maxgadney.com

Site Complications

There may be some issues with the presentation of the site over the weekend - teething troubles while i get the domain names sorted  - yawn

all the same stuff is here though - read below for this month's graphic

Housekeeping - Punctuality and Page URLs

Just a couple of notes on the running of this site:

1) This month's graphic is up on the site now. I am trying to get this site perfectly synched with the release of the magazine and the updated HistoryNet page - two graphics in and we are nearly there.

2) (technical details here) The individual pages are not showing unique addresses yet. I need to fix this with my hosting service and Typepad. I do understand that those who will want to link will want those links  to be permanent so, again, please bear with me and I'll fix it soon.

Miscellanies - book proposal fleshed out a little

(Apparently pronounced with emphasis on the - Cell - thanks Bob)

Book Proposal

I have chosen Visual Miscellany as the working title of my book proposal.

It cover many bases and could be read as vague but I think the mass audience is getting used to the idea of what a miscellany is.

Here are some reasons:

There are already enough excellent encyclopedias and histories of WWII.

My book will present certain ideas that best communicated visually. This is the main reason for their collection.

Swollen Market

The military history book market place is so full that the only selling points are to have something new (many do not) or claim to be more concise and authoritative than the last person (Now Includes More Words!).

My book will show things as they haven't been shown and collected together before. That is a grand claim. The main theme at the moment is not weapons or tactics etc -  but the idea that there is a lot of different visual information there. A Visual Miscellany. It was actually Julia who came up with the M word)

Schott's Miscellanies

I recently got stuck on a train in the June '07 floods. I was reading the Times and came across a one-page Miscellany of British Prime Ministers. It was done by Ben Schott who has cornered the Miscellany market.

My first idea was that this information would have been much better presented more visually instead of the rather dry table. But I thought some more and decided that most of this info was best as a table (and it followed the Schott style guide -  so it looked good).

Well managed serendipity

I then thought about miscellanies more and realised that they are actually very well managed serendipitous journeys.  (Have they been rediscovered by a book industry confused at the new power of the web to connect the seemingly unrelated?)

They seem to be random lists, chaotic and unordered but actually they have underlying structure and foreshadowing. They let the reader build up a body of knowledge around a subject for themselves.

Not to negate narrative

The reader feels free in their wonderings and certainly not bogged down in an A to B journey. (Do not get me wrong - there is nothing wrong with good narrative but it was a revelation to think that a Miscellany can (and should?) have a structure - albeit a looser one - more open to interpretation by each of it's readers.

It's more about curating and presenting a bunch of stuff rather than being too strict with the overall strcuture. I am trying to make each page coherent though. It is just when to stop with that.

The spectrum of organisation

I am figuring out where on the spectrum of organisation my subject matter needs to be - rigourously ordered - purposeful argument - editted version - curated facts information - seemingly random facts - a big mess? (maybe not the last one)

At the moment I am settling on three main themes - tactics, technology and turning points. I hope that each of the spreads play chords that start some common themes throughout and between these alliterative lables.

Accessibility

I am still working through this - but I think there is an accessibility to a Miscellany and I would like to reach many with this book. They are sometimes overtly playful when the randomness is amped up and I think I will try to keep some order.

Comments welcome. (But do not ask why I am currently capitalising the M in Miscellany. I am not sure.)

Book List - WWII Summer Holiday Reading

In researching the magazine graphics and book proposal I have come across a fair few books on WWII. Below are some that do not contain some of the exact detail featured in the graphics but do paint different pictures of the war.

I have not included some of the better known books - John Keegan's are all excellent, especially 'Soldiers' - as are Anthony Beevor's 'Stalingrad' and 'Berlin'. A bigger list will appear at a later date.

Anyway,I have read these and they are excellent books. I have listed them in no particular order - although the first one reads most like a story:

The Forgotten Soldier
Guy Sajer
Sajer's journey takes him from basic training to the Russian front and back. This view of the war from a German soldier is beautifully written by someone in all the worst places at all the wrong times. (longish read)

The Boys' Crusade
Paul Fussell
Fussell was a soldier too, but this book is broader than a memoir. He is critical of much of the way the war was fought and shows us the undersides of stones often left uncovered by military history books on this subject. (shortish read)

The Battle of Hamburg
Martin Middlebrook
The perfect balance between military logistic detail and personal stories of all involved. Fantastic detail on bombing raids, air defence etc. He explains how this controversial episode came to pass and what it was like to experience it from all sides. (longish read)

Guns, Germs and Steel
Jared Diamond
Not about WWII - instead about Pissarro's conquest of the Incas. A fantastic account of how technologies come to being and their evolution and implications. Chapter 13 is the best writing on technology I have ever read.(longish read) Certainly read this if you work with technology.

Leave a comment of there is something you think I should read.