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Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary
is $14.95. Click on the cover image to buy a copy from Amazon.com, where qualifying orders over $25 get free shipping. Voices Under Berlin
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Berlin in Early Cold-War Army Booklets
lists for $17.95. Click on the cover image to go to Amazon.com and buy a copy.
To learn more about this book, click here.
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Once More Upon a Time
was a prize winner at the 2006 Hollywood Book Festival, which celebrates books that deserve greater recognition from the entertainment media.
It is a collection of contemporary fairy tales for young and old, from not so long ago, and not so very far away. Beware of trolls and computer malfunctions, goblins and swimming pools, gremlins and washing machines, winter sprites and refrigerators. These modern tales explain why the mouse ran up the clock at the Hickory, Dickory Dock, and why the cow jumped over the moon. Having read them, you will never look at birthdays or Halloween the same way again. These tales will take you to the Bounding Main and the Deep, Dark Forest, where you will learn if dead men really tell no tales. Go back to school with sorcerer's apprentices who have not mastered reading, with trolls who cannot spell, and lettered dragons. Those with a taste for the macabre can learn what happens to recycled vampire teeth and why the Grim Reaper uses modern technology.
Judge's comments:
"I found the concept of Once More Upon a Time intriguing. I was pleasantly surprised to find refreshingly new twists on plots of old fairy tales, with characters who were charming and spontaneous. Each story has its own plot, with new twists and turns that caught me off guard. Throughout the book, the characters seem compelling and interesting. The dialogue appears natural and not forced. Each story starts like a fairy tale beginning, and each ending has a take-away message. The storytelling is consistent throughout all the stories in the book. I found myself smiling at various points all the way through."
Read one of the stories here.
A Train to Potevka: An American Spy in Russia
by Mike Ramsdell, Publisher: Zhivago Press, 305 pages.
The reason for the book's popularity is clear. It is a tale of survival, written with enough adventure to make you want to keep reading to find out how the author lived through the events described in it. It's not edge-of-your seat excitement, but that's not the intent. As it says in the book, "actual intelligence work is far removed from the 'cloak and dagger spies' portrayed in Hollywood. . . . In reality, intelligence work is extremely serious, tedious, and unglamorous" (p. 205).
The book feels like it was written by someone who's been there and done that, until you get to the place where it says an MP platoon sergeant handed the author a 45mm [sic] Pistol (p. 100), or when the glossary at the back of the book says that "the Puzzle Palace" is "The Pentagon" (p. 341). The chapter entitled "President Carters' Folly," however, reminded me of an episode in my own intel career that could have had the same title, and brought a 'secret' smile to my face.
The story line reminded my of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in that it is a story of personal growth and value of small achievements in the face of grindingly depressing circumstances. In between are historical asides about the Soviet Union, and flashbacks to episodes from the author's personal life before he got on the train to escape to Potevka.
The historical asides about life in Russia and the Soviet Union are done in a style that recalls an intelligence report and--for insiders--slow the reading down. The author warns insiders about these places in the "Prologue" and invites them to skip over them. For people who have never had to deal with the Soviet Union, however, they make up a rather good historical overview.
The flashbacks help the reader get to know the author as a person, and make the reader care about what happens to him.
Ramsdell is not the new Hemingway, Fleming, or Pasternak, but his story is worth reading if you want to learn more about Russia and American intel interests there. Check your library, or pick up a used copy. Don't wait for the movie. It will probably jazz up the story to make it more like James Bond and less like real life.
