This book poses an intriguing question — and after tons of research, the author arrives at the only answer most historical mysteries can be answered with: It’s possible.

The question is whether what we think of as “Irish Christianity” — with its distinctive decorative motifs including the Celtic cross, its emphasis on monastic life, a liturgical tradition historically distinct from Britain or France — was an offshoot of the Egyptian Church rather than the Roman.

Author Connie Marshner combed through not only earlier histories of the Irish Church, but also compared early Irish manuscripts with similar manuscripts from both Western and Eastern churches. She then also considered archaeological evidence of trade between Ireland and Egypt in the early years of Christianity.

Her conclusion? There is definitive evidence of ongoing trade between Ireland and Egypt, the Irish liturgy was deeply influenced by early Eastern liturgies, and travelers from and to Ireland undoubtedly brought in ideas from the various Eastern seats of Christendom.

And when you simply look at early Coptic crosses and compare them to Celtic crosses, they are far more similar to one another than they are to any other designs.

Marshner writes with an engaging voice, and she cites her sources with footnotes. Adding illustrations would have helped her emphasize certain points — but that’s the only negative.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs created some of the most memorable fantasy worlds in literature, from the familiar African jungles of Tarzan to the barren lost civilization of Barsoom in his John Carter of Mars series.

There were more, though: The misty oceanic world of Amtor in the Carson of Venus series, the island of Caprona from “The Land That Time Forgot” trilogy, and the Medieval England of perhaps his best novel, “The Outlaw of Torn.”

My favorite, in terms of the pure audaciousness of the concept, is Pellucidar — the hollow Earth with a tiny mini-star at the planet’s core providing a never-ending noontime for the life on this planet within a planet.

While the story lines in his seven Pellucidar novels are stock Burroughs — corrupted modern men facing uncivilized, primitive cave men whose blunt honesty shames their 20th century visitors — the setting is unrivaled.

Reading these books as a youth swept me away into Burroughs’ imaginary worlds, and while re-reading them as an adult has been a bit of a disappointment, the vision of an eternally sunlit hollow Earth existing below our feet remains ever beguiling.

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I often wonder that no one has attempted to make a modern Pellucidar film. With current CGI techniques, you could create the illusion of a hollow planet where there is no horizon, instead the vistas rising above you in all directions, to fade out in the haze of the atmosphere.

The only one made so far, “At The Earth’s Core” (1976) has the cheesiest of special effects (think the Saturday morning series of the same era, “Land of the Lost”) with everything set in underground caverns (probably to avoid trying to capture the panoramic views from inside a hollow planet).

But then I think of recent attempts to put Burroughs to film — Disney’s abomination of a John Carter film, or the nearly as flat Tarzan animation — and think, well, maybe it’s better they not try. At least not Disney.

The books, though, can still be found, although I don’t know how many are still in print. (The copyright is still in force, which is ridiculous.)

In order they are:

• “At the Earth's Core” (1914)

• “Pellucidar” (1915)

• “Tanar of Pellucidar” (1929)

• “Tarzan at the Earth's Core “ (1929-1930)’

• “Back to the Stone Age” (1937)

• “Land of Terror” (1944)

• “Savage Pellucidar” (1963)

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The premise is superb: A British knight in the rein of Richard II joins in a revolt against the king, sees his side lose, but rather than being executed with his fellow traitors, is banished from his lands and title and is reduced to solving crimes in the streets of London to earn his keep.

Jeri Westerson’s fleshing out of that premise through 15 novels is among some of the best mystery writing of the last 20 years.

And her commitment to fallen knight Crispin Guest — rebranded as “The Tracker” — was equally strong: Although the early novels in the series won several prestigious awards, and were nominated for a bunch more, her original publisher dropped the series after the sixth book.

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It would have been easy to pack it in then and move on to another project, but Westerson soldiered on self-publishing another nine books.

I’ve not read the entire series yet, but whenever I splurge for the next book chronologically, it’s always a rewarding couple of days visiting with Crispin, his manservant Jack Tucker, the local barkeep and his wife who look after Crispin, and several other recurring characters that Westerson populates London with.

