Memoirs Of Hadrian, Yourcenar - B

              Hadrian (76-138 A.D.) was emperor for 21 years, and is generally applauded for focusing on consolidating, not expanding, his domains. He promoted Athens as the cultural capital of Rome. This novel is an imagining of a letter to his successor, Marcus Aurelius. 

             After bemoaning the state of his health, he turned to his story and praised his education in Rome and Athens. His cousin Trajan placed him in the army on the Danube frontier, where he s enjoyed fighting for a man who was more soldier than emperor. He fought well and garnered the approval of the emperor, who married him to Sabina, his grand niece. While back on the northeast frontier, Hadrian began to develop a philosophy of government inconsistent with Trajan's and most Romans. He began to view endless war as a folly, one that drained resources and men, and began to believe a military focused exclusively on defense was optimal. While governor of Syria, Hadrian saw Trajan embark on an ambitious, but in Hadrian's mind, foolish advance east to fight the Parthians, conquer Arabia, and reach farther into Asia. Trajan's plans for conquest faltered, as did his health. He died far from Rome, and designated Hadrian his heir. 

              Hadrian immediately settled the war in the east, and returned to Rome.  He refused the honors and titles the Senate wished to bestow as he designed a less imperial household and continued to treat all with dignity. He was "thankful to the gods" that he had the  opportunity to reorganize the state, not have to save it from some crisis. He traveled the empire, building new cities and endeavoring to negotiate issues with foreign powers to avoid armed hostilities. He spent little time in Rome and preferred Athens. His efforts to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem faltered when a massive anti-Roman uprising by the Jews broke out. It was a four year battle in which the Jews crushed the occupiers before they themselves were put down in a massive loss of life, and the end of Jewish political independence. From there, he returned to Rome to prepare for the end. "Let us try if we can to enter unto death with open eyes." This book is less a telling of the history of his era and more a lengthy and interesting philosophical musing. 

The Things They Carried, O'Brien - B+

      "The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, cigarettes, salt tablets, Kool -Aid, lighter, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C Rations and two or three canteens of water." 

     They carried thousands of things into what "was not battle, it was just an endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost." No one in the author's platoon, the lieutenant who led them, or of his buddies, thought there was any reason for them to be there. The did not fight for a cause. They fought to survive.

       O'Brien was drafted in the summer of 1968 after graduating from college summa cum laude. He was so distraught that he drove north from St. Paul and spent six days on the Minnesota-Canada border just thinking about crossing. But he could not leave his hometown, his country, or his life. He concluded "he would kill or maybe die-because he was embarrassed not to." His depiction of being young, uninformed, and petrified while contemplating going to Canada is brilliant.

      As this is a novel with related short stories but no straight line narrative, it is difficult to write about. It is about many things, things that I, and most of us, have not experienced. He weaves tales of comradeship, fellowship, the brotherhood of those who have fought together. Death is pervasive, and the deaths of those left behind are ever present and in the front of the consciousness of the survivors. This is a haunting brilliant book. Thanks to my daughter Lauren for the recommendation.

The True Story Of The Christmas Truce, Richards - B

                     The war was expected to be over by Christmas. By the holiday, it was clear it would not be. Throughout Flanders, British and German soldiers engaged in a spontaneous truce. They fraternized in No Man's Land, swapped food and cigarettes, exchanged jokes and played football. In some sections, the ceasefire lasted a week.  This book tells the story.

                     By mid-October, the front had stabilized and the massive entrenchment had begun. A month later, the rains assured that the trenches became permanently flooded, and everyone was miserable. There was some fraternization throughout the fall by men sharing the same dismal world. As the holiday approached, civilians in both countries sent a significant number of packages. Every German front unit received a Christmas tree, which they decorated at the front while singing carols. On Christmas eve, men from both sides entered No Man's Land and began to exchange Christmas greetings. They serenaded each other with Christmas songs. "The peace that had begun would become even more pronounced on Christmas Day." Fully two-thirds of the British-German front did not fight on December 25th. The fraternization did include some football playing, but no real games. Soldiers from both sides wished they were home, and far away from war. "As the daylight slowly faded, both sides made their way back to their respective trenches." In many sectors, the peace continued on Boxing Day, but it turned into a ceasefire when it began to rain again and everyone had to work to maintain the trenches. As the war became more violent, there would not be a repetition of 1914. "Each nation's senior commanders ensured that there were unequivocal orders to avoid any rerun of the Christmas Truce."

              "The idea of open, friendly fraternization between enemies has remained in the minds of many as a uniquely First World War concept, forever linked to the Christmas Truce  of 1914.'

Dr. No, Fleming - B

         Bond is slowly recovering from injuries suffered during a recent assignment when M calls him in. M sends him off to Jamaica on a job that he believes will be a short vacay in the Caribbean. When two attempts are made on his life in the first twenty-four hours, Bond concludes that is not the case. His predecessor was likely killed by a gang under the thumb of Dr. Julius No, a recluse who owns and lives on a private island about twenty miles from Jamaica. Bond  heads there under cover of darkness. He runs into a beautiful girl of twenty, Honeychile Rider, who collects and sells rare seashells. When No's men seek them out, they head inland. They are captured and dine with Dr. No, who informs them that there is much going on at Crab Key, including interfering, with Moscow's assistance, with US missile launches. Both Bond and Honeychile are set up to die, when Bond endures torture, survives, kills No and some of his men. They escape back to Kingston and set the authorities onto Crab key. I do not think I've read a Bond book in over sixty years, and am totally shocked at how good it is. 

The Stars Turned Inside Out, Jacobs - B+

                  One morning at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research the home of the massive underground Large Hadron Collider, a scientist is found inside, irradiated, and dead. Dr. Howard Anderby had only worked there for a few months before his death. Inquiries by a former member of the Swiss police and now a private investigator, Sabine Leroux, yield  only that he recently spent a year in China working on their collider project. Also, Dr. Eve Marsh, who had fallen in love with Anderby, failed to disclose it. At Anderby's memorial service, all the scientists receive an app message with a live feed of a body floating in the LHC's xenon tank 1500 feet below ground. Niels Thorne was a scientist turned PR hack, who just about everyone at the LHC despised. However, Thorne left a video with one of the post-docs who brings it to Leroux. It clarifies that both deaths were murders, not accidents. It turns out a little bit of old fashioned espionage was in play.

                This is one heck of a novel, albeit one focused intently on physics. That said, I still haven't the slightest clue what a sub-atomic crash is or a Higgs boson for that matter.

i have no idea what a sub atomic crash is

The Devil Raises His Own, Phillips - B

              This novel is a sprawling, big story set in Hollywood in 1916-18. It is more or less about the beginnings of the movie business, and in particular, 'blue movies.' Everyone is hustling and trying to make a few bucks. The central character is an aged photographer who beds the middle aged women whose pictures he takes, and who shoots his granddaughter's fiance in the leg to stop him from joining the army. Other folks include two women who become fond of a lesbian lifestyle after satiating each other on film, a delusional drunk comedian, a claw hammer wielding escapee from prison, a crooked postal inspector, various drunks, floozies, con-men, and generally people of low character. The books setting forth the vast canvas of the city a long time ago has been broadly acclaimed.

