ARMOR AND BLOOD The Battle of Kursk: The Turning Point of World War II
of fact and fiction. Much of the text satirizes desiccated sociology books, offering archly funny examinations of New York City’s class and economic structures, its absurdly inflated real estate market, the lucrative world of its various vices and other banal facts of life. Unfortunately, the apparently fictional narrative that’s interlaced with these journalistic observations is wearyingly trite and unfocused. Its primary protagonist is John, an office drone at a company suffering through multiple rounds of firings, resignations and layoffs. He goes to parties with his friends, gets high and watches TV. He frets over not making enough money to live comfortably in New York City. He has sex, again and again and again, with boyfriends, hookups, party crashers and club rats, described not only without passion, but with an almost clinical detachment. “Sometimes work was just what you clocked into while you were falling in love,” Sicha writes. “Sometimes sex was just something you did while you weren’t at work. Drugs were something you did sometimes when you couldn’t deal with one of those things, or with yourself.” Sicha seems to be trying to document generational angst as a new product, something that’s been done with every generation since Fitzgerald transcribed the Jazz Age. A certain rhythm to the author’s prose harkens back to the glory days of coffeehouse spoken-word performances; the atmosphere of ruthlessness takes its cues from the Ellis/McInerney school of hipster-urban bards. Either way, it already feels like an artifact. An experiment in genre fusion too clever for its own good.
Showalter, Dennis E. Random House (336 pp.) $28.00 | Aug. 27, 2013 978-1-4000-6677-3
Meticulous account of the July 1943 tank battle between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, perhaps the largest such battle in history. Showalter (History/Colorado Coll., Hitler’s Panzers: The Lightning Attacks that Revolutionized Warfare, 2009, etc.) goes far toward rescuing the Battle of Kursk from undeserved obscurity. In early 1943, the Germans planned a major campaign to eliminate the Soviet salient around the city of Kursk that had resulted from the Wehrmacht’s retreat after the Battle of Stalingrad. Preparing to attack both sides of the salient, each several hundred miles long, required immense movements of armies, equipment and aircraft; the launch was repeatedly delayed by supply problems, changes, and quarrels between Hitler and his often skeptical generals. Tipped off months in advance of the attack, the Soviets used the time to construct vast defensive works more than 100 miles deep, a maze of minefields, antitank guns, strong points and artillery. German forces attacked, advanced and suffered terrible losses; they inflicted far worse losses on the Soviet defenders but never broke through. Within weeks, Red Army counterattacks recovered the lost ground. Showalter emphasizes that Kursk capped the Red Army’s two years of painful education in tactics, logistics and air-toground cooperation. While it never matched the Wehrmacht’s efficiency (nor did the other Allied armies), it functioned well enough to seize the initiative; the Battle of Kursk was Germany’s last operational offensive in Russia. The author mostly describes large unit actions and command decisions, although an astute introduction and conclusion put it all into perspective. Showalter clearly knows his subject, but the avalanche of battle details, tactics and unit maneuvers will appeal to military buffs more than general readers.
EVERY DAY IS ELECTION DAY A Woman’s Guide to Winning Any Office, from the PTA to the White House Sive, Rebecca Chicago Review (224 pp.) $17.95 paper | Aug. 1, 2013 978-1-61374-662-2
An activist and public affairs strategist’s intelligent, no-nonsense guide for women seeking to hold elected office. While feminist movements have helped women make inroads into the halls of power, the world of politics is still dominated by males. In this take-charge guide, Sive offers practical advice to women on organizing successful political campaigns that can help women become anything from PTA presidents to U.S. senators and beyond. Using her own experiences along with stories from political women at the municipal, state and national levels, Sive tackles such issues as branding, image management, networking, fundraising, handling the media and dealing with the challenges of gender. Women must learn to shrug off sexist criticisms (“If being blunt and efficient means being called a bitch, so what?”) but also be ready to “haul out the pink sweater” when necessary. They must also learn to play hardball if they want to win since “softball is only played at campaign photo-ops.” At the same time, women must also know when to put aside differences and negotiate compromises. Failure
VERY RECENT HISTORY An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City Sicha, Choire Harper/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $24.99 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-06-191430-0
Sex. Bills. Politics. Sex. Friendship. Real Estate. Recession. Sex. Shower, rinse, repeat. Former Gawker, Radar and New York Observer editor Sicha, who now co-owns The Awl website, creates a novelistic tale that the subtitle claims as reportage. It appears to be an odd mixture 66
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15 june 2013
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nonfiction
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kirkus.com
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