"Books for Boys and/or Girls" Topic

I'm wondering what sort of childhood books might have influenced anyone's interest in history in general and military history, in particular. Unless you're a sci fi/fantasy gamer, in which case an interest in sci fi/fantasy, etc.

For me, the books which I particularly remember reading and enjoying during my "scouting years" (say seven to thirteen) include:

The Battle for Quebec, by F. van Wyck Mason
Spearman to Minuteman, by S. E. Ellacott
The Golden Book of Indian Crafts and Lore, by W. Ben Hunt
Heroes & History, by Rosemary Sutcliff
Tree in the Trail, by Holling Clancy Holling

I still own a copy of three of these. I just reread one of the ones I don't own, and I reread the other a couple summers ago.

What about you? Any specific childhood reads that contributed to a love of history, fantasy, sci fi? Were they school library books? Public library books? Scholastic (brand) paperbacks?

For me, four of the five were school library books, and the fifth was a public library book from a library that shared the same campus as my elementary and middle schools. When I was in fifth and sixth grade, I had two or three libraries within walking distance of my front door.

And speaking of scholastic paperbacks, my favorite was Flying Aces of World War I, by Gene Gurney.

All of these books were illustrated, with line drawings or wash paintings or photographs. Many had pretty exciting covers, as well, sure to deliver what was implied in the title, action and adventure, knowledge and learning, heroes and history.

I loved a Fanfare for the Valiant which was about a trumpeter in the Chasseurs a Cheval of the Guard

Also Mary Renault's books on Greek mythology

Plus anything by CS Forester

I remember this Davy Crockett book & record set from when I was about 4. Couldn't read it but could listen to the record anytime I wanted (pretty novel in the pre modern media age).
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Frederick, it's title is: Fanfare for the Stalwart. Yep, got me into Napoleonic history too.

"Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" is also a great book, for several reasons. A good book for boys and girls.

They may be dated, but for kids, the Altsheler ACW books (methinks two series???) were also my favorites when I was a kid.

"Combat Commander", another Scholastic PB is also a great book, short, sweet and too the point. But if you read it critically, in a nutshell it instructed a boy on just how to fight and lead men when he got older.

My parents subscribed to the Landmark book series back in the 1950s. I still have my copy of Gettysburg by McKinley Kantor and I still enjoy reading it. I also loved the one on D-day, the one on the Americans in WWI and the one on the USMC. All were written by noted authors and many are still available today. I bought some just the other day for my grandchildren.

One of the earliest authors I read when I was a kid back in the 60s was C.B. Colby. He wrote a lot of history books for kids. My two favorites were Weapons of World War One, and its companion piece, Weapons of World War Two. Not too surprising actually.

From there I went on to Walter Lord, who I still enjoy reading from time to time, despite the fact that things were not quite how he said.

Oh, and don´t forget the American Heritage series!

The books I remember were:
Tom Swift Series
The Time Life WWII books

All of the Old War and Western Movies were probably my biggest influences especially a Bridge to Far, Zulu, and Midway.

"We Were There At The Alamo" – by Margaret Cousins – 1958. I still have my original hardback copy.
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Texas Jack said:

C. B. Colby

THAT'S IT!!!

I could not remember that guy's name, for the life of me. I must've read at least a dozen books by that guy. Thanks for reminding me. To the library!

My mother read to me before I could read, and I read them again after I could.

Treasure Island

Kidnapped

Last of the Mohicans

David Copperfield

Christmas Carol

The Master of Ballantrae

Around the World in 80 Days

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.

The Three Musketeers

The Man in the Iron Mask.

Shakespeare's works. (the whole bloody thing)

Not to mention The Bible, Fox's Book of Marrtrs, Little Women, Black Beauty, Little Men, and all the stories and book for young people.

But the chief of them all was "the book." I don't know the name. But it was a book to be read.

When I was a little lad my parents sent me to a Christian School run by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. This was a very conservative sect back in the 50's who believed fervently in the motto "spare the rod and spoil the child." My parent's weren't religious, and they sent me here simply so I would not get beat up and my clothes would be torn in public School. I was not particularly religious back then either and I annoyed my teachers constantly with questions and of course I was put through many "character building" seminars with "the rod" which was a real "rod"--no wimpy pointer but an honest to god maple dowel 1" thick!

I remember once I was earmarked for such "special education" but the principal was out and I was told to wait in the library till he returned and I could be punished. Well in there, my little nine or ten year old frame waited its correction and I decided to read. I found a book in the shelves which I cannot remember the title of but it was on the Renaissance and Reformation. We had been taught about the reformation in Class and how God hated every one of us because we were sinful and that only Martin Luther and the Republican party stood between us and hell, and that only if we acknowleged our fitlthyness and sin and reprented did we have a chance of avoiding hell, if God was in a giving mood that day.

