MWP: Mississippi Books & Writers for March 1999

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A splendid, moving, and authoritative account of the most decisive day of WWII by Ambrose (History/Univ. of New Orleans), whose massive biographies of Eisenhower and Nixon have won widespread praise. Based on “the most extensive first-person, I-was-there collection of memoirs of a single battle in existence,” Ambrose moves easily between the strategy of each side and the individual recollections of the battle. He conveys not only the magnitude of the enterprise but its complexity. He also suggests some significant changes to the conventional interpretation of the war, most notably in the view hitherto taken about the respective quality of leadership and soldiers on each side. He contradicts the belief in the superiority of the German soldiers and says that the higher losses they inflicted against the Anglo-American armies derived from the necessity for the latter to take the offensive. The German army was, he writes, “inferior in all respects (except for weaponry, especially the 88s and the machine guns) to its allied opponents.” He call Rommel’s plan to stop the Allied invasion on the beach “one of the greatest blunders in military history,” and he compares the strategy to that of the French Maginot line. By contrast, he argues that Eisenhower’s judgment was generally right and that he not only inspired his subordinates but also showed courage in rejecting suggestions for an alternative strategy from Army Chief of Staff George Marshall. But most memorable in the account are the tales of individual heroism, from the 16-year-old French girl who, with a group of companions, paralyzed the German Second Panzer Division by removing the axle grease from its transporters and substituting an abrasive, to the Canadian soldier who threw himself down on barbed wire to enable his companions to use his body as a ladder. A brilliant account that blends perfectly the human and the strategic dimensions of this great battle. —Copyright © 1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

What does National Park Service Ranger Anna Pigeon do on her own time? She goes to New York, of course, bedding down on Liberty Island, the speck of land the Statue of Liberty shares with thousands of tourists each day and has pretty much to herself each night. Staying with fellow ranger Patsy Silva in order to be close to her psychiatrist sister Molly, hospitalized at Columbia Presbyterian with pneumonia, a kidney infection, and more, Anna thinks her biggest headaches will be Molly’s grave illness and Anna’s need to deal somehow with FBI agent Frederick Stanton, the ex-boyfriend who deserted her for Molly. But darker trouble is already brewing. An unidentified 14-year-old girl who jumped to her death from the parapet around the statue’s base has sent James Patchett, the guard who was pursuing her, into deep depression. Why was the girl more willing to die than to have Patch, who thought she was a pickpocket, catch her? Why has her backpack disappeared? And why hasn’t anyone claimed her body? As Molly Pigeon shuttles in and out of Intensive Care, pausing only long enough to encourage Anna’s romance with surgeon David Madison, more casualties pile up on Liberty Island, including two who leave behind cryptic messages that Anna’s convinced would tie half a dozen mysterious portents togetherif only she were wise enough to decipher them. Though Barr works her customary magic with the eerily deserted nightscapes of Liberty Island, they’re just not as arresting as the Lechugilla caves (Blind Descent, 1998) or the wild scenes of any of earlier six adventures. Score a mere double this time for the Park Service’s answer to Mark McGwire. —Copyright © 1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The Tao Te Ching is the world’s oldest leadership manual, written, according to legend, by the sage Lao-tzu in the sixth century B.C.E. In this book, premier business consultant James A. Autry and bestselling author and translator Stephen Mitchell present a modern-day guide to business leadership drawing on the age-old lessons of the Tao Te Ching. With simple, evocative essays, commenting on a selection from the Tao Te Ching, they show how its elegant wisdom can transform the workplace from a source of stress into a source of creativity and joy—and make work, at any level of the corporate ladder, more fulfilling than ever before.

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Mississippi Books and Writers

March 1999