The Hunter, French - B+

                    Cal Hooper, a former Chicago PD detective, has nicely settled into life in rural Ireland with a nearby lady friend, and a modest woodworking business with his apprentice, Trey Reddy.  Trey is the town's impoverished, wild, 15 year old teenage daughter who is growing up with help from Lena and Cal. Trey's con man of a dad makes a rare visit, and soon has roped a bunch of the farmers into a plan to swindle an Englishman he met in London. Cal believes there's more going on here than meets the eye, and Trey warily tries to sort out how to stop her dad from hurting her siblings and her mother. She learns that her dad and the Englishman are really in town to con the locals because her dad is seriously indebted to the Englishman. That requires her to weigh her desire to get back at the townspeople who killed her brother a few years ago against her disdain for her dad and his illegal plans. Cal sorts it out and tells Johnny Reddy to leave town. When Trey finds the Englishman dead one morning, both she and Cal are pretty tight lipped with the local detective, as is the entire town. Trey eventually blows her dad's cover and the locals convince him to leave town. Although the murderer is never uncovered, life returns to normal and everyone settles back into their way of life.

                    This is a truly excellent novel with moments of brilliance. The author excels at rural Irish dialogue and paints a picture of a small town's anxieties, and the communal groupthink that brings them all to a boilng point simultaneously. Really good.

                

Babylon Berlin, Kutscher - B+

           Newly arrived in 1929 from Koln, Inspector Gereon Rath is assigned to the Vice Squad. The capital is a city of decadence and violence, as the communists battle various right wing groups. As he was previously in Homicide and has little interst in porn raids, he decides to check out a murder in his free time. And he can't quite get his mind off the cute brunette stenographer in Homicide, Charlotte Ritter. While looking into the death of a Russian, he learns that there is allegedly a trove of Tsarist gold in the city. Rath makes enough of an impression in Vice that he is assigned to the short-handed Homicide division. Homicide is busy, hounded daily by the press, and a web of intrigue and internicene politics, all compounded by the murder of a young detective who likely was murdered by a colleague who is attempting to frame Gereon. Rath methodically works his way through clues and lies to confront and bring to justice those behind the murder of the Russian and his young colleague. Along the way though, all of the feuding at work appears to cost him a woman the he has fallen head over heels for, Charlotte Ritter. This is an excellent crime thriller, but an extraordinary historical novel. It brings to life the maddening complexities of Weimar Berlin.

Augustus, Williams - B+

           This National Book Award winner is half-a-century old, and is considered one of the greatest historical novels ever written. It tells the story of Gaius Octavius Thurinas, later Gaius Caesar Octavius and ultimately, Augustus. It consists of letters and notations of his contemporaries, and finishes with a composition by Augustus. 

          He was born in 63 BC and adopted by his great uncle, Julius Caesar. When he learned of Caesar's assassination, he told his three comrades: "I swear to you all now, and to the gods, that if it is my destiny to live, I shall have vengeance upon the murderers of my uncle, whoever they may be." Caesar named him his son and heir, and Caesar's enemies dismissed him as a mere boy. Marc Antony told him to leave Rome for the safety of the countryside, while Cicero denigrated him as an inconsequential youth. Octavius soon challenged Antonius for primacy in Rome, and the Senate supported him. He defeated Antonius and was made Consul. Octavius then pivoted, came to terms with Antonius and they allied against Brutus, Cassius and Pompey. In a battle at Phillipi in Greece, both Brutus and Cassius lost their lives. Pompey died soon thereafter. Octavius and Marc Antony settled into an uneasy peace.  By 37 BC, they were at loggerheads, and a year later, Antonius married Cleopatra after divorcing Octavius' sister. The substantial forces of the two men clashed at Actium, a naval battle off the Grecian coast, in 31 BC. Octavius' forces prevailed and Marc Antony and Cleopatra fled to Alexandria and committed suicide. A decade and a half of civil war was over. Octavius was now Caesar Augustus, first Emperor of Rome.

       Augustus was married to Scribonia whom he divorced the day she gave birth to his only child, Julia. He immediately married Livia, pregnant with her second child by Claudius Nero.  Marriage in his court was purely a political matter. Fearing for his health, he married Julia off when she was fourteen to her cousin Marcellus who died a few years later. He then married her to his friend and colleague, Marcus Agrippa, thus distressing Livia who had hoped Julia would marry one of her sons.  Julia gave Agrippa sons who Augustus immediately adopted. When Agrippa died, Augustus arranged for Livia's son, Tiberius, to divorce and marry Julia. Tiberius left after a year as both parties to the marriage despised each other. Eventually, Augustus banished Julia from Rome for her many lovers and her proximity to a treasonous group. Augustus was alone, separated from his wife, his only child exiled, and all of his friends dead.

       In his 76th year, he composed a long letter the week before he died to an old friend reminiscing about the previous six decades. He foreswore friendship and true love in order to seek his destiny as Rome's ruler, and to commit himself to the country. Those efforts led to 40 years of peace during which no Roman fought another and no barbarians entered Italy. Prosperity and justice has been a gift to all the peoples of the empire. "Throughout this world the Roman order endures. Te world looks in awe upon the Rome I found built of crumbling clay and that is now built of marble." He died on 19 August 14 AD.

         

For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond, Macintyre - B-

        "It is the character of Bond - established in the first novel and hardly altered thereafter - that explains the enduring appeal of the world Fleming forged: tough, resourceful, quintessentially British." He wrote 14 books in adozen years, and sold 40 million copies during his life. 

         Ian was the second of four sons born in 1902 to a wealthy Edwardian family, whose patriarch died in the trenches in 1917. He was not much of a student, loved sports and the ladies, was an excellent skier and spoke German fluently. He landed a position with Reuters and learned to write, but didn't stick with it. His most notable activity before the outbreak of WWII was the pursuit of women. "From 1939 on, he was a man with a mission: specifically, naval intelligence and espionage." He went to work for the Director of Naval Intelligence. He traveled the world and was involved in every action of espionage and counter-espionage undertaken by the Royal Navy. 

        After the war, he went to work for the Sunday Times. He wrote his first Bond book in 1952. There are theories about the derivation of the name James Bond, but no conclusive answer. The same is true of who the spy was modeled on.  M, on the other hand, was likely based on Fleming's boss during the war, Admiral John Godfrery.  The plots were driven by the war and the Cold War, as Fleming constantly has Bond looking back to WWII experiences as he battles the Soviet's SMERSH. Bond's luxurious lifestyle appealed to a nation that was, until the mid-fifties, rationing food and beginning to dismantle its empire.

      Fleming had never had robust health and never took care of himself. He had high blood pressure and suffered a heart attack in 1961. The following year, the film 'Dr. No' changed everything as "the first installment of what would become the most valuable cinematic franchise in history." His deal with Broccoli and Saltzman paid him $100,000 per movie and 5% of the producer's profit. The films propelled book sales, and in the last full year of his life, 1963, Fleming's income increased tenfold. He died in 1964 at the age of 56 of a massive heart attack. 

     Interestingly, a Wall Street Journal article last week discussed the standoff between Cubby Broccoli's daughter and Amazon, the  studio holding rights to the franchise. Amazon cannot produce without a script and a star from Barbara Broccoli, and she and the algorithm driven studio cannot find common ground. I believe we all should root for Cubby's daughter so that we can relish Bond, James Bond.

The Vietnam War: A Military History, Wawro - A*

             "What motivated the United States to go to war and stay there was a fear of appearing weak." Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon did not want to lose a war, or be castigated as Truman was for losing China.

