In On All Fronts: Czechoslovaks in World War II, Part 3 (ISBN: 0-88033-456-8), edited by Lewis M. White, there are many stories of people with Czechoslovak heritage fighting and resisting the Nazi occupation of their beloved land, fighting with the Allies to overthrow the Germans, and then fighting an unexpected enemy, their major liberator, when the USSR decided to prop up a Communist dictatorship in the post-war years. The book consists of short contributions from a wide variety of Czechoslovaks involved in the war in one way or another. The vast majority are contributions from men who served as officers in Czechoslovak regiments of Allied militaries. Many served in the French Foreign Legion, others in the Royal Air Force, and a disproportionately large number served in the Red Army. Other stories were from members of the underground resistance or partisans. All had a very common theme: the liberation of what was a free and democratic country from the grips of a totalitarian Nazi government. Stories of tense minutes hiding under the floorboards of a stranger's house, fighting off German tanks on swampy riverbanks, forced treks through the snowbound and freezing Tatras, and high-flying adventure in the skies over enemy territory make for interesting reading, especially since it is about a group that doesn't get much billing in the usual run-down of the history of World War II. While the book largely focuses on military successes, there is room for a few stories of defeat as well as some realism that describes the banalities and redundancies that afflict all military bureaucracies the world over in all eras. The end of the book sees a little change in focus as the stories do not have so much to do with the vanquished Germans, but with the intruding Red Army that presented a much different face than the French, the British, and the Americans.The book was enjoyable and provided for an unexpectedly powerful and poignant ending, although it was admittedly hard to plow through in places. Since most of the writers were officers and career military men, many of the memoirs seem technical and are filled with recountings of names, dates, lines held, and guns lost. This is especially true of those who served with the Western Allies. Those who served with the Soviets, in the Far East, or in partisan units provide for what I found to be more intriguing reading. Their stories are full of crazy moments such as a Soviet captain telling a Czech lieutenant that if he doesn't succeed in battle, he'll answer with his head; or a Czech officer recounting how he and another officer had horses, but one morning during a particularly hard time in the winter, they awoke to only one horse, but the camp cook was proudly serving horse goulash in the mess hall. Dry tales of artillery lines and military bureaucracy are counterbalanced effectively by your heart racing along with the resistance member hiding in a barn as the Nazis tear a farmyard apart. The far reaches of the Gulag make some depressing appearances and, even having read books explaining the Gulag and Stalin, make the Soviet bureaucracy seem absolutely crazy. Czechs escaping the Nazis by going into Soviet territory were promptly arrested and spent time in prison until the Soviets found a use for them by forming a Czech regiment. Then, they were sometimes used as canon fodder. Finally, as the war came to a close, those who had put their complete effort into fighting for Czechoslovakia in an effort to make it again free, found themselves fighting a new and entirely unexpected foe. The Soviets had a little bit of a different agenda than the Allies on the western front, and started implementing things right away. It was interesting to read about the disappointment of those who returned from the war only to find themselves looking to get out of Czechoslovakia again. Some made it; others weren't so lucky and suffered torture and other inhumane treatment in prisons. The part that was the hardest to believe was that it wasn't some far enemy (i.e., the Soviets), but a near enemy in the face of former classmates, those who one fought next to, or acquaintances from the same town. Not only had the Soviets sold Czechoslovakia out, Czechoslovaks sold Czechoslovakia out. Of course, that spawned a whole new generation of tales of an equally intriguing underground resistance movement; hopefully their stories are also recorded somewhere for us to both enjoy and learn from.
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In 2008, my question was answered, and the Church published Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith for use in priesthood and Relief Society meetings throughout 2008 and 2009. Following the standard format, the book contains some historical information on Joseph Smith and then two years' worth of lessons (47 chapters in this case). Each one is about one or another aspect of the gospel. For the most part, the content of the chapters is taken directly from Joseph Smith's writings or sermons. As a result of the nature of the time he lived in, a healthy amount of the material from his sermons is according to a scribe or someone who heard the message first-hand and then wrote it on their own. All of the content has been carefully checked and corroborated by Church historians and editors before being approved by the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. There is no room for doubt that one is reading the words of the prophet that opened this dispensation. The words, or the things we are all supposed to learn and come to know as true, explain just why this period of time on Earth, with the fully restored true church, is so special. From the Book of Mormon to the nature of God and from true priesthood authority to faith and from the organization of the Church to the reality of a living prophet, Joseph Smith laid out the teachings of God as he worked to restore the fullness of the gospel, and now we can read about it.
