Mountain Views News          Saturday, May 28, 2016

B2

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Views-News Saturday, May 28, 2016 


Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

Will War Ever End?: A Soldier’s Vision of 
Peace for the 21st Century by Paul K. 
Chappell 

Once in a great while, a book is 
written that substantially changes 
the way people think about a 
particular subject. Will War Ever 
End? is such a book. Written as a 
“manifesto for waging peace” by 
an active duty captain in the US 
Army, Will War Ever End?challenges 
readers to think about peace, war 
and violence in radically new 
ways.Are human beings naturally 
violent?What is hatred?How can love 
overcome the power of hatred?How 
does nonviolence overcome the 
power of violence?How can we 
prove that unconditional love 
makes us psychologically healthy 
and that hatred, just like an illness, 
occurs when something has gone 
wrong?How does violence against 
the natural world relate to violence 
between human beings?These are 
all questions that Captain Chappell 
leads us to consider in a strikingly new 
way. He demonstrates that human 
beings are naturally peaceful and 
that world peace can become more 
than a cliché. He lays out a practical 
framework for transforming the way 
we think about war and violence, 
enabling us to begin the real work 
we must do in order to achieve true 
peace for mankind.The book is a 
deeply personal story of a soldier’s 
search for human understanding that 
will lead to universal transformation. 
Its message is one of hope, offering 
practical solutions to help us build a 
better world.We can all make change. 
Now is the time to begin.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can 
Sailors: The Extraordinary 
World War II Story of the U.S. 
Navy’s Finest Hour by James D. 
Hornfischer 

This is easily one of the greatest books 
on Naval Warfare ever written.“This 
will be a fight against overwhelming 
odds from which survival cannot be 
expected. We will do what damage 
we can.”With these words, Lieutenant 
Commander Robert W. Copeland addressed the 
crew of the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts 
on the morning of October 25, 
1944, off the Philippine Island of 
Samar. On the horizon loomed the 
mightiest ships of the Japanese navy, 
a massive fleet that represented the 
last hope of a staggering empire. All 
that stood between it and Douglas 
MacArthur’s vulnerable invasion 
force were the Roberts and the 
other small ships of a tiny American 
flotilla poised to charge into history.
The author weaves together a 
dramatic David and Goliath battle 
in the Pacific, where a force of U.S. 
destroyers and cruisers took on a 
Japanese fleet over ten times its size. 
It was perhaps the U.S. Navy’s finest 
hour during WWII, but it came with 
a monumental price. The sacrifice of 
these sailors deserve to be honored 
and forever remembered.

Brothers in Battle, Best of 
Friends by William Guarnere 
, Edward Heffron , Robyn Post 

Tom Hanks introduces the 
remarkable story of two inseparable 
friends and soldiers portrayed 
in the HBO miniseries Band of 
Brothers.William Guarnere and 
Edward Babe Heffron were among 
the first paratroopers of the U.S. 
Army,members of an elite unit of 
the 101st Airborne Division called 
Easy Company. The crack unit was 
called upon for every high-risk 
operation of the war, including 
D-Day, Operation Market Garden 
in Holland, the Battle of the Bulge, 
and the capture of Hitler’s Eagles 
Nest in Berchtesgaden. Both men 
fought side by side until Guarnere 
lost his leg in the Battle of the 
Bulge and was sent home. Heffron 
went on to liberate concentration 
camps and take Hitler’s Eagle’s 
Nest hideout. United by their 
experience, they reconnected at the 
wars end and have been best friends 
ever since. Their story is a tribute to 
the lasting bond forged between 
comrades in arms and to all those 
who fought for freedom.


All Things Considered By Jeff Brown

MEMORIAL DAY

Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United 
States for remembering the people who died while 
serving in the country’s armed forces.Following 
President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 
April 1865, there were a variety of events of 
commemoration. The sheer number of soldiers of 
both sides who died in the Civil War, more than 
600,000, meant that burial and memorialization 
took on new cultural significance. Under 
the leadership of women during the war, an 
increasingly formal practice of decorating graves 
had taken shape. In 1865, the federal government 
began creating national military cemeteries for 
the Union war dead.The first widely publicized 
observance of a Memorial Day-type observance 
after the Civil War was in Charleston, South 
Carolina, on May 1, 1865. During the war, Union 
soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held 
at the Hampton Park Race Course in Charleston; 
at least 257 Union prisoners died there and were 
hastily buried in unmarked graves. Together 
with teachers and missionaries, black residents 
of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 
1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune 
and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned 
up and landscaped the burial ground, building an 
enclosure and an arch labeled ”Martyrs of the Race 
Course”. Nearly 10,000 people, mostly freedmen, 
gathered on May 1 to commemorate the war dead. 
Involved were about 3,000 school children, newly 
enrolled in freedmen’s schools, as well as mutual 
aid societies, Union troops, black ministers and 
white northern missionaries. Most brought flowers 
to lay on the burial field.David W. Blight described 
the day:This was the first Memorial Day. African 
Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, 
South Carolina. What you have there is black 
Americans recently freed from slavery announcing 
to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their 
songs what the war had been about. What they 
basically were creating was the Independence Day 
of a Second American Revolution. The national 
holiday originated as Decoration Day after the 
American Civil War in 1868, when the Grand 
Army of the Republic, an organization of Union 
veterans founded in Decatur, Illinois, established 
it as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of 
the war dead with flowers.

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