              Both Eisenhower and Kennedy provided South Vietnam with a minimal amount of support. LBJ inherited Kennedy's hawkish advisors, and declared he wouldn't lose Vietnam. "The State Department report of February 1964 spelled out the reality that would dog the war effort in Vietnam: it was unwinnable under all conceivable scenarios." Lyndon Johnson wanted to focus on domestic issues, and had no desire to expand the war.  He felt he could not invade North Vietnam without drawing in China and the USSR. So, variations of a limited war were the only options on the table. The reserves would not be called up, taxes would not be raised, and costs would be contained. There was no plan to win, just the hope to bring Hanoi to the negotiating table. Less than a year after his election as the peace candidate, LBJ had committed almost 200,000 men to Vietnam. The US built a hundred airbases, a dozen ports, and enough infrastructure to support a million man army.  The approach was  'search and destroy,' and to travel by airmobile helicopters. The more effort and men the US put into Vietnam, the greater the number the north sent south. In 1965 alone, the north quadrupled their men in the south. The US escalated and had almost 500,000 men there in late 1966. The year 1967 saw costs rise to $22B and 300,000 men drafted. Westmoreland requested an increase to 700,000 men so he could invade N. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and told Washington he couldn't win the war until 1972. After a year or so of accomplishing virtually nothing in the Central Highlands, Westmoreland moved the war south to the Mekong Delta, a swampy, wet agricultural region where American "mobility and firepower" would never be the game changers MACV hoped for.  Nonetheless, the Politburo in the north began to worry about America's perseverance, wealth and obstinacy and concluded a dramatic move was necessary. They decided on an all or nothing/go for broke effort in Vietnam's major population centers. In late 1967, they lured American forces away from the cities into sparsely populated areas. The NY Times surmised the war might be a stalemate, and Life magazine declared it "no longer worth winning." The goal of the Tet Offensive was not to beat the Americans, but to break the spirit of the American public. The first attacks were at Pleiku in the Central Highlands, and the US effectively and immediately countered afflicting a high volume of casualties on the enemy. In DaNang and in the Mekong, where there were fewer Americans, the ARVN refused to fight and ran from the NVA and VC. In the area around Saigon, the VC breached the wall at the US Embassy and almost overran MACV headquarters, sending Westmoreland into a bunker for a possible last stand. The US counterattacks in the Saigon area killed 8,500 attackers, thwarting the communist hope for a spontaneous uprising. To the north, the battle in Hue went on for three weeks when 6,000 NVA regulars overran the city. They killed thousands of local civilian supporters of  Saigon.  The Marines and ARVN, who fought well in Hue, eventually recovered the city. The north had suffered serious losses and Westmoreland wanted more men to expand the war. However, the sight of the Embassy in Saigon being breached convinced Americans that the North had prevailed in Tet. The physical and psychological devastation in the south shook the regime.  On February 27th, Walter Cronkite said there was no reason "to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds." He concluded that the best we could hope for was stalemate, and LBJ said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the  country." He was correct. The year 1968 saw the nation conclude the war was a mistake. One of the Wise Men, Dean Acheson who LBJ occasionally gathered for advice, told him: "We can no longer accomplish what we set out to do in the time we have left and the time has come to disengage." In March, LBJ sacked Westmoreland and announced he would not run for re-election. May saw the north initiate a mini-Tet that rocked Saigon, and killed more Americans than any other month of the war. The American aerial response left another 155,000 homeless in the capital. Johnson's attention turned to negotiations and by the fall, the US and North Vietnam were close to a deal. However, a backdoor approach to the south by Nixon and Kissinger scuttled the opportunity to end the war in 1968. Twenty-eight thousand more Americans would die before 1973.

             The man who ran on his secret plan to end the war acceded to the presidency on Jan. 20, 1969. There was no plan. Nixon and Kissinger decided to hit the north harder, turn the tide and end America's discontent with failure. He began the bombing of Cambodia, increased the use of napalm in South Vietnam, and resumed B-52 raids. He also began to withdraw American forces, and replaced them with Vietnamese. The negotiations in Paris were going nowhere, escalation had no impact on the north's determination to pursue independence, protests in America were erupting, and in late 1969, the cover up of My Lai was exposed. Chinese and Soviet support now assured that the communists were well supplied with modern weapons. At year's end, the troops met Bob Hope's Christmas show with Black power salutes, middle fingers, and a cascade of boos. MP's had to hustle Hope away. In the new year 1970, the administration set its sights on Cambodia the source of supplies for the southern half of South Vietnam's communist troops. Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia a week after reporting the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 men. The announcement led to widespread and virulent opposition at home all for an event that Nixon was advised would fail. It did. It led to the failure of the Cambodian government. Congress withdrew the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and attempted to suspend funding. By the end of 1970, the combat readiness and morale of the grunts was "rotting" away as drugs, alcohol, and a complete disregard for their being in country mounted. At home, the Calley trial was the only consequence of an investigation that found that dozens of officers, including West Point graduates, had either participated in atrocities or covered them up.  Before the Senate, Lt. John Kerry stated: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam...To die for a mistake." The last major effort in the war was that spring and was an ARVN attack into Laos intended to halt incursions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It failed because of the inability of the southerners to fight, and led to 2,000 American deaths as 726 of the 750 helicopters used were either shot down or shot up. Nixon announced that "Vietnamization was a success." Seventy percent of Americans believed he was lying. Over the winter of 1971-72, the North sent thousands more men south and even moved MIG airbases close to the DMZ in the hope of taking Saigon by May 19, Ho's birthday. The NVA launched its spring offensive in March. Once again, the ARVN were humiliated. Nixon retaliated by bombing the north for the first time in four years. American airpower ended the spring offensive. Under pressure from the Chinese and the Soviets, the North indicated a willingness to come to terms in Paris with Nixon. The agreement was signed in January, 1973, allowing the remaining 25,000 Americans and the 591 POW's to leave. It was essentially the same deal Nixon had undercut four years earlier. The North was resupplied and slowly recovered from the heavy bombing of 1972. The end for the South came when Saigon fell in April, 1975. 

              The war "was a luxury that only a phenomenally rich great power like the United States could afford." Three presidents escalated because they could and they did not want to appear soft. Jack Kennedy had toured Indochina as a senator and said that no war could be won against an enemy that "was nowhere and everywhere." War games early in the Johnson administration indicated a chance of victory if we bombed the ports and cities of the north and caused a vast amount of casualties. LBJ opted instead to slowly escalate in the hope the north would negotiate. Militarily, the US was unprepared and incapable of taking on the pure guerrilla war tactics of the VC, and the quasi-guerilla war tactics of the NVA. There were no set piece conflicts where we could prevail.  The ethos of why we fought continued even afterwards. When Saigon fell, Ronald Reagan compared Nixon, Kissinger, and Ford to Neville Chamberlain.

              This book is extraordinary because it does not focus on what every book I have read focused on, the politics and the lies. Just about everything in the last half a century emphasized the deceits about the domino theory, the deception about Tonkin, the delusional light at the end of the tunnel speeches, and the unknown and illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia that came cascading into full view with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. This story is about the endless deceptions bordering on, if not actually treason by Westmoreland throughout his tour at MACV. He and his staff constantly manipulated the numbers and lied about their meaning. Search and destroy never really succeeded, so they made up the numbers. They covered up My Lai and reveled in bombing campaigns that ended in innumerable homeless refugees. The ARVN could do nothing right, but they were a 'success.' It was a decade of deceit, delusion and contempt for the truth, the South Vietnamese, and our young men. The author highlights over and over again Nixon's actually treasonous interference in 1968.  Often mentioned here was LBJ's fear of Chinese intervention. As all of the participants lived through the Chinese crossing the Yalu River in Korea, that is somewhat understandable. I wish the author had addressed whether this was a real threat. After all, China was going through famine and the Cultural Revolution, and was almost 500 miles from the DMZ. Critics have suggested that this will be 'the' book on this war.

