Jim Tresner, 33°, Grand Cross
P.O. Box 70, Guthrie, Oklahoma 73044–0070
Book Reviews Editor, The Scottish Rite Journal

In Maxwell Anderson's great play Winterset, he explores the heroism of the common people. The final speech of the play is highly powerful, both emotionally and dramatically. In that speech the character, discussing heroism in life and death, says, "What odds and ends of life men may live out otherwise-let them." Our books this month are about men and women who, rather than living out the odds and ends of life, grasped the moment, with humility and with no thought of self, and lived or died as heroes.

Christopher Sweet, editor, Above Hallowed Ground: A Photographic Record of September 11, 2001, by Photographers of the New York City Police Department, New York: Viking Studio, 2002, 192 pages, almost entirely consisting of color photographs, ISBN 0-670-03171-2. Some Internet sources, like Amazon.com, list the book for $20.97, plus s/h, and the book is generally available at bookstores. Prices may vary. All royalties go to the New York City Police Foundation, Inc.

It's hard to write about this book. It has some of the finest photography I have ever seen. The pictures tell the story of the attack on the World Trade Center. Even more, they tell the story of the men and women who sacrificed everything to help others. Many of the images have a strange beauty. There are what appear to be huge lace fans (as on the cover of this issue), standing alone at impossible angles. It takes a second to realize that they are the partial facades of the World Trade Center, left standing alone in the rubble. There are the photographs of the heroes-firefighters, law enforcement officers, and volunteers-all driving themselves past human limits. There are images of pathos and horror, of desolation and beauty.

In a strange and surprising way, I discovered I need this book. I thought, after all the news coverage, I would never need to see the pictures of that tortured steel again. But I was wrong. In the two years since the attack, I've allowed the memory to lose it sharpness, to recede into the past.

But the victims who died there and the heroes who served there deserve better than that. They deserve, at the very least, that my outrage remain sharp and my determination remain focused. They deserve that I never forget for a moment that evil has struck at us and can strike again.

This is a historic book and a tribute as much to the art of the photographer as to the art of the historian. I strongly recommend it.

Sue Gossett, The Films and Career of Audie Murphy: America's Real Hero, Madison, NC: Empire Publishing, Inc., 1996 (3rd printing, 2003) paperbound, 200 pages, many photographs and illustrations, ISBN 0-944019-22-6 available on the Internet for $18.00 and Sue Gossett, Audie Murphy, Now Showing, Madison, NC: Empire Publishing, Inc., 2002, hardbound, 207 pages, very heavily illustrated with theatre posters and lobby cards, ISBN 0-944019-38-2. (See front inside cover of this issue.) Available on the Internet. Sue Gossett, the author of the two Audie Murphy books reviewed here, will autograph copies ordered through her. Send checks or money orders payable to her to: Sue Gossett, P.O. Box 192, W. Carrollton, OH 45449. Copies are $18.00 ea. for The Films and Career of Audie Murphy (soft cover) and $30.00 ea. for Audie Murphy Now Showing (hard cover). Please add $3.00 per book shipping and handling. E-mail suegossett@worldnet.att.net; http://suegossett.home.att.net

To order copies without the author's autograph, mail to Empire Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 717, Madison, NC 27025-0717. Book prices are the same, but s/h is $2 per book, and NC residents must add 6.5% tax. Tel.: 336-427-5850; Fax: 336-427-7372. E-mail: movietv@vnet.net or consult the Empire Publishing web site at www.empirepublishinginc.com

These two books by a lifelong fan of this American hero are by the same author. Ill. Murphy, 33°, has also always fascinated me. Growing up dirt poor, he was the most decorated soldier in World War II, before he reached his 21st birthday! He had an integrity and sense of honor in his life which never left him, even in the wilds of darkest Hollywood, surely a place as fatal to integrity and honor as any battlefield. Ms. Gossett has done a fine job with both these books. If you want more biographical information on Audie Murphy, I'd suggest Films and Career, but both are excellent books to have in your library and both are fine tributes to this Mason who was a hero in every sense.

Manley F. Cobia, Jr., Journey into the Land of Trials: The Story of Davy Crockett's Expedition to the Alamo, Franklin, Tennessee: Hillsboro Press, 2003, hardbound, 274 pages, illustrations, ISBN 1-57736-268-3 $27.95 list price at your bookstore; available on the Internet.

Albert Pike, the Mason, often shared dinner with Davy Crockett, the Mason, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Pike liked the man, especially his straightforward manner, and Crockett seems to have liked Pike as well. Pike's photo appears in the book, along with a brief biographical sketch. Brother Crockett is a fascinating man, but the myth has largely overtaken him. In this book, by careful and meticulous research, the author peels away the myth and leaves us with the man, and the man is more than enough. This is the real story of the Alamo and the complex decisions and turns of fate which led to it. There is heroism aplenty here, and human frailty as well. I think you'll enjoy the real story of the "King of the Wild Frontier."

I noticed a fine book review by Bro. Wallace McLeod in the Royal Arch Mason (Spring 2003). Since it deals with another outstanding Brother and fits into the theme, "Masonic Heroes," of this issue of the Journal, it is reprinted here with permission. Thank you, Brother McLeod!

The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling by David Gilmour. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2002. Pp. xv, 351, 34 illustrations. List price $26.00 at your bookstore; available on the Internet.

We tend to think of Bro. Rudyard Kipling as somebody who spent most of his life in India, particularly if we have read a fair bit of his work. Actually he was born there (on December 30, 1865, in Bombay), but only spent his first five years and then from age 16 to 23 there. He did have an American connection that is not often mentioned. His wife, Caroline Balestier, came from Vermont, and after their marriage in 1892, the Kiplings spent several years living near Brattleboro, Vermont, where the house that Bro. Kipling built (known as Naulakha) is still something of a tourist attraction. Then Kipling returned to England, which was his headquarters for the rest of his life.

Now here we have a new biography, written by David Gilmour, a British historian who lives in Edinburgh. It concentrates on Kipling's acquaintance with political figures and his insights into political life. He lived in South Africa during the Boer War, and his son John was slain in the First World War; he was one of the active members of the Imperial War Graves Commission, formed in 1917 "to construct and maintain permanent resting places for...the valiant dead of the British Empire who fell in the Great War;" and after Hitler and Mussolini came to power, he foresaw the inevitability of the Second World War. He died on January 18, 1936.

This is a very readable book, full of insights. But there seem to be only three mentions of Freemasonry (on pages 17, 37, and 69), and it alludes to only two of his literary works as having a Masonic context: the story "The Man Who Would Be King" and the poem "The Mother-Lodge." Gilmour says in one of his footnotes (117), "Kipling was never a very active mason, either in India or later. But he appreciated Masonry for its sense of brotherhood and its egalitarian attitude to diverse faiths and classes."

At one level this is true. Kipling only seems to have held one office in a Masonic Lodge, that of Secretary of his Mother Lodge, Hope and Perseverance, No. 782, Lahore, Pakistan. But there are dozens of evocative allusions in his works; they are summarized for us in the definitive paper "Kipling and the Craft," which is published in Harry Carr's World of Freemasonry (London, 1983), pages 222-279. There we have (on pages 262-263) a plausible explanation for Kipling's apparent neglect of Masonry. "The constant interruptions in his career, his necessary mobility as a journalist, and his travels, his early marriage and his subsequent wanderings, all contributed towards his inability to make 'progress' in the Craft. Yet his zeal for Freemasonry was proclaimed in his writings time and time again."

In summary, Gilmour's book is very enjoyable and informative, with many fascinating photographs, but it doesn't have enough to say about Masonry.