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 enlarge | Author: Nicholson Baker
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
Buy Used: $6.05
You Save: $23.95 (80%)
New (58) Used (41) Collectible (2) from $6.05
Avg. Customer Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 129911
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 1416567844
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5311
EAN: 9781416567844
ASIN: 1416567844
Publication Date: March 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Your book ships from Kentucky. Some books contain writing/highlighting from the previous student. The cover has normal wear but may contain stickers on cover/spine from bookstore. Your book may not include the CD/Access code from the publisher since it was used in class. Feel free to e-mail any questions you have on the product and I will answer as soon as I can. We are a small family business and do our best to give you the kind of product and customer service we would expect to receive.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Hidden History Revealed July 22, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
As a life-long conservative, I've found myself challenging my beliefs over the past five or so years. I've read a lot of books I would have called "pinko-commie" not too long ago. "The Corporation" was the first, followed by Howard Zinn's history of the 20th Century. Those gave rise to questioning our country.
I'd long heard that WWII was precipitated by issues seldom discussed in conventional history books. This book solidifies many of those things I'd heard. What's amazing is that the book, by and large, is not modern day opinion and observation of 60 year old facts, but rather a selection of opinions and facts FROM 60 years ago. Our history books make it seem as if the Allies were peace-loving peoples forced into a state of war by the crazed Axis countries.
While Hitler may have started the war, the book shows how the incidents that happened after the beginning of the war (and indeed, before it ever started) are not the way our history books seem to remember them. The sanitized history we are all fed here is shattered when you read this book.
Even if you choose not to accept or believe all you read here, the information is good to have regardless of your political leanings. Like I said, I'm a conservative (so much so that folks used to say I couldn't even make a left turn) but events of the past 10 years, bolstered by books like this, make me question where I really stand. When a book makes you question your beliefs - you know it's a powerful book.
Offers another point of view July 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
My son loves to read and memorize data on the World Wars. I wanted him to see another point of view. He has found this book interesting and full of valuable data to help him make informed decisions about WWII events.
War as page-turning human drama July 20, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I was surprised to see so many negative reviews that criticized the author for being revisionist or preaching pacifism. It is hard to blame him for undue editorializing when the book consists entirely of documented contemporary accounts. While there may be a selection bias, and Baker does confess his admiration for the pacifists in the Afterword, no one can argue that the material presented is not factual. For weaving these facts into a continuous tale that is so compellingly readable, he does justice to his subject by bringing many sides of this complex and tragic story vividly to life. I found that the format of this book was the most inspired part of Baker's approach: a continuous, chronological series of bite-sized first-person anecdotes uninterrupted by arbitrary chapter divisions, representing the innumerable individual story strands that intertwined to produce the disaster of war. It is another testament to its impact that, after 474 pages, I was eager to read more. No single work can ever adequate encompass such a massive subject, of course. But in this narrative the focus seemed to be on the European theater; the origins of the war there are more or less directly outlined, while I felt the reasons behind Japan's involvement were not satisfyingly explained. For this, John Toland's The Rising Sun would seem to be an excellent companion volume.
Even if it inevitably excludes some aspects, and focuses too much on the pacifist element for some people's taste, I feel this work deserves five stars for doing justice to the monumental tragedy of WWII by bringing the story of how it started so vividly to life.
Some Human Smoke helps you see more clearly.. July 18, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Let me begin by making it clear that this can be a very frustrating book to read because it isn't like the books that we are used to. That said, it is a great work by a very clever writer who makes us re-examine what we believe about the beginnings of World War II.
As others have pointed out, Nicholson Baker does not write a standard historical narrative. Instead, he presents a series of facts taken from diaries, memoirs, magazines, government reports and contemporary newspaper accounts and presents them chronologically. Baker does not write a typical narrative that tries to tell readers what to think but expects the readers to connect the dots and come up with their own conclusions.
Of course, such an approach has set off a fire-storm among some groups because most readers are likely to reach a conclusion that many of the things that we have been told about World War II are myths that are not supported by history, even when history is written by the victors in such a way to present their own case in the best way.
Please do not misinterpret what I say in this review. In this book Hitler is still a very bad guy who does bad things that cannot be excused. Baker shows no sympathy the Nazis in any way. The problem for many critics isn't that Baker is kind on the established enemies but that he rightfully exposes many of the historical figures we think as heroic and moral as political hacks who were responsible for much unnecessary misery and death. The figures exposed include both FDR and Hitler; they are not shown as the great men that the historians would have us believe that they were.
Baker clearly shows that early on Churchill was far more worried about communism than he was about fascism and that he said some very flattering and kind things about Hitler and Mussolini. Baker also exposes Franklin Roosevelt an anti-Semite who obsessed about figuring a way to get the United States into war with Japan and how to help American industry sell weapons. (Arms sales was a lucrative business before the two world wars and the English and French did not wish to lose out; like the Americans, the British and French also sold weapons to Germany, including tanks and bombs at a time when some Germans were looking to overthrow Hitler.)