            

              

Postscript: I've included the three most iconic photographs that appeared in color in US magazines during the war because the author emphasizes the import of the middle one in swaying American opinion during Tet.

                               

                                                     

The Seventh Floor, McCloskey - B+

                 After losing her friend and colleague, Sam, on a busted op in Singapore, Artemis Proctor is unceremoniously ushered out the door at the Agency. A few months later, after languishing in a Moscow jail, Sam shows up at her door. He tells her something he did not tell his captors or his debriefers - there is a high level mole at Langley. He and Artemis begin to plan an op to find out who it is. Their search comes to the attention of the mole, who in turn asks Moscow for help. Moscow assigns two relatively inexperienced sleeper agents to dispose of Artemis and Sam. After a miss at Artemis, Deb Sweet, number 2 in the CIA, shows up looking for answers and hustles Artemis to the Farm. Since Artemis considers her one of the possible moles, she takes flight and heads back to DC. She and Sam fly to France, run a surveillance of a safe house, and conclude that a very high up former friend and lover of Artemis', Mac mason, is the mole. They present their information to the 7th Floor. Soon, Mac retires, as does his Russian handler. After the Russian sleeper agent kills Sam, Artemis heads to Paris. She confronts Mac, obtains his confession and the location of his loot, and sends him into the next world. Six months later after a meeting with Deb Sweet, Artemis is back on the payroll. This is the third book by a former CIA agent who tells great stories.

Black Wolf, Gomez-Jurardo - B+

             Antonia Scott, a brilliant Madrid based criminologist, is called to the north of the country.  A Russian mafia financier is brutally murdered, and his wife, Lola,  is on the run. As it turns out, he was informing because the police were ready to put him in jail. Both the Russians and the police want Lola, but Antonia's boss, who is in charge of the Europe wide Red Queen project, won't divulge why. The Russians want her so badly that they send the Black Wolf for her. The Wolf is a woman dressed all in black, , and a killing machine on a motorcycle The tension mounts and ends with a shoot out at a property deep in the woods. This is the second in a very good trilogy.

Worst Case, Newman - B

              An airline pilot has a coronary while the 2nd officer is out of the cockpit. The plane crashes about 30 miles from Minneapolis,  hits a nuclear facility, and sets in train a sequence of catastrophic events. The only question is how bad it will be. It appears to be a level 7 event, on par with Fukushima and Chernobyl. The risk is that  the entire Mississippi River basin will be poisoned for a thousand years. People around the country panic trying to escape, markets crash and the whole world watches. Two people, the local fire chief and a woman who works for the US government, make the ultimate sacrifice and save the day. The author is a master at page turners and this one surely qualifies. 

The Wrong Stuff: How The Soviet Space Program Crashed And Burned, Strausbaugh - B+

           "The race for space between the US and the USSR was a severely uneven match." The US had the best of the German rocket engineers, and all of their plans. Add in the US's industrial might with the destruction in the Soviet Union, and the US had a substantial lead. Nonetheless, the Soviets achieved the first satellite, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first spacewalk, and the first object on the moon. The Soviet program was run by Sergei Korolev, the Chief Designer. They built their space city at Baikonur in Kazakhstan. "Between the loneliness, the hideous conditions, and the pressure to get the Cosmodrome built fast, mental and physical breakdowns were regular occurrences." From this hellhole that everyone who ever worked there despised, the Soviets launched Sputnik on October. 4, 1957. Although it was a pivotal moment of the Cold War, Sputnik was the size of a beachball and carryied a short wave radio. The American press coined the phrase "space race." In September 1959, a Soviet probe crashed on the moon, and Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in April, 1961. Gagarin was an international hero, the "space Elvis," everywhere but in the US.

         By the mid-sixties, the Soviets were in trouble. They did not have the wherewithal to build larger rockets and bigger capsules to take the next step and lift man beyond the earth. The military was clamoring for more missiles, and Brezhnev was more inclined to focus on national defense. In the two years the US flew ten Gemini missions, the Soviets did not fly once, and Korolev died. In early 1967, Soyuz I burned up on reentry killing its cosmonaut. Gagarin died in a plane crash. They were able to send capsules to the moon, but not control their return. It was all over in July, 1969. This book is an eye opening delight. I never knew how slapdash and dangerous the Soviet program was. Thanks to Dave Gutowski for the recommendation.

The Last True Templar, Morrisson & Morrisson - B

            Willa and Sir Gerard Fox are in 14th century northern Italy planning on a pilgrimage. By happenstance, they rescue Lady Luciana Corosi from a band of robbers. Luciana is the spouse of a corrupt and lying banker, but more importantly, the only child of the last Templar. Luciana has half of her father's letter explaining where the Templar treasures are hidden. Her husband is attempting to kill her to obtain the information for himself. With Willa and Fox's help, Luciana  obtains the second letter and begins the quest to understand the riddles, find the valuables, and beat her husband to the prize. They travel from Siena to Florence to Venice to Rhodes. In a fight with Corosi, Fox and Luciana's allies prevail, but lose most of the treasure when two ships sink off the coast of Rhodes. However, the two chests of gold are recovered. In a fitting finale, Fox and Willa finally marry.  We will see them again in the third installment next year.

Karla's Choice, Harkaway - B+

              The subtitle of this novel is 'A John LeCarre Novel,' and it is written by the late author's son. It picks up George Smiley in early 1963 just after his agent, Alex Leamas, was shot while escaping East Berlin. George's remorse leads to his retirement, but Control soon asks him to return. The Circus ascertains that a long term Hungarian sleeper agent of the KGB has done a runner and left London in a hurry. It turns out that Moscow Centre sent an assassin to kill him, and now both The Soviets and the British want to get hold of Ferencz Roka. The chase leads to Berlin,  Vienna, Budapest, and Lisbon and includes some of the old hands we know: Toby Esterhase, Bill Hayden, Jim Prideux, and Peter Guillam. It's a blast to get back to the good old days of scalp hunter, lamplighters and the Cold War.

The President's Lawyer, Robbins - C

              A few months after he's voted out of office, Jack Cutler is accused of murdering a young woman from the White House Counsel's Office. She was pregnant with his child, his DNA is everywhere, but there is only circumstantial evidence. Jack calls on his best friend from their days growing up in Brooklyn. Robbie Jacobsen is somewhat compromised by the fact he had an affair with the decedent before the president did, and the president's wife was Robbie's high school girlfriend. Nonetheless, they face the trial together. Rob puts Jack on the stand. He does well and the end result is a hung jury. The rabbit the author pulls out of his hat to have a peripheral character as the guilty party is complete nonsense.

The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis And The Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked The World, Macintyre - A*

             "The underlying forces that produced the crisis in London more than forty years ago still agonize and destabilize our world. Britain had never before faced an international hostage-taking incident on this scale, and the siege changed forever the way terrorism was perceived, and dealt with."

