CANR
WORK TITLE: SKIES OF THUNDER
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: British
LAST VOLUME: CANR 222
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 13, 1956, in Gainesville, FL; daughter of Elizabeth Ann Kirby (a professor of art history).
EDUCATION:Somerville College, Oxford, B.A., 1977, M.A., 1980; Columbia University, M.Phil., 1987, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi, lecturer in classics, 1982-85; American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, curator of “Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Expedition,” 1999; writer and producer of documentaries, including The Endurance and Tiger Tiger.
MEMBER:Royal Geographic Society (fellow), Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, American Philological Association, the Explorer’s Club, the Directors Guild of America.
AWARDS:New York Times Editor’s Choice, and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination for general nonfiction, both 2003, both for The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty.
RELIGION: Jewish.WRITINGS
Also contributor to magazines, including New Yorker, Granta, Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, Outside, and National Geographic.
The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition was released as a feature film by Columbia Pictures in 2001.
SIDELIGHTS
One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley is Caroline Alexander’s account of her exploration of Gabon, a former French colony in West Africa. Alexander was drawn to this remote outpost by the memory and writings of another intrepid traveler, a Victorian spinster named Mary Kingsley, who investigated the area and its people in 1895 and chronicled her journey in Travels in West Africa. In assessing the similarities and differences between nineteenth-century and present-day Africa in One Dry Season, Alexander notes that she gathered information for her months in Gabon’s interior—from missionaries and Peace Corps and government officials—much as Kingsley had gathered it from missionaries and shell-hunters a century earlier. Both women were led astray by native tribesmen with their own ideas. The march of progress characterizes the divergence of Alexander and Kingsley. The wood and iron dwellings Alexander found have taken the place of the bamboo and thatch Kingsley had known. The author’s depiction of her kinship with and distance from Kingsley gains depth from anecdotes of historical characters like celebrated French missionary and physician Albert Schweitzer and colorful British adventurer Aloysius “Trader Horn” Smith.
“Alexander is not only good on history,” remarked Caroline Moorehead in Times Literary Supplement. “Her own travels are well told, with considerable powers of description and a true sense of adventure. … As a companion to an armchair traveller, she is resourceful, without prejudice and full of insights.” Reviewers lauded Alexander’s wit and graceful prose as well. These elements combine to form what Los Angeles Times contributor Jonathan Kirsch called “a vessel of memory, insight and observation.”
Alexander also records her travels in The Way to Xanadu. In this work she tries to find the real-life locations symbolically presented in Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan.” The search takes Alexander to China and the ruins of Kubla Khan’s summer palace, then to Kashmir, Ethiopia, and northern Florida in search of magical ice caves and fountains.
Time correspondent John Skow found The Way to Xanadu a “learned and delightful work of literary voyaging.” The critic added: “Alexander’s account of her travels, undertaken to set foot and mind on the actual places around the globe that inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s misty and fantastical poem Kubla Khan, carries its erudition lightly.” Citing Alexander’s “candid and illuminating observations,” Booklist contributor Donna Seaman praised The Way to Xanadu as not only a journey “of the mind and spirit but also [a journey] into the past.”
In 1995 Alexander published Battle’s End: A Seminole Football Team Revisited. After completing her college education, Alexander returned to Tallahassee, Florida, in 1981 and took a position as writing tutor for the college freshman football players. She forged a bond with the players that, a dozen years later, led her to seek them out to see how their lives were progressing. Battle’s End consists of interviews with the former players, who tell their stories in their own words.
In his Sporting News review, Steve Gietschier noted that the book “should chill the hearts of those who hold fast to the belief that the good spawned by college athletics outweighs the bad.” Wes Lukowsky in Booklist likewise declared the work “a fine important book” for its insights into “the hopes, dreams, regrets, and plans of seven young men.”
