Photoessay #2851 - Two Recent Books

I checked out the book Bloodland by Timothy Snyder. About the area between Germany and the Soviet Union and what happened there in the 1930s.  I got to page 200 before I just had to stop.  Every time I turned the page at least 10,000 people died, murdered, starved and gassed.  Hitler was horrible; Stalin was worse if even that could be possible.  Thousands, millions of civilians senselessly slaughtered.  Not a place to live.  And few know the story (except the Holocaust) because most was brutally done in secret.  So nobody knew or knows.

The first picture is an aerial view of the Warsaw Ghetto burned to the ground after the uprising.

I also have read Joan Didion's "Blue Nights" which was about her grief over her daughter Quintana's death at age 39.  The physically small Joan Didion does not hide her age (75 when the book was written) though she does write about it.  A lot of it is an adoption story and the author admits (which is so very very obvious) that they were not prepared to become adoptive parents.  Many of Quintana's problems are hinted at.  Borderline Personality Disorder is major stuff.  And some vague mentions of addiction and alcohol.  A mother does not have to tell all.  I did wish that she would knock off the name-dropping.  Serious, the story would be just as compelling without having to acknowledge that she and her husband hung out with the beautiful people and famous folks and all the fancy hotels they stayed at and fancy things they had.

A picture of Joan Didion.