              At a little after 11 in the morning on April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen entered the Iranian Embassy in Kensington, and quickly gathered up the twenty six people in the building. The police were there in minutes and the gunmen handed them a statement. They were Iranian Arab opponents of the new theocracy, who had been helped, financed and trained by Iraq, and demanded the release of 91 prisoners held by the secret police in Iran. Police, paramilitaries, firemen, medical professionals and special forces, all from different security entities, soon surrounded the building. There was limited contact between Salim, the nom de guerre of the leader, Ibrahim Towfiq, and the police hostage negotiators over the course of the day before the embassy settled in for the night. On the second day, anxieties rose as the deadline of noon for Iran to release the prisoners approached. Salim kept extending the deadline while changing his demands, and eventually asked for twenty five hamburgers and released two hostages. At day's end, little had changed and the SAS was deployed for immediate action if necessary. The third day saw the hostages and the gunmen becoming more friendly and beginning to care for each other's well-being. As the days wore on, Salim was exhausted and frustrated by the British media's failure to publish his demands and political statements. Late on the fourth day, the authorities allowed the BBC to release Salim's demands leading to a joyous celebration among the hostages and the gunmen. The release of two more hostages led to the delivery of a celebratory meal. The fifth day saw no movement or change and the authorities decided that they would enter the embassy on the sixth day.

            At 12:55 pm on May 5th, the gunmen killed an Iranian hostage who was a member of the Revolutionary Guards. Six hours later, the SAS was ordered to take the embassy. At 7:23, with the tv cameras rolling, explosives blew the skylight on the roof and the commandos entered the building. Tear gas grenades smashed through the windows and the gunmen began shooting at the hostages. Salim was the first killed when he pointed a submachine gun at the commandos. Four more terrorists fell in the melee. The youngest hostage taker was the only one captured alive. Only one hostage died. It was over in eleven minutes. 

           The British people were terribly proud and patriotic and the new PM, Margaret Thatcher, was ascendant. John Le Carre proclaimed it a triumph. The SAS was praised around the world, and was used extensively two years later in the Falklands. Saddam Hussein continued his war against Iran in an eight year grind that killed a million men. The young Fowzi Nejad was tried and sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 2008. This is a truly superb book by an excellent writer, and has been totally fascinating - because I had no idea this had happened.

A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention Into The Russian Civil War, Reid - B+

            "The operation was substantial. Some 180,000 Allied  troops from sixteen countries took part, in half a dozen theatres ranging from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic, and from Poland to the Pacific. It ended two years later with fewer than two thousand Allied lives lost and one not insignificant gain - independence for the Latvians and Estonians. But as to overthrowing the Bolsheviks, it completely failed." The war was not very bloody as battles were few and far between, but the violence perpetrated against civilians, particularly Jews, was extensive.

           Almost immediately upon assuming power, Lenin asked Germany for an armistice, and signed the Best-Litovsk Treaty in March, 1918. The Allies considered the treaty a "heinous betrayal and the Bolsheviks traitors in German pay." That summer, Wilson  agreed to Britain's and France's request to intervene in Russia. When the British landed in Baku and Archangel and the US and Japanese  in Vladivostok, the Bolsheviks realized the counter-revolution was at hand. Thousands of counter-revolutionaries were executed, and British and French diplomats were expelled. In the closing months of 1917, British and American forces moved south from Archangel and engaged the Russians in light skirmishing before winter set in. The British occupied Baku for six weeks before the Bolsheviks repulsed them. In Vladivostok, the Americans sat tight with no orders from home, the Japanese occupied Manchuria, and the White Russians formed a government under Adm. Kolchak. At war's end, the Royal Navy sailed through the Dardanelles to the Crimea bringing men, supplies and money for the Whites.

         "The 1919 campaigning season was when the Civil War reached its climax." Kolchak was the first to move, with 130,000 men, into western Siberia. He was spectacularly successful and by April was near theVolga. Just to his north in Perm, the Reds pushed back a British-Russian Brigade that retreated north on the Kama River. Both the US and UK concluded that there was no real strategic objective in the Arctic north and began withdrawing their troops from Murmansk and Archangel. General Denikin led the White forces in the south north to Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad, Volgograd), and to Kiev. As the Whites advanced, they sanctioned and participated in a vast number of pogroms labelling the Jews as Bolsheviks. "For the British government, Denikin's massacres and mass rapes were a side issue, only of serious concern in so far as they caused political embarrassment." 

           In the Baltics, the British asked the occupying Germans to stay on after the Armistice. Intervention came in the spring of 1919 as French, English, and Baltic Germans came together to fight the Reds.  They marched on Petrograd and reached to within twelve miles of the former capital. They were pushed back and fled south. Soon, Estonia and Latvia reached accords with the Bolsheviks and achieved their independence.

         At this point in 1919, the Whites still held all of Siberia and much of what had been the Russian Empire in the south. In September, Denikin began his bid for Moscow. His forces quickly ran out out of supplies, and began to fall back. Trotsky now had Kolchak retreating to the east and Denikin to the south. "The Whites were failing, the British could not support them forever." Kolchak's flight to Vladivostok ended in Irkutsk when the Reds captured and executed him. In the Russian heartland, the Whites and the remaining Allied troops fled to the Black Sea ports hoping for British evacuation. By March 1920, the Crimea was in Red hands. 

        The intervention was a colossal failure causing Churchill to lose his seat in Parliament in 1922, and was conceded by many to have contributed to the instability in Germany and Czechoslovakia. For the US, it is believed to have fed the appetite for isolationism and cemented the USSR in its anti-western beliefs.  It appears to me that it was a knee jerk reaction to communism, and that the US had no real sense of why it intervened and no strategy at all. At least we had the sense to not get as deeply committed as Britain. This author lambastes Churchill as borderline delusional in his enthusiasm. Interestingly, decades ago, George F. Kennan took Wilson to task.

      

Our Nazi: An American Suburb's Encounter With Evil, Soffer- B+

         In December 1982, Dr. Jack Swanson, the principal of Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF), read in the Chicago Sun-Times that the US was seeking to deport Reinhold Kulle, his chief custodian, for his membership in the SS and his role in a Silesian slave labor camp.

         A teenager and member of the Hitler Youth, Kulle joined the Death Head's Division in 1940. He was seriously wounded in Russia in early 1942. Unfit for combat duty, he was assigned to Gross-Rosen. He served there for two-and-a-half years. During his time there, he met and married Gertrude, who gave birth to a daughter, Ulricke. They escaped to the American sector at war's end, their son Rainer was born in 1949, and they received a visa for the US in 1957. Thousands of former Nazis made it to America, and Chicago was a favored destination. In 1959, Kulle obtained employment at OPRF even though his marriage certificate referred to his SS rank. A hard worker with many skills, Kulle was promoted as he and his family enjoyed life in suburban America in the 1960's. He became the "staff and faculty members go to," and was known throughout the community as someone who always performed his job well and helped others. His supervision and management of the department,  as well as his work ethic, led to the school being considered one of the best maintained in the area.

         In the 1970's, the US increased its efforts to find and deport former Nazi's and their collaborators. The Supreme Court ruled that the deception in the obtainment of a visa was enough to deport someone, it was not necessary to prove specific wrongdoing. In 1981, a cross-referencing evaluation of German documents and US visa records surfaced Kulle's name. When questioned, he acknowledged lying on his visa application. As his deportation hearing took place in a federal court, it garnered little attention in Oak Park, where the school board decided to say and do nothing until the court ruled. Nonetheless, the issue was beginning to cause a crack in the community's proud belief in its diverse and welcoming philosophy as the supporters of the widely admired custodian lined up against the much smaller Jewish community. The school's faculty weighed in requesting Kulle's dismissal. After colleagues, his Jewish daughter in law, and Hispanic grandson testified about his character, Kulle took the stand. The essence of his defense was that he was a combat soldier who marched on guard duty, did not persecute the prisoners and indeed, didn't even see them from where he was stationed. And there was no question on his visa application asking about the SS. The school board met with Kulle and at the end of the discussion, he stated, "I feel very, very bad. I just wish we had won the war." In January 1984, Kulle was placed on terminal leave, and would no longer work for the district effective the end of the academic year. The majority of people in the community opposed his separation. That May, two hundred and fifty people came to his retirement party to honor and praise him. That summer, the deportation order was issued, and after an appeal, Reinhold Kulle was sent to West Germany in 1987. He died in 2006.