Well this was book on the Renaissance and Reformation but it was nothing like what I was taught. It was a book, a huge big book with huge big color pictures and it told the most wonderfull stories of fields of Cloth of God, of Kingdoms of Cannibals, of treasure gallions, and martyrs and glorious battles, of a forest that went clear around the world, inhabited by wolves and bears, and Cossacks, and a man with an iron hand and another with a golden nose, of stars and moons spinning in their courses, of a diet of worms, and chestnuts and courtesans, of Papal Bulls, of poison and prostitutes, of masques and balls, of glorious crusades of men of iron and men of Butter, of Snow Kings, and a spider king, Of Caterina Sforza on her wall, and a 70 year old general standing in the breach, of Pluderhosen and plate of steel, of brilliant paintings and glorious sculpture, of an teenage admiral, and pirates, and mercenaries, and all of them had names that sounded like mine! It told of Luther and the Reformation and he was not at all the fearsome ogre we had been told, but a man who enjoyed a good joke and a good beer, and a good time, and who had an entirely different view of God and Salvation. It told me of massacres and victories, and Golden Hordes, and banners, and the cheesemakers who could have inherited the earth, and thesack of Rome, the fall of Byzantium, and tales of severed heads, piles of jewels, the wealth of the Indies, tinkling temple bells, and perfumed harem girls. (I liked the harem girls).

Well I read and I read, and I read, and when I finnaly broke from the zone it was 8 pm at night and they had forgotten all about me. The Janitor rousted me out and I went home.

The next day of course I got my whipping in spades and twice over for staying so late. I didn't care. I knew the truth, or at least the glory and glamour. I didn't care if they pounded me flatter than snail-snot!

I was only a kid so I forgot to go back and steal the book! I don't even know the title of it.

The point of this tale is simple. NEVER, NEVER let anyone turn history into pablum or into identity politics, or into a dull dry lifeless thing.

By he way, the joke is still on them. I'm today still a Lutheran, and a staunch Republican, but they had nothing to do with it.

Again-- NEVER-- NEVER forget that you hold the real story. That the world is one great huge drama-- life and death, guns and butter, wine and roses, sacrament and excrement, pathos and heroism, good and evil, all rolled up into one great delicious ball.

I completely forgot to mention Greek Gods and Heroes by Robert Graves.

Must've been something about those 21cm "about 200 pages" historical books about "heroes", with their alluring dust jackets promising adventure.

I can't remember any specific books but they would almost certainly be non-fiction, didn't go in much for historical fiction then and still don't.

My problem has always been that I remember the story but never the book or the author.

Schmidt – I think my parents would have preferred torn clothes to the bigoted brutalising you describe.

Dear Gildas Facit

Naah, they were poor, they didn't have much money. It never bothered me. You have to remember, this was the 50's as far as bigotry everyone was back then. My wife is Catholic and the stories she told me of what the Nuns told them about "us Protestant Boys" were amazing, almost as amazing as what the Lutherans told me.

As for the whuppings, they weren't so bad. Didn't affect me any.

The real brutalizing was at public school. The stuff the Lutherans did was at sufferance and as a last resort, and it was done by authority. The stuff in the public schools was day to day and the damage was done all over by the older kids and all the time, and there was no rhyme or reason to it, and no appeal.

One of my teachers when I was very small would always read stories to us. Fantasy novels (for kids), adventure stuff, Norse mythology, bible stories, all mixed together.

From there, my own jump into fantasy and science fiction was an easy one.
My mom was not a good person in most ways, but she always approved of reading. Hence, why I would be limited from watching many movies and she always complained about my playing RPG's, she'd be okay with me reading books far above my age. So lots of violence, sex, crazy philosophical questions and weird adventures.

As for history, if I could trace it to a single book, it'd be "All quiet on the Western front".

It overwhelmed me by presenting the sheer humanity of the people involved, in the face of terrible inhumanity. I think I've always carried that with me.
From there, I'd go on to develop interests in the two world wars, devouring everything I could find in the library on the topics.

Dear Weasel

If you were fascinated by the humanity and inhumanity of it, I would recommend to you Robert Conquests "Reflections on a Ravaged Century." Conquest, perhaps the most famous of the coroners of the Soviet Union, (though WATCH OUT! it seems to be ALIVE! again) analyses the "totalizing ideologies" of the twentieth Century. A "totalizing ideology" is any which assumes that all the history, society, culture, art, mores, the one, the true, the beautiful can not only be explained, but Controlled and directed by one organizing principle, and it doesn't matter if that's Nazism's "race," Fascisms "power," Communism's "control of the means of production," or fundamentalism's "God", all of these creeds are united in one common thing- their organizing principle is not in any way derived from humanity or out of the human experience, nor even responsible and responsive to it, and derive purely from a theoretical or philosophical sense, and thus inevitably makes them inhuman, and from that lack of consideration of humanity mandates that they will be inhuman, barbaric, totalitarian, cruel and hellish. Conquest is almost tot he point of saying that these ideologies cannot HELP but be cruel and inhuman.

