One sometimes wonders what publishers would do if World War II had never happened. Each year brings hundreds of new books about a conflict that ended 80 years ago, and there is only so many times you can read about the Battle of Midway. Luckily for us, Paul Thomas Chamberlin offers us an invigorating and exceptionally well-written account of the war and its roots in colonialism, interpreting the global battle not so much as the last Good War but as a struggle for dominance, with atrocities committed by soldiers on all sides.
Chamberlin provocatively frames the war as being as much about the West against the Soviet Union as it was the West against Germany and Japan, including details about Operation Unthinkable, which was Churchill’s plan to enlist the defeated German Army to fight against the Soviets, and Operation Rankin, F.D.R.’s scheme to parachute American soldiers into a teetering Berlin to foil Stalin’s occupation of Germany. Two of every three people killed in the war were civilians, a fact that underscores just how horrific and unheroic some of the tactics were. Scorched Earth offers not only a panoramic account of the most destructive war in history but illuminates the path that led us to the Cold War and beyond.
Multi-level marketing, better known to those in the business as M.L.M., does not seem like a sexy subject, but in the hands of Bridget Read the stories of those who worked for Mary Kay, Amway, and Herbal Life are utterly engrossing. Who doesn’t want to be their own boss, recruiting friends to buy products and perhaps to become little bosses themselves, selling even more products and enlisting their friends in turn to join the business? At some point, of course, the pyramid scheme collapses upon itself, leaving so many who had hoped to get rich quick instead ending up broke even quicker, thanks to entry fees, leftover inventory, and expensive seminars. For those of us old enough to remember the apparent innocence of Tupperware parties, where a housewife would invite her friends over to see and buy food containers available only through direct selling, Little Bosses Everywhere is a dark tale, indeed, of warped capitalism and dashed dreams.
Pompeii rules our imagination the same way the Titanic does: a thriving enterprise suddenly gone—in the Roman city’s case, destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Unlike the Titanic, of course, you can easily visit the ruins of Pompeii, and in this enthralling and handsomely produced account by the director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, we learn who lived there, how they went about their days and nights, and about their final hours. A third of the site remains unexcavated, so there is still much to learn beyond the ruins that have already given us unmade beds, dishes left drying, and bodies encased in ash. The reader can ask for no better guide to the emotional pull of Pompeii than this author.
Jim Kelly is the Books Editor at AIR MAIl. He can be reached at jkelly@airmail.news