         This is a very well done micro-history shared on a broad canvas of the war, the Holocaust, SS practices, US's postwar immigration policies, and the shocking amount of antisemitic, Nazi supporting deplorables in the Chicago area and on a national level. Patrick Buchanan stands out as particularly disgraceful. It should be noted that the author currently teaches at Lake Forest High School.

The Detective Up Late, McKinty - B+

                  Duffy strikes a deal with the RUC. Because a double agent being run by MI-5 is more reliant on Sean than anyone else, he negotiates an understanding whereby he can move to the safety of Scotland and come back to Belfast seven days per month. He'll  be  able to work part time for three years, reach twenty and retire. Beth has a teaching position across the water and Emma is as happy as a toddler can be in their new home. He only has to work one more case, a missing person matter involving a teenage traveler girl. He and Sgt. McCrabban push very hard and find the killer. On his last day, Duffy kills two IRA hitmen going after the double agent, hops the ferry, and leaves Northern Ireland.

A Punishing Breed, Frost - B+

                This debut novel is very good and features LAPD Detective DJ Arias. A murder at a small liberal arts college brings in Arias and his team. The womanizing VP of Development is found stabbed in his office, and a few days later, so is his secretary, who maintained a blue notebook tracking his many conquests. Privilege and the institutional protection of a sexual predator is the theme. How this turns out as a series is not quite obvious, as some of the people working at the college are better drawn and more interesting than the detective. 

Sherlock Holmes The Affair At Mayerling Lodge, Lawrence - B

             In early 1889, Britain's PM calls on Holmes at 221B Baker Street and asks him to go to Vienna to assist the Emperor Franz Joseph. The emperor in turn asks Holmes to ascertain the loyalty of his son, the Crown Prince Rudolph. The next day, Holmes is on his way to Mayerling Lodge to investigate the deaths of Rudolph and the young baroness found in bed with him. Both had died from a gunshot wound from Rudolph's pistol and left suicide notes. After his examination of the Prince's room, Holmes declares it was not suicide. As he interviews people in close proximity to the royal family, he creates a lengthy list of suspects. He further concludes that Rudolph, who has sympathies for the Hungarians and who was beyond bored, was intriguing to assume the Crown of St. Stephen. Upon completion of his investigation, Holmes speaks to the assembled royals to advise them of his conclusions. He asserts that the young Baroness indeed killed herself, but that Rudolph was assassinated by a cabal led by the Archdukes, the emperor's brothers. As they begin to defend their actions, Mycroft Holmes steps up, tells his younger brother to cease and return to London, and admonishes Watson to not write about this investigation. Watson puts pen to paper thirty years later and his story is found a century later.

           I believe I've read everything Conan Doyle wrote, and I'm certain I have read many of the wonderful modern era speculations and additions to the canon. I'd have to grade this a weak addition that is more history than mystery. Speaking of,  history is certain that it was a suicide pact and not the archdukes.

A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue, Jobb - B+

              "Arthur Barry was one of the most brazen and successful jewel thieves in history." He was an impostor, con man, and cat burglar who robbed throughout metropolitan New York, from a  Rockefeller to many, many others. 

              He was born into a large family in Worcester in 1896. By the time he was 13, he was a full time criminal. He went to jail at 17, was paroled to work in a Remington factory, and joined the army. He was a combat medic who served with distinction and bravery in France. He returned to the US in the summer of 1919 and decided to become a jewel thief. His first job netted $2,500, twice the annual wages of a laborer. A string of successful robberies in Yonkers and Ardsley added to his haul. He expanded his pursuits to Long Isand's north shore. The key to Barry's success was preparation. He studied the social pages, went to endless public places where well-dressed ladies flaunted their jewelry, and diligently studied their homes and habits. His preferred time to strike was during dinner. By the middle of the 1920's, he was stealing jewelry worth $500,000 per year and making $100,000. He also became "an expert at crashing Long Island's most exclusive parties." He even had the Prince of Wales join him on a night spent clubbing in Manhattan. Indeed, he stole $130,000 of Edwina Mountbatten's jewelry while she and Louis were in the US with the prince. He once stole a $700,000 necklace at the Plaza. 

           At this stage, Barry was considering retiring, and those on his trail now included a private detective, insurance companies, and the Nassau County police. Someone, never identified, tipped the police to his whereabouts and he was arrested getting off a LIRR train. He confessed in order to protect his wife, who knew noting about his work. A judge in Mineola sentenced him to 25 years at hard labor. He was thirty when he entered Sing Sing. Two years later, he was moved further upstate to Auburn. Soon, he broke out, went to Manhattan, and hid with his wife's assistance. They moved to Newark and he kept out of the public eye. For the next few years, every theft in New York was attributed to him, and in 1933, it was surmised by some that Barry and his wife, Anna, were the Lindbergh baby kidnappers. His luck eventually ran out, the Newark police arrested him, and returned him to Auburn. Seven years more were added to his sentence. For the next four years, he was in solitary confinement. He was sent to Attica, then a new prison and one considered a "prisoner's paradise." His wife died in 1940. He was paroled in 1949, and moved in with a sister in Worcester. He went to work in a diner. His fame attracted writers and he even appeared on television, interviewed by Mike Wallace, and later appeared on the Tonight Show. He spent his remaining years doting on the younger members of his extended family and serving the veterans of Worcester. He died in 1981.

Guide Me Home, Locke - B+

                 Darren Matthew's life has completely unraveled. He hands in his gun and badge and resigns from the Texas Rangers, where he was only the second Black in its history. He's drinking too much, his girlfriend has left him, and he's about to be indicted. On top of this mess, his mother with whom he's had maybe two conversations with in his life, shows up, and encourages him to look into a Black girl missing from a white sorority house. He makes a connection with his mother,  and unearths a great deal of unpleasantness behind the community the missing young girl is from. His indictment falls apart and he's offered a chance to return to the Rangers. And, his girlfriend is now his fiancee. The excellence of these novels is the brilliant exposition of Black life in East Texas. The author does an excellent job of laying before us the steps and pain of poverty, hopelessness, and desperation, along with some biting criticism of right wing hatred.

The Waiting, Connelly - B

                  The Bosch series is moving on with Renee Ballard, and now Maddie Bosch, taking center stage. Maddie begins working for Ballard's Unsolved Cases unit as a paid volunteer one day per week. Thanks to advances in DNA technology, the unit is solving more and more cases. The primary case involves a serial rapist and killer whose DNA surfaces from a son he didn't even know he had. The son has been adopted and it takes a while to find out who his real dad is. The unit does great work, and Maddie unilaterally solves the Black Dahlia murder in her free time. Harry's role is limited to a minimal amount of help to Ballard, who has to jump through some hoops to recover her stolen badge. As always, a delight.

In Too Deep, Child - B

             Reacher is knocked unconscious in a car wreck while hitchhiking, and he winds up with a couple of bad guys who appear to be up to no good. They are a motley crew, that may include an FBI undercover agent, who despise each other. They are trying to figure out how they can knock each other off and get away with the loot, because they have something incredibly valuable about US national security that they can sell. Reacher stays one step ahead of the FBI and the bad guys and saves the day. Unfortunately, this is Reacher-lite as Andrew is not in Lee's league.