It's a compelling book and has a compelling logic. A similar theme can be found in Phillip Hallie's "Cruelty" which discusses the nature of Cruelty. Hallie says that Cruelty cannot exist without power, and that it results from an imbalance of power between peoples (he does not deal with states, classes, castes, or groups, but simply man to man, one is powerful and the other is not, and he says that as long as this power imbalance exists, the powerful cannot help but be cruel to the powerless, no matter how much he "cares" or is "interested in the little man." Indeed, Hallie notes that as the power imbalance increases the rhetoric of the powerful becomes more and more maudlin and cloying, going into paroxysm of words as to how much the powerful cares and that the powerful is his first and constant concern.

Otto

They may be dated, but for kids, the Altsheler ACW books (methinks two series???) were also my favorites when I was a kid.

Altsheler was a great read. And he had more than the ACW series. AWI, Texas Independence, FIW, WW1, 1812, the lot. And the books are mostly on Gutenberg.

Another good one was "Falcons of France" by Nordhoff and Hall.

Also Arch Whitehouse's aviation books. And I've asked, he's no relation to Howard.

I remember those Colby books. Really enjoyed them as a kid.

Appreciate the recommendation Otto and I'll give it a spin once I am through my current pile. I tend to buy 4-5 books at once, then work my way through them before grabbing another 4-5.

Once I am done, I try to lend them out to interested parties. No reason only I should benefit.

Marine at War by Russell Davis comes to mind. It's a great account of the war in the Pacific written at a children's level. In fact, I believe one of my teachers read it to the entire class one year.

I also read a lot of Landmark histories and You Were There accounts, which I wasn't as fond of.

I also read Padraic Colum's mythology books, and enjoyed them.

Grelber

Dear Weasel

Same here. I lend them out too. Good job. Right now I'm wading through a collection of fairy-tales and folk tales looking for tropes and plot similarities.

On that topic, I assume you are familiar with Campbell and "Hero of a thousand faces" ?

Very interesting but rather a dry read.

Dear Weasel

Yes, read it. It is dry, but I'm also a little leery of it. I think Campbell "skates over the top" too much and I am not impressed by some of his argument. Further, Turner does not imself "believe." I think that's a problem when really understanding the mythos. But we could talk about Campbell for weeks-- come to think of it I did in grad school.

If you're into this sort of thing then I recommend a bunch of books for you that might be interesting, but beware, it's a dark dark road and you will wind up in a very deep, dark, cold and forbidding part of the woods.

Lawrence H. Keely: "War Before Civilzation: The myth of the peaceful savage."

Steve A.LeBlanc "Constant Battle: The myth of the Peaceful Noble Savage."

Both of the above seem to deal with the same thing but they really don't and they take different paths to get where they are going. Keely shows that war in the pre-historic and the primitive is actually MORE vicious and prolonged and kills off a far greater percentage of the population of any one tribal group than modern war does. Both are huge correctives to the "Barcelona Conference myth" and LeBlanc pretty much demolishes the idea of the American indian as BC Greenpeacer. He notes they stampeded whole herds bison over cliffs thus creating enormous waste.

Matt Cartmill "A View to Death in the Morning." This is what SEEMS to be a simple disquisition on hunting with most of the expected maudlin eco-pieties and anti-hunting tropes. But about halfway through the book you begin to wonder where he is going with this and the book ends with as shocking and surprising and terrifying conclusion as you can imagine in the worst horror movie. Remember it's non fiction. Basically Cartmill says the moral justification for hunting has always come from tehe propogation of a "man-animal different" that allowed us to hunt and kill. OK as far as it goes. He builds his case perfectly, but then in the very last paragraph of the book where he's winding it all up he says "But I do not believe that if we were to abandon the theory of man-animal difference we would treat animals any better. We would still be cruel to animals. That's it! the End, what Cartmill in essence says is "We do it because we're evil, we like to be cruel to animals, and worse, having crashed the argument, he is in essence saying that since there is no man-animal difference then animals are just like men, and are as cruel and heartless as we are!

If that hasn't gotten you to take the gas-pipe then there's

Preston and Wrangham's "Demonic Males: Apes and the origins of human violence." This takes up where Cartmill leaves off and shows that apes are not at all the happy friendly "cheetah's of the Tarzan movies. Painstakingly step by scientific step with a huge amount of fieldwork behind it you see that the best things our mothers could do is drown us like unwanted puppies at birth. We are too violent even for our own good, and we now have perfect understanding of what Phillip Hallie in "Cruelty" mean't when he said that if we have power over people we cannot help but be cruel.