Then there is the anti-Semitism issue. Baker presents facts that show that when he was a New York attorney in the 1920s, FDR noticed that a third of the freshman class in Harvard was Jewish. He used his influence to establish a quota that would limit the number of Jews that could be accepted. The anti-Jewish sentiments did not end wen he was elected to the Presidency; FDR prevented Congress from passing laws that would help save European Jews. Churchill was not better. He also did not think much of Jews and actually wanted to put Jewish German refugees in prison because they were Germans. His predecessor as Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain stated that Jews were not a lovable people and that he did not care about them. With people like them in power it is not surprising that Hitler thought that he could get away with his plans for Europe's Jews.
There is one last bit that I need to cover on the topic before I move on. Baker makes it clear that there were plans to deport European Jews to some place where they could live on their own. For some reason, Madagascar was thought to be a suitable place by the Nazis. The problem was that the deportation plans could not take place because the allies refused to lift a blockade that would have allowed the ships to carry on the plans. Churchill was hoping to use the pressure of the blockade as a catalyst that would have starving Germans and citizens of occupied nations to rise against the Nazis.
It is time to move to another theme; the direct attacks on noncombatants, which used to be strictly forbidden. One form of attack came from a simple but effective blockade that cut off civilians from supplies of food and medicine. Churchill wished to starve the German population in the hope that it would undermine the German war efforts from within. Churchill's blockade was opposed by Herbert Hoover and the Quakers, who are among the heroes of this book because they stood for peace and made efforts to save German Jews and feed starving children and civilians.
Baker also points out that the bombing of civilians was started by Churchill, not Hitler. On page 178 he quotes James Spaight who wrote, "We began to bomb objectives on the German mainland before the Germans began to bomb objectives on the British mainland." At the beginning the bombings were not acknowledged and the press had to get its information from German radio broadcasts. The British Air Ministry did its best to deny the attacks by saying that the cities hit were not among the bombing objectives. As the conflict escalates things get worse and Baker quotes Lord Trenchard (page 327) suggesting that the RAF ignore targets like military ships and oil fields because only 1% of the bombs hit their target. It was better to choose targets inside German cities because there the other 99% wound up killing civilians who lived in the area and that would disrupt the war effort. Later on (p. 349) Barker quotes Gerald Brenan who writes to a friend that, "'Every German woman and child killed is a contribution to the future safety and happiness of Europe.'
FDR has similar dreams of bombing civilians and encourages the Chinese to bomb Japanese cities within reach of their air fields. The high density of buildings made with a lot of wood and paper would mean that incendiary devices would be very effective. The period after the book ends shows that the assessment was valid.
While Churchill gets more space Baker devotes many pages showing that Roosevelt was very anxious to have an armed confrontation with Japan.
I have to get some sleep now so I better end this review quickly. I really liked the book because it made me think about many things. Unlike may critics I have no problem with going in the direction that Barker obviously wants me to go. This has nothing to do with a blind acceptance of Barker's method and facts but because it fits with much of the extensive research that I have done on the subject. The simple fact is that World War II was not the simple `just war' that we are told that it was. While the Nazis were clearly villains the list of the `good guys' is small and does not include the Allied leaders that have been deified by contemporary Historians. Human Smoke is a valuable chronology of important events rather than a typical historical argument and needs to be read by the thoughtful reader in search of clarification.
 Absurd and inaccurate July 12, 2008
1 out of 11 found this review helpful
Baker states that the result of WWII could not have been worse than it was. Oh no? Had the Nazis not been defeated in Europe, then the whole of Europe and Britain would have been controlled by a horrific fascist regime which shut down intellectual inquiry and freedom of expression, burned books, and killed anyone who disagreed with it. With all of Europe and much of Africa contolled by a powerful fascist regime, Russia controlled by the equally blood-thirsty Stalin, and Asia dominated by a fascist power base in Japan - would there have been any chance of survival of democracy? Would the US have been able to hold out if all these powers had been mounted against us? (there were Nazi U Boats off the shores of the US before we entered the war in '41) Baker never bothers to consider this. He ignores the horrible suffering of the people in countries Hitler invaded and controlled. His premise is that it was harder on the Jews because we went to war. But Baker writes as though the Jews were the only ones to suffer at the hands of the Nazis in Europe. He has jumped into his premise without understanding the true state of the war and the complete history. He delved into a few facts to make his point and ignores blatantly obvious evidence which doesn't fit his theories. Baker talks about the night bombings of Germany as though the Brits actually had any other choice strategically and as though the incredibly risky raids by the RAF were just blood thirsty vindictiveness on the part of Churchill. He doesn't seem to have a clue what Britain was facing in 1941. Baker apparently thinks that the Battle of Britain could have been avoided if the British had just let Hitler march through one European country after another and then they would have politely stopped at the Channel - or the eastern Atlantic. Hitler's own words disprove such an idea. Comparisons with Iraq are idiotic - Saddam was not planning and was not capable of the kind of continental aggression which was accomplished by the Nazis and their allies. This book is a load of bunk - Baker should stick to fiction.
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