the immigration issues, one can't help but draw comparisons to the debate raging in our country today.  In 1914, one in three people living in the US was an immigrant or child of an immigrant.  They did not learn English, they stayed in small enclaves of people who spoke their language, worshiped their same god, ate the same food.  It was not until the US entered the war, and these men joined the armed services (almost all of them willingly) to fight for the US against what was for some of them their native countries, that they became not "kikes, jews, wops, & polacks," but Yanks one and all. The bonding that took place on the battlefield transcended language, religion, and customs; the friendships formed lasted lifetimes.

By following the lives of these twelve men and their families (4 Italians, 1 Norwegian, 1 Irish, and the others Slavs and Jews from Russia and the Russian Pale) he gives us a picture of hardship, loyalty, and determination. We get a history lesson and a humanity lesson.  I think he sums it up toward the end:

The only great thing about the Great War was the scale.  So why did they fight?  The question was especially fraught for America's immigrant soldiers.  To fight for your own country is an inescapable part of the social contract.  In exchange for the  benefits of a secure civil society, we offer our bodies  and, if need be our lives, in time of war. But the foreign born were asked, indeed forced to serve without having executed the social contract in full.   In the streets of America, they were aliens, but in no man's land they were expected to fight as fervently as native born Americans.   And for the most part, they did.    It was that loyalty in action that changed everything.  They righted the imbalance of the social contract not by protesting, but paradoxically by submitting.  Their pride in serving won them, and their families, the status they could never have gained without the war. 

In a war remembered more for senseless slaughter than for courage, the service of the foreign born shines.  Nearly  a hundred years later, it's one of the few things about the great war that still does.

 I enjoyed this book and learned a lot.  I do think however, that I've about gotten to the end of my war reading for awhile....it's time for a change of pace.

Memoir #5: The Things They Carried

Author:  Tim O'Brien
Publisher/Format: Mariner Books (2009), Paperback, 256 pages
Subject: memories from the Vietnam War
Genre: short stories/memoir
Source: My own shelves
Challenge: Read from my shelves; War Through the Generations

What a way to honor our Veterans today!   This is a book I read for the Vietnam Reading Challenge sponsored by War Through the Generations.  The author, Tim O'Brien, is featured over there this week as he compares the Vietnam War to today's conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His thoughts are a good addition to what is featured here.

It seems strange to read a book written about death, mire, dismemberment, fear, and squalor and then call it beautiful.  But it is just that.  O'Brien is truly one of today's most gifted writers, giving us the ugliness of war in beautiful eloquent prose.  As he tells the stories of "A" company and his fellow soldiers humping their way through the killing fields of Vietnam, slogging through marshes, creeping blindly through jungles at night, and hiding in pits, we see them as individuals, we feel their fear, their bravado, their anguish and their emotions.  We also see the author's torment as he tries to tell the stories.  Does he give us bare truth?  What is truth?  Should he embellish?  He says:

The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque.  But in truth, war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat....It's not pretty exactly, it's astonishing. It fills the eye.  It commands you.  You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not.  Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference--a powerful implacable beauty--and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly. (pg. 77).

 Each story is a stand-alone, but together they form an aggregate of emotions that help us feel.  We may never have had to endure what they did, but we at least know what they felt as they went through the experience, because the very first story lets us understand that among the things they carried, the heaviest were the fear, the hope, the love, the nostalgia, the loneliness that each young man took with him as he went to war.

If you never read another book about war......any war.....you should read this one.  It is jaw-dropping in its beauty, and that is what is so special: that a subject so ugly can be described in such splendor.

2010 Challenges - War through the Generations: Vietnam

Hosted by Anna (Diary of an Eccentric) and Serena (Saavy Verse & Wit) the  War Through the Generations challenge will focus in 2010 on the Vietnam war.

Both my husband and I served on active duty during the Vietnam War, but we both would like to understand that era a little better. This challenge has the following guidelines:

This year you have options when reading your fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, etc. with the Vietnam War as the primary or secondary theme.Books can take place before, during, or after the war.  Books from other challenges count so long as they meet the above criteria.
Dip: Read 5 books in any genre with the Vietnam War as a primary or secondary theme.
Wade: Read 6-10 books in any genre with the Vietnam War as a primary or secondary theme.
Swim: Read 11 or more books in any genre with the Vietnam War as a primary or secondary theme.

I'm going to go very easily and only commit to the Dip level. It will be an emotional stretch to go much further than that.

Review: All Other Nights

I'm don't usually read much Civil War material. I often find the non-fiction overwhelming with all the gruesome battle details and the fiction often cloyingly romantic or just plain unbelievable. This book held my attention however, and I found myself very involved in it before I even realized it. Dara Horn has taken the Civil War setting and viewed it fictionally from the perspective of a New York Jew, Jacob Rappaport, who runs away from his family to avoid an arranged marriage and joins the Union army. His Jewish background and language skills land him in the role of a secret agent smuggled into New Orleans to kill his uncle who is involved in a plot to kidnap and/or kill Lincoln. He is so successful at that undertaking (killing the uncle), that he is next assigned to go to Danville Virginia to marry a young lady who is suspected of being the member of another Confederate spy ring. The story has many plot twists, making it often necessary to go back and see who's working for whom. Several times, there are awfully convenient occurences that seem to pull the fat from the fire just in time. And the reader is constantly questioning Rappaport's motivation since he is constantly questioning it himself. The supporting characters are well drawn, and each has a very specific role in the unfolding of the story. I can't even say I won't do spoilers. I just finished this, and really will have to go back and re-read a bit because I'm not sure what happened, or how the story ends. There are certainly questions in my mind about the ending, not so much that I didn't like what happened (I'm not sure I did) but that I'm not sure whether the story really ended, or the reader is left hanging. If so, why? All in all, if you are a civil war fan, you may enjoy this account of the involvement and role of Jewish soldiers and families on both sides of the conflagration. If you're looking for Gone With the Wind, this isn't it, but it's still worth a read.

Review: Rule Number Two

Subtitled Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital, the lessons and rules are from an episode of M.A.S.H: There are two rules of war. Rule number one is that young men die. Rule number two is that doctors can't change rule number one.

This is the well written story of a young female Navy clinical psychologist who is sent to a field Marine surgical unit (think MASH) in Fallugah Iraq in Feb 2004 during some of the fiercest fighting of the war. She left behind her 15 mo old twins in the care of her parents and her husband (a Marine pilot). It's an incredibly honest, compassionate, compelling, and heartwrenching story of her tour of duty and the heroes she counts herself privileged to serve. I count her as one of the heroes. Stories of her days in Iraq are interwoven with 'email' from home, making it as gut-wrenching for the reader as it must have been her to serve. The book is not long, not technical and 'easy' to read on the one hand--the prose is sharp and clear. However, it is difficult to read about a young parent separated from her family, enduring incredible hardships, who is still able to help those Marines both younger and older than herself not only to endure and function, but survive the carnage with some humanity. With people like Heidi Kraft taking care of us, we will remain a strong country. It's one of my best of the year.