HALO The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund

                  In “HALO The Fall of Reach" by Eric Nylund, although I didn't get that far into the book the main idea is clear. From the very beginning you can see that John a kid from Reach was born to be a strong leader. It all started when Dr. Catherine Halsey a U.N.S.C. scientist goes to secretly interview Candidate 117 (John) for her top secret experiment right before kidnapping him. From there John and a group of 70 other kids go through agonizing military training. Dr. Halsey then does her experiment to enhance the kid’s growth, reflexes, muscles, bone strength, and knowledge complicity. Dr. Halsey ends up making the perfect supper soldiers. That are tested and trained even more brutally in the next couple of weeks. At the end of all this john is made the commanding officer of the remaining 30 soldiers.

           To me John is the perfect leader; he cares and helps his team from the very beginning. In every training mission with teams John put his team before himself. For instance, when all 70 candidates were told to hike to a spot on a map to be picked up by a Pelican (plane). Commander Mendez told everyone that the last one to the Pelican would have to stay behind. John told his men that if anyone was getting left behind it was going to be him. This shows how John is a good leader because it shows how he puts his men before him. It also shows John is a good leader because he won’t leave one of his men behind. Finally, it shows that John is a good leader because he knows how to boost the morale of his men.

           Another example of how John is a good Commanding Officer is how he cares when he loses men. For instance when he lost about 40 out of 70 of his men due to affects of Dr. Halsey body inclement experiment. When his men died he felt as if he had lost a part of himself and when he doctors were moving the permanently crippled men he made sure they would still get a chance to serve their country in some way. As John said, "That's all we want, a chance to serve,"(Nylund 55). This proves John is a good Commanding Officer because he really cares about his men and what happens to them. John would probably rather die than loose men, which is what a good Commander would do for his men.

Non-Fiction Post

 Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson tells the story of how Lincoln was shot and killed. It also tells the story of what happened to John Wilkes Booth after he shot Lincoln. Booth shot and killed Lincoln because he was mad that the Confederacy had lost the war. As an actor, Booth knew the whole layout of the theater that Lincoln was going to attend a show in. Booth also knew the show well, and that made it easier to plan the murder. From the title it is clear that this book tells us a lot about the hunt for Booth and his associates.

This book was really suspenseful and keeps the reader on the edge of his seat. In the book, the first thing Swanson talks about is how Booth shot Lincoln. He starts out by telling the reader how Booth got to the theater and up the back way to Lincoln’s box. After that he explains how Booth snuck into the room and shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a small pistol. When he tried to get away he was tackled by Major Henry Rathbone who realized what Booth had done. Not thinking, Booth jumped out of the box onto the stage where he stood up and said “Sic simper tyrannis!” which is “the state motto of Virginia: ‘Thus always to tyrants’” (Swanson 43).  The details Swanson adds make the book exciting because you don’t know what is going to happen next. The descriptions make the reader wonder what it was like in the theater that night.

Swanson includes pictures that make the reader want to know more about the events that happen in this book. For example, Swanson includes pictures from news papers from back in 1865. One specific news paper is the National Police Gazette from April 22, 1865 which shows drawings of how Lincoln was shot and what people did after he was shot. It also shows drawings of the attempted assassination of Secretary of State William H. Seward in his bed (56). Seeing these images helps the reader get a better picture of what really happened and the surrounding time period. These images also give us an idea of the people and the time because of what they were wearing and where they were. It also show s how people back then would learn about what happened through drawings  since there were no TV’s.

This book makes me wonder what the time was like. Also after reading this book I want to see Lincoln, the movie. This book makes me think how terrible the assassination of the president was, especially since he freed the slaves