Woven in among the cases Crispin tackles (which alternate between murders and theft of holy relics) is a nice peek into the daily life of the merchant class of medieval London.

Westerson has done some pretty deep research, and so we find out what food Crispin eats, that he only owns a single set of clothes, that his bedding is rather primitive, his possessions consisting mainly of his clothes, a few kitchen items (a bowl, a few cups, a couple forks), and his dagger.

She keeps the dialogue mostly in modern English, but does sprinkle in some historic terminology for color.

This is one of those series — like Tony and Anne Hillerman’s Navajo mysteries featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee — that you’ll want to read in order. It’s not that every novel doesn’t stand on its own, it’s just that Westerson (like the Hillermans) has grown stronger as a writer over the years, and continues to flesh out her characters from book to book, so that they, too, become more interesting and nuanced over the course of the series.

You can see the list of books in order on Westerson’s web site.

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While visiting two of my kids up north over Thanksgiving, I stopped by the used bookstore my oldest daughter manages and was perusing the World War II section while waiting for her to wrap up so we could go have dinner.

I ran across this book, and its 1945 companion. Had never even heard of them — so naturally had no choice but to get both.

They’re a bit beat up, no dust jacket, but the insides are in good shape — and the oversized format makes the photos really jump out.

There was one that really grabbed my eye — a young, African American woman welder! Given the prejudices of the day, I didn’t expect to find that photo. I didn’t expect that photo to exist.

More remarkably, when I turned the page to see who shot it, it was none other than Gordon Parks — the director of the groundbreaking 1971 film “Shaft.”

Mind you, I wasn’t sure at first it was the same Gordon Parks — but a quick search for his biography turned up the fact that he was indeed a stateside photographer for the war effort.

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There are dozens of photos in here that I hadn’t seen before — not unusual, given that tens of millions of photos were taken during World War II, and relatively few of them have ever been published. It’s a fairly unvarnished look, from Japanese Americans (and Japanese nationals) being sent to camps for the duration of the war, to a stricken American bomber in its death spiral, a German U-Boat trying to evade Allied depth charges to Gen. George Patton overseeing a battle, the photos are so stark and real that it removes any glamour from the nasty business of war.

The last 10-12 pages are advertisements for various photographic equipment — film and enlargers, developing solution and lenses. It’s a fascinating time capsule.

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After a bit of a break, I picked up two more entries in Jeri Westerson’s series of Crispin Guest mysteries.

Westerson herself describes the Guest books as “medieval noir” — set as they are in 14th Century London.

Guest is entirely fictional, as are the cases he takes as “The Tracker” — but the historical events happening the background are all drawn from real life.

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The premise of Guest is that he was a rich nobleman, a knight who chose badly during a family feud when King Edward the Third died. Vouched for by his adopted brother, Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), Guest escapes execution — but is stripped of his title and lands, and must now earn his keep to stay alive.

Prohibited from carrying a sword, Guest finds himself solving some minor crimes in London that the royal sheriffs could not — and also finds that people of means are willing to pay a modest fee for these services.

Westerson does her research into what life in medieval London was like — the food the working class ate, the clothes they wore, they jobs they held. This series does the best job of simply immersing modern readers into medieval England of any other series I’ve encountered outside Brian Jaques’ Redwall fantasy series.

But where Jacques’ books are a cross between “Watership Down” and “The Hobbitt” (the characters are all anthropomorphized woodland creatures with grand, epic adventures), Westerson is more Philip Marlowe set in an age before cigarettes and electricity.

I am intentionally reading them in order, and “Season of Blood” is the 10th in the series (there are 15 in total, as Westerson has wrapped up the series to move on to new projects). The story opens with Crispin realizing he is being followed as he walks home. When he confronts his stalker, he learns that she, too, is a refugee from the royal court, and she wants to hire him. But before he can learn the particulars, a knock on his door brings a dying monk into his living quarters — and his new client has disappeared.

As always, Westerson ties everything up — not always in a neat, Disneyesque happily ever after ending, but a logical, satisfying conclusion.

“The Deepest Grave” is the 11th book in the series — and the only really macabre one so far. A priest from a small parish on the outskirts of London reports that the recently buried in his graveyard and coming back to life, and dragging their coffins out into the fields at night.

