FEAST OR FAMINE

-

 

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow (2012) is an account of America’s military history and developmnent from the end of the Vietnam War (1955-1975) to the end of the Iraq War in (2003-2011) and the Afghanistan War (2001 to the time of her writing in 2011, which continued to 2021).    Rachel Maddow claims that America has drifted away from its original peace time goals to ‘being at peace with perpetual war.’ She details presidential war time decisions, particularly from Lyndon B Johnson to Ronald Reagan, and George H W Bush to his son George W Bush – the decision to go to war, the human costs, the financial costs, and the aftermaths.    Mostly, she explores the position of executive authority – exactly which individuals make the decisions, and who made the decision to outsource  the war-making capabilities to private American companies. She also looks at the rise and fall of citizen support for war – often told through the rise ...

  Carnets (1913-1918 ) – Notebooks by Maurice Esmein (French edition, 2022) is the memoir – the diary – of French cubist artist Maurice Esmein which I purchased at his art exhibition on 6 January 2023 (the exhibition was held from 8 December 2022 to 7 January 2023).   Maurice Marcel Marie Esmein (1888-1918) was born in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and studied medicine. Inspired by his uncle, Julien Le Blant (1851-1936), who was a military painter, Maurice turned to painting. He commenced painting in 1913 at the age of 25, but at the start of the First World War (1914-1918), Maurice was assigned as an auxiliary doctor at the Chaptal High School Hospital in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.   In 1917, he volunteered to go the war front as a doctor. He was assigned to a patrol station near Reims in the east of France. One night, there was a lack of volunteers for a reconnaissance mission, so his patrol volunteered. The patrol’s position was caught in the enemy’s searchlig...

Beyond the Sea: A Wren at War (2021) is the memoir of Englishwoman Christian Lamb during the Second World War.   Christian Lamb (1920-) begins writing her memoir – her fifth book – at the age of 101 during the Covid-19 pandemic.    She writes of growing up for two years in Malta in a naval family, and France for a year, before joining  the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the Wrens) in 1940 as a coder. Her experience at the ‘wrenery’ in London included the wartime bombing Blitz in 1940-1941 in which 20,000 Londoners died. She quickly moves onto the war in the Atlantic and beyond, and her decoding work at Bletchley Park.   This memoir is the extraordinary life of duty in a secret and vital role in the British wartime radar and operations rooms: the training, the strict security, the incoming traffic, the intercepts, the orders, the codes, the translations of German messages, and Winston Churchill’s secret visits to Bletchley Park to thank the decoding wrens in ...

  Rueil-Malmaison is the hometown of General Napoleon Bonaparte before he became Emperor of France.    Napoleon married his first wife Josephine de Beauharnais in 1796. She bought the Château de Malmaison in Rueil-Malmaison in 1799, a run-down manor house on 150 acres of woods and meadows, for 300,000 francs. However, it was near Versailles and only 12 kilometres (7 miles) from the centre of Paris.    She commenced renovations to the manor and turned it into a castle. She also established a garden with an orangery, greenhouse, and an extensive rose section with 250 different varieties.   Josephine stayed in the Château after their divorce in 1810 until her death in 1814.   MARTINA NICOLLS MartinaNicollsWebsite   Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website Flower Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES  MARTINA NICOLLS   is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and...