Between the Covers: AHLHA Book Reviews

By Jeff Shaara
© 2001 by Jeffrey M. Shaara
Published by Ballantine Publishing Group
ISBN 034542753x
$26.95

I'm a sucker for history. Duh. That's why I started Armory Hill. I'm also a sucker for a good book. But when I frequent my favorite bookshops I find that my area of interest, the American War for Independence, seems woefully under represented. Especially when compared with areas like the Civil War and WWII. This is why when I saw Jeff Shaara, son of Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Shaara (The Killer Angels), had turned his particular style of exposition to my particular field of study I was pleasantly surprised.

Those hearty souls among you who have read my otherbook reviews know that I do most of my book buying in Kevin Magee's Half Moon Bay Books in, of all places, Half Moon Bay, California. I've veen spending my pennies with Kevin for more than twenty years so he and his staff have come to know my proclivities and oddities quite well. A little over a year ago Kevin handed me an advanced reading copy of Jeff Shaara's Rise to Rebellion knowing that I'll devour anything about this time period. I had never read Jeff Shaara before but had lovedThe Killer Angels. Not a writer, Jeff decided to sell his successful business after his father died in 1988 to manage the estate full time. After the critical success of Gettysburg, the Turner made-for-cable movie based on The Killer Angles, Jeff was persuaded to try his hand at the author business and write a prequel and sequel to his father's book.

If one is to believe Jeff's Web site (www.jeffshaara.com) no one was more surprised that Jeff when, two weeks after it was released Gods and Generals shot into the New York Times Bestseller charts and remained there for fifteen weeks. Two years later essentially the same thing happened when Jeff published The Last Full Measure to complete the Civil War trilogy begun by his father. A third effort, Gone for Soldiers, an historical novel of the Mexican War, was similarly received when it was published in 2000.

It would appear that Mr. Shaara is working his way backward through American history as 2001 saw the publication of Rise to Rebellion, the first of a two volume set of novels set during during the American Revolution.

Rise to Rebellion follows the events of the beginnings and earliest days of the AWI primarily through the eyes of John and Abigail Adams, Ben Franklin, General Thomas Gage, and George Washington. In this respect he follows quite closely in, almost retracing, his father's footsteps. The formats are identical, a present tense introduction setting the stage with pertinant background information which segues into a third person narrative, limited omniscient style, for each of the main and secondary characters. One is privy to the innermost thoughts of the Adamses, Ben Franklin, Generals Gage and Washington each in their turn as Shaara weaves his story.

The book opens in Boston on March 5, 1770, a cold winter night, as the infamous "massacre" is about to take place. It closes in New York on July 9th, 1776, a sultry summer day, with the public reading on Washington's orders of the newly adopted Declaration of Independence. On the pages that lie between we follow Gage, Adams, Franklin, Washington and a host of others as people and circumstances lead to the event that will become the dividing line between the old and modern worlds.

The book is very readable, and while Jeff writes well he does not do so with the style and grace of his father. This shouldn't be a surprise as one would hardly expect a precious metals dealer turned author to "coin" a phrase as neatly as a university professor of creative writing. Having said that I should also say that I do like this sort of novel. That is to say a meticulously researched effort that cleaves scrupulously not only to the facts but to the spirit of its times. This style was delineated and perfected by Allan Eckert in his six volume Winning of America series written between 1967 and 1988.

All in all Rise to Rebellion is a thoroughly enjoyable book that I do not hesitate to recommend. If you want to get a good feeling for what it must have been like to be there and can't seem to finish those books by Gordon Wood this one is going to be just about perfect.---JBW

As long as I'm admitting to being a sucker for things I might as well cop to being in love with pirates. I was captivated, like so many young boys, by Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. I still believe it is the best boy's book ever written. Period. Between its covers young Jim Hawkins finds a map to buried treasure, outwits pirates, and in general saves everyone's bacon whenever it needs saving. God, I wanted to be Jim Hawkins. In many ways I still do. I have four different filmed versions of Treasure Island in my video collection and still put on either the Jackie Cooper/Wallace Beery or the Christian Bale/Charleton Heston version, my personal favorite, whenever I get sick and need some special "comfort films" to perk me up.

It was, as usual, on one of my trips to Kevin Magee's Bay Book Company that I asked Jeff Boyles, the store manager, if he had anything on pirates. I'd been reading a book on the lost colony of Roanoke and the author kept mentioning that the area where the colonists had been sailing was lousy with pirates. The Lost Colony was pretty much a lost cause (I'll finish it someday when I'm really old and have nothing to do) but it had piqued my interest in pirates. And I didn't even have a cold.

One of the books Jeff handed me was Under the Black Flag - The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. It had a bold black cover with a skull and cross-bones on it so I bought it. I took it home and put it on my night stand where it whispered my name every night as I continued to slog through the adventures of the Roanokies. The author's style, reminiscent of Erich von Daniken's Chariot of the Gods, finally got to me and I "caved in" to the lure of the jolly roger there on my night table, grinning at me with its one gold tooth.

Cordingly, one time curator and head of exhibitions of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, is considered to be the world's foremost expert on pirates. I for one will not dispute the claim. What Cordingly does is contrast and compare the image of pirates as portrayed in fiction and on film with accounts taken from such contemporary sources as newspapers, periodicals, and first person narratives. What emerges is a picture of pirates that often is surprisingly consistant with our modern notions but more often at direct odds with it.

Under the Black Flag explains the difference between a pirate (someone who robs and plunders at sea) and a privateer (some licensed to attack and seize the vessles of a hostile nation), between a corsair (a pirate based in the Mediterranean) and a buccaneer (a pirate operating in the Caribbean). He also tells us not to underestimate the influence of Treasure Island on our perceprion of pirates. "Stevenson linked our pirates forever with maps, black schooners, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen with parrots on their shoulders. The map with a cross marking the location of the buried treasure has become one of the most familiar piratical props...(y)et it is an entirely fictional device which owes its popularity to that spidery drawing of Treasure Isalnd which is usually reproduced as the frontispiece of Stevenson's book."

Cordingly divides his attentions almost equally between pirates and pirate hunters. While one chapter recounts the not so romantic exploits of Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts (no relation to the "Dread Pirate Roberts" of The Princess Bride) another follows Chaloner Ogle, a captain in the British Navy, as he tracks Roberts down off the Gold Coast of Africa, catching up with his ship The Royal Fortune on the morning of February 10, 1722. By 2 o'clock in the afternoon Roberts is dead, killed in the ensuing battle, and his entire crew either killed or captured.

In chapters titled, Wooden Legs and Parrots, Women Pirates and Pirates' Women, and Torture, Violence, and Marooning Cordingly takes us into the gruesome and deadly world of the pirates, never pulling a punch or missing a beat and always entertaining. It was one of those rare books that I wanted to be twice as long.

Go buy it. You'll like it.---JBW

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