Patrick K. O’Donnell has tackled an obscure corner of history. In part, this history is obscure because it is at the roots of America as a country. The other part of this relatively occulted subject occurs because the topic concerns clandestine units that operated spy rings during the Civil War.
The two units focused on are the Northern Jessie Scouts, and the Southern Rangers. Both of these units dress up in the other army’s colors with the objective of gathering intelligence, gaining kills, and taking prisoners. The phrase “All is fair in love and war”, springs to mind.
At times, it is hard to keep track of which units are impersonating who. Fortunately, there is an index in the back that lists the characters and their affiliations. If the reader knows this going in, it probably will prove a necessary and valuable asset to ameliorate this potential issue. If not, one often has to read the context carefully to be sure one is remembering who is on what side. It is not always easy either to keep track of who has actually changed sides and who might be a double agent.
Nonetheless, O’Donnell is advancing several conclusions in this work. The biggest piece which stands out concerns who knew what and when where the assassination of Lincoln took place. It is not especially giving a spoiler to say that the conclusion he draws is “many units of the South”. The reason this is not the spoiler one might imagine is that how O’Donnell arrives at this deduction concerns analying many convuluted movements and communications occurring within the Southern armies–particulary during the waning days of the war.
The next important thesis concerns how the movements of the Rangers under Mosby are used as a type of instruction manual for irregular warfare units during World War II as practiced by the OSS. (Office of Strategic Services)
A definition might prove valuable here for the casual non-military reader concerning irregular warfare and regular warfare (conventional):
“Irregular warfare (IW) is defined by the Department of Defense as “a violent struggle among state and not-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations. IW favors indirect and asymmetrical approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities, in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will.” source: https://www.red-inc.us/irregular-warfare/overview/
In other words, irregular warfare involves spy and psychological kinds of operations. Conventional warfare, on the other hand, is more direct with various members of both armies attempting to obliterate one another on the battlefield using traditional weapons.
If you mix the two together, the result is a “hybrid” kind of warfare which uses both methods of battle with the goal being the ultimate victory of one side or the other.
Mosby’s rangers are very good at this kind of warfare and use what might be an early form of blitzkrieg method of attack utilizing calvary before disappearing into the surroundings. The North develops intelligence gathering ability, however, through the intervention mostly of a man by the name of Phillip Sheridan. Sheridan would eventually go on to become a four-star general. The North wins mostly by gathering intelligence. The South gains many of its victories owing to Mosby’s lightning fast guerilla tactics. Both, of course, were adopted in military strategies on many sides in future wars.
The South is also not without its intelligence units and respective secret services, but it seems they are often inefficient in the narrative or else are simply outmanuevered or outmanned. Often, however, their plans do not succeed by very narrow margins. O’Donnell does a great job of illustrating these kinds of moments and includes a story about one officer who might have changed the outcome of the war simply by having gone fishing.
One thing missing from O’Donnell’s account which plays a part into this story is how not just Lincoln’s enemies conspired to kill him. Indeed, there were many that called themselves friends of Lincoln who behaved quite strangely before his death. More than a few were in close proximity to people like Booth and mixed among him and people like Lewis Powell. Everyone wanted to become rich on cotton, and the South had a lot of it to sell. Many wanted Lincoln out of the way, because he was not radical enough in his positions for either the North or the South. So while the thesis of the book points to the death of Lincoln being heavily a Southern invention, the subsequent actions of many in the north who wanted to be President and have power to rebuild the nation after the civil war cannot be overlooked or understimated. What O’Donnell does well, however, is establishes that many in the South were playing ignorant of a desired outcome to evade justice. All of them, in this work, look guilty. They surely were not lacking in apparatus to organize insurrections which they pursued, and they definitely were not wanting when it came to organizing something on the scale of an assassination. That many were not held liable for this is the blind eye history likes to turn in changing the page to the next moment of peace before conflict.
This review is written in markdown in WordPerfect 8 within a Linux terminal. This is not taking place due to a sense of nostalgia so much as it is appropriate to the review in focus.
Many of us, including the reviewer, have used WordPerfect at one point or another. Markdown, is, in many ways, the answer to what was lost when Microsoft Word began to replace WordPerfect. WordPerfect has something that modern word processors lack–a user can push a button marked “Reveal Codes” and once this is done begin to understand what “hidden formatting” is present in the document that might be causing formatting issues.
The book “Almost Perfect,” by W.E. Pete Peterson, tells the tale of how WordPerfect rose and eventually fell on its own sword. What makes the tale especially interesting is that it traces the narrative through a time when business was just beginning to migrate from traditional goods, in Peterson’s case, a family-owned drapery business, to ‘adoptive families’ via technology companies. The old models of making money were beginning to become difficult to maintain, and the new models were in the digital frontiers and had better profit margins.
