American Maritime Prisoners in the Revolutionary War: The Captivity of William Russell

Book Description

The fact that more Americans died in British captivity than in combat during the Revolutionary War will come as a shock to many because the treatment of prisoners has received little attention until now. Most of the twenty thousand American seamen taken captive were held on prison ships in New York harbor and in naval prisons in England. Their dramatic story unfolds through the experiences of William Russell, a sailor who kept a secret journal during his four years of British captivity.

A Boston schoolteacher swept up in the protest movement against British rule, Russell was an ardent revolutionary prior to the outbreak of war and went on to serve on a rebel privateer. He spent three years imprisoned in Newfoundland and England and returned to sea only to be captured again and taken to the infamous prison hulk, HMS Jersey, in New York harbor. His experiences and those of fellow rebels bring added dimension to the history of American prisoners of war. As the author examines the contentious issue of British treatment he also takes a close look at the harsh lives of seamen and the extraordinary challenges involved in maritime service. The story will appeal to everyone with an interest in warfare in the age of sail or in the American Revolution.

Book Description

lan Shepard was the brashest, cockiest, and most flamboyant of America’s original Mercury Seven, but he was also regarded as the best. Intense, colorful, and dramatic—the man who hit a golf ball on the moon—he was among the most private of America’s public figures and, until his death in 1998, he guarded the story of his life zealously.

Light This Candle, based on Neal Thompson’s exclusive access to private papers and interviews with Shepard’s family and closest friends—including John Glenn, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper—offers a riveting, action-packed account of Shepard’s life. Among the first men to fly off aircraft carriers, he was one of the most fearless test pilots. He endured long separations from his devoted wife and three daughters to fly dangerous missions, working his way up the ranks despite clashes with authority over his brazen flying maneuvers and penchant for risky pranks. Hugely competitive, he beat out John Glenn for the first Mercury spaceflight and then overcame a rare illness to return to space again on Apollo 14.

He took every challenge head-on and seemed to win every time.

Long overdue, Light This Candle is a candid and inspiring account of a bold American life.

Customer Reviews:

The Highs, Lows, and In-Betweens of Alan B. Shepard.......2006-12-31

Surprise of surprises. Amid the clutter of hastily-written self-serving memoirs from the early days of the space program, finally there appears something akin to solid history and literary proficiency. Neal Thompson was a Baltimore reporter when Alan Shepard died in 1998 of leukemia. Assigned to write an obituary, Thompson discovered that no first rate biography of the United State's first spaceman was then in print. Sensing an opportunity, Thompson, a free lance writer, began a six-year research project and produced a highly respectable treatment of a very private man. What had been known about Shepard were primarily his great successes and his notable shortcomings. Johnson tackles the great middle--and the puzzle that was Alan Shepard now begins to make sense.

In truth, there is probably misunderstanding about all of the early astronaut heroes, as if each was assigned a role in a bigger cosmic drama. Scotty Carpenter will always be the house philosopher, Gordo Cooper the hotdog, Gus Grissom the curmudgeon. Shepard's role was to be first, the best, the winner of a grueling marathon to ride the Redstone rocket--tiny by today's standards--for fifteen minutes on May 5, 1961. Given the unpredictability of the rockets of that era, the greater risk to the astronaut was on the ground than in space. This fact was appreciated in 1961, and being chosen number one was a statement from his superiors about his fortitude as much as his mastery of flying and technology.

Alan Shepard was born in 1923 in Derry, NH, to a somewhat removed, demanding father. Young Shepard inherited a fierce competitiveness and an independence that allowed him to pursue personal goals with little concern about his impression on others. This latter quality, to his advantage, is what set him apart from his archrival John Glenn, who did worry about public relations. Shepard was one of those rare men who had his cake and ate it, too: he achieved remarkable career goals while entertaining himself along the way with what can only be called oppositional defiance. In a strange twist of history, he actually pulled off the mischief that has always been attached to others like Gordon Cooper.

In this regard Thompson studies Shepard's military misbehavior and his philandering. The author's account of the future astronaut's brushes with military authority is detailed and rather surprising. One comes away with a sense that the New Hampshire flyboy's skills as a naval test pilot must have been noteworthy, outweighing numerous dangerous incidents of "flat-hatting" or strafing civilians on the ground. His cheating on his virtuous and devoted wife Louise--a spouse of the Lady Bird Johnson mold--is a blotch that time will probably not erase. Thompson does observe that Shepard's amorous sorties off the reservation were adolescent in nature; the astronaut apparently never engaged in any sort of long term relationship in which Louise was displaced.

