Victory at Sea

Victory at Yorktown

Richard M. Ketchum

Henry Holt and Company. 350 pp. $27.50.

It's good to remind ourselves from time to time just how close the American colonies came to remaining a British possession. Ketchum's book serves as that reminder. "A haunting question," Ketchum writes, "is whether a true majority of Americans had wanted the Revolution in the first place. Chances are that they did not. If, in John Adams's colorful phrase, 'We were about one third Tories, and [one] third timid, and one third true blue,' this suggests that somewhere between a majority and two-thirds may have opposed the war."

The Majesty of Colonial Williamsburg

The Majesty of Colonial Williamsburg

Peter Beney

Pelican Publishing Company. 176 pp.

This lovely photo album with text probably would offer the first-time visitor an excellent introduction to all that Colonial Williamsburg has to offer and serve as a fine memento to share with others. 

The Year of Living Constitutionally

The Year of Living Constitutionally

A. J. Jacobs

Crown Publishing Group. 295 pp.

Fun romp through the Constitution. With all the hilarity, though, comes some quite thoughtful proposals. Among them:

1) Replace the president with a committee of three or more;

2) term limits for Supreme Court justices;

3) find creative ways to celebrate voting;

4) regulate those who would regulate our regulatory agencies.

Lots more "food" for thought here. I tip my hat Jacobs for making the U. S. Constitution fun again.

Hitler's Furies

Hitler's Furies

Wendy Lower

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 270 pp.

I'll be direct. This was a tough read. Just when I thought I had learned all there was to learn about atrocities committed by Nazis during WWII, along comes historian Wendy Lower to uncover and to document crimes committed by German women. And these weren't your everyday garden variety crimes. These were crimes so awful that that even now I cannot bring myself to repeat them. 

Why? That's always the question that comes to my mind whenever I read of these accounts? Or, rather, how could seemingly normal people commit such terrible deeds? Studies of perpetrator motivation, Lower writes, "explain that those who incite acts of hate are seeking to rid themselves and the world around them of its unsettling, messy ambiguities and complexity." Perpetrators, she goes on to say, "often see themselves as enlightened, as holders of a greater truth, superior to their foes, above reproach and accountability, struggling to break free of a world of dichotomies."

Well, all I can say is God save us from such people, for I have no doubt that they remain among us.