A Biography of Douglas MacArthur. Fascinating reading.
The movie MacArthur (1977) starring Gregory Peck, starts with the fall of Bataan, but follows the biography from there.
One tidbit I loved. His father was General Arthur MacArthur a civil war hero. While in New Orleans after the war, he was charged with cleaning up the graft and corruption there. While investigating he was approached by some locals and offered a vast sum of money, a mansion and the use of the most expensive hooker in town. He sent in his report and asked to be transferred to another post stating, "They're getting close to my price."
Clavell was a POW during WWII, and this is his memoire only fictionalized. It was turned into a black and white movie starring George Seagal as the King Rat. This embarked him on his writing career which includes Tai Pan, Shogun, Noble House and others.
Years later Steven Spielberg did a blockbuster movie, Empire of the Sun. John Malkovich's role is strait plagiarism from King Rat.
This was Michener's memoire of fighting in WWII. Amazing how many great novelists were veterans. It was turned into a musical play and the movie had an unknown actor as part of the choir: Sean Connery. 
Tolkien was a veteran of WWI. It may be apocryphal, but the story is he was bet a certain amount of money that he couldn't write a story with the word "hobbit" in it.
Like many of his fellow veterans of the trenches he was a part of the "Lost Generation," Those who lost all ideals concerning war. In the Hobbit the Battle of 5 Armies over Smog's treasure is a prime example of his disdain for warfare.
5 comments:
Great list! I need to read these, especially "American Caesar."
Fun fact: my father is technically in the movie "MacCarthur". He was at West Point when they were filming it, so he's somewhere among the marching cadets. He always used to jokingly refer to Gregory Peck as his "old co-star."
(Sorry if you get this comment twice; the comment form is behaving strangely.)
Great list! I need to read these books, in particular "American Caesar."
Fun fact: my father is technically in the movie "MacArthur". He was a cadet at West Point when they were filming it, so he's somewhere in those scenes. He likes to jokingly refer to Gregory Peck as his "old co-star."
No problem, Berthold, I liked what you said twice.
Manchester is a great author, a bit wordy but that is the nature of biographies. I think I read Goodbye Darkness. He had some great insights.
Back in the day I think I read all of Clavell's books. They were wonderful.
I think I have literally read all of Michener's books. They were also wonderful except toward the end when he had grad students do most of the research and his writing got to be like a committee books.
I tried, but there came a time I'd rather read other authors too. The Source is my all-time favorite of his.
I have read most of Clavell, not his offshoot stuff with his name and ghost writers. Try Joseph Badal, his writing is like Clavell's. He's living here now, and I go to his book signings.
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