Although there is in this work a lot about Shepard to dislike, the author clearly strove for a balanced presentation. Shepard appears to have made his peace with Glenn at the time of the Freedom Seven flight. After retirement he demonstrated a better than average interest in philanthropy and seems to have worked harder in his later years to enrich his marriage with Louise. Perhaps best known is his decade long battle with Meniere's Disease, and later with a form of leukemia. In some ways the Meniere's was more of a psychological jolt, coming as it did at the beginning of the Gemini, and ultimately, the Apollo Programs. Whatever his colleagues felt about him, Shepard was widely respected in the NASA management circle for outstanding cape com work in the troubled Carpenter and Cooper flights. With Glenn, his chief rival, out of the picture due to a head injury and political considerations, Shepard was the logical choice to command the maiden voyages of these new craft--and by implication become the first man to walk on the moon.

But this was not to be. For nearly a decade Shepard lost his license to fly any type of aircraft due to balance impairment [and other less known medical problems brought to light by the author.] Did he take this forced grounding graciously? Admittedly not. But the author assesses this period of Shepard's career with more depth than other commentators. He notes, for example, that Shepard had burned his bridges with the Navy by joining NASA and could not return to what seemed to be a straight road to admiralty status. While the Navy was no longer an option, Shepard was proving himself to be a better than average business man and becoming independently wealthy. Freed of aviator-astronaut responsibilities, he could have lived a highly lucrative lifestyle.

But he stayed with NASA, a nasty Don Quixote. Only a man in similar straits like Deke Slayton, himself medically grounded from space travel, could have understood and tolerated his subaltern's angry depression which alienated other astronauts in the program and at times rendered him a public relations nightmare. What sustained him through his bureaucratic Siberia was the desire to return to active status, but perhaps more strongly a desire to conquer his own medical problem. Shepard would admit that his selection for the first Mercury flight was the professional highlight of his career. Reinstatement to flight status for Apollo was for him a personal triumph of a different sort,

Shepard was due for some luck. Experimental surgery put him on line for Apollo 13, but management bumped him to 14 to absorb training and thus he avoided the near catastrophic events of unlucky 13. Shepard seemed grateful to be back--choosing for his Apollo 14 crew Stu Roosa, who had defined the art of avoiding Shepard in company hallways. Apollo 14 survived at least three mission-threatening crises on its way to the world's most famous tee shot. What the author shares about the moon landing mission is one of its least known achievements: it brought its commander to tears.

Certainly changed my mind about Al Shepard!.......2006-08-10

I am a "space nut". I have read numerous books, seen numerous vhs and dvd stories of everything from the start of the space age to the shuttle flights. I have never had a more inspiring feeling than upon finishing "Light this candle". It started a little slow with all the early life details of Shepard but, helped later in the book with how & why he reacted to many (and I mean many) tough situations that he faced in his unbelievable life. Being a space nut, I was happy to see little details explained in the book that are lacking in other books I have read. Such things as Shepard talking about laying in the LEM following an EVA on Apollo 14. He and Mitchell were supposed to be sleeping but Shepard talked about the "eerie silence" and hearing the A/C unit click on and off. Also, feeling like they were going to tilt over and falling out of the bunk when he thought the LEM was sliding down the edge of the crater. All of these things made it a "tough to put down" book that I would HIGHLY recommend.
I used to think of Al Shepard as an egotistical, bi-polar, spoiled fly-boy that I wanted no part in learning more about. I would have rather stuck to anyone of the other 6 Mercury astronauts. BOY WAS I WRONG! This book might have turned me to thinking that Al Shepard is the most interesting of the original 7.

Al Deserved Better Than This Shoddy Book.......2005-08-12

I had been meaning to read this long-overdue biography of Alan Shepard, and I happened to pick it up in a cruise ship library. As I read it I was surprised at the number of factual inaccuracies--there is at least one glaring non-technical error per chapter, which calls into question almost everything else between the covers. Numerous reviews here mention more problems with technical aspects of the book that I was unaware of, but which do not surprise me given the apparent lack of proofreading and fact-checking.

An example: upon finding the book, I leafed through it and found the section on Apollo 14. There it mentioned that John Glenn had "almost killed himself when he lost control of the pace car at the Daytona 500 and slammed into a flatbed trailer crowded with journalists." This sentence boggled my mind, for it contained two errors: the pace car was at the Indianapolis 500, and John Glenn was a passenger while a local Dodge dealership owner was the driver. The book is just full of examples of this kind of sloppy reporting.

