I have getting books like crazy on my Kindle and I am always overjoyed to find something by one of my favorite authors to add to my reading list.
I have always enjoyed the work of Robert Conroy who is one of the best alternative history guys around. I first started reading him with his very cool book "1901" where he imagines a world where the Kaiser invades the United States because he wants to steal the colonies we acquired during the Spanish American War. That book was a lot of fun as were his later books: "1945 Red Inferno" "1945" "1942" and "1862" in which he picks a pivotal year in one of our wars and wonders what would have happened if a few things changed. He seamlessly blends real life historical characters with those of his own invention to tell some great stories.
In "Castro's Bomb" he wonders what would happen if after the Cuban Missile Crisis our buddy Fidel decides to attack Guantanamo Bay and at the same time steal a couple of the tactical nukes that Russia had secreted in Cuba at the time. There are some great battle scenes but the best part of it is the depiction of Kennedy and his relationship to Lyndon Johnson, Maxwell Taylor and a bunch of other historical figures from Camelot. For example when he meets a CIA analysis he is more interested in checking out her tits than what she has to say about Castro. It is a lot of fun.
Highly recommended for some light reading.
15 comments:
I remember the Cuban missile crisis, being out on the playground, being terrified because the teacher scared the crap out of us with descriptions of nuclear bombs and all the duck and cover drills .
And to think teachers are getting into trouble nowadays for telling the kids there is no Santa Claus.
Wouldn't it be cool to live an alternative ending to ones life if it didn't turn out quite right? Like alternate realities, anyone heard of the String Theory?
The funny thing is that one of the Presidential candidates made a lot of money out of alternative history.
Newt cowrote a book about Gettysburg with a prominent alternative history and science fiction writer named William Forscthen. It was a pretty good book.
If I were him I would have stuck with that. It just seems like a lot more fun than politics.
Some men don't know their limitations.
I thought the Cuban Missile Crisis was when Jose Canseco's johnson was shrinking daily from steroid abuse.
Uh oh,Titus.
I love this book.
You can buy it from my site and I will get a small commission back. I am sure you will enjoy it.
EBL, Is there a photo of you from the rear? I bet you have a ghetto mullet. I've been reading the urban dictionary lately. After reading Unbroken, I need some levity.
I am sorry, I do not share images of my rear end. It is not my best view.
Just the back of your head, EBL. We just want to see the Ghetto Mullet.
ndspinnelli, I am a cow. I cannot hold the iphone up behind my head. You will have to ask the milk boy/gardener for that.
Moo.
C'mon, give EBL a break. She managed to hold the iPhone up to the FRONT of her face.
Impressive, if you don't have thumbs.
Maybe some kids were actually afraid of the atom bomb. All I remember is like so many other school rituals (fire drill comes to mind) there was a complete sense of unreality about getting under your desk and then waiting for the "all clear." Just one more way of spelling recess. And who didn't love recess?
When I got a little older I thought winning the cold war would change everything. Not that I knew what change everything meant. But when it finally happened it was anticlimactic, to put it mildly. I was still naive enough then not to understand that for those in power at the center the big problem was that now there was no ENEMY as an excuse for...well, as an excuse for everything, foreign and domestic.
Ricpic:
Yes - there was nothing scary about those drills in grade school.
The teachers also pulled down the window shades on the ten foot tall windows and the shades were made of paper as if that would help us from the A-Bomb.
Did your teacher show you pictures of Hiroshima ?
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