100 books like The Last Valley

Greg Baughen had written over a million words on the evolving role and functions of the Royal Air Force from its foundation in 1918 to the post-second world war period, then decided to find a publisher!

The work is thus published in a number of volumes this being the fourth. Never frightened to challenge conventional wisdom the author deals with the RAF and British Government’s preoccupation with strategic bombing at the cost of developing effective tactical air power. As he notes German occupation of much of Europe was accomplished on the ground with effective air support.

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver is a screenwriter of some considerable experience and it shows in his writing. Of late he has been a prolific writer, especially on aspects of the air war in the Pacific and post-war in Korea.

His work is a combination of authoritative research and verbatim accounts collected firsthand from those who were there. His writing is highly readable, without being patronising, and in this volume he describes the contribution of naval air power to the United Nations' fight against North Korea.

A characteristic of all of Cleaver’s writing is that he looks beyond the United States: thus in this book he includes a full description of the part played by Britain’s Fleet Air Arm.

In respect of covert post-war aerial intelligence gathering there is a great deal of rumour, misinformation, and disinformation.

What I like about Listening In is that the authors have undertaken thorough research and rather than speculating have compiled what is otherwise spread around in the public domain: occasionally, for example, US sources give more detail of RAF operations than British sources. The book gives details of probing and overflight missions, including some American ones, and includes numerous diagrams, maps, and photographs.

The book is also a good example of the publishing values of Hikoki Publications.

Max Hastings is a journalist and author of several dozen books mainly on warfare. Being well-connected he is able to draw on a wide circle of friends and acquaintances to contribute their experiences, research, and ideas to his own analysis of one of the most potentially dangerous events in post-war history.

His books draw on a very wide range of sources and are invariably highly readable but also reliable. Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis and Abyss pulls facts together in a digestible way with references throughout and a useful but far from complete bibliography.

What is remarkable is that the work was undertaken within the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic that effectively closed off archives and libraries for up to two years.

The Crystal Messenger is a delicate melancholy tale about a girl who observes from her window the comings and goings of her family and the community around her.

Her sister is the local beauty who is wooed by many but cannot find the poet that she truly loves and she is courted by a dwarf who is a member of the communist party. The prose of this novella is like candy floss, it can melt on your tongue and I aspire to use language this way.

As Tom took Basic Combat Training, learning to become an infantryman and kill, his religious beliefs would not allow him to kill. He applied for conscientious objector status, but he wound up in Vietnam where he worked as a clerk at the sprawling Long Binh Post. He is treated as a coward and faces criminal charges, but he keeps his faith. As a Christian, this book helped me come to grips with my military time, not wanting to kill, and fortunately, I never had to.

I loved Waltzing With The Dragons for its autobiographical sense of history and description of mother/daughter bonds that are truly universal. 

The story begins in 1922 with Ly, the daughter of one of the last Mandarins in north Vietnam, who flees an arranged marriage at thirteen to stay with her father’s friends, a French couple, and lives through the WWII Japanese occupation, finally fleeing to the South where she falls in love with a French Army doctor and gives birth to a daughter, Mai-Tam, in 1952. 

Mai-Tam, who is Eurasian and never feels she belongs, grows up in the shadow of the American-Vietnam war. The novel ends in 1967, preserving a mother-daughter kinship that sustains migration and separation. 

Some of us marry our childhood sweetheart, while others carry a lifelong torch for a love that seems unattainable. For Inez Victor—married to a U.S. Senator and failed Presidential candidate, a woman who has spent her entire adult life being photographed—the memories of Jack Lovett come in and out of focus like a camera lens. For decades, the two of them nurture a fantasy that finally explodes into the open with the force of the munitions that Lovett sells to governments around the world.

If you want to immerse yourself in the old French Indochina then this could be the book for you. Published in 1942 it is written by a Brit who describes it as a travel book, but it is a travel book that is replete with history. That the author travelled the Annamese (Vietnamese) lands during a time of peace made it of particular interest to me when working with Michel on his early years from 1936 in Vietnam for my book. In Little China one can immerse oneself in the life of the Annamese people through Brodrick’s descriptive prose of everyday scenes. The book has not only a historical Chronological Table, but an Appendix, a short Bibliography, a map, and a comprehensive Index in case you happen to be looking for something specific. It was published by Oxford University Press.

Dr. Gus Kappler contacted me via my Facebook page. After we spoke, I ordered his book, Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally: A Vietnam Trauma Surgeon’s Memoir. Since I write Vietnam War fiction, I found his memoir both enlightening as to how it really was for the doctors saving the lives of our troops. M*A*S*H it is not, while themes in that classic show have a ring of truth. I will not mention them as you need to read the book to understand. The book is written from Gus’ heart and soul of his experiences and illustrated with the pictures he took in-country. The book is gritty, down-to-earth, and above all, how it truly was to work in a Vietnam War field hospital—the 85th Evacuation Hospital. You need to read this book.