Edit: I see that at least the paperback edition correctly says Indianapolis 500, but it still incorrectly implies that Glenn was driving the pace car.

As close as one can get to the "real" Alan Shepard.......2005-05-25

I missed an opportunity to go to a book-signing where Alan Shepard was signing copies of "Moon Shot". I figured I would have another chance but then before long he was gone. What a thrill it would have been to have shook the hand of the first American in space.

Nostalgia aside, this book is a capsule of the life of the man. True, it is littered with inaccuracies in spots, and seems to delve far too deeply at moments on the personal life of one of the most important men in the last 50 years. But then again, how many JFK biographers have tried to delve into the hush-hush side of the man?

This book will give you a clear picture of the over-achieving, success-driven, consumate test pilot who one day became an important symbol to many Americans, who were afraid their world was about to be consumed by communism. At times wistful, sometimes aggrandizing, other times pointedly candid, this biography attempt to reveal the Alan Shepard even the man himself wanted no one to see.

You will be amazed at the story.

Enjoyable, but the essence of the man is missing...........2005-01-10

I was surprised to learn how few biographies have been written about Alan Shepard. Perhaps this is a function of the Life Magazine exclusivity contracts; it would seem that such a pivotal character at the birth of the age of space exploration would have generated more interest. However, the lack of literary output cannot diminish Mr. Shepard's contributions which are, unequivocally, legendary.

Mr. Thompson's research appears to be of professional caliber. However, I was left with a view of Shepard as a courgeous philanderer, whose marriage survived his self indulgence. His cold, competitive detachment appears to be one of his most admirable qualities, in addition to his aforementioned intestinal fortitude.

Those of us who, as childeren, watched him hit the most famous extra-terrestrial golf shot in history, imagined a hero cut from different cloth. Courage, and an almost unimaginable grace under immense pressure, are more fitting labels.

Indeed, it may be that the author's account is more accurate than one's imagination. In fairness, the early flying exploits are exciting and intriguing; the fatality rate in training was horrific. The mere fact that those men would attempt Carrier landings, at night, is worthy of our admiration and respect.

Perhaps in an era where literature must reveal every harsh truth, no matter how tasteless, one may be forgiven in yearning for a more gentle, respectful memory.

Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard

Average customer rating:

Light This Candle
intriguing bio of a Great American
The paperback is much better.

Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard
Neal Thompson
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Scientists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Astronauts | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 140008122X
Release Date: 2005-03-22

Book Description

Alan Shepard was the brashest, cockiest, and most flamboyant of America’s original Mercury Seven, but he was also regarded as the best. Intense, colorful, and dramatic, he was among the most private of America’s public figures and, until his death in 1998, he guarded the story of his life zealously.

Light This Candle, based on Neal Thompson’s exclusive access to private papers and interviews with Shepard’s family and closest friends—including John Glenn, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper—offers a riveting, action-packed account of Shepard’s life.

Customer Reviews:

Light This Candle.......2007-09-27

If you are one of the older generation who lived through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, this is a well written, well researched book on Alan Shephard. Shephard and Grissom are two of my all-time heroes. It was a good read, as this talented author's always are!

intriguing bio of a Great American.......2006-02-23

I found this bio to be well written, and informative on not only Shepard, but also the Mercury Seven and the beginnings of NASA. It charts the mans abilities, and also his shortcomings, and well evokes the period of the space race. I thoroughly enjoyed it, highly recommend it and recommend the From Earth to the Moon miniseries as a good companion piece.

The paperback is much better........2005-06-14

The hardback version of this book was an extremely entertaining read, but was unfortunately marred by many basic factual errors. It is good to see that the author took the time to fix the major ones for this paperback edition - it is a much better read for it.

Light This Candle The Life and Times of Alan Shepard America's First Spaceman

Average customer rating:

Light This Candle The Life and Times of Alan Shepard America's First Spaceman
Thompson Neal
Manufacturer: Crown Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UF90F6

Customer Reviews:

Vital Data for Health.......2007-05-31

A little "pocket book" the kind you would see at a grocery checkout.
But the data presented about this vital mineral magnesium most persons would have to locate and research the various books and articles the author has included in his bibliography to find.
The general public AND most doctors are unaware of the number of problems magnesium deficiency is currently causing us.
I wish everybody could read what this very qualified author says in this little book. I took his advice and it changed my life too.
Get it. Its very affordable and your health issues may take a turn for the better.

