Sailor of Fortune: The Life and Adventures of Commodore Barney, USN Book

This is an excellent book to listen to in the audible format since there are many voices that are done quite well and some apparently the actual people.

On the negative side this book is almost totally about World War II. This book is a follow up to The Greatest Generation. I was not paying close enough attention since I thought this was that book. But I do not think I will be following up by reading that book.

I am not fond of books that glorify war. I am not fond of books that act as if wars are about protecting our freedom. This book certainly recognizes that plenty of people don't come home from war but I think it leans heavily on the glory of the sacrifice. World War II is the war that people like to see as the one where we were all in it together and we were all fighting for the same thing. This book gives absolutely no alternative viewpoints.

Well let me take that back just a smidgen. There is the story about the 16 Negroes Who were trained to be paratroopers. After they were trained they were shipped up to Washington state to fight forest fires!

There was much mention in reminiscences by people who said their father never talked about the war. And there were some indirect (very indirect) references to the horror of war. There were statistics about how many tons of bombs and flights of the carpet bombing B-17s in Europe. But war was very sanitized. While I would have to say that it is hard to imagine a pro war book, this book leans a little that way. But given the title that should not be totally surprising. This is after all a book about American heroes.