It took eight years, but Heimerdinger finally got around to writing the sequel, Escape from Zarahemla (ISBN: 978-1-60861-539-1). In it, Kerra, Brock, their father, Chris, and their grandfather, Grandpa Lee, purposefully head off into a mysterious "rift in time" to see about some of the people left behind — Chris's Nephite wife and kid as well as Kerra's childhood friend (and now love interest), the Nephite soldier Kiddoni. It doesn't take but a few seconds before they're entangled in an ongoing war between the righteous Nephites and Lamanites, who have banded together to take on the Gadianton robbers. The twist to the whole thing is that the Gadiantons have someone in their midst trying to usurp power, a man rumored to practice a magic even blacker than that of your everyday Gadianton, Akuhuun. Like all Heimerdinger adventures, the books, written for teenagers, move along quickly, and you're pulled right into the action, of which there is never a shortage. One adventure after another befalls characters from throughout history, including an unexpected turn involving one of the gangsters that wanted to kill Brock after Brock ditched a quarter million worth of illegal drugs in the first book. In the end, it seems like things are good, notwithstanding the honorable deaths of a few of the good guys, especially since Chris and his family are reunited, as are Kerra and Kiddoni.
No matter my view of the world, a gripping story of international intrigue, raw, primordial bravery, faith, and patriotism, is told by Betty Mahmoody and William Hoffer in Not without My Daughter (ISBN: 0-312-92588-3), a memoir of Mahmoody's experiences when her husband took her and their daughter to Iran and then forcibly kept them there. Mahmoody starts with her flight to Iran from America's heartland, where she spent her entire life and moved from her blue-collar beginnings to entertaining and comfort of the upper middle class thanks to her Iranian husband. She had various reasons for agreeing on the flight to Iran, but staying there indefinitely wasn't one of them. That such a plan is her husband's plan is apparent within a week of arrival, and it's made worse by the fact that most of his family, and like most eastern cultures, family connections are extensive, is in on the kidnapping. Mahmoody and her kindergarten-age daughter, Mahtob, endure the next two years under what amounts to house arrest in an unfamiliar and usually hostile foreign land where hatred for America is not only the official line, but something many citizens openly and actively agree with. Eventually, Mahmoody is able to make contacts with various people, some simple shopkeepers, some foreign government officials, and others who are just the universal kind-hearted person you always hope exists out there. She uses these contacts to organize a treacherous escape for her and her daughter, and through a few minor miracles, they are smuggled to freedom.
In his fifth edition of his best-selling book, The World's Most Dangerous Places (ISBN: 978-0-06-001160-4), so-called extreme travel guru and author Robert Young Pelton explores some of the ins and outs of places that are most definitely off the beaten path. He talks about some of the things one is likely to run into if you're trying to see the sights in Afghanistan, Iran, Zimbabwe, North Korea, or Russia. The guide gives rather extensive information on adventure travel and the various ways to make it a reality in your life. Then it delves into specific countries or regions (Chechnya, somehow, gets its own chapter even though Russia is also covered as a whole). Each country or region gets a general overview, a run-down of some of the famous nutters that make the place a dangerous place to be, a list of other dangers that run the gamut from landmines to "67% of the hookers have AIDS," an idea of what getting a visa is like, and a list of some dates in the place's history that featured much death and general mayhem. The book ends with a few more lists featuring things like what adventure tourists should pack and organizations that help people experience the crazy parts of the world while trying to "make a difference."
A couple years ago, the Church issued a new version of Gospel Principles, which had historically been used in classes for newly baptized members of the Church or for those who had not yet been baptized. This new version, though, has been used as the main course of study in Relief Society and Melchizedek priesthood meetings throughout 2010 and 2011. It is just what the title says it is. It has forty-seven chapters on key subjects like faith, repentance, baptism, marriage, tithing, chastity, fasting, the Millennium, and the final judgement. If there is a basic tenet of the gospel — something you really need to know to be saved — it's in here. There are abundant references to the scriptures, explanations from modern-day prophets, and even pictures and illustrations that explain and teach things, too. It's a great resource for personal study as well as for a starting point when one has a lesson to teach or a talk to give. My experience with the older edition is somewhat limited (the Russian edition while I was on my mission), so I can't make comparisons, but there's really no need. The point of the manual is written on the front cover: "[to] come to the knowledge of their Redeemer and the very points of his doctrine, that they may know how to come unto him and be saved" (1 Nephi 15:14).