Very informative Book.......2007-05-29

This book can change anyone's life if they have High blood pressure. It shows you how to maintain blood pressure without pharmacutical drugs. Highly recommend!

Lower your blood pressure and mitigate many other ailments with magnesium.......2005-07-18

Dr. Cohen's book does the public a great service in discussing the importance of magnesium for maintaining a healthy level of blood pressure. However, as Dr. Carolyn Dean discusses in her very important book The Miracle of Magnesium, magnesium deficiency is a significant factor -- often the major factor -- in many other severe illnesses including heart attacks and other forms of heart disease, asthma, anxiety and panic attacks, depression, fatigue, diabetes, migraines and other headaches, osteoporosis, insomnia, and most cases of muscular problems. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans are deficient in magnesium to some degree and many are severely deficient. Because magnesium deficiency is largely overlooked by orthodox medical doctors, millions of Americans suffer needlessly from the foregoing ailments or are having their symptoms treated with expensive drugs (which often have unpleasant or dangerous side effects) when they could be cured with magnesium supplementation. While I recommend Dr. Cohen's book, I recommend even more highly Dr. Dean's more comprehensive (but easy to read) book The Miracle of Magnesium. Getting the right level of magnesium can not only mitigate a large number of seemingly-unrelated ailments, it may save your life.

magnesium -- the forgotten piece of the jigsaw.......2005-01-19

This useful little book is in the same series as one I reviewed earlier (The Magnesium Solution for Migraine Sufferers).
High blood pressure accounts for more trips to the doctor than any other condition. Almost always, patients are put on prescription drugs. As Dr. Peter Galgut said so eloquently on www.naturaleater.com, ALL drugs have side-effects. [This is no small matter: side effects to prescription drugs in hospital are the 4th leading cause of death in the United States, according to Lazarou in JAMA. 1998 Apr 15;279(15):1200-5.]
Moreover, doctors do not like to admit that, using drugs to lower blood pressure, does not reduce your risk of cardio-vascular disease to the same extent of someone who has the lower level naturally. In other words, drugs are dealing with the symptoms not the cause.
Dr. Cohen looks at one probable underlying cause of high blood pressure -- magnesium deficiency. He describes how up to 75% of Americans are deficient in this mineral and as a consequence are sick in many ways. Doctors are widely ignorant about magnesium and tend to think of drugs as first resort rather than last.
Dr. Cohen explains how magnesium is an essential micronutrient in maintaining suppleness in the walls of blood vessels. In magnesium deficiency, the vessels become stiffer and so do not absorb the blood pressure surges properly.
Dr. Cohen reviews many of the other lifestyle factors that are responsible for high blood pressure. These include obesity, lack of exercise, low fiber intake, salt, alcohol and smoking. However, even correcting these matters (particularly in black Americans) is not very effective; magnesium must be corrected too.
Dr. Cohen does not claim that fixing magnesium deficiency will "cure" high blood pressure. Rather it is usually an overlooked piece of the jigsaw in a pattern of factors to be corrected.
This eminently readable book has guidance on the types of magnesium available and how to find the right dose for you. As commented earlier, we should all be nervous of the aggressive side-effects of drugs.
The insights in this book offer a valuable avenue for high blood pressure sufferers to explore. Of course, as a nutritional anthropologist (www.naturaleater.com), I would say that taking pills -- even magnesium pills -- can only be a stop-gap measure. We should all be changing our eating habits so that we get ALL our nutrients from food. By feeding our bodies in the way that our bodies were designed by our ancient past, then all these food-induced lifestyle diseases (like high blood pressure) will disappear of their own accord.

Book Description

Oldest known cookbook in existence offers readers a clear picture of what foods Romans ate, how they prepared them. Actual recipes — from fig fed pork and salt fish balls in wine sauce to pumpkin Alexander style, nut custard turnovers and rose pie. 49 illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Victorian Fantasy of Rome.......2006-12-14

Vehling was a professional chef, not a scholar of Latin, and his grasp of Latin was limited, so his translations are not good. Also they are not based on the earliest available copies of the Apician cookbook. Instead, he used humanistically "enhanced" Renaissance texts. And he didn't understand the history of the various editions he was looking at. Thus Vehling's translations are full of gross inaccuracies. When his book was first published, readers had little access to anything much better. But today there are quite a few much more accurate translations, and more accurate translations lead to more accurate interpretations, when one wants to cook a recipe.