A former love interest plays a role in a secondary case he is working — but is it really a second case?

As always, Crispin’s apprentice tracker, Jack Tucker, continues to grow into a young man — starting a family of his own while still serving as an indispensable resource for Crispin.

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I found this in the neighbor’s little free library they put up a few years ago, in a cheap Bantam paperback edition. Had never even heard of it before, but it was written by a British Bomber Command pilot during World War II. Reading the forward by Air Marshall Arthur Harris, we learn that the author did not survive the war — he was shot down and killed in action against the Germans shortly after finishing the manuscript of this book.

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I’m only about a tenth of the way in — the Nazis have just invaded Norway, the U.S. is still on the sidelines, France still seemingly standing strong.

Gibson goes through the process of the young RAF reservists such as himself being called up to active duty after Poland was invaded, the year of intensive training that followed during the so-called “phony war,” and then the early missions. He writes of the shock of the first time fellow crews are shot down and don’t return, of realizing that the other fellow is truly trying to kill you and you’ve got to try to kill him first.

The author possessed a relaxed writing style, and was clearly a natural story teller.

The one surprise I’ve taken from this book so far is the number of non-Brits who had come to help defend Britain at the very beginning: Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans, even some Americans.

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“Bellow and myself and a couple of others were very much smaller than Faulkner and Hemingway.”
— Norman Mailer, as told to the New York Times

Growing up the late 1960s through the late ’70s, it was always interesting to see what books your friends’ parents had on their family room or living room shelves.

There were certain best-sellers and highly regarded “serious” books of the day that tended to show up fairly frequently. One I remember as being almost ubiquitous in the homes of those whose children I babysat in my younger teen years was “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” by Richard Bach.

So popular was this self-improvement book told from the point of view of an avian scavenger that it topped the best-sellers lists two years’ running, 1972 and 1973.

And yet, few people under the age of 45 today have heard of it — and few over that age will admit to having read it, much less owning it. (The great film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the subsequent film, “It is based, to begin with, on a book so banal that it had to be sold to adults; kids would have seen through it. ‘The Little Engine That Could’ is, by comparison, a work of some depth and ambition.”)

The best-selling work of fiction in 1970 was “Love Story” by Erich Segal — another book that nearly every family on our block had on their shelves; another book that, except for the film based on it (in this case, infinitely superior to the movie version of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”), would be just as forgotten. (Of the novel “Love Story,” Ebert wrote that Segal’s style was “sort of a cross between a parody of Hemingway and the instructions on a soup can.”)

Other best-sellers from the 1970s that were omnipresent on the bookshelves of America’s wood-paneled family rooms included a trilogy of Carlos Castañeda (“The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” “A Separate Reality” and “Journey to Ixtlan”) that were purportedly non-fiction memoirs of psychedelic drug use among Native Americans. In that same category of fictional non-fiction were a series of books by Erich von Däniken (“Chariots of the Gods,” “Return to the Stars,” “The Gold of the Gods,” et al) that claimed to prove that human beings were the descendants of space aliens.

Written from the late 1940s to late ’50s, but still widely popular in the 1970s, was a series of books by Thor Heyerdahl detailing sea journeys he made in primitive sailing vessels which he used as “proof” that Incas could have settled the Pacific Islands, or that Africans could have discovered the Americas.

And the original pop psychologist (although he would have abhorred being grouped in with Dr. Ruth, Dr. Phil and Dr. Joyce Brothers), B.F. Skinner, would appear on the bookshelves of the more intellectually inclined — although if one takes his arguments in “Walden Two” (1948) and “Beyond Freedom & Dignity” (1971) at face value, folks only purchased and read those books as a reaction to an environmental variable, not because they freely chose to.

All of these books were not only widely read, they were widely discussed — even by those who hadn’t read them. Their authors were frequent guests on the talk shows of the day, and many of the titles were taught in high school and university classes. They were all hugely influential on the popular culture of the day.

Today, most of these books are forgotten — the non-fiction books almost all discredited. Few of those titles are still being read — except, perhaps, as artifacts of their time, curiosities as it were.

