Events
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Start: 2:00 pm
The World War II History Book Group will discuss All the Way to Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe by James Megellas (Presidio Press, $27.00). In mid-1943 Megellas joined the 82d Airborne Division. His first taste of combat was in the rugged mountains outside Naples. In October 1943, Lt. Gen. Mark Clark requested that the division’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment for a daring new operation that would outflank the Nazis’ stubborn defensive lines and open the road to Rome. On 22 January 1944, Megellas and the 504th landed across the beach at Anzio. Following initial success, Fifth Army’s amphibious assault, Operation Shingle, bogged down in the face of heavy German counterattacks that threatened to drive the Allies into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Anzio turned into a fiasco, one of the bloodiest Allied operations of the war. Not until April were the remnants of the regiment withdrawn and shipped to England to recover, reorganize, refit, and train for their next mission. In September, Megellas parachuted into Holland with the 82d Airborne as part of another star-crossed mission, Operation Market Garden. Months of hard combat in Holland were followed by the Battle of the Bulge, and the long hard road across Germany to Berlin. | 24
Start: 6:30 pm
The History/Mystery Book Group, a new reading group focusing on mysteries in historical settings, will have its organizational meeting to discuss common interests and select books for discussion at future meetings. The book for discussion at this first meeting is Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery by James Benn (Soho, $14.00). What's a twenty-two-year-old Irish American cop doing an English country house, having lunch with King Haakon of Norway? Back home Billy Boyle had barely made detective when war was declared. Unwilling to fight--and perhaps die--for England, he was relieved when his mother wangled a job for him on the staff of a general married to her distant cousin. But the general turns out to be Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose headquarters are in London, which is undergoing the Blitz. And Uncle Ike wants Billy to be his personal investigator. Billy is dispatched to the seat of the Norwegian government in exile. Operation Jupiter, the impending invasion of Norway, is being planned, but it is feared that there is a German spy amongst the Norwegians. Billy doubts his own abilities, with good reason. A theft and two murders test his investigative powers, but Billy proves to | 25
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Start: 10:00 am
The Civil War Book Group will discuss A Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster, $21.00). Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires. It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war. We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through. |
