BOOK REPORT--

We spent the winter without full-privilege access to a local library while snow-birding in Vero Beach, FL.  Consequently the winter's reading was confined almost entirely to paperback novels available in the mobile home/RV park's casual, library.

Lots of noteworthy authors but that's enough brain-candy.  Here's my first non-fiction read in quite awhile:

THE BOXER REBELLION--

and the Great Game in China   by David J. Silbey

This book was a jolting reminder of man's propensity to wage war.  It also reminded me things I had learned about earlier in life weren't necessarily ancient history as I had imagined from the perspective of youth.  This rebellion happened in China just 40 years before I was born.  At the same time the Brits had their hands full with the Boers in South Africa, the German kaiser was threatening world peace by building a vast new navy, the US was struggling with an insurrection in the Philippines and Japan was flexing its territorial muscle around the neighborhood.  Nicely done Mr. Silbey.