On the other hand, certain writers from that era are still read — their works of that period considered classics, even today. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Ursula K. LeGuin are all considered giants of science fiction — they are still being read, and new movies are still being made about their novels.

Going back even further, Frank Slaughter was a hugely popular writer of hospital dramas from the 1940s through the ’70s — he rather invented the genre that continues to populate TV shows even today.

As a novelist, however, he is largely forgotten, and almost entirely unread.

While popular tastes change over time, and yesterday’s best-seller is often relegated to the thrift store shelves today (I’m looking at you, Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins), in an odd twist, the same fate likely awaits Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal and John Irving. These three “serious” authors were at one time darlings of the literary establishment, held up as worthy replacements for the often-reviled Ernest Hemingway as the greatest American novelist.

There was a time when Hemingway was the ultimate American writer. He was both a best-selling author and considered a literary heavyweight — winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. He was also a celebrity in the pre-Internet age when one had to work a bit harder at being a celebrity. He drove a military ambulance in World War I, fought in the Spanish Civil War, and was a war correspondent during World War II. He went on African safaris, owned a home in Cuba, and single-handedly put the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona Spain on the bucket lists of young men the world over.

But Hemingway’s unabashed patriotism and unbridled machismo put him at odds with intellectual values in the 1960s and ’70s — and despite the fact that Hemingway had built on Stephen Crane and Mark Twin in modernizing the American novel, he was soon being dropped from reading lists in English departments at major American universities and colleges. (This despite that fact a student of American English cannot possibly account for the writing style of, say, Toni Morrison without first taking into account Hemingway, who had helped pioneer the use of informal vernacular in serious novels.)

Even by the 1950s, younger novelists Mailer and Vidal were being hailed as the Next Big Thing, the writers who would push Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald out of the way and finally write the Great American Novel. Talented writers both, early works had shown flair — and their celebrity-driven egos consistently promised even greater books to come.

In the late 1970s, John Irving — maybe the first product of writers workshops to be so hailed — became the hot new literary fashion. His books were added to university reading lists and films were made of his novels. He, too, was heavily touted as the man who would finally kill off Hemingway in the American imagination.

And yet, despite all the official disapproval by trendy English profs at supposedly elite schools, Hemingway remains both a cultural fixture and a popular read. (When his final unpublished manuscript, “True at First Light,” was edited by his son, Patrick, and published in 1999, it immediately shot up the best-sellers lists — 38 years after the author’s suicide.)

Walk into nearly any new book store, and there will be at least a couple Hemingway titles available (while Mailer and Vidal are likely to be utterly absent). Heck, many university and college bookstores still carry posters featuring Hemingway — likely to the great dismay of the English Department profs who would much rather their students read something more politically correct, if also more forgettable.

If Hemingway’s reputation has outlived repeated assassination attempts, university English lit departments have been more successful at killing off the concept of a literary canon.

It wasn’t so long ago that literary critics and college English professors shared the heady duty of deciding which works belonged to the canon — an unofficial but accepted roster of works that represented the best of the best in literature. In fact, the canon itself defined literature — if a book was accepted as part of the canon, it qualified as literature. Otherwise, it was just fiction.

Required reading lists at universities were widely reflective of the consensus on the canon: Hawthorne, Crane, Twain, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway — there was a historical progression in American literature. (On the other side of the pond, the progression would range from Shakespeare to Jane Austen, Charles Dickens to the Brontë sisters, George Eliot to George Orwell.) For a young up and coming fiction writer like Mailer or Vidal, having your works accepted as part of the canon was the height of your professional goals. It was the hall of fame for novels and poetry.

Winning major prizes was part of the process of getting added to the canon: The Pulitzer, the Nobel — this kind of validation was considered a key endorsement of the value of your work.

But by the 1970s, “deconstruction theory” and a general anti-establishment mood on campuses was undermining the authority of the awards, as well as belief in a canon — a shared cultural touchstone.

Younger, trendier writers began to be featured in required reading lists. One could be awarded an English literature degree from a major university without ever cracking Crane, Twain or Hemingway. We had supposed “experts” on American literature who had never read some of the most influential American writers, writers whose stylistic innovations had helped differentiate American literature from the rest of the English-speaking world, writers who had made it possible for counter-culture writers in the 1970s and ’80s to find publishing houses willing to accept their manuscripts and bring them to a wider audience.