Alexander is perhaps best known for her 1998 best seller, The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition. The book revisits the disastrous but ultimately heroic polar expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton beginning in 1914. Setting off with the goal of being the first to walk across Antarctica, Shackleton found his hopes dashed when his ship, the Endurance, was seized and destroyed by ice floes. How Shackleton saved all of his crew from death forms the crux of the story. The Endurance has sold more than 220,000 hardcover copies and was adapted as a feature documentary film in 2001. Critics not only praised Alexander’s retelling of the adventure—based on her use of diaries and other primary sources—but also commended her for including 170 previously unpublished pictures taken by the expedition’s Australian photographer.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer praised The Endurance as “a spellbinding story of human courage,” and Gilbert Taylor in Booklist deemed it “an exhilarating retelling of a most popular saga in polar exploration.” In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Carolyn Nizzi Warmbold called the book “a first-rate addition to the Endurance canon.” Warmbold added that the book is “a great holiday gift that you may keep for yourself.”
With The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, Alexander presents a history of the renowned 1789 mutiny of the Bounty and its aftermath. Alexander recounts how the Bounty, commanded by William Bligh, headed from England to the West Indies in 1787. It hauled breadfruit trees from Tahiti to the West Indies until the fateful mutiny that left Bligh and his crew stranded in a small boat, left to die on the open ocean. Miraculously, Bligh was able to keep himself and his men alive over their forty-eight day ordeal.
In a rare negative critique, New Statesman contributor Frank McLynn found that “although she writes well and has done a lot of archival sleuthing, Alexander tells me nothing new. Let us hope that this talented author will find a subject that has not already been written into the ground and will produce something truly original in her next book.” On the other hand, Booklist writer Joanne Wilkinson called the book a “fast-reading and gripping narrative, which draws on a host of primary-source materials.” She also dubbed The Bounty “a rollicking sea adventure told with enormous confidence and style.” Robert C. Jones, writing in Library Journal, was also impressed, stating that this “carefully documented account” is an “original and thought-provoking work” that “is highly recommended for all libraries.”
The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War, Alexander’s next book, is a meditation on and elaboration of Homer’s Iliad. Alexander offers a detailed analysis of the plot, along with discussion of related ancient texts and fragments. She connects these texts to historical sites and archaeological finds, and then goes on to relate the narrative to modern times.
Calling the volume “highly recommended to general readers,” Library Journal reviewer T.L. Cooksey described it as “vigorous and deeply learned yet unpedantic.” Steve Coates commented in the New York Times Book Review: “ The War That Killed Achilles suggests a joyful re-embrace of an early love. In its bones and sinews, the book is a nobly bold, even rousing, venture, a read-through of the Iliad, from beginning to end, always with a sharp eye to half a century of revealing scholarship.” Coates added that “the book’s best ideas won’t be new to readers versed in this work, but it would be hard to find a faster, livelier, more compact introduction to such a great range of recent Iliadic explorations.”
Alexander told once CA: “I believe in the classical ideal of a combination of the active and contemplative life; hence the union in my own life of travel writing and classical scholarship. The subjects most vital to me are environmental issues, conservation, and protection of animal rights.”
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In her historical adventure Skies of Thunder: A Forgotten Epic of World War II, Alexander covers one of the least known campaigns of the war, the China-Burma-India theater, in which American and British pilots bringing supplies from India to their allies in China had to fly over the only available route—the “Hump,” over the Himalayas, the most dangerous air route in the world. To support Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army against the Japanese, who invaded Burma, the young pilots, using inaccurate maps and primitive navigation technology, braved daily accidents, sheering masses of air, monsoons, freezing temperatures, and dense jungles, rather than fly over Japanese-held territory. Alexander also discusses the aircrews’ sparce living condition and discredited contribution to the war, the ground war, and the impact of the war on the Burmese people.
Alexander “packs the text with gripping anecdotes of nail-biting flights that often end with crashes into the Burmese jungle,” noted a Kirkus Reviews contributor, who added that Alexander used Western accounts and cultural slurs, so “Compelling tales of aerial derring-do lift this uneven but entertaining account.” Skies of Thunder is a “thrilling aviation adventure that also casts an assured historical lens on a lesser-known arena of WWII diplomacy, this is sure to enrapture readers,” according to a critic in Publishers Weekly.
