January Meeting

We had a nice turnout for our guest speaker, Jim Hornfischer, author of Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, Ship of Ghosts, and Neptune's Inferno. Jim became interested in WWII in the Pacific at a young age, due to his model-building and playing war games (such as Midway and CA) Jim graduated from Colgate in 1987 and went right into the book publishing field, where he soon became the go-to guy for books on the Pacific War. He moved to Austin in 1993.

More interested in surface warfare than either carrier battles or submarines, he was encouraged to write an account of the Battle of Samar (part of the larger engagement of Leyte Gulf), during which the heroic crews of tiny destroyers confronted the huge battleships and cruisers of the main Japanese battle fleet. This was published in 2004 as the Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.

Jim now acts as an agent for other writers, including Fred Burton and George Friedman (of Stratfor), Rich Frank (working on a trilogy of the Pacific War), Ron Powers (Flags of Our Fathers), Annie Jacobson (Area 51), and others. He is also assisting Marcus Lutrelle (Lone Survivor) with his second book, Service.

We held out business meeting after Jim's presentation. Books nominated for March included One Thousand White Women (Fergus; it turns out we have already read this), Sarah's Key (Tatiana de Rosnay; previously nominated), and Molokai (Alan Brennert, about the leper colony in Hawaii). We voted decisively for Molokai. Our book for February is Into Thick Air. At that time, Patty will nominate for April.