Hemingway: A Writer - Part-One Of The Three-Part Ken Burns and Lyn Kovick Documentary Series On Ernest Hemingway

Tonight my wife and I enjoyed part-one of the three-part PBS documentary series on one of my favorite writers, the late, great Ernest Hemingway. 

I thought the Ken Burns and Lyn Kovick episode was well researched and well-presented. I especially liked hearing actors and other writers reading from his letters, short stories and novels.

I look forward to watching the other two episodes. 

You can watch the first part via the below link:

Hemingway | A Writer (1899-1929) | Episode 1 | PBS

You can read my previous post on the series, which also links to some my writing on Hemingway.

Paul Davis On Crime: The Man. The Myth. The Writer Revealed: A Panel Discussion About The Upcoming PBS Hemingway Documentary By Ken Burns And Lynn Novick 

My Washington Times Review Of 'The Vietnam War: An Intimate History'

The Washington Times published my review of The Vietnam War: An Intimate History, the companion book to the PBS TV series.

With the anniversary of the fall of South Vietnam to the Communist North on April 30, 1975, veterans of that war, those who lived through the era and those interested in history, may want to read Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns’ coffee-table companion book to the PBS series “The Vietnam War.”

“America’s involvement in Vietnam began in secrecy. It ended, thiry years later, in failure, witnessed by the entire world,” the book begins. “It was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American over-confidence, and Cold War miscalculation.”

The book also reminds us that 58,000 Americans died in the war, and at least 250,000 South Vietnamese also died. More than a million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong Communists died in the war, as well as an estimated 2 million North and South Vietnamese civilians.

“For those Americans who fought in it, and for those who merely glimpsed it on the nightly news — the Vietnam War was a decade of agony, the most divisive period since the Civil War.”

… “The Vietnam War: An Intimate History” is an impressive-looking book, with a vast array of photos that accompanies a look back at the long and complicated war. Unfortunately, the companion book suffers from the same bias we saw in the television series.

… Many veterans believed in the war, many volunteered to serve in Vietnam, and many Vietnam veterans are proud of their service. Many Americans, then and now, believe we should have gone all out to win the war. Certainly, the many South Vietnamese murdered and imprisoned by the Communists after the fall of the South, and the many Vietnamese “boat people” who endured hardships and sacrifices to escape the Communists, wish we had stayed the course.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/29/book-reveiw-the-vietnam-war-an-intimate-history-by/

As I noted in my review, readers may want to read Lt. Gen. Philip Davidson’s Vietnam At War: The History 1946-1975 for a bit of balance.

https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-at-War-History-1946-1975/dp/0195067924 

Good Drama, Bad History: Krauthammer on 'Wolf Hall'

I've been watching the television series Wolf Hall on PBS and I'm enjoying the series, despite the historical distortion. The series offers good drama, if bad history.

Charles Krauthammer offers his take on Wolf Hall in a column in the New York Daily News.

"Wolf Hall,” the Man Booker Prize-winning historical novel about the court of Henry VIII — and most dramatically, the conflict between Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas More — is now a TV series (presented on PBS). It is maddeningly good.

Maddening because its history is tendentiously distorted, yet the drama is so brilliantly conceived and executed that you almost don’t care. Faced with an imaginative creation of such brooding, gripping, mordant intensity, you find yourself ready to pay for it in historical inaccuracy.

And revisionism of “Wolf Hall” is breathtaking. It inverts the conventional view of the saintly More being undone by the corrupt, amoral, serpentine Cromwell, the king’s chief minister. This is fiction as polemic. Author Hilary Mantel, an ex- and anti-Catholic (“the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people”), has set out to rehabilitate Cromwell and defenestrate More, most especially the More of Robert Bolt’s beautiful and hagiographic “A Man for All Seasons.”

Who’s right? Neither fully, though the depiction of More in “Wolf Hall” as little more than a cruel heretic-burning hypocrite is particularly provocative, if not perverse. To be sure, More-worship is somewhat overdrawn, as even the late Cardinal Francis George warned at a 2012 convocation of bishops. More had his flaws. He may have been a man for all seasons but he was also a man of his of his times. And in those times of merciless contention between Rome and the Reformation, the pursuit and savage persecution of heresy were the norm.    