In his book The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence (ISBN: 978-0-440-50883-0), Gavin de Becker attempts to help people push irrational fear out of their lives so they can be properly attuned to true fear, which he claims is a positive aspect of our bodies' natural reaction to things. Fear, he says, helps us respond appropriately to situations that have a real chance of resulting in our being harmed or killed. De Becker is an expert on security issues, criminal justice, and public safety. His book reflects that in that most of the examples and the topics of discussion involve things like corporate safety, dating safety, and child abuse. As one with a wide range of experience — personal, research, and professional — the examples given are not only gripping, but provide lessons learned. De Becker explains how we can often predict violence and gives some suggestions on how to get out of those potentially violent situations with minimal damage done. As someone who has found much of what Glenn Latham says in his book The Power of Positive Parenting: A Wonderful Way to Raise Children to be true, I was intrigued by de Becker's claim that stalking, whether from an estranged spouse to a crazed fan to a disgruntled employee or anything in between, can usually be solved by ignoring the stalker. The overarching message of the book, of course, is that our natural intuition will help us in most dangerous situations, but only if we are informed enough to not have our head full of worries and anxieties caused by unfounded fear.
In his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? (ISBN: 978-1-889865-09-6), Czech president Václav Klaus presents his reasons for why environmentalism and its liberal, leftist, and radical tendencies is dangerous not only for the planet, but for people who cherish their liberty. The book is largely written from an economic point of view (Klaus is an economist by training), but also includes a chapter on the many scientific fallacies present in various environmentalist arguments for global warming (or, now that global warming has largely been discredited, the environmentalists have changed the label once again, and we have "climate change" to be all freaked out about). The economics-heavy chapters explain why environmentalist policies are bad for the economy and why they also tend to be bad for the planet. There is also a section on how environmentalist policy limits economic and personal liberty. Finally, Klaus gives the reader a policy recommendation regarding so-called climate change: do nothing. Based on his analysis of real numbers (in contrast to environmentalists, who have brought us endless fake numbers, including the famous so-called statistics of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and those rain forest destruction statistics, that if true, would’ve resulted in the complete extermination of rain forests decades ago), Klaus convincingly points out that slow and measured responses to problems are much more effective at preserving solid economic conditions as well as personal liberty. When we look at everything as a crisis, we (or, at the very least, politicians) make knee-jerk reactions that almost universally compound the original problem. When you are facing a problem like global warming, which is far from having a scientific consensus, let alone from being fact, a reaction causes not a worse problem, but new problems.
Anne Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning and critically acclaimed-by-everyone book, Gulag: A History (ISBN: 978-1-4000-3409-3) is, obviously, not a memoir. Instead, it draws heavily on memoirs and other existing literature, including what little has been made available by the Russian government in their state archives, to give the reader an idea of just what the Gulag was, how it functioned (or didn’t function, as the case may be), who ran it, why they ran it, who the prisoners were, and why it, like the Soviet Union, eventually came crashing down as the result of an implosion more than anything else. The history is quite detailed and dutifully footnoted. It takes the reader from the pre-Bolshevik use of forced labor in imperial Russia through the very end of the system with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Every angle of the story is explored, some of them in more detail than others, but always in such a way that the impact of a particular decision or event is clearly seen. The individual anecdotes that make up a significant portion of the book are both colorful and illustrative, often giving an even more detailed look at what it was like to live, work, and sometimes die (interestingly, it wasn’t all bad, and there was time in some camps for music, theater, and storytelling) in the notorious prison camps of the Soviet Union. One comes away with not just a basic overview, but probably an intermediate-level understanding of the Gulag thanks to the complete coverage of the subject by the author.
The Caucasus is a complex region because it has traditionally been a bit of a crossroads and its famous mountains have always made it strategically desirable. This situation was the same during the Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1988–1994 (the uneasy cease-fire has more or less held since then to the present day). Like most anything in the Caucasus, a romantic region shrouded in mountain mystery, the truth about the current strife between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis (and the Turks) is not always easy to come by. Although the war was long over by the time of my mission, I was not alone in knowing nothing about Nagorno-Karabakh, and longtime Caucasus expert and journalist Thomas de Waal tried to solve that problem for people with his 2003 book Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War (ISBN: 0-8147-1945-7). De Waal’s book is an attempt to acquaint the Western reader with the region, its history, and the modern-day conflict. He focuses on XX-century history, and the reader is acquainted with how Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan came to be. Then, the majority of the books is spent dealing with the details of the Nagorno-Karabakh War. De Waal is meticulous in his presentation of the story of the war from Yerevan, Baku, and Stepanakert. The book concludes with an overview of the negotiations process since 1994 and how they have proved rather fruitless. De Waal, unlike many writers on the subject, offers no faultfinding, finger-pointing, or one-sided calls to action, just a simple overview of a historical subject.