Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

Carl Sandburg wrote, in his preface to Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, "For thirty years and more I have planned to make a certain portrait of Abraham Lincoln. It would sketch the country lawyer and prairie politician who was intimate with the settlers of the Knox County neighborhood where I grew up as a boy, and where I heard the talk of men and women who had eaten with Lincoln, given him a bed overnight, heard his jokes and lingo, remembered his silences and his mobile face.

"The Mayor of Galesburg in 1858, Henry Sanderson, is the only individual of casual record who carried warm cistern water to a bathtub for Lincoln and saw Lincoln taking a bath. There in Galesburg Clark E. Carr, author of "The Illini," repeated Bill Green's remark about Lincoln, "He can make a cat laugh." And there Lincoln when bantered about his backwardness with women, answered, "A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me."

"The folk-lore Lincoln, the maker of stories, the stalking and elusive Lincoln is a challenge for any artist. He has enough outline and lights and shadows and changing tints to call out portraits of him in his Illinois backgrounds and settings -- even had he never been elected President.

"Perhaps poetry, art, human behavior in this country, which has need to build on its own traditions, would be served by a life of Lincoln stressing the fifty-two years previous to his Presidency. Such a book would imply that if he was what he was during those first fifty-two years of his life it was nearly inevitable that he would be what he proved to be in the last four."

So a challenge: Try it. If you think that a six-volume biography of Lincoln is too much, I understand (The first two volumes are "The Prairie Years," followed by four of "The War Years."). There are shortened versions available, a three-volume paperback set, or a one-volume abridged version. I read the three-volume set many years ago. And I wondered if I would ever try to read the entire six volumes. Well, I am. I got through The Prairie Years pretty easily. Volume 1 of The War Years took a bit longer (I kept getting interrupted.) And I have just started volume 2. I love that Sandburg grew up knowing people who knew Lincoln. And he was a great storyteller. That is what sets his Lincoln biography apart, for me, and why I intend to keep reading.

We See Everything by William Sutcliffe

The future sound of London is an air raid siren.
Lex lives on The Strip. No not the area of Las Vegas which according to everyone who goes there "has been ruined since the mob left".

The Strip is what's left of London after a series of brutal wars between the government and an organisation known as The Corps.

To the government, The Corps are terrorists, plain and simple. To those in The Corps, the government's 24-hour drone surveillance, lies and disorder has left them no choice but to fight back.

Lex's father is a member of The Corps, and therefore a target. Their family does their best to survive in an anxious, bombed-out reality

The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon

Subhi was born in an Australian detention centre and knows nothing but fences and guards and hunger.

 

A refugee, Subhi lives with his sister Queenie and their mother, who grows more and more despondent as the days go on.

Subhi finds refuge in his friend Eli, who runs a smuggling operation under the guards' noses. He also likes Harvey, the only guard, or "Jacket" as they are called, that treats the people in the detention centre anything close to human.

Subhi's only hope is that his father will someday return.
One night, his life changes when he's visited from someone on the other side of the fence. Her name is Jimmie and she asks Subhi to read her stories, stories that were written by her mother who has since passed away.

Jimmie's father works double shifts, her older brother Jonah is tasked with taking care of her but he's a teenager and isn't ready to be a parent.

The Bombs That Brought Us Together by Brian Conaghan

Current events made this book a more timely read for me and even though this novel doesn't delve deeply into the after effects of large scale weapons, there is still enough detail to enable the reader to empathize with the characters and understand the reasoning behind some of the decisions they make.

The overall theme of the book is one of despair, hopelessness and feeling powerless in the face of big government apparatus. The main character is a 14 year old called Charlie Law whose mom is sick and badly needs medicine. All goods are in short supply including medicine so after a chance encounter with a shadowy figure Charlie gains access to a never-ending supply of medicine, no questions asked. This seems fortuitous but perhaps this may not be the case.

 The restrictions are in place because Charlie lives in a place called Little Town which is under siege from nearby Old Country. The Old Country regime is harsh and soldiers from their country patrol the Little Town streets and sometimes harass Little Townites. In order to survive Charlie's parents has painstakingly taught him a series of rules that are essential for him to survive. His world is altered even further when one day he meets a fellow teen from Old Country whose family has had to flee their home. Will Charlie be able to get along with Pav?  Will his government be able to overthrow their oppressors?

Some read alikes to this work are The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne, The Old Country by Mordecai Gerstein and Eye of the Wolf by Daniel Pennac. Conflict in Conaghan's novels echoes many real life conflicts past and present and I can see this book being used in high school classrooms to broach many difficult subjects.

Rebels by Brian Wood

Let's talk about the American Revolution, shall we?

At some point in elementary school, every American learns all about Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre and the Minutemen and George Washington and Valley Forge and Betsy Ross (who did not exist) and Bunker Hill (which was really a battle fought on Breed's Hill) and the Crossing of the Potomac and, well, I could go on and on and on.

(If you are of a certain age you learned a lot of this by watching the movie Johnny Tremain which I think I saw a million times, or at least it felt like I did.)

Brian Wood wanted to explore the notion of just what being a patriot meant during the revolutionary war period. But he didn't want to go with the big names like Washington and Franklin, he wanted to know what it was for like the men and women on the ground. So, Wood created a limited comic book series which is now collected in a trade called Rebels, and it is incredible.

Seriously - best thing I've ever read on the American Revolution.

In the opening series Wood tells the story of "A Well-Regulated Militia" which focuses on the hard choices of one young farmer who starts out defending his New Hampshire home against the British and then joins the larger effort under Washington. Ethan Allen plays a big part here and the Green Mountain Boys (who you may not have learned about). The story is about how not obvious (or easy) it was for the men who chose to leave their homes. We always think of America as one nation — we might be regionally focused but we are one country. Back in the 1770s that was not the case at all so fighting for another colony was a very big deal. Wood brings that choice to life in the this series in a way that I have not seen elsewhere.

There are also stories about Native Americans and how their wars against each other found them fighting on the opposing sides of the French and British during the French & Indian War (the lead-up to the Revolution), there is a story about a fearless young radical in Boston, about a very unfortunate British soldier (conscripted, confused and stuck) and a very (really far too short) piece about a former slave who sides with the British against the Americans in exchange for freedom.

My favorite story though is the one that rips apart the Molly Pitcher myth: "Goodwife, Follower, Patriot, Republican". This story about a camp follower, who assists her husband and then, in the heat of battle, takes his place when he falls to keep the cannons firing, seems like a dramatization of the Molly Pitcher legend. But then it takes a dramatic turn when she pursues a pension years after the war. The way this woman — this hero of the revolution — is treated by a bunch of smug men is positively infuriating. It sheds significant light on the work women did in combat even before this nation was a nation however, and is a comic that everyone should read.

I love Rebels. This is exactly the kind of writing that we need more of to get people excited about learning American history. All of the art is outstanding: realistic, intense and often very poignant. Rebels shows what comics can do with a subject that seemed to be fresh out of new ideas. Thanks, Brian Wood—this book is outstanding.

The Raqqa Diaries: Escape From "Islamic State"

The news about Syria, especially since the US recently sent a bunch of bombs in its direction, can be overwhelming but it's important, really important and as Americans and humans and citizens of this world, we need to be doing what we can to educate ourselves on the Syrian Civil War. A good place to start, especially if you are intimidated by reading about foreign affairs, is The Raqqa Diaries: Escape From "Islamic State" by Samer. 

First - Samer is a pseudonym, to protect the author who was forced to leave his country after being targeted by the Islamic State (referred to in the book as "Daesh" - as it is known in much of the Middle East). He is 24 years old, a former college student and a member of the resistance who took to the streets against the authoritarian control of President Bashar al-Asaad and then also became targeted by Daesh after they took control of his city.

Framed as a series of diary entries and illustrated by Scott Coello, The Raqqa Diaries takes readers through the chaos of Samer's life as he reels from the heady days of demanding governmental reforms in the streets to the invasion by Daesh, air strikes by Russian jets and the subsequent involvement of multiple other groups in the war, all with agendas of their own.

Here's the first thing you learn while reading this book: Syria is complicated and anyone who suggests it isn't is a liar. In some ways, Samer's story is very straightforward. He writes about people being dragged away by al-Asaad and tortured, including his own father, for speaking about about government corruption. He writes about his friends who are targeted by Daesh for speaking out against their corruption and getting publicly murdered in executions that everyone is required to attend. He writes about getting arrested himself. He writes about getting tortured. He writes about his father being killed in an airstrike. He writes about longing for college and work and the girl he loved, who was forced to marry a Daesh fighter in order to save her own brother's life.

He writes, in just over 100 pages, about the end of his world. And then he writes about saying goodbye to his family and running for his life. The very least we can do is read his story. Really - the very very least we can do.

Here is Samer on the fight to get his father out of one of al-Asaad's prison before the war started:

No one should ever criticise a government official for stealing from his country, he said. After all, he continued, such a person might need to use public money to build a palace for himself to 'make the country look more civilised.' Or maybe he would go on to be really successful in business and become one of the country's top businessmen and wealth creators. And that was why officials should be allowed to do what they wanted.

Let's keep that in mind, shall we?

Later, he writes about the Hama massacre:

The Hama massacre of 1982 taught our people a valuable lesson. Under the command of the country's president, Hafez al-Assad [current president's father], the regime ended up killing more than 35,000 civilians in the heart of Syria, yet there were no repercussions. No journalists covered the atrocities, so people didn't know they had happened. 

We remember this. That's why we make sure that anything that happens in this war is documented and published outline through social media outlets.

Pay attention to Syria; people are literally risking their lives for our attention. And check out The Raqqa Diaries; it's a fast, compelling, unforgettable read and well worth your time.

Four-Four-Two by Dean Hughes

Yuki Nakahara is an American. He was born here and is a citizen. His parents on the other hand, were not. After Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which directed the removal of "enemy aliens" from coastal areas labeled war zones. Because of their Japanese ancestry, Yuki's father was sent to a prison for investigation while Yuki and the rest of his family were rounded up and sent to an internment camp in Utah. They were called traitors and cursed as "the enemy."
Yuki, and many of the other young Americans of Japanese Ancestry (AJA), want nothing more than to prove their patriotism by fighting for America, THEIR country.

This story is truly amazing. Reading about what these men endured, how they fought, where they fought, how they were used as assets in the European theater, and how they died was fascinating.

Yuki was fictionally deployed as part of the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team, a combat team that in real life was comprised of about 18,000 AJAs throughout the course of the war. They are still the most decorated unit in U.S. military history. Approximately 50% earned a Purple Heart and they suffered a staggering 314% casualty rate.

I highly recommend this book. It is an extremely timely story! So much of the political atmosphere right now regarding Muslims in America sounds so similar to the attitude and behavior of the U.S. government its citizens around the time of World War II.

Here are a couple of interesting links for more information about Japanese Americans in World War II.
Go For Broke National Education Center
The mission of this organization is "to educate and inspire character and equality through the virtue and valor of our World War II American veterans of Japanese ancestry."

Allegiance
George Takei of Star Trek fame, who was rounded up and relocated to an internment camp with his family, has created a Broadway musical based on a true story of another family.

Child Soldier: When boys and girls are used in war by Jessica Dee Humphreys and Michel Chikwanine

 First person narratives are very powerful and more so first person narratives of harrowing experiences. We know there are conflicts going on all over the world but most of them hardly make the news cycle here in the United States. This site tracks some of them.

Grunt by Mary Roach

In the yawning dog days of Summer, last chance for those still on vacation for some lazy summer reading, and a perfect time for last-minute escape to those who might already be back to the school year grind. When you don't have time or energy or the concentration for a novel, nonfiction makes for a good choice.

Mary Roach is the author of Stiff: The Curious Life of Cadavers, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and the book I want to talk about, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. If there was one word to describe Mary Roach's approach to her subjects I'm going guess... curious?

As you can surmise from the title Roach like to take her curious mind and delve into the more unusual scientific aspects of warfare and its side effects. Told with occasional humor but always tactfully factual, boys will no doubt go into the chapter on genital transplants with a smirk and come out sobered about exactly the sort of "collateral damage" you don't learn in a first-person shooter game. Along the way are chapters on testing shark repellent, how one learns to drive around and over bombs, and the medical benefits of maggots on wounds.

Not for everyone, but for that particular boy out there, this is a goldmine of great nonfiction.

THE ENEMY ABOVE: A NOVEL OF WORLD WAR II by Michael P. Spradlin

*Review copy courtesy of the author.
THE ENEMY ABOVE takes readers into WW II as the Nazis attempt to clear the Jews out of Ukraine. Their plan is to access the rich farm land in the area to use in supplying the German army.
Twelve year old Anton knows of the concentration camps and the mass execution of Jews, and he knows his father is off fighting with the Russians, but so far he and his grandmother and uncles have been safe. That is about to change.

Major Von Duesen is leading a group of gestapo soldiers through the area to capture and remove the remaining Jews. A vicious man, he is determined to make a name for himself by delivering all his prisoners to the General in hopes of earning a promotion.

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

I had no idea that this had happened. When people are asked to name massive ships sunk on the open sea, everyone knows about the Titanic and the Lusitania, but the Wilhelm Gustloff is not on anyone's radar. It really should be. The sheer loss of life from this single maritime disaster was and is astounding.
In this terrific piece of historical fiction, Sepety's masterfully weaves the stories of a ragtag group fleeing in front of the Soviet advance across former Prussian territory at the close of World War II, a young German naval recruit preparing the ship to sail, and a Prussian teen escaping his past. As the Soviets press the Nazis back, foreigners, the wounded, the sick, Jews and all others considered to be of lesser stock than themselves are all rounded up and either executed or shipped off to a gulag.

This truly is a wonderful and tragic story. Despite the fact that these characters were not real people, we get a real sense of what it must have been like to flee from the Soviet invasion from the East pressing toward the unknown of the German occupation farther West. Which empire is the lesser of the two evils?
I would highly recommend this to those that liked Code Name Verity or The Book Thief. 

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle is a captivating collection that will elicit a passionate response from young activists and historians. It is also a great recommendation for kids who don't like long stories, since the poems are very brief and are related by various narrators.

Cuba's three wars for independence raged on as Rosa la Bayamesa, a nurse, tended to the sick and the injured. Using medicine made from plants, she helped the fallen soldiers, the children, even those who fought for the other side. This verse novel is based on actual events and people, and it follows the main character's life from 1850 to 1899. Even when they were pursued by her enemies, Rosa and her husband Jose never stopped helping others. Jose and a few other supporting characters, such as a little girl named Silvia, step in from time to time to share a poem. Rosa is the driving force behind the story. We could all learn something from her selflessness and determination.

The Surrender Tree was named a 2009 Newbery Honor Book and a Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, is listed among the ALA Best Books for Young Adults, and also won the Pura Belpre Medal for Narrative and the Bank Street Claudia Lewis Award.

This book is available in multiple fashions - in English, in Spanish, and the audio book has multiple narrators, one for each of the main characters. Give it a read, give it a listen, recite it, share it!

THE DARK GAME: True Spy Stories by Paul B. Janeczko

Little-known fact: When I was a kid, I wanted to be a spy. I practiced by spying on my younger brother, naturally. It all seemed so cool and glamorous. When I got to college and heard from speaker G. Gordon Liddy about the Watergate break-in, I was glad I'd grown out of it.

Still, I like learning about actual spies, and have written a bunch of poems about some of the spies featured in THE DARK GAME: True Spy Stories by Paul B. Janeczko, who says in the introduction that he shares my childhood interest in spying. The book includes tales of revolutionary spies (the Culper spy ring and Benedict Arnold), the Civil War (including women and African Americans), both World Wars and the ensuing Cold War.

In addition to profiles of individual spies or groups, there is information about the technology used by spies. The book came out in 2010, and I've had a copy sitting here in my house since before then (an ARC picked up from the publisher at a conference). It was a finalist for a YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction in 2011. I'm only sorry I didn't read it much sooner. Now I'm off to locate a copy of Janeczko's earlier title, Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing (2004).

Illuminae: The Illuminae Files_01 by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Like many of you, I spent some time over the holidays in a galaxy far, far away, swept up in the story of an epic war between rebel forces and an evil empire, a story filled with interstellar strife and futuristic technologies. But I have yet to see the new Star Wars movie; instead, I read the pulsing Illuminae: The Illuminae Files_01 by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.

Five of my favorite books from 2015 (and six 2016 books I'm looking forward to)

It's that time of year for bloggers to make some lists. So, with the caveat that there are a lot of 2015 books that I haven't gotten to yet, like Thing Explainer, here are my five favorites from this year.

It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario
Lynsey Addario is now an acclaimed, award-winning photojournalist and combat photographer who has worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and Libya (where she and several colleagues were kidnapped). But though she began taking pictures as a teenager, she never considered photography as a career until after graduating from college. At first, photography was something she did to earn money to travel around the world. Then, as she increasingly ventured into dangerous regions despite the risks and the effects on her personal life, it became her job and her calling. It’s What I Do, featuring some of Addario’s photographs, is an eye-opening memoir exploring how she became a photographer and why she continues to venture around the world to document war and injustice.

Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson
Here in the U.S., when we think of 20th century Russia/Soviet Union, things like the fall of the Romanovs, communism, and the Cold War come to mind, not World War II. As M. T. Anderson demonstrates, in order to understand what happened during the war, we do need some understanding of the Romanovs, communism, and the Cold War, but it’s also worth noting what we’re ignoring by overlooking the Soviet role in World War II: it “eventually suffered 95 percent of the military casualties inflicted on the major Allied powers (the U.S., the U.K., and the USSR)—and 90 percent of Germans killed in combat died fighting them.” An estimated 27 million Soviets, both military and civilian, died during the war, over 15% of the USSR’s population. The city of Leningrad (formerly Petrograd, formerly and now once again St. Petersburg) suffered under a German siege lasting 900 days; a million people died, and a million others went to desperate lengths to survive the freezing cold and starvation. It is in this context—the instability of the last days of the Romanovs, the rise of the Communists, then the treacherous consolidation of power by Joseph Stalin, and the suffering of World War II—that the famous composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who was alternately honored and denounced by the authorities, wrote his Seventh Symphony during the siege of Leningrad in honor of his beloved birthplace. (See also Colleen's review from earlier this year.)

Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin

Back in the fall, The New York Times Magazine asked its readers whether they would go back in time and kill baby Hitler if such a possibility existed. And because we are heading into an election year in America, and because the twenty-four-hour news cycle must be constantly fed, and because the Internet and any mention of Hitler is a toxic combination, the question went viral.

Cat's Cradle

Veteran's Day in America is also Kurt Vonnegut's birthday, a dubious pairing if ever there was one for a writer who survived the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII and became vocally anti-war as a result. Year after year high school students are given gateway to Vonnegut through Slaughterhouse Five with the understanding that it is a great work of Literature, that it is often censored, and that it is a satirical anti-war book crucial to the Vietnam War protests. As with most required reading, students will rarely move beyond an author's so-called greatest work and never explore further.

But for me the ultimate Vonnegut book is Cat's Cradle, a satire of science, technology, religion, and the post-Sputnik Cold War era that is both more biting and funny than Slaughterhouse Five, and no less personal to Vonnegut.

Told in jabbing short chapters, the story is narrated by John (who calls himself Jonah) who is basically writing a memoir. It was originally supposed to be about what Americans were doing on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but as John follows the thread to Felix Hoenikker, a physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb, and his children, John/Jonah finds himself falling down a rabbit hole of connection that leads to the fictional island of San Lorenzo, modeled on Duvalier-era Haiti. In San Lorenzo John/Jonah finds himself and the Hoenikker kids in the company of the island's dictator "Papa" Monzano who is dying of cancer and is about to hand over the island to the Hoenikkers (who uncomfortable hand over the country to John/Jonah) before killing himself with a chard of ice-nine, a chemical created by the late Dr. Hoenikker that turns all water-based cells it comes into contact with into ice at room temperature.

Yeah, it's a convoluted plot, and that doesn't even cover the cult-like religion called Bokononism that brings about a mass suicide that nearly destroys the world. John/Jonah is more like his literary kin Ishmael who survives to tell us this tale.

As for the personal element, ice-nine does exist, it was co-created by Vonnegut's brother Bernard at the GE labs where Vonnegut was working in Public Relations at the time.  

The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume One by Daniel Kraus

Dearest Reader,

If you dare, join me in the tale of one Zebulon Finch.

Revel in the ribaldry as Finch leaves the cosseted nest and joins the nascent Black Hand gangsters in fin-de-siécle Chicago!

Wince in sympathy as a reanimated Finch endures indentured servitude in Dr. Whistler’s Pageant of Health and Gallery of Suffering!

Recoil in horror as Finch discovers the cadaverous truth behind Dr. Leather’s People Garden!

Armada by Ernest Cline

I rushed blindly into reading Armada with very high expectations. I loved Cline's first novel, Ready Player One and found myself recommending it to anyone who loved video games, D&D or sic-fi/fantasy in general. I have to be honest and say that Armada is no Ready Player One, not by a long shot. 

I'll start with the good, Armada definitely made me nostalgic for my youth - jamming quarters into Gauntlet & Double Dragon arcade cabinets, sitting for hours on my bed trying desperately to beat The Legend of Zelda on NES. Even the cover seems to glow with light from an arcade game. It's a novel that wants you to remember the golden age of video games, and that's kinda the problem.

Zack Lightman is a seventeen year old video game nerd with a tendency for physical violence. His father died in a mysterious factory explosion when Zack was one, leaving a boulder-sized chip on his shoulder. His mother, who Zack refers to as "hot" (huh?) can recite Battle Star Galactica and World of Warcraft references better than any Cheeto-crunching basement dweller in the state.

Zack finds solace in a video game called Armada, an online flight simulator he plays every night with his friends. Armada may be the reason Zack lost his girlfriend, but it's also the one thing that keeps him focused and connected to his deceased father, who was also a massive gaming nerd. 

After school, Zack spends his time working at Starbase Ace, a shabby video game store owned by Ray, a video game aficionado and Yoda to Zack's Luke. Zack seems happy to not have a plan in life, whittleing away the hours paying Armada and debating Star Trek vs. Star Wars with his friends.

Then, everything changes. Bored in class one day, Zack's gaze wanders to the window where he sees a flying saucer, and not just any flying saucer, the enemy ones from the game Armada. Convinced that he's hallucinating, Zack tries to shrug it off. 

The problem is, you can't shrug off an alien invasion. 

OMAHA BEACH on D-DAY

Perhaps you've seen Saving Private Ryan, the film by Steven Spielberg, which opens with what feels like very real footage of landing at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on June 6, 1944 - now known as D-Day. He has said publicly that without the photos of Robert Capa, he could not have made that movie. This book is the story of the man behind the only camera to actually reach the beach on D-Day, Robert Capa.

The book opens with a 55-page graphic novel retelling of Capa's career as a photojournalist written by Jean-David Morvan and illustrated by Séverine Tréfouël. It includes a four-page fold-out spread of what the invasion looked like from the shore. It's an engrossing, gritty telling of the first wave of the beach landing, as Capa chose to go ashore with Company E (sometimes called Easy Company), one of the first companies to put ashore, armed only with a camera. Capa's surviving D-Day shots follow the graphic novel, and are themselves followed by three separate essays: "The man who invented himself", a bio of Capa; "The eye of June 6, 1944", about Capa's life during D-Day; "In the viewfinder", about Capa as a photographer; and "A face (lost) in the waves", about the identity of the man in Capa's most iconic image from June 6th, 1944. All of the additional essays include additional Capa photographs, and were written by Bernard Lebrun. Translation into the English was done by Edward Gauvin.

The following spread is about the taking of the photo that became known as "The Face in the Surf":

And here's a link to that photo: The Face in the Surf, copyright Robert Capa, which is featured on the book cover (seen above).