John Bryson
Список книг автора John BrysonThree Revolutions
Three Revolutions in the Equatorial Americas.<br /> <br />A volume of three feature pieces treating revolutions in each of Panama, Nicaragua and the building of tensions in Haiti.<br /> <br />1. In Panama, a Pantomime.<br />Billed as support for a rebellion against General Noriega, the US invaded Panama for Christmas 1989. A year later Western expatriates in their clubs and enclaves were still divided.<br /> <br />GENERAL NORIEGA'S portrait stood on the hotel bar, his cap crusted with laurels, stars the length of his epaulets, his cheeks pocked and grainy. The camera had caught him reviewing a parade.<br /> <br />2. The Play of Children.<br />In Port o Prince, Haiti, waiting for the elections, tension builds, as does the heat. Here, we sit in a restaurant, speaking of Haitian artistries, during a power failure.<br /> <br />We were all eyes, in this dusk. Mme Du Paix said, 'The Voodoo has taken over the Naive in our culture. No artistry speaks without voodoo.'<br /> <br />3. The Fall of Old Managua.<br />The Nicaraguan revolution split families, none more than the Reyes, in which two brothers each became prominent leaders of opposing factions. In the first free elections in a decade, during the period in which President Reagan was still denying collaboration with the Contras, the US backed faction lead by Violetta Chamorro took government.
A Long Weekend In Belfast
A novella sized piece covering the Ulster troubles, called the Stormont Riots, the street battles and intrigues of Ulster Protestants and IRA.<br /> <br />"John Bryson has the skills of literary journalism, and abundant luck" a Penguin Books copywriter wrote for a back cover, and this was the case in 1986 in Belfast, where I was to launch a book, and stayed on to cover the sectarian war of that year, the worst for many years.<br /> <br />'A man was crucified in a Belfast park last night…'
The Personality of War
The Personality of War – A volume comprising five pieces.<br /> <br />Dresden.<br />Now an old man, a onetime Air Force flyer recalls his time in the night sky during the bombing of Dresden.<br />For the incineration of a hundred and forty thousand souls, if things went right, for the destruction of a graceful city, of its old walls and obedient gardens, they flew east. He was the navigator.<br /> <br />Rehearsals for the Death of Taipei.<br />One day every year Taiwan practiced its defenses against its possible invasion by China, or for its own invasion of China. Here is the moment in Taipei.<br /> <br />Battle Songs.<br />Music is as much the sound track to certain grainy recollections as it is to silent movies. Here are the popular songs of WW2 and the warfare they recall.<br /> <br />This Perilous Winter in St Moritz.<br />Holidaying at St Moritz as he had since childhood, German industrialist Herr Genscher rides the cable car to the mountain top to meet his son, and recalls his vacation here on leave from World War Two, as did resting British officers, sharing the ski runs.<br /> <br />The End of All Wars.<br />Four stories, moments which ended World War Two, moments for a small band of German women who formed a chamber orchestra in a cellar in East Berlin, moments for a fighter pilot in New Guinea who disobeyed the cease-fire, for another pilot who was exercising in clouds over the Arafura Sea when told the war is over, and the end of the War in Vietnam for a soldier so damaged by warfare he brings cruelty home with him as if it were a trophy.