Ultimately, however, there is a sort of unofficial literary canon — one composed of the novels of previous generations that continue to find an audience, novels that have stood the test of time and that have, mostly through word of mouth, continued to find new readers in subsequent generations.

This canon — the one that matters, for it signifies what is actually being read — isn’t maintained by literary critics or college faculty: It is one created organically by readers. There are no real gatekeepers — now that books can be ordered online if the local shop doesn’t carry a title, people can read what they want more than ever.

The ultimate quality needed for inclusion in this living canon is this: Do modern readers find a book worth reading?

By that standard, Hemingway continues to stand the test of time, as do Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and the above-mentioned sci-fi authors.

Other once-popular authors have been forgotten — much like the 18th century composer Antonio Salieri, who owes what little regard he still possesses to the 1984 film “Amadeus.”

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And maybe classical music contains some lessons for helping us make sense of which, of any, of our contemporary writers will be celebrated by future generations. Not only was Salieri famous in his lifetime, only to be forgotten after, but Johann Sebastian Bach was known during his lifetime mostly as a gifted church organist. His great fame as composer only came in subsequent centuries.

If the concept of an official canon of Great Literature died in the campus culture wars of the 1990s, perhaps that liberates all of us who are fans of engaging writing. Rather than worrying about what the self-proclaimed experts say — whether they’re inveighing against the former classics, or pushing some new trendy upstart on us — we can simply enjoy those writers we enjoy, without worrying about whether they’ll be read or even remembered by future generations.

Other than leaving some personal favorites on our bookshelves for younger visitors to peruse, there really isn’t much we can do to influence that anyway.

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I’ve been on a bit of a World War II bender of late. This one appealed to me because I had a close friend who served on a frigate in the Cold War (the USS Albert David). It was the only combat ship I ever visited — and wearing one’s Air Force uniform aboard a Navy vessel probably isn’t the wisest move, but I had ROTC that day and no time to change before heading to 32nd Street Navy base.

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This book revisits the Battle of Samar. With Admiral Bill Halsey having chased a Japanese decoy fleet north, leaving the Philippines with no air cover, the small group of escort carriers and their accompanying frigates found themselves cornered by the largest Japanese fleet of the war, including the giant battleship Yamato, with its 18-inch guns.

The author does a nice job of bouncing from ship to ship, weaving in survivors’ reminiscences with official naval histories and memoirs.

The battle was as unusual as it was unexpected for both sides. The Japanese thought they’d caught Halsey unawares; the Americans hadn’t been told the main fleet carriers had left the area.

I’m about halfway through, but already can recommend this book for any fans of World War II history.

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An early birthday present arrived in the mail over the weekend — Buddy Hackett’s “The Truth About Golf and Other Lies.”

Golf is a game that has always appealed to comics and humorists, from P.G. Wodehouse to Leslie Nielsen, Robin Williams to Mark Twain. I think it is the inherent cruelty of golf that so appeals to our comedians.

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While Hackett is not broadly remembered today, he was a mainstay of talk shows in the 1960s and ’70s.

I’ve not dove into it very far yet, but I did already find one gem I love: Hackett writes about calling Dean Martin, a scratch golfer who took the game very seriously, and asking for a round. Ah, sorry, we already have three, was Dean’s reply. (Golfers will get the joke.)

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Stop me if you’ve heard this before ...

I was at Helen’s Book Mark in Escondido, browsing through the stacks not knowing what I was looking for — and found a first-edition sans dust jacket of “Up Front,” Bill Mauldin’s illustrated memoir of his time in the Army in World War II.

Mauldin was the young infantryman who became famous for his portrayal of front-line combat through his cartoons featuring the characters Willie & Joe. While the brass often disliked his realistic portrayal of American soldiers making the best of their lot, like syndicated reporter Ernie Pyle he was beloved by the front-line troops — to the point that even Patton had to tolerate the fact that Mauldin was simply too popular to touch.