Writing in Library Journal, Chad E. Statler commented on the detailed and beautifully written account, adding that “Alexander weaves together a wide array of primary sources to describe the conditions faced by pilots.” Describing the Allies, Imperial Japan, Army Air Forces, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek, and Lord Mountbatten, and drawing on sources such as diaries, memoirs, and historical records, Booklist reviewer James Pekoll remarked: “Alexander brings these operations and the personalities of their leaders to life.”
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BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Alexander, Caroline, One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990.
Alexander, Caroline, The Way to Xanadu, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.
PERIODICALS
Atlanta Journal- Constitution, November 22, 1998, Carolyn Nizzi Warmbold, “Photos, Diaries Add Intensity to Arctic Epic,” p. L12.
Booklist, June 1, 1994, Donna Seaman, review of The Way to Xanadu, p. 1765; December 15, 1995, Wes Lukowsky, review of Battle’s End: A Seminole Football Team Revisited, p. 680; October 15, 1998, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition, p. 389; July, 2003, “Upcoming in Upfront—Nonfiction,” p. 1847; August, 2003, Joanne Wilkinson, review of The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, p. 1922; October 1, 2009, Gilbert Taylor, review of The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War, p. 16; February 15, 2024, James Pekoll, review of Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission over the Roof of the World, p. 19.
Film Journal International, September, 2001, Marcia Garcia, review of The Endurance, p. 68.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2024, review of Skies of Thunder.
Library Journal, September 15, 2003, Robert C. Jones, review of The Bounty, p. 68; November 1, 2009, T.L. Cooksey, review of The War That Killed Achilles, p. 66; November 1, 2015, Thomas L. Cooksey, review of Homer. The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander, p. 88; March 2024, Chad E. Statler, review of Skies of Thunder, p. 113.
Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1990, Jonathan Kirsch, review of One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley.
New Statesman, November 3, 2003, Frank McLynn, “Good Bligh,” p. 53.
New Statesman & Society, December 17, 1993, Robert Carver, review of The Way to Xanadu, p. 72.
New Yorker, April 12, 1999, Anthony Lane, “Breaking the Waves,” p. 96.
New York Review of Books, June 10, 1999, Jonathan Raban, “Journey to the Edge of the Night,” p. 14.
New York Times, December 10, 1998, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “Ice, So Cruelly Wondrous Even in the Face of Death,” p. E9; October 19, 2001, A.O. Scott, “Virtue Defeated Adversity across a Frozen Wasteland,” p. E22.
New York Times Book Review, June 5, 1994, Rand Richards Cooper, review of The Way to Xanadu, p. 55; November 23, 1997, Robert R. Harris, review of Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition: The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton’s Polar-bound Cat, p. 14; December 27, 1998, Robert R. Harris, “Southern Exposure,” p. 10; October 18, 2009, Steve Coates, “Where Men Won Glory,” p. 16.
Prairie Schooner, spring, 1992, Sydney Landon Plum, review of One Dry Season, p. 127.
Publishers Weekly, October 5, 1998, review of The Endurance, p. 63; June 14, 1999, Daisy Maryles, “‘Endurance’ Keeps Sailing,” p. 17; March 2024, review of Skies of Thunder, p. 52.
Sporting News, February 19, 1996, Steve Gietschier, review of Battle’s End, p. 8.
Time, August 15, 1994, John Skow, review of The Way to Xanadu, p. 59.
Times Literary Supplement, January 26, 1990, Caroline Moorehead, review of One Dry Season.
U.S. Catholic, April, 2000, review of The Endurance, p. 38.
Your Company, October 1, 1999, P.B. Gray, “Managing by Endurance,” p. 68.
ONLINE
BookBrowse, http:// www.bookbrowse.com/ (June 27, 2002), biography of Caroline Alexander.*
Caroline Alexander (author)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Caroline Alexander
Born March 13, 1956
United States
Signature
Caroline Alexander is a British author, classicist and filmmaker. She is the author of the best-selling The Endurance, and The Bounty, and other works of literary non-fiction, such as The Way to Xanadu and The War that Killed Achilles. In 2015, she published a new translation of Homer's Iliad.[1]
Alexander is also a writer and producer of documentaries such as The Endurance (based upon her book of the same title) and Tiger Tiger.[2]
Personal life and education
Born March 13, 1956,[3] in the United States of British parents, Alexander grew up in North Florida, but travelled widely, living in the West Indies, Italy, England, Ireland, and the Netherlands. She began her classical studies at Florida State University in her senior year of high-school. In 1977, among the first class of female Rhodes Scholars, she attended Somerville College, Oxford, taking her degree in Philosophy and Theology.[4]
Between 1982 and 1985, she established a small department of classics at the University of Malawi, in south-central Africa. Following this, she obtained her doctorate in Classics at Columbia University, as a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities.[5]
Career
Alexander began her career as a freelance writer while in graduate school, and subsequently has published widely on subjects ranging from Antarctic exploration, travels in central Africa, tigers, butterfly poachers, ancient history, lost treasure, Xanadu, and military subjects such as shell shock and blast-induced neurotrauma. She has published two New York Times best-sellers (The Endurance, The Bounty).
Alexander was a Contributing Writer for National Geographic Magazine for many years, and has also written for The New Yorker, Outside and Smithsonian among other publications; her work has appeared in a number of anthologies of literary non-fiction.[6]
Her National Geographic Magazine cover story, “The Invisible War on The Brain,” was praised for exploring the effects of blast-induced trauma on modern soldiers, and nominated for a Kavli Science Journalism Award.
Alexander is a member of the American Philological Association, the Royal Geographical Society, the Explorer's Club, and the Directors Guild of America.
Films
Title Production company Credits Notes
Tiger, Tiger White Mountain Films/Kennedy Marshall production George Butler producer/director; Caroline Alexander writer/producer 90 minute theatrical documentary and 40 minute IMAX version, following big-cat conservationist Alan Rabinowitz into one of the last tiger habitats, the mangrove forest of the Indian and Bangladesh Sunderbans
The Lord God Bird White Mountain Films Production George Butler producer/director; Caroline Alexander writer 90 minute theatrical documentary about the possible re-discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker
The Endurance White Mountain Films Production George Butler producer/director; Caroline Alexander writer/Executive Producer 90 minute theatrical documentary about Shackleton's 1914 expedition. Released in 2001; National Board of Review Best Documentary and numerous other awards; two hour television version nominated for a British Academy Award, 2000.
Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure White Mountain Films Production George Butler producer/director; Caroline Alexander writer/consultant IMAX film shot on location in the Antarctic. Winner of best Giant Screen Film Award, 2000.
Publications: books
Publisher Year Title Subject Languages Notes
Ecco Press/Vintage Classics 2015 The Iliad: A New Translation Retells the events of the few weeks in the ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in the city of Ilion.[7] Translated into English First English edition of the Iliad that is translated by a woman.[8]
Random House/National Geographic Society 2011 Lost Gold of the Dark Ages: War, Treasure and the Mystery of the Saxons A history attempting to shed light on one of England's most mysterious periods. Written in English The book is introduced by one of the experts (Dr. Kevin Leary) who is studying the 1500 pieces of jewelry.[9]
Viking/Faber 2009 The War that Killed Achilles: The True Story of the Iliad and the Trojan War An interpretation and study of Homer's Iliad. Translated into multiple languages Ken Burns called it "Spectacular and constantly surprising."[10]
Viking/HarperCollins 2003 The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty A historical examination of the story-myth of the mutiny on the Bounty, a small armed transport vessel. Written in English A New York Times bestseller. National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. New York Times top nine books of 2003.
Knopf/Bloomsbury 1998 The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition Tells the story of the explorer Ernest Shackleton's attempt to be the first to cross Antarctica on foot. Translated into multiple languages A New York Times bestseller
HarperCollins/Bloomsbury 1997 Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition, 1914–1915 Journal of Shackleton's Polar-going cat Also published in German and Greek From the perspective of a cat.[11]
Knopf 1995 Battle's End: A Seminole Football Team Revisited Tutoring Florida State University football players in English Written in English Seems to have only had a printing in 1995.[12]
Orion 1993/Knopf 1994 1993/1994 The Way to Xanadu Travels to the landmarks of Coleridge's Kubla Khan Written in English A New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.” Also published in paperback by Phoenix, 1994.
Knopf/Bloomsbury 1989 One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley in Equatorial Africa A retracing of Mary Kingsley's travels through of the then French colony Gabon. Written in English A Book of the Month Club selection. Published in paperback by Vintage, 1991; and Phoenix, 1993.
Articles
“Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: In Search of the Places that inspired the Iliad.” (the refugees who carried the Iliad tradition out of Greece). The American Scholar, Summer 2019.
“War of Words” (Britain's secret propaganda unit in WW1). Lapham’s Quarterly, Spring 2018.
“The Dread Gorgon” (origin of the face of fear.) Lapham's Quarterly, Summer 2017.
“Greece, Gods, and the Great Beyond,” (Ancient Greek quest for immortality). National Geographic Magazine. July 2016.
“War Shock: Blast and the Brain” (blast-induced traumatic brain injury). National Geographic Magazine. February 2015.
“500 pounds of Stealth” (seeking tigers in the Indian and Bangladesh Sunderbans). Outside. June 2014.
“The Wine-Like Sea” (what did Homer mean?). Lapham's Quarterly. Summer 2013.
“Cry of the Tiger” (the plight of our greatest cat). National Geographic Magazine. December, 2011. Nominated for Overseas Press Club Award.
“Gold in the Ground” (discovery of an Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard). National Geographic Magazine. November, 2011.
“Shock of War” (WW1 shell-shock and Traumatic Brain Injury). Smithsonian. September 2010.
“The Great Game” (war and sport). Lapham's Quarterly. Summer, 2010.
“Captain Bligh's Cursed Breadfruit” (Jamaica's botanical legacy from the Bounty). Smithsonian. September 2009.
“If the Stones Could Speak” (new theories about Stonehenge). National Geographic Magazine, June 2008.
“Tigerland” (travels in the Indian Sundarbans). The New Yorker, April 21, 2008.
“Making a New World’: Gertrude Bell and the Creation of Iraq” (nation-building in the 1920s). National Geographic Magazine (international editions), March, 2008.
“The Face of War” (masks for soldiers mutilated in WW1). Smithsonian. February 2007.
“Murdering the Impossible” (profile of mountaineer Reinhold Messner). National Geographic Magazine, November 2006. National Magazine Award Finalist.
“Across the River Styx” (looking for MIA's in Vietnam). The New Yorker, October 25, 2004.
“The Wreck of the Pandora” (wreck of the ship carrying the captured mutineers of the Bounty). The New Yorker, August 4, 2003.
“Echoes of the Heroic Age”; “Ascent to Glory”; “Alexander the Conqueror” (three part series on the history of ancient Greece). National Geographic Magazine, December 1999 – March 2000.
“Shackleton and the Legend of Endurance” (Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914-16 Expedition). National Geographic Magazine, November 1998.
“Crimes of Passion” (a butterfly poaching conspiracy). Outside, January 1996.
“Plato Speaks” (the trial of Hastings Banda, dictator of Malawi and ardent classicist). Granta, September 1995.
“A Shot in the Night” (death at a girl's camp in Tennessee) Outside, July 1994.
“Little Men” (the mysterious shrunken men of Ecuador). Outside, April 1994.
“An Ideal State” (Plato's Republic in Malawi). The New Yorker, December 16, 1991.
“The White Goddess of the Wangora” (the earliest dramatic movie made in Africa). The New Yorker, April 8, 1991.
“Vital Powers: a Profile of Daphne Park, O.B.E., C.M.G.” (a profile of one Britain's first female diplomats). The New Yorker, January 30, 1989.
“The North Borneo Expedition of 1981” (insect collecting in Borneo). The New Yorker, September 14, 1987.
Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission over the Roof of the World
Caroline Alexander. Viking, $32 (496p) ISBN 978-1-984-87923-3
In this soaring account, bestseller Alexander (The Endurance) spotlights a group of American airmen stationed in Burma who flew the "Hump" over the Himalayas to deliver supplies to Chinese allies during WWII. Franklin Roosevelt was committed to supporting Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Army against the Japanese, Alexander writes, though the fickle Chiang proved a difficult ally, with increasingly exorbitant demands and few battlefield accomplishments. (One American general later claimed that when a fed-up Roosevelt asked if Chiang could be replaced, the president's advisers speculated whether the Chinese leader could be "lost" on a plane trip over the Hump.) Meanwhile, flying over the world's highest mountain range tested the skills of young pilots and navigators of the Air Transport Command, who were rushed through training. Accidents were near daily occurrences, and escape meant bailing out into one of two deadly landscapes: the snowcapped Himalayas or the Burmese jungle. Despite the job's extreme peril, it was viewed as unglamorous; "on the lowest rung of the military aviation hierarchy," aircrew in Burma, who received little recognition and lived in Spartan conditions, referred to themselves as the FBI--"Forgotten Bastards of India." (However, as Alexander reveals, the lessons learned flying the Hump proved invaluable in 1948 when the ATC was conscripted to work the Berlin Airlift.) A thrilling aviation adventure that also casts an assured historical lens on a lesser-known arena of WWII diplomacy, this is sure to enrapture readers. (May)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission over the Roof of the World." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 10, 11 Mar. 2024, p. 52. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A787043927/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a1bd0604. Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
Alexander, Caroline SKIES OF THUNDER Viking (NonFiction None) $32.00 5, 14 ISBN: 9781984879233
The deadly skies over the Himalayas form the backdrop of this account of the Allied forces' Burma campaign in World War II.
When Japanese troops overran the British colony of Burma in 1942, they cut off the land route between Allied bases in India and the troops of Chiang Kai-shek in China, seen as the West's bulwark against Japanese aggression and insurgent Communist forces. Rearing between them were the Himalayas and their "towering weather systems" characterized by "violent, roiling, sheering masses of air" and "unbroken levels of ice" extending upward for thousands of feet. Nevertheless, supplying the Chinese Nationalist troops was seen as such a priority that U.S. pilots ferried fuel, matériel, and troops back and forth over "the Hump" from 1942 through the end of the war. The route was so dangerous that it became known as "the aluminum trail" for the wreckage that accumulated along it and tempted pilots to fly over known Japanese-held territory in order to skirt it. Alexander, author of The Endurance and The Bounty, packs the text with gripping anecdotes of nail-biting flights that often end with crashes into the Burmese jungle (another object of terror for the airmen). They make for thrilling reading, but they pile on top of one another such that the narrative begins to feel baggy, as if Alexander couldn't decide which would best serve her narrative so simply included them all. In addition to the air-transport efforts, she covers the ground war but not the air-combat campaign. Choosing to use colonial nomenclature to align with the period, largely relying on Western accounts for narrative and background, she too often presents the cultures of Burma and China through the exoticizing lenses. Her frequent, gratuitous use of the slur coolie is a further blemish.
Compelling tales of aerial derring-do lift this uneven but entertaining account.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Alexander, Caroline: SKIES OF THUNDER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A784238285/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8f16cd05. Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
Alexander, Caroline. Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World. Viking. May 2024.496p. ISBN 9781984879233. $32. MILITARY HISTORY
The Japanese occupation of eastern China in 1942 cut off foreign support to Chiang Kai-Shek's Chinese nationalist forces. In order to keep China in World War II, U.S. and British planners promised to ferry supplies, weapons, and ammunition to Chinese forces. The British would complete the Ledo Road, a supply route along the border of China and Burma. Americans chose an air route over the Himalayan foothills, a route that came to be known as "the Hump." Journalist Alexander (The Bounty) details the heroic efforts by American and British soldiers and flyers, Indigenous Burmese people, and Chinese people to ferry supplies through inhospitable terrain, monsoons, and dense jungles while fighting Japanese incursions. Alexander weaves together a wide array of primary sources to describe the conditions faced by pilots--freezing temperatures, ice buildup, buffeting winds, and peaks higher than the plane's flight path--to show the challenges troops needed to overcome. However, strategic advances in the eastern Pacific made both routes redundant by 1945, and in the postwar world, Truman did not view securing China as a priority. VERDICT Readers interested in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II and Asian history will enjoy Alexander's detailed and beautifully written account.--Chad E. Statler
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Statler, Chad E. "Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World." Library Journal, vol. 149, no. 3, Mar. 2024, p. 113. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786321601/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dcac81cf. Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission over the Roof of the World. By Caroline Alexander. May 2024. 496p. Viking, $32 (9781984879233); e-book, $13.99 (9781984879240). 940.53.
The China-Burma-India Theater of WWII is poorly understood due to sporadic record keeping and a disparate array of Allied command structures. However, the Allies invested massive amounts of manpower and resources in the fight against Imperial Japan and in support of China, including the important "Hump" airlift operation over the treacherous Himalayas. Alexander brings these operations and the personalities of their leaders to life, piecing together the diaries, memoirs, long-forgotten records, and official Army Air Forces' histories to create a captivating narrative of humans and technology triumphing in spite of dangerous terrain and extreme weather. She vividly chronicles the interactions and agendas of Chiang Kai-shek, FDR, General Joseph Stillwell, Claire Chennault of the legendary Flying Tigers, Lord Mountbatten, and many lesser-known figures. Alexander also investigates the impact of war on the Indigenous peoples of Burma, their contributions assisting ground forces (such as the Chindits and Merrill's Marauders), and their invaluable service rescuing downed airmen. Skies of Thunder is a vital history of an important and extremely complicated theater of WWII.--James Pekoll
YA/C: An excellent source for teens interested in or researching WWII and/or South and East Asia. Jp.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
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Pekoll, James. "Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission over the Roof of the World." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 12, 15 Feb. 2024, p. 19. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A783436319/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8961d312. Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.
Homer. The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander. Ecco: HarperCollins. Nov. 2015. 608p. tr. from Greek by Caroline Alexander. ISBN 9780062046277. $39.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062046291. LIT
In her controversial The War That Killed Achilles, Alexander, a classicist and prolific author (including books on Ernest Shackleton and the mutiny on the Bounty), argued that Homer's Iliad subverts the notions of heroic glory by its treatment of the tragedy and sadness of war. Emerging from that project is her own full translation of the Iliad, joining a significant field of influential modern versions, most recently those by Stanley Lombardo, Anthony Verity, Stephen Mitchell, Peter Green, and Barry B. Powell, as well as those of Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fitzgerald, and Robert Fagles. Alexander's Iliad closely resembles the spare and vigorous blank verse of Lattimore, following the line structure of Homer. Working from the premise that Homer did not sound archaic to his audience, Alexander's diction and syntax avoids the archaic elements of Fitzgerald or the contemporary tone of Lombardo and occasionally Fagles, seeking a line that sounds natural to the modern reader. VERDICT This powerful and readable version of the Iliad is modern without sacrificing the accuracy, energy, or the seriousness of the original. It is a toss-up between Alexander's translation and Lattimore's version, while Verity's or Powell's editions are desirable for those interested in a more philological translation.--Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah
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Cooksey, Thomas L. "Homer. The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander." Library Journal, vol. 140, no. 18, 1 Nov. 2015, pp. 88+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A443057523/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3d9c3e3c. Accessed 7 Apr. 2024.