Sherlock Holmes And The Telegram From Hell, Meyer - B

             In 1916, Whitehall asks Holmes to go to the US to learn anything he can about the efforts being taken in Washington by the German Embassy to keep America out of the war. He recruits Watson and off they go. Their primary contact is Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who is having an affair with the German ambassador, and it is she who learns that he has forwarded to Mexico a telegram from Berlin - the one from hell. Holmes and Watson make for Mexico and make a copy of the infamous Zimmerman Telegram, and forward it to London. When it is made public in the US, the anger about the proposed German-Mexican alliance helps propel America into the war.

Hitler's People: The Faces Of The Third Reich, Evans - B+, Inc.

               "This book takes a close look at the people who overthrew the fragile democracy of the Weimar Republic, set up the Third Reich, kept it in power for over a decade, and drove it into war, genocide, and self-destruction." 

                  "Without Hitler, there would have been no Third Reich, no World War II, and no Holocaust..." "For the first thirty years of his life, Adolf Hitler was a nobody." He rejoined the army in 1919, tasked to reeducate soldiers after a brief communist takeover in Munich. It was at this point that he developed a rabid antisemitism, likely because many of the leftists were Jewish. He joined the German Workers' Party, suggested renaming it the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and designed its red, white, and black flag featuring the swastika. He took over the party and attracted men like Hess, Rohm, Goring, Himmler, Streicher, and Rosenberg as his lieutenants. He was jailed after the failed 1923 putsch. His nine month imprisonment afforded him the opportunity to write 'Mein Kampf,' which enhanced his fame, made him wealthy, and outlined his principles of extremism and hatred. When the Depression shook Weimar to its roots, the communists and the Nazis gained in the Reichstag elections. In an attempt to curtail the political turmoil, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Within a few months, he so manipulated the levers of power that by the summer, he and the Nazi Party were ruling a dictatorship. The Nazis began their long, escalating attack on Germany's Jews immediately upon assuming power. Civil rights were ignored as the SS and Gestapo murdered and imprisoned at will. Desirous of reversing the Treaty of Versailles and obtaining lebensraum in the east, he began to rearm the military. There was never any doubt in his mind that war would follow. He lied, broke every agreement he made on the international stage, and began the war in 1939. The victories of 1939-1941 confirmed in Hitler's mind his delusion of being the greatest military leader of all time, and that he was  incapable of error. His intense focus on the war led to a severe reduction in his public appearances. He completely ignored his generals. Defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad unhinged Der Fuhrer. He became more isolated and intransigent, and the July 1944 assassination attempt, deepened his distrust of the aristocracy and the army's generals. By the penultimate year of the war, he had eliminated most of the six million Jews from Europe that he had vowed to eliminate. He was now suffering from Parkinson's Disease, a hardening of his arteries, loose teeth,  deteriorating eyesight, and living in a "fantasy world." "More than a third of all German troops killed during the war were killed between January and May 1945." He spent his last months condemning world Jewry and Bolshevism before committing  suicide on April 30. "Adolf Hitler left only death and destruction behind him."

             Herman Goring, a military school graduate and successful fighter pilot, joined the party after hearing Hitler excoriate the Versailles Treaty in 1922. He was elected to the Reichstag, became Speaker and helped Hitler outmaneuver his opponents to become Chancellor. As Prussian Interior Minister, he organized the Gestapo and spread terror far and wide. He amassed vast reservoirs of power and was the most important leader of the country's rearmament. He was also a leader in confiscating Jewish assets. However, his opposition to the war led to his fall from favor. Virtually powerless by 1942, he focused on his art collection and consumed vast amounts of para-codeine and morphine. He vigorously defended himself at Nuremberg, but was sentenced to death.

          Adolf Eichmann was an ambitious anti-semite and not the mere bureaucrat he proclaimed himself to be. He was neither educated nor bright. He grew up in a middle-class Protestant family and was a successful traveling salesman when he joined the party in 1932. He went to work for the Security Service (SD), impressed all with his thorough, efficient work, and was placed in the Jewish section. He managed the forced emigration, and expropriation of the wealth of Austria's Jews. He was put in charge of organizing the transportation of Jews for resettlement in the east.  He was at the Wannsee Conference assisting his boss, Reinhold Heydrich. He became "obsessed with carrying out the extermination of the Jews." He escaped to Argentina, but was captured, tried, and executed by the Israelis.

         "Few if any servants of the Third Reich were as widely or as vehemently reviled as Ilsa Koch. She was known as the Witch of Buchenwald. Her husband was the SS commandant of three different camps. She was tried by the SS, the Americans and W. Germany. She shot prisoners, engaged in orgies, ordered guards to kill innocents, and had gloves and lampshades made from human skin. Her trials garnered the world's attention and the Germans sentenced her to life imprisonment. She committed suicide in the 1960's.

         There are three sections of this book after the Hitler biography: the Paladins, the Enforcers, and the Instruments. Each section has at least half a dozen chapters, but I have read only the three above. I have found that the most enlightening portions of this book are the various section introductions and conclusions, rather than each mini-biography. Almost everyone written about held deep and vengeful memories of the end of the Great War, the inflation, the occupation of the Rhineland, the Depression and Germany's humiliation. Scapegoating the Jews was easy.

         "The perpetrators in this book were not psychopaths; nor were they deranged, or perverted, or insane." They were normal overwhelmingly middle class people to whom Hitler offered a way out of defeat and humiliation. The regime encouraged and enabled people to do heinous things by dehumanizing the communists, the Jews, the Roma, Slavs, and the handicapped. The executioners did their jobs because the state approved and encouraged their actions. In Germany, and in every conquered country, the Nazi's unleashed the anti-semitism lurking just below the surface. 

Maragret of Anjou, Iggulden - B+

              With Henry VI comatose, Richard of York rules as Regent. Everyone in the kingdom, waits for the king to die. Eighteen months into his illness, Henry awakens on Christmas Day 1354, and learns he has an infant son. Barely able to stand, he  mounts his steed, rides to Westminster, demands the return of his seal, and dismisses York. After a brief rest, he decides to initiate a Judicial Progress, a march with many followers, to the north to show himself, dispense the king's justice, and possibly confront York. Their forces clash at St. Albans, where Henry is gravely wounded. York asks for and receives forgiveness, swears fealty to the king, and is made Constable of England. As the next few years pass, Henry, once again, falls into periods of lassitude as the kingdom is managed by Margaret. She has the king sign a Bill of Attainder taking Lancaster's titles and lands forcing him to take up arms again. At the Battle of Ludlow, York is surrounded, escapes and flees to Ireland. Yorkists continue to fight and once again capture Henry, placing him in the Tower of London. When Richard returns to England, Margaret's forces capture him and behead his son, his loyal liege, and York himself. As I said about the first book, superb historical fiction.

Police At The Station And They Don't Look Friendly, McKinty - B+

                 This series just gets better with each reading, although I suspect the next one will be the finale. Duffy and Beth are living in his house with their infant daughter. He is very suspicious about the murder of a drug dealer with a bolt from a crossbow. He and his team begin to dig and hackles are raised all over Ireland. An IRA team kidnaps him, and only his combat skills allow him to live. He suspects that there's some connection between the IRA man he is after, and a highly placed mole in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. When his house is attacked, he knows that his suspicions are correct. He lays a trap, catches the two men behind it all, and negotiates a quasi-retirement from the RUC that will, in about a year, allow him, Beth, and Emma to escape to Scotland. As good as they get.