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It’s a touching book, written and published while the war in Europe still raged. Mauldin lost buddies in the war, like most combat soldiers, and he wanted to make sure that the folks back home never forgot the sacrifices an awful lot of young men made in order to stop the Axis and make democracy possible for another generation.

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Another great find from Helen’s Book Mark in Escondido, this 1948 memoir by the overall Allied commander in Europe is a fascinating look back at the European campaign in World War II written while the war’s memory remained fresh. Ike’s recollections of Patton and Bradley, as well as their British counterparts, are insightful.

What is more interesting — and I’m only about a quarter of the way through it — are his memories of the steep learning curve the Americans had to undergo during their first combat engagements in North Africa. Successful peacetime military officers did not always translate to combat effectiveness, and many careers were ended by having to relieve someone of duty when they were simply ill-suited to wartime leadership.

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While Ike is remembered as a rear echelon theater commander who never commanded troops in combat, by his own recollections he did travel to the front lines in North Africa to see for himself what his subordinates were facing — and he came under enemy fire more than once.

But his overall tone is that of a manager — which, in coordinating U.S., British and French response to the Axis, is exactly what was needed.

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Last week’s Lost in Cyberspace, about the erosion of joy and happiness in contemporary society, is echoed in this weekend’s piece by fellow Substacker Tara Hensley.

She links to a couple other writers who have written on the fact that the professional class largely eschews fun - while those who work and live in what online denizens quaintly call “the real world” are still having parties, telling jokes, letting loose.

It’s worth checking out.

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Published in 2014, and subsequently turned into a miniseries on Netflix, Mark Harris’ tale follows five Hollywood directors who joined the military to help tell the story of America’s fight against the Axis powers in World War II: Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, and William Wyler.

Huston had the least to lose in walking away from Hollywood to join the military, having only directed three films (including his first, “The Maltese Falcon,” that had established him as a director on the rise) by the time Pearl Harbor happened. The other four were bonafide stars in their own right — at the time, as famous and respected as Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood or Spike Lee are today.

Harris uses personal correspondence, government archives, contemporary news accounts, and more to piece together each man’s journey from civilian to quasi-military. (None of these men were required to go through basic training; a quick orientation to get them familiar with military protocols, and they were off to work with an officer’s commission.)

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All but Capra would see combat, or at least get very close to it — Ford taking a piece of shrapnel while personally filming the Japanese attack on the island of Midway. But as Harris tells it, Capra was able to work his Tinseltown connections to make sure the military got the cinematographic equipment and talent it needed to both produce training films for the tens of millions of American civilians entering the military, as well as pro-Allied propaganda films to help keep the home front’s spirits up. Capra may have resented his deskbound job, but he may also have done the most to make sure the American people understood the war.

Their work dramatically influenced filmmaking as an art: Ford’s shaky, hand-held camera while filming battle scenes during Midway was widely adopted as a technique to lend films about war an added layer of authenticity, even when filmed safely on a sound stage; while Wyler’s use of fixed cameras on P-47 fighters to account for the lack of space for a cameraman opened up new possibilities for filming aviation. In addition, Wyler’s willingness to cast a double-amputee veteran in “The Best Years of Our Lives” was the kind of brutally honest look at the costs of the war on the young men we sent to fight it that hadn’t been seen before.

But the men themselves were changed more.

Ford’s anger at his formerly favorite leading man, John Wayne, for refusing to serve in the military during the war forever strained their relationship.

Capra would only direct six more films following the war, and only “It’s A Wonderful Life” is held among his stronger works. In Harris’ telling, Capra was a victim of self-doubt — and the military’s refusal to deploy him to a combat zone, instead utilizing him as a virtual producer of all the military’s war films from a desk in Washington, only fed into his fears.

