Teaser Tuesday: Disciples

Like a baseball card snapping in the spokes of a bicycle wheel, the Wheel of Time has spun ’round to Teaser Tuesday.

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share a few sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

This week’s book is Disciples: The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought for Wild Bill Donovan by  Douglas Waller. I haven’t red much about the CIA in World War II, so I’m looking forward to his book.

The Truly Random Number Generator send us to page 79:

Barely five months old, the Coordinator of
Information escaped much of the blame that came 
after the attack. For Navy and Army intelligence, 
Pearl Harbor was a monumental failure.

Donovan, who was attending a Sunday afternoon  
professional football game at New York's Polo 
grounds, learned of the strike when a voice over a 
stadium loudspeaker summoned him to a phone and an 
aide on the line told him the president wanted him 
back at the White House immediately.

In Retrospect

Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross. and A Great American Land Grab

Author: Steve Inskeep.

Although I enjoy listening to this book’s author, Steve Inskeep, on NPR, I worried that the book would lean more towards an examination of white guilt than towards actual history.

I’m glad to report I was wrong. I found this book engaging, engrossing, and educating without being overbearing, heavy-handed, or even overtly moralistic.

Inskeep shows not just Jackson and Ross but also all the other minor players in the drama as people of their time to be understood in the circumstances of the day. He avoids the all-too-common sermonizing of modern, moralistic presentism.

Well done, indeed.

5 stars

Oh, and my review has the blessing of the author himself!

 Coming Soon

Anna Karenina

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