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/charles-krauthammer-wielding-power-hellish-times-article-1.2205511

Review Of PBS' "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, The Last Outlaws"

Gerald D. Swick, my friend and former editor at GreatHistory.com, offers a review of the PBS documentary Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Last Outlaws for Historynet.com.

If you are one of the millions who loves the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, you owe it to yourself to watch the one-hour American Experience documentary, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Last Outlaws. It fills in a good bit of information and provides a deeper appreciation for what the movie got right historically within an entertainment medium. The gregarious Cassidy and taciturn Sundance of the 1969 film reflect the true personalities of the two, for example.

The American Experience documentary sets the scene effectively within the opening minutes. The story begins with the Wilcox Robbery, when Butch's gang used too much dynamite and blew a safe in a railroad mail car into the middle of next week. That robbery is what made Butch famous, but as the narration points out, he and the outlaw gang he led, the Wild Bunch, was operating at the end of an era. The railroads had become determined to put an end to holdups, and the dogged pursuit that followed the Wilcox Robbery sent Butch and Sundance to South America and, ultimately, to their doom.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.historynet.com/butch-cassidy-and-the-sundance-kid-the-last-outlaws-review.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Historynet+%28HistoryNet+%7C+From+the+World%27s+Largest+History+Magazine+Publisher%29

Admiral McRaven Says No Evidence Pakistan Knew Bin Laden's Location

Claudette Roulo at the American Forces Press  Service offers the below piece on Admiral Willaim H. McRaven at the Hero Summit.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2012 - The commander of U.S. Special Operations Command said yesterday that a post-raid assessment concluded there is no evidence that the Pakistani government knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
Navy Adm. William H. McRaven told attendees at the Hero Summit that Pakistan wasn't informed of the raid that led to the death of bin Laden because the initial assumption was "How could they not know he was there?"

Senior leaders, he said, believed informing Pakistan about the raid in advance would have put the mission at risk. McRaven said he doesn't believe the Pakistani government knew bin Laden's whereabouts. "We have no intelligence that indicates the Pakistanis knew he was there," he added.

McRaven, interviewed on stage by PBS' Charlie Rose, said there was never a moment he doubted the raid would succeed. "We hand-picked the guys," he said. "They were the best of the best, all across the board. They had extensive combat experience, and consequently ... I was very confident."

Though bin Laden is dead, nonstate actors still present a threat, the admiral said.

"We've done a terrific job of taking care of the core of al- Qaida," McRaven said. But, he added, "there's no such thing as a local problem anymore. ... Everything in the world is connected." This interconnectedness means the future of special operations lies in partnerships with other nations, he added.

"We understand ... to minimize the rise of violent extremism, you have to create the conditions on the ground where people have good jobs, where there is the rule of law, where there is stability [and] where there is good governance," he said. "We think, from a military standpoint, we can certainly help with the security that will be required to help begin to build some of that stability.

"The raids get all the media attention," he continued, "but the reality of the matter is the bulk of what we do is building partner capacity and working with host nations. I think that's the future of special operations."

The admiral said he recently returned from Afghanistan, where partnership building is ongoing, and he feels the relationship is the best he's ever seen it. The relationship between Afghans and their local, regional and national governments is taking serious root, he said.

Afghanistan will be a better version of itself in 2014, McRaven said, noting that the Afghan army is one of the most respected institutions in the country.

"It's an entirely different paradigm for the people of Afghanistan, but I'm convinced we're on the right path," he said.

Note: The above DoD photo by Claudette Roulo show Navy Admiral McRaven on the right and PBS' Charlie Rose on the left.

Why Charles Dickens Is Still Relevant: 'Great Expectations' On PBS' Masterpiece Sunday Evening

 

PBS offers a short video on the showing of Great Expectations on PBS' Masterpiece Sunday night.

You can watch the video via the below link:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2216835068/

You can also read Linda Stasi's New York Post review via the below link:

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/great_stuff_OgrtKGv40Nay6sPzPjSviK

Note: I've recently watched and enjoyed Masterpiece's adaptation of Dickens' Little Dorritt on Comcast's On Demand. I've also recently watched and enjoyed Masterpiece's adaptations of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Dorritt and Bleak House.