Rick Atkinson

Popular book son WW II

Jean Renoir

Having read about a Clifford Odets play being staged, I read his Wiki biography, wherein Jean Renoir is cited: Renoir dedicated a chapter of his autobiography to his friendship with Odets.^[54]

That led me to look up Renoir, and read about him; I took his memoirs off the shelf, and read that chapter referred to above. I also read about his films. These are three of his works:

The Rules of the game (1939): A comedy drama set on the eve of World War II. It contrasts the affairs of the French aristocracy and the working class at a weekend house party. Masters and their servants are involved in an immoral erotic charade that builds to a shattering climax.

 Grand illusion (1938): A classic tale of adventure. Duty and honor conflict in a German prisoner of war camp during World War I, when an aristocratic French officer becomes friends with the commandant yet must cooperate with his comrades in a daring escape.

 Boudu saved from drowning Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932): A well-off bookseller rescues a tramp from a suicidal plunge into the Seine and his family dedicates itself to reforming him. He shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations, challenging the hidebound principles of his hosts.

World War II writings

A J Liebling. A collection of World War II accounts by the influential journalist and author includes "The Road Back to Paris," "Mollie and Other War Pieces," and "Normandy Revisited," in a volume that also features twenty-nine previously uncollected New Yorker articles.

Catch-22

Heller's classic. Book-a-day calendar states that today, 10 November, is the 50th anniversary of the book's publication. It adds that "The Modern Library ranked Catch-22 number seven in its list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century."

Witness to History

In notes of "Traitor to his class"

FDR spy

Persico, Joseph E. (2001). Roosevelt's secret war: FDR and World War II espionage. New York: Random House.

From bibliography of Scorpions.

A covert affair

A covert affair : the adventures of Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS / Jennet Conant.

Conant wrote Tuxedo Park, a book I enjoyed greatly. This book is about Paul and Julia Child.

Swashbuckling Spymaster

Waller, Douglas C. (2010). Wild Bill Donovan. The Spymaster Who Created the Oss and Modern American Espionage. New York: Free Press.

The Last Brother

Appanah, Nathacha. (2011). The Last Brother. Translated by Geoffrey Strachan. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Inspired by the largely unknown story of 1,500 Jews who fled Europe only to be imprisoned in Mauritius from 1940 to 1945 after their ship was refused entry into Palestine (then under British rule), the novel recounts the heartfelt friendship between two boys: David, a Czech orphan, and Raj, an Indian-Mauritian grieving for the two brothers he lost in a flash flood.