This October we here at Mulaney Reads continued on the theme of Cold War insanity.
Last month we featured Charles McCary’s Tears of Autumn. This month a nonfiction and fiction choice.
The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro and America’s Doomed Invasion of the Bay of Pigs by Jim Rasenberger is a large scale history and almost minute by minute account of the maddening, sad, and yes doomed Bay of Pigs invasion. It’s terribly depressing and wild to watch so many people get so many things wrong and then at the last minute, when they can course correct, get them so wrong again.
And then there is The Book Of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. I have been a big fan of Doctorow since high school, but Book of Daniel is the one I think about the most. In short it’s a novel about what might have happened to the children of (a fictionalized) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But it’s more a look at rebels of the radical 1960’s facing down the buttoned up but equally radical 1950’s subversives. And who did more for their cause: the people trying to fit the suit and tie mold or those who threw it all out a decade later.
Read both of these and then call my landline to tell me what you think.
Last month we featured Charles McCary’s Tears of Autumn. This month a nonfiction and fiction choice.
The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro and America’s Doomed Invasion of the Bay of Pigs by Jim Rasenberger is a large scale history and almost minute by minute account of the maddening, sad, and yes doomed Bay of Pigs invasion. It’s terribly depressing and wild to watch so many people get so many things wrong and then at the last minute, when they can course correct, get them so wrong again.
And then there is The Book Of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. I have been a big fan of Doctorow since high school, but Book of Daniel is the one I think about the most. In short it’s a novel about what might have happened to the children of (a fictionalized) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But it’s more a look at rebels of the radical 1960’s facing down the buttoned up but equally radical 1950’s subversives. And who did more for their cause: the people trying to fit the suit and tie mold or those who threw it all out a decade later.
Read both of these and then call my landline to tell me what you think.
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