LITTLE ROCK — When it comes to Christmas gifts for the kind of people who read editorial pages, there is probably nothing better than a great book (except maybe a bottle of top-flight single malt scotch or a box of good hand-rolled cigars). These book gift sets would be at the very top of my wish list.
Winston Churchill’s The Second World War (the six-volume box set from Mariner Books).
Self-serving history, yes, but also beautifully written and the primary justification for Churchill’s receiving the 1953 Nobel Prize in literature. Reading these volumes also reminds us of how he was unjustly passed over for that other Nobel-after all, if standing alone against Adolf Hitler wasn’t a major contribution to peace, properly conceived, what within the catalogue of courageous human resistance to evil would be?
Shelby Foote’s classic The Civil War: A Narrative (the big three volume paperback set published by Vintage Books).
Frankly, it’s possible that no one has ever written a better history of any war than Foote’s, at least since Thucydides, or a history of anything for that matter. Civil War buffs that already have Foote (and, really, how many wouldn’t?) might also be in line for Bruce Catton’s trilogy, Mr. Lincoln’s Army, Glory Road and A Stillness at Appomattox, with all three available under a single cover from Random House; or the Modern Library’s edition of Michael Shaara’s heartbreaking The Killer Angels.
Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time (all four “movements,” adding up to 12 novels, from The University of Chicago Press).
Confession: I’ve still not finished the whole thing, in large part because I start over again every few years and get just a bit further than the previous try, which means I’ve read the first few books four or five times now, the sixth or seventh books a couple of times, the ninth once and so on. This is less a reflection on my stamina than simply the magnitude of Powell’s achievement in chronicling the decline and fall of the British elite, one that makes you go ever slower so you never reach the end.
Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, brought together in a 14-volume paperback set from Penguin Publishing.
A fairly heated debate has developed over Sean Connery versus Daniel Craig (my vote: still Connery, although Craig is undoubtedly good, in a different sort of way), but it’s remarkable that so few of those flocking to see Skyfall have bothered to read the original novels, which formed the basis for the earliest and best Bond films.
These don’t take long to read, and they illuminate the key characters (not just Bond, but M, Moneypenny and the classic villains) in a way that will seem refreshing in light of their film counterparts. We all know that Fleming didn’t envision a Connery type when he conceived Bond (David Niven, rather!!!), but it is still Sir Sean you see in your mind as you read these, largely because those of us who grew up in the 1960s saw the movies before we read the books, and that’s just the way it works.
Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honor trilogy, consisting of Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and The End of Battle, collected together in the Everyman’s Library Classics edition, with a pitch-perfect introduction by Frank Kermode.
With all due respect to Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny, and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, this is still the best work of fiction to come out of World War II.
Patrick O’Brian’s The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels, available in a beautiful five-volume boxed set from W.W. Norton.
The 20 remarkable installments trace the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and ship’s physician Stephen Maturin at sea and on land during the Napoleonic Wars.
Fans of historical fiction would also probably be glad to receive C.S. Forester’s 10-novel Horatio Hornblower series (with the 1939 boxed set from Little Brown especially worth searching used book stores for) and George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series, books as funny as they are oddly informative about British history and diplomacy in the 19th Century, three of the best of which (Flashman, Flash for Freedom and Flashman in the Great Game) are now available in a single Everyman’s Library collection.
Then there is the Library of America’s recently released two-volume American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe, and featuring underrated works by Alfred Bester, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson and others, with original art work and covers. Or Books to Die For, a collection of essays by 119 prominent mystery/detective writers (including Dennis Lehane, James Sallis and Elmore Leonard) discussing their personal favorites, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke (Atria Press).
But if, in the end, books somehow don’t serve, then perhaps you can honor the passing of Dave Brubeck by giving some of his best recordings instead, not just Time Out, but maybe the two-disc At Carnegie Hall (from 1963), Gone with the Wind (1959), or the Jazz Goes to College compilation from the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s classic campus concerts from the 1950s.
Yes, it’s the thought that counts, but good taste helps, too.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 13 on 12/17/2012