On Dec. 6, 1917, train dispatcher Vincent Coleman witnessed two ships colliding in Halifax, Nova Scotia, harbor. One of those ships was the French freighter Mont-Blanc loaded down with 3,000 tons of explosives, heading to Europe to assist the Allies in World War I. Coleman sent a telegraph: “Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor…will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys.”
The Belgium relief ship struck the Mont-Blanc’s bow and a fire ensued. As people on shore watched the ship burn, an explosion did occur, leveling 2.5 square miles of Halifax and killing 2,000 people and wounding 9,000 within one-fifteenth of a second. It became the largest man-made detonation prior to the atomic bomb and one of North America’s worst human disasters.
Wednesday marks the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion and New York Times bestselling author John U. Bacon relives the horrific day and its aftermath in “The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism.” The book details the explosion, followed by rescue efforts and Boston’s contribution of medical supplies, money and personnel. Bacon also relates Halifax’s resilience, how the event brought the two countries closer and how Robert Oppenheimer studied the explosion for developing the atomic bomb.
War stories
Thursday also marks the 76th anniversary of the bombing by the Japanese of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Louisiana author-historian Ronald J. Drez insists there were signs leading up to the surprise attack. He details through memoirs, documents and testimonies how Gen. Billy Mitchell foresaw the clash of the United States with Japan 28 years before Pearl Harbor in “Predicting Pearl Harbor: Billy Mitchell and the Path to War,” published by Pelican Publishing of New Orleans.
Liza Mundy, a staff writer at the Washington Post and the bestselling author of “Michelle: A Biography” and “Everything Conceivable,” among other works, will visit Garden District Book Shop of New Orleans this week to sign “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Codebreakers of World War II.” Mundy will be discussing and signing the book at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the bookstore.
Dennis Ward of Lafayette has written two novels paying tribute to his late friend, Gisele “Gigi” Carriton, a holocaust survivor and owner of a Parisian-style gay cabaret nightclub in Lafayette called Chez Gisele in the 1960s-1970s. The two books — “Mademoiselle Gigi” and “Madame Gigi,” published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press — chronicles Carriton’s early life, the horrors of being a Jewish child in occupied France, meeting a Cajun soldier and moving to Lafayette where after two divorces she renovates and opens a bar that welcomes gay people.
William R. Bradle utilizes original crew accounts from the Allied forces’ raid on Hilter’s oil fields in Ploesti, Romania, in 1943 in “The Daring World War II Raid on Ploesti,” published by Pelican. Other Pelican titles include “Sioux Code Talkers of World War II,” a young adult story by Andrea M. Page, and “Saluting Our Grandmas: Women of World War II” by Air Force Col. Cassie B. Barlow and Sue Hill Norrod with a foreword by Congressman Michael R. Turner. Both books are published by Pelican and a portion of the proceeds of “Saluting Our Grandmas” will be donated to Honor Flight Dayton.
Book News
LSU Press is offering 40 percent off all books from now until Dec. 15. Among the recent titles by the academic press are “Images of Depression-Era Louisiana: The FSA Photographs of Ben Shahn, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott: by Bryan A. Glemza, director of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina Libraries and Marla Hebert-Leiter of Thibodaux, who teaches at Lycoming College of Pennsylvania.
Book events
Melinda Winans signs “The Fonville Winans Cookbook” from noon to 2 p.m. today at The Conundrum bookstore in St. Francisville.
The 20th anniversary of Words & Music, a Literary Feast in New Orleans, sponsored annually by the Faulkner Society, will be Wednesday through Sunday, Dec. 10. For more information, visit www.wordsandmusic.org.
Liza Mundy signs “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Codebreakers of World War II” at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Garden District Book Shop of New Orleans.
Emmy Award-winning actor Ed Asner will discuss and sign his book “The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends our Constitution Against Right Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs” at 3 p.m. Saturday at Octavia Books of New Orleans. You must purchase the book from Octavia Books to attend.
Alysson Foti Bourque will sign copies of her children’s books at 10 a.m. Saturday at Books Along the Teche in New Iberia. Bourque’s “Alycat” series was recently honored as a Best Book Award finalist by the American Book Fest. For more information, visit www.alyssonfotibourque.com.
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