Reader’s Diary

Simon Winder

I haven’t watched a Bond film in years, but to an American kid growing up in the 60’s - the kiid that I once was - James Bond was the very definition of cool sophistication. To a British kid, though, as Simon Winder tells us in this quirky, enjoyable memoir, 007 was something else entirely. Bond was, Winder says, Britain’s manhood, the icon that kept Englishmen’s faith in England alive from the hardscrabble post-war years through the subsequent loss of empire all the way into the economic doldrums of the ’70s. It’s a serious thesis, played for laughs in this very funny book that manages to cover the Bond novels, the movies, Ian Fleming’s life and a good chunk of late 20th Century British history.

Jeff Meldrum

When I was very small, I insisted that my mother read me a series of articles in the Minneapolis Star about the Abominable Snowman. For weeks afterwards whenever I looked out the window at night, I imagined the yeti looking back in at me. Nevertheless, I was hooked. I grew up reading about strange creatures in Frank Edwards‘ books, and figured that if, as I read in the pulp pages of “Science Digest“, coelacanth could survive, why couldn’t an ape man be hiding in the remote corners of the world? Earth has few, if any, remote corners any more, but I have a Bigfoot action figure on my desk and while I’m not - quite - a believer, I’m not a scoffer. Call me a want-to-believer.

Jeff Meldrum, professor of anatomy at Idaho State University, doesn’t “believe” in Bigfoot either. He says that “believe” means to accept something in the absence of evidence but maintains that “…a respectable portion of the evidence that I have examined suggests, in an independent yet highly correlated manner, the existence of an unrecognized ape, known as sasquatch.”

Meldrum’s book is convincing. He makes a good case that the observed behavior, calls, footprints, film (including the famous Paterson-Gimlin film), and body prints are consistent with those that might be produced by a large forest-dwelling ape such as the extinct Gigantopithecus.

Since Meldrum’s specialty is primate locomotion, his chapters on sasquatch footprints are especially detailed. He explains that the size and shape of the footprints, the evident flexing, and the imprints of skin ridges in some of the best prints are all exactly what he would expect to see in the trackways of a giant ape.

My only complaint is that Meldrum doesn’t usually give precise details of sasquatch sightings. This isn’t a fatal flaw, since the book deals almost entirely with physical evidence and he doesn’t base he case on anecdote, but it’s a flaw nevertheless.

Stephen Ambrose

This account of D Day is both interesting and frustrating. Ambrose sets the scene well, and the personal, GI-level stories are gripping, but the reader is left with the impression that there were only Americans in Normandy: a few Germans, some French for local color and, oh, yes, some Canadians and Brits way off in the distance.

Ambrose makes extensive use of veteran’s accounts. Unfortunately, he usually quotes them verbatim, and the shift from 1944 to decades-later reminiscence often breaks the rhythm or his story.

In summary, this is a fairly good book which I’d recommend especially to anyone visiting the Normandy beaches (something I have done and something no American visiting France should fail to do). It’s too bad, though, that is lacks the historical analysis of Keegan’s “Six Armies in Normandy” or of Ambrose’s own excellent “Citizen Soldiers“.

Ted Bishop

Ted Bishop rode his Ducati from Edmonton, Alberta so Austin, Texas and back. This book is the story of that trip along with some interesting tales of his time in Austin researching Virginia Woolf. How many people can write about motorcycling and the Bloomsbury Group in the same book? Bishop not only does it, but his evident love for scholarship and cycling makes them equally interesting.