Peterson, though, tries to maintain what he considers to be a “fair” balance between running the company, and having friends while earning outrageous amounts of profit. He was, quite literally, following his dreams and would eventually have more than enough money to gather if only he had enough hands to help him gain it.
Within the company, the predictable story of the original founders, not really understanding what they are doing and quickly discovering an entire world of money and logistics and personality conflicts, comes into view and to deal with this issue Peterson builds a scaffolding that proves to be his legal undoing later when the company decides it wants to remove him to head into some “new direction.” Peterson, instead of being viewed as a conservative is relegated to being a wet-blanket, and the company no longer wants him there. They hire him on as a consultant, but he later deduces they do not want his information, only his silence. It is a hard blow to Peterson, who feels guilty in the work for leaving his family for extended times. He even states, at one point, that the technology business became like a drug of which he could not get enough. As his focus begins to shift to his family in the work, his removal seems to be not far behind.
Between times, he is working hard to fend off Microsoft that has an inferior product. (and still does to this day) Microsoft eventually, however, breaks into the GUI market and begins its steady assent to where it is today. (the beginning of its twilight years)
There are many stops along the way, and the management style that Peterson suggests is the best, even with all of the problems concomitant with its application he experiences, is to allow employees to govern themselves, and to learn to subdivide job responsibilities quickly and effectively as the organization grows.
The book is a great read for anyone that wants to understand the early technology field and what the decisions looked like that formed the terrain we are experiencing today. Indeed, the 2020 US elections concerned much by way of technology and how its use influenced the outcome. Peterson lets us know that the competition even in the early time was brutal and is himself a decidedly rich casualty. Since you can read the book for free, there is nothing preventing you from doing so except taking the time to do it.
Richard A. Cohen endeavors, in this 2010 work, to tell the reader all about the sun. The only issue is, Richard A. Cohen does not sufficiently get out of the way enough to tell us about the sun. Rather, he tells us what he thinks about the sun. It is still an interesting read, but it is not as scientific as it would like to be.
Many reviewers discuss this work and how it tends to be Western culture dominant. There is certainly a smattering of that present in the text. The first section of the book discusses eclipses in no small way, and presents evidence that the cultural fear of them ingrained in other native beliefs appears to evidently hold some weight. Certain people die. Unnatural births occur. Then, Cohen goes on to state that these beliefs are superstition and baseless and that modern science clearly is superior. It is a very strange kind of tension and one that seems to want to validate the older meanings of what an eclipse entails while at the same time trying to appease modern rationalists and thereby refuting those earlier assertions.
The next pieces of the book go on to discuss artists, sun tans, and more than a few adventures to speak with people concerning solar power and climate change. Again, many reviewers have noted that this work “dismisses climate change.” This was not evident from reading it. Rather, the cause of climate change is debated and the uncertainty of what drives it is analyzed. Apparently, the same scientific modern rationalist crowd that Cohen seems to be trying to please is off-put because the conclusions do not support categorically the main narrative that climate change is man-made only and the reason for atmospheric change.
The stronger parts of the book speak about the solar cycles concerning the sun spots and what they are and how they work. This, mixed in with some tantalizing clues about how certain kinds of ancient literature might have been tellings concerning the movement of the ancient night sky are the tidbits that make the read worthwhile. The crumbs like these, although invaluable diamonds, though, are a bit too scarcely scattered among fields of debris. While it is interesting to learn about say, Louis the Sun King and Cohen’s ascent up Mt. Fuji to see the sunrise, it is less titillating to read about how great science is. The narrative is evocative of a jigsaw puzzle, and one sometimes gets the impression that Cohen was running out of things to talk about concerning the sun and so simply decided to discuss aesthetics around the sun instead or modern rationalism. Of course, it could also have been some ploy to sell books to a wider audience since artistic sorts are not usually science-y sorts. The net effect, however, is to alienate the voice of the narrative from being what feels like what would make it authentic. Who cares why people get sun tans? Tell us more about your own adventures to India. One of these facts can be deduced from Wikipedia, the other requires us to probably purchase the work of the author. Guess which one is worth more of the price of admission?
In the scientific landscape of the sun post 2010, there have been many new assertions and discoveries. Cohen’s book might best be read as a kind of cultural monument to what we thought we knew about the sun up to about 2010 if the reader is looking for the scientific reason for taking the time to comb its pages. For the mythologist, take a pass on this book. For those looking for a basic adventure concerning the author and the sun, well, there are some worthwhile points in his experience–just do not get too hungry for this kind of narrative. There are crumbs, but little by way of red meat.
ISBN: 978-0802162861
ISBN: 978-0788199912