Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
George Santayana 
-1905
This famous statement could be attributed to my guest, lawyer and author James D. Shipman in 2017.
Bitter Rain is the title of Jim’s fourth historical novel and the second in a row concerning the Second World War. As we learn in the interview the primary scene is not the relative comfort of the American home front as in It Is Well, set in Snohomish, Washington state. Instead his next work takes us to the eastern regions of what was then Germany from the beginning of the war all the way through the Russian conquest of his characters town.
In the interview we really get going on the state of things; how history seems to be repeating itself. We reflect a mutual concern about how ordinary Germans managed to allow the takeover of their country by the Nazi party, and how this kind of totalitarian advance is possible in any republic whether it is ancient Rome or our own. People who are too comfortable tend to let things go until it is too late.
We end with titles and authors that Jim, otherwise very 
well read himself, has digested and can recommend.
The interview is about an hour and 10 minutes.
