Book note

I don’t write book reviews, usually, because before I get around to reading them enough has already been said about them, and anyway it’s too much like work. But the most recent entry on the book list, Leon Uris’s Armageddon, a Novel of Berlin, is worth a note. 

Uris was a bestselling author in the 1950s and 60s, writer of Battle Cry, Exodus, QB VII, and a bunch of other big, complex mid-century novels. Armageddon, published in the mid-1960s,  is from that mold. It’s about post-WWII Germany, particularly Berlin; it details the setting up of a military government by the victorious allied forces, the political strife occurring in Berlin, and the Berlin Airlift (about which another book has appeared on the list this year).

It’s not a light read. But it’s interesting for its description of attitudes toward the German people and the Soviet government and people then, as contrasted with now. And it describes happenings that foreshadow recent events in the Crimea and Ukraine. If this kind of thing is your cup of tea, it’s recommended reading.

If not, keep your eye on the list. I’ll try to find something a little more entertaining (one way or another) next.