I won't even go into an analysis of his faulty translations, but, assuming most buyers want to cook food of the Roman Empire, I'll go straight to examples in his worked-out recipes...

Vehling uses a roux (a technique in which flour is browned or at least lightly colored in hot fat before having the fluid stirred in) to thicken sauces in many of his recipes. This technique was not common until the 17th century. Clearly the Romans used other techniques, and we can use them, too.

Vehling includes vegetables not known in Europe even in the 15th century, let alone during the Roman Empire, such as French beans aka green beans aka string beans (when the Romans used green fava beans, quite a different item), and bell peppers and kidney beans and pumkpins (which are all native to the Americas, unknown to Europeans until the 16th century).

In one recipe he even substitutes pate à choux (used for things like eclairs and cream puffs) for splet or emmer grits (early forms of wheat)!

Additionally, he substitutes "broth" for "liquamen", that is, fish sauce, one of the hallmarks of Ancient Roman cuisine!!!

In fact, in many of his worked out recipes he "corrects" the original recipe to make it more like modern European cuisine, losing the flavor of the original and destroying its Roman character. Some of his worked out recipes are so transformed as to be nearly unrecognizable when compared to the original recipes.

If there were no other translations available, Vehling might be useful. But there are. And Vehling is misleading, erroneous, and wrong. Get a better book.

tangential comment.......2006-10-06

I haven't read the book, so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt with five stars. I just wanted to comment briefly on the whole A.D. / C.E. controversy. First, A.D. stands for Anno Domini, not "After Death" - the Christ is said to have died in 33 A.D., not 0 A.D. Second, the "Common Era" designation is nothing but a euphemism, and as such I find it hard to understand how it can be deemed an "improvement" over the A.D. designation - when you use the "C.E." designation, you're still taking the alleged year of the birth of Christ as your chronological reference point. In other words, this "Common Era" verbiage is pure window dressing. Those with a proclivity for pointless euphemisms are of course free to identify their dates under the C.E. system - just don't be too self-righteous about it.

Worth a read, if you actually want to prepare the recipes........2004-10-14

The book I have to say are decent and the recipes, defiantely reproducable, if you are looking for a cookbook then this is your book, if for some crazy hobby of trying to cook with ingredients impossible to get then this is not your book. The author adds or omits ingredients that you would simply not find, anywhere, even Sicily, promise. The dishes are close to true and if you are interested in Sicilian cooking you get a very different perspective. Try reading Pomp and Sustenance after this book and you will see what I mean. As for the "Christian" zealots in the other reviews, get a life, please, from the Roman point of view it is CE, AD is just so narrow minded, and take a look around we are not the only people on this earth.

Good Thing It Was A Gift.......2003-10-06

Spared the horror of paying good money for this, I concur with the other reviewers that this is a letdown.

The measurements have been tampered with and the reliability of the historicity is questionable.

There is a reductionist spirit here at work.

Worth a Read.......2001-05-30

While others who have commented on the book take the author/translator to task for substitutions, mistranslations and other faults, I found that by and large the redactions were not terribly different from others I have read. These include several versions, so I am aquainted with Apicius and his recipes and have tried quite a few, and not from just one source.

What I find most praiseworthy about this book is Dommers Vehling's obvious interest in gastronomy in general and in ancient cookery in particular. He makes a fairly honest attempt to fill in some of the background for the reader. And although he may be guilty of having his own point of view, we must remember that he was writing over sixty years ago.

Dommers also gives the Latin names of the recipes, makes comments on many of them and makes references to other translattions of Apicius' De Re Coquinaria.

And so I feel that this book is worth reading, especially for the price.

Average customer rating:
Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome
Joseph Dommers, Illustrated by None Vehling
Manufacturer: Walter M. Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LGF3OG

Average customer rating:
Cookery and dining in imperial Rome: A bibliography, critical review and translation of the ancient book known as Apicius de re coquinaria
Apicius
Manufacturer: s.n.]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B00087NQWY

Average customer rating:
Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome

Manufacturer: Peter Smith Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 9993329541

Average customer rating:
Apicius: Cookery and dining in Imperial Rome: a Bibliography, Critical Review and translation of the Ancient Book Known as Apicius De re Coquinaria

Manufacturer: Walter M. Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H5IDOI

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