I Believe his name Is HD Turner, but I am not sure, I will find out tonight. He wrote a book called "Forests" which deals with forest and the ideas and ideals of forest that populate our mind and images. Significantly he deals with the difference between "Sky gods" and "River Gods" and "forest Gods" and in this it is important to remember that Wotan, the ultimate forest God Is also the God of Treachery. he also deals with the Acteon Myth. This is a very powerful ancient myth in which Acteon, the hunter, goes into the forest with his dogs to hunt. Here he stumbles by accident, into the grotto of Artemis while she is taking her bath with her nymphs around her. The Nymphs shriek and circle around her to try and hide her but it is too late. Acteon has seen her, he has seen Artemis naked, he has seen nature in her essence, in her raw, as she is. This is a great sacrelige and Artemis splashes him with water from the grotto and says contemptuously "Tell what you have seen, if you can!" he flees in terror from the grooto and is turned into a stag and is pursued, and torn apart by his own houds. The power of the myth is enormous as are many of the metaphors that crowd it (she splashes him with water from her grotto? This is only one part of the message in Turner and what he is really saying is that forests are terrible, dangerous places. Not forests themselves, but the nature of the forest which we go into, and it is a place of dark dread. Nature is neither kind, nor forgiving or merciful, and the "natural" thing in the forest is to eat and be eaten. Rather, Turner said it is the UNNATURAL that we require. The artificiality of law and logic and mathematics, and that the Roussean desire to "go back to nature is in fact to go back to the beast, the murdering, destroying devouring beast. That is that our sentiments and emotions are confused, as confused as the nature of Artemis. Artemis is an ambiguous goddess. She Is virginal and despises sex, but she is the goddess in Greece women called upon to ease the pain of childbirth. She is the protector of the animals in the forest, but also a supreme huntress (what does she hunt?) Like nature she is irrational, immoveable, unfathomable, and --- there.

There are half a dozen more on the same theme, but the above will be enough to unsettle you.

Junior Classic Illustrated's Caesar's Wars hooked me on the Romans (and the memory of that aided me a great deal when later translating said tome in high school Latin).

A biography of Robert E. Lee (don't recall the title; it was part of a series published sometime in the '70s).

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, of course.

The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff

Howard Pyle's The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Junior Classic Illustrated's Ivanhoe and Macbeth.

The Chronicles of Narnia

Spies of the American Revolution was also a favorite, though I've yet to start playing AWI.

Oh, and touching on the Artemis myth, I just finished Dark of the Moon, by Tracy Barrett, which is a re-imagining of the Minotaur myth told in a very realistic vein, based on Moon Goddess worship in ancient Krete. Ms. Barrett is an expert on ancient cultures, and the tale is quite effective. Written for a YA audience, but definitely of interest to anyone, with some unexpected twists. Well worth the read!

OSchmidt wrote:

Dear Weasel

Same here. I lend them out too. Good job. Right now I'm wading through a collection of fairy-tales and folk tales looking for tropes and plot similarities.

You may be interested in Vladimir Propp's Structuralist approach to Russian folklore. It can be applied to Campbell and the "Save the Cat!" Story Beats method as well. Several diagrams exist, and they are quite fun to build, especially attempting to correlate the three systems. Cheers.

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re: Your longer following post, you may be interested in Deadly Powers, where the author posits an origin for much of folklore and mythology in the man-eaters of the Pleistocene.

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Another recent read is Astrotheology and Shamanism, where the authors discuss the origin of mythology in the light of shamanic practices concerning such plants as Amanita Muscaria and Psilocybe Cubensis.

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Dear Parzival

Thanks on the Artemis myth but is this fiction? I really never read fiction, if it's a scholarly exposition I might pick I t up.

Sorry but I don't tink much of fiction.

Dear Grommett

Deadly powers sounds interesting. I am somewhat intrigued by things like this.

As for Astrotheolog and Shamanism I'm more of a classicist myself and a disciple of Mircea Elaiade. I'm not a believer in psychedelis as too few have the vision. I suspect that habit and repetition and rote are much more formative of human belief. The explanation is far less spectacular but it's far more believable.

This thread got pretty heavy but quite enlightening nevertheless. Keep it up good folks.

Dear Weasel

That's the thing about books and imaginations. It is on the one hand very light and fluffy, but there is a serious side to it. It has to do with the nature of stories.

Otto

Yes, Dark of the Moon is fiction. But then, so is Artemis.

Dear Parzival

Believe that till you meet her.

Otto – I completely agree. There's few things quite like that feeling when you read a book and when you put it down, you know in your heart that you're not quite the same person anymore.

As an aside, would you mind popping me an email ? runequester@gmail.com

sent

First war book which made quite an impression on me was "Guadalcanal Diary".