Wyler, although younger than Ford or Capra, had the second-deepest filmography at the war’s start — having, like both men, started out directing silent films. And yet, despite having helmed some highly regarded pre-war films including “Wuthering Heights,” “Jezebel,” “The Little Foxes” and the pro-intervention (and Oscar-winning) “Mrs. Miniver,” it was his post-war work that garnered him even greater acclaim, as he won Oscars for “The Best Years of Our Lives” and “Ben-Hur.” But the two documentaries he produced for the government helped bring Hollywood production values to what had been the province of the newsreels. For “The Memphis Belle,” Wyler and his cameramen flew combat missions over Germany with a bomber crew, filming the waves of Luftwaffe fighter attacks on the bomber formations as they happened. As mentioned, for “Thunderbolt!” — which followed a squadron of U.S. fighters based in Corsica as they flew ground attack missions over Italy — Wyler devised methods of mounting cameras at different points on a P-47, and automatically triggering them when the pilot fired his weapons. Both films brought the war to stateside audiences in a visceral way they had never previously experienced.

Huston was first assigned to the Aleutian Islands near Alaska, to document efforts to expel Japanese forces from American territory. But it was his attempt to document how the military treated those suffering from combat fatigue — what we today call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder — that was his most frustrating assignment. The resulting film, “Let There Be Light,” while widely hailed today for its humane depiction of the psychological stress of combat, was censored by the government and not made available for public viewing until 1981. And Huston, of course, went on to have the most productive post-war career of any of the Hollywood directors who joined up (being the youngest didn’t hurt, of course). The anti-establishment tone of his career was likely shaped by the constant battles he waged against the bureaucracy while in the service.

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But it was Stevens who was most affected by the war — not least because of his role in documenting the concentration camps the Allies liberated from the Nazis in the closing months of the war. After filming the D-Day landings and the liberation of Paris, Stevens and his cameramen made it their mission to document as fully as possible the depravities the Americans found in the death camps. His footage was used as the basis for the Nuremberg trials after the war — an experience that obviously scarred him. He would make some notable films after the war, including Oscar-winning “Giant” with James Dean, but Harris documents that family and friends noted he could never escape the horrors he’d witnessed.

It is likely no one could.

Harris is a gifted writer, with a strong feel for narrative flow. A streak of anti-Catholic bigotry sneaks in now and again, but this is otherwise a superb history of a time that some of Hollywood’s most talented, rich and powerful directors put their lives on hold to join tens of millions of other Americans to serve their nation during a time of need.

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Just published in 2017, I recently picked this up at Helen’s Book Mark in Escondido.

The author co-wrote “Apollo 13,” the best-seller that was made into the Tom Hanks film a few years ago.

This book is much shorter than the earlier one, but the Apollo 8 mission was not nearly as fraught as the Apollo 13 one, obviously.

The Apollo 8 mission has been largely forgotten behind the thrill of Apollo 11 reaching the moon, and then the near-disaster of Apollo 13 and the three astronauts doing everything they could to get safely home.

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But Apollo 8 was the proof-of-concept mission: The ship left Earth orbit, and inserted into lunar orbit before returning home.

Following the fatal fire in the Apollo I capsule that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, NASA was scrambling to fulfill President Kennedy’s promise to the American people to land a man on the moon — and bring him home — before the end of the 1960s.

After Apollo 7 (Apollo 2-6 did not carry humans) successfully inserted into orbit before returning, the decision was made to accelerate the process: Rather than another orbital test, Apollo 8 would circle the moon.

Kluger recaptures the sense of excitement surrounding that time, as well as the pressure on those who worked at NASA. The focus is on the three men who flew Apollo 8: Frank Borman, for whom this would be his final space trip; Jim Lovell (who would later command Apollo 13); and Bill Anders, who had trained to pilot the lunar module in orbit but would instead become a science mission specialist since no lunar lander was even carried on Apollo 8.

The pace of the story is perfect, the men’s back stories let us identify with them before they are even assigned the mission, and Kluger’s telling builds to a satisfying peak.

This is as good a book about the Apollo program as exists; it’s not comprehensive, of course, but it tells an important part of the story of how our species first left our home planet to go exploring in space.

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Anne Hillerman’s 8th novel in her continuation of her father’s Navajo police mysteries is like a too-short visit with old friends, where you utterly enjoyed the time together but are already looking forward to the next visit.

Detective Jim Chee is on vacation by Lake Powell when he comes across a corpse floating in the lake — and agrees to the park ranger’s request to stay on a few more days and lend a hand with the investigation.