A Grave in the Woods, Walker - B+

           This is another fabulous book in the Bruno, Chief of Police series. It is also a vivid reminder that before the author semi-retired to the south of France, he was a noted historian, as this novel has the most history of any of the others. A grave is opened in an abandoned church graveyard. Two German women, with their Wehrmacht id's, are found naked, and it is obvious that they were raped by the Resistance and murdered. An Italian naval officer who was shot was buried with them. The grave has been expertly sealed in cement. The findings bring the press, German and Italian diplomats, and French forensic officers to St. Denis. Bruno and the Mayor organize a superb ceremony to honor the war's dead and then protect St. Denis from a flood.

Ghosts Of Belfast, Neville - B+

                  The 'ghosts' are the twelve people Gerry Fegan murdered when he was an IRA hitman. Most of the dozen, whose faces haunt and follow him through Belfast, are Ulster paras, a few cops, and unfortunately, a few innocent civilians. The only way Gerry can expunge the visions of them is to kill again, and his first victim is an old friend now in the IRA hierarchy. Before he is buried, Fegan takes out another IRA troublemaker. As he had been with both men the night they died, he becomes a target for the party. They come after him, he is ready and bangs up the assassin. Before he leaves town, he sends the IRA's priest to his eternal reward for violating the sanctity of the confessional, among other sins. However, when the IRA kidnap another outcast, a woman and her daughter who Gerry is protecting, he turns himself in. When a different captive slows down the IRA's torturers, Gerry seizes the opportunity and escapes with Maria and Ellen. He bribes his way onto a Chinese trawler in Belfast harbor and leaves behind Ireland and its ghosts forever.

               This novel from 2009 is famous as Northern Ireland's best crime story, and one that graphically illustrates the dysfunctional horror that was the Troubles and its aftermath.

Everyone Knows But You, Ricks - B

           A young FBI agent in San Diego loses his family in a car accident and, in his demoralized state, asks to be sent as far away as possible. In Bangor, Maine, he is called out when a body shows up on the shore of federal land. Upon examination, the lobsterman's head has been bashed in. Thus, he begins his investigation into an amazingly closed island community where the lobstermen all fish areas of the ocean that have been in their families for generations. Needless to say, outsiders are not welcome. On Liberty Island, "we take care of our own." Eventually, a confession is coaxed out a leading citizen who did in one of the worst men in town who served what he got. Intriguing debut novel by a noted military historian.

The Incorruptibles: A True Story Of Kingpins, Crime Busters, And The Birth Of The American Underworld, Slater - B, Inc.

                      This story begins in Manhattan in the 1890's. It is about those "who had left the largest ghetto in the world - the Pale of Settlement - and lived in what would soon become the most crowded ghetto in history, the East Side of New York." Their children learned English and became street wise practitioners  of many skills, one of the most desired of which was mathematics, especially useful  in the gambling trades. In this world, young, ambitious Arnold Rothstein began his career as a gambler and hustler who dreamed of cracking the big time. "The East Side became an incubator of delinquency" and another young man, Abe Schoenfeld, a future reformer, "watched a Jewish underworld coalesce in real time." Rothstein so impressed Big Tim Sullivan of Tammany Hall that he granted a gambling concession to Arnold in mid-town's west side Tenderloin district. Schoenfeld attracted the attention of the wealthy and famous Jewish philanthropist, Jacob Schiff.            At the almost half-way point, nothing seems to be developing. I'm certain it will, but too slow for me.

                  

The Eastern Front: A History Of The Great War 1914-1918, Lloyd - B +

                        "Writing in the 1920s, Sir Winston Churchill believed that the First World War on the Eastern Front was incomparably the greatest war in history. This conflict, which pitched the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary against Imperial Russia, lies at the heart of the Great War; it was its mainspring and core, which changed the political order of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans forever." 

                        After the declarations of war, Germany advised Austria-Hungary that they would attack France, and it would be the responsibility of Austria-Hungary to hold off Russia in the east. The first contact with the much better equipped Russians was a cavalry charge on 21 August at Jaroslawice. An infantry battle at Krasnik sent the Russians fleeing the battlefield. To the north, Samsonov forced a German withdrawal that led to the immediate replacement of the army's leadership with Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. On 26 August, the Germans attacked in  the Battle of Tannenberg. They surrounded the Russians and captured 92,000 prisoners. The Russians regrouped in Galicia and inflicted terrible losses on the Austro-Hungarians, whose army retreated 90 miles after losing 2/3rds of its personnel. As the Austro-Hungarians were ineffective and the Germans undermanned, the somewhat disorganized Russians were able to plod forward. But their shortage of rifles, men, bullets, shoes, artillery shells, and officers, was soon exposed when all offensive action was postponed at year's end. In a February storm, the Germans attacked the northernmost Russian army and attempted to encircle it. The Russians escaped, but with massive casualties. To the south, Austria-Hungary finally surrendered their besieged fortress at Przemsyl sending 120,000 men into Russian captivity. It would be the high point of Russia's war. In early May, the Central Powers began an attack that crushed the 3rd Russian Army, sending it into headlong retreat. By the end of the summer, the Germans and Austrians had crossed all of Poland and captured and killed hundreds of thousands, fighting against men who did not have ammunition, artillery, ample sustenance or eventually, any hope. Somewhere between 3 and 6 million civilians fled east with the retreating army.  The Tsar dismissed Brand Duke Nikolai, Commander in Chief and his uncle,  and took command of the army himself. He was warned that leaving St. Petersburg would leave the monarchy in a precarious position.

                     Italy joined the war in the summer of 1915. They attacked across the Isonzo River at its short border with Austria. Attacking uphill in the face of extensive defenses on mountainous terrain led to three years of inconsequential slaughter. The Bulgarians joined the Central powers hoping to join them in dismembering Serbia. The Central Powers  attacked Serbia in September. By the approach of winter, Serbia's armies were pushed back to Albania. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians seemed ascendant in the East.

                    The beginning of 1916 saw the two Central powers in disagreement on plans for the new year. Austria-Hungary wanted to knock Italy out of the war, but Germany just didn't see the advantage and pursued their war of attrition at Verdun. Historians agree that the Italian front would have provided better results for them. Although their fates were linked, they went their own way in 1916. Austria-Hungary defeated Montenegro in January. With the Balkans conquered and their manpower dwindling, they began to think about their war's endgame. In March, a massive Russian army provided at long last with supplies and ammunition attacked Hindenburg's army in White Russia. Once again, the Russians failed completely, and it became obvious to some of the generals that the war was lost. Nonetheless, the Russians continued to believe in fighting the war and in the summer began the Brusilov offensive against the Austrians. Prepared with adequate artillery, and fighting the Austrians instead of the Germans, the offensive was a success. Stretching on a line from Poland to Romania, the Russians pushed the Austrians back all summer. Panic grew in Vienna as the empire was on the ropes. German soldiers came to the rescue and stopped the Russians. Hindenburg assumed command of all forces in the east and tried to incorporate the Austrian-Hungarian armies into Germanys'. Bulgaria entered the war as a Central Power and Romania joined the Entente, thus extending the fighting further south into the Balkans. 

                   Nineteen seventeen saw major changes in the war. Karl had replaced Franz-Joseph on the throne in Vienna and surreptitiously reached out to the Allies for peace. The abdication of the Tsar opened up Russian politics to those adamantly opposed to continuing to fight.  In April, America joined the Allied Powers. In July, the Kerensky offensive, Russia's final effort, failed. