Nope, fellow Book Club Sufferers, I have not forgotten.  We can all put the “Devil in the White City” debacle behind us and move on.  I am sure nobody will have trouble letting go.

The second book in the GAMBLE installment is (drumroll):

 

Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs

Publisher’s Weekly Synopsis:

This dense but highly informative volume narrates the long pretechnological history of the use of poisons and fire in warfare. Mayor, who has published in Military History Quarterly, begins with the first legend of poisoned arrows: Hercules and his quiver of missiles tipped with the hydra’s venom (probably snake venom). He and his wife also figure in an early use of an externally applied poison-the “poisoned” garments that killed them both with an inextinguishable flame may have been impregnated with saltpeter. Using their powers of observation and a sound if rule-of-thumb grasp of cause and effect, our not-so-primitive ancestors went on to set fires, throw fires and project fires (Greek fire reached its apex when flung from a ship-mounted flame thrower). They also put poison on arrowheads, in food and wine and in water supplies, tamed elephants to use as living tanks, bottled scorpions to throw over walls and knew about the problems of accidental casualties, enemy retaliation and lowering the ethical level of warfare. Mayor clearly describes how some of the poisons caused gruesome deaths, and Greek fire was essentially napalm. One antielephant weapon consisted of coating live pigs with pitch, setting them on fire and driving them at the elephants. The sheer mass of information will be daunting for the novice, particularly to one not familiar with classical mythology, but the book is otherwise absolutely absorbing, if macabre, and a formidable source on classical warfare, with bibliography, illustrations and annotations to serve further research.

 
What a very strange lot we all are.

In case you had not noticed, I published a page dedicated to the GAMBLE book club in my navigation column to the left.  I am slowly getting the Amazon links installed, and I will be publishing a brief one-line consensus on each book based on what seems to be the general opinion.  I will also list links to people’s reviews of each book, but only if you specifically send them to me.  Let me know, and I will add your name to a review list, and a link to your post.

Advance reviews of “Greek Fire…” are a bit more promising than “Devil…” turned out to be.  Looking forward to the reviews!