Editor’s Note: We are confronted with international developments that have the potential to burst into the use of nuclear weapons. Normally that is pretty big news. Splash rushed into the Bunk House yesterday, thinking the “chyron” high-light ribbon across the bottom of the screen on his phone meant NATO had imposed a “no-fly” zone over Ukraine. We assured him it wasn’t true, and the end of the world was no closer than usual. We got him to relax a bit with a shot of Belmont Farms White Lightning and a nice new book to read. Here is the advertising copy that came along with it, just in case you feel the need for distraction during these unsettled times. It is helpful to look back on how the previous generations got through it. Maybe we can, too.
– Vic
Hi, Gentle Readers!

Big News from the good folks at Politics and Prose! The Admiral Mac Showers project is now complete!

They said:

“We just received our copies of “Cocktails with the Admiral” this morning, so the book is now officially on sale! Here’s the online link where people can purchase the book: https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781624293955

This is a project that has run over the course of three decades, this year being the tenth anniversary of Mac’s passing, and the 80th anniversary of the epic naval battle off Midway Atoll on which he cut his analytic teeth.

One evening during our weekly chats at The Willow Restaurant and Bar we were talking about the creation of the secret plan to identify the Japanese target in their next move across the Pacific. Mac has told the story hundreds of times in his life. What I tried to do in our sessions was get the sense of what it was like to live in his times. I asked him where in the Dungeon the trick was plotted. He drew a diagram of the desk assignments in the code-breaker’s basement office and pointed to a spot at the corner of his desk. History was made: “There!”

Another time we talked about what the commute to Fort Meade was like before there was a Beltway, and the challenge that presented to one of his team who had to milk cows on his farm in Leesburg before heading to Arlington to meet his carpool buddies. On those sorts of anecdotes, the history that made our world was made as real and vital as day.

This is from the jacket of the book:

“Mac Showers lived the American Century with a front-row seat. An Iowa Depression-era kid, Mac’s desk in a Pearl Harbor basement enabled the Secrets to be used in victory at the greatest naval battle of modern times. It was hatched near his desk. He headed the Estimates Section on Admiral Nimitz’s forward headquarters, and briefed the breathtaking casualties involved in the coming invasion of the Home Islands. They were so horrific the decision was made to drop the atom bombs. He stayed in the Navy after the war, and entered the New One in style, dining with Marshall Tito, and helping to sweep up the wreckage in the Intelligence Community after Watergate. He became friends with a younger crowd at the bar across the street from his retirement community building, and listened to the follies of Washington from the people still doing it. He would laugh and tell us exactly why some of the strange things happened in DC, and how they came to be when he helped implement the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for the Director of Central Intelligence after a scandal we remember as “Watergate.” It was the scope of a life lived in full, and right in front of the electric panorama of the American Century. You will find some rage-age America in there, too!
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Mac saw all the episodes compiled in this book and approved them. I hope you have a chance to meet him through these vignettes of a life well lived in historic times. He was a great pal, and we laughed throughout the decade we spent together.
– Vic Socotra