Meanwhile, back at home, Chee’s wife, Bernadette Manuelo, witnesses a vehicular homicide on her day off — an Asian man runs up to her car asking for help before he is brutally run down twice by a Mercedes with blacked out windows, which then takes off while she tends to the mortally wounded victim.

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While Chee tries to narrow down the list of suspects who might have wanted to kill the seemingly well-liked Navajo man whose body he found, Berne talks Capt. Largo into letting her go undercover at a new hemp plant on the Navajo Nation that may not be what it’s administrators claim.

The Jim Chee arc is classic Hillerman, and has Chee wondering if he should resume his aborted studies to become a traditional healer. He also is working on an angle for his mentor, the retired Lt. Joe Leaphorn.

The Bernie arc feels a bit like a Jack Reacher novel — with the large, isolated industrial plant run by mysterious figures terrorizing the neighbors.

There are a few disjointed passages that her editors should have caught: When Chee calls the local sheriff’s deputy late in the book, he’s on the phone with the deputy — then suddenly they’re in her office? And there are a surprising number of typos, particularly for a publishing house the size of HarperCollins.

But those are minor quibbles about another strong entry in this series.

And I fully realize that Chee and Bernie should be way too old to be talking about starting a family, that Largo should have hit mandatory retirement decades ago, that Leaphorn would, based on his being 40 in the first novel 52 years ago, be 92 by now.

At the same time, this is all fiction, and they’re not stuck in stasis — they’re just aging slowly.

And I’m okay with that. I’m in no hurry to have to say goodbye to these friends.

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My colleague and friend Michael J. Williams has a wonderful profile of and interview with jazz bassist Gunnar Biggs in this month’s issue of San Diego Troubadour.

Michael and I are working together on a history of jazz in San Diego, and this article came out of that research. But this article was all Michael.

Gunnar has played with everyone from Buddy Rich to Sarah Vaughan through the years, and was regular bassist for the Sunday night jam sessions that Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham ran at the airport Sheraton and later the Bahia resort on Mission Bay in San Diego.

But read Michael’s article — he tells it way better than I am. And Michael (who turned me on to jazz when we were both on staff at the San Diego State student newspaper, the Daily Aztec, in the early ’80s) knows everybody in jazz in San Diego, so the article is as well-sourced as it is well-written.

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I got this awhile ago, and started reading it last year. It’s interesting — how could it not be, with the subject matter at hand — but very detailed, and thus at times a bit of a slog.

Friedwald is mostly interested in Cole the artist — every recording session is covered, every song.

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And Cole’s transition from straight-ahead jazz pianist to popular crooner is given fair treatment in comparison to the general narrative that Cole simply sold out. In Friedwald’s telling Cole felt constrained by the stylistic borders of jazz — he wanted to branch out like Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and his contemporaries, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.

Cole’s personal life is also covered — his first marriage, the slow growing apart of the couple, his meeting and marrying Maria, the two daughters. The affairs are acknowledged, but never in a salacious manner.

This is a serious, compelling biography of an important artist who did much to shape post-war musical taste in America. Friedwald took his time and did the necessary research to present as complete, balanced and fair a portrait as possible.

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The second volume of McManus’ history of the Army in the Pacific, this volume focuses heavily on MacArthur’s campaigns in the western Pacific, but also does get into the central Pacific island invasions the Army conducted under Nimitz’ command.

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McManus seeming goal of this trilogy (the third hasn’t yet been published, I don’t believe) is to counter the mythology that the Marines did all the heavy lifting in the Pacific. In fact, the Army conducted more amphibious landings, took more casualties, provided more of the manpower than the smaller Marine Corps. While never downplaying the Corps’ valor (he takes pains to point out that the Marines suffered proportionately higher casualties than the Army), he wants to ensure that the contributions the soldiers made are not forgotten.

Neither revisionist nor loyalist, McManus is willing to cite strong criticisms of senior generals and admirals from those who served with them. Neither McArthur nor Chesty Puller is immune to such criticism — the former for his glory hounding, the latter for his willingness to send his men in costly frontal attacks rather than adapt to the situation on the ground.

It’s an enjoyable read so far, and I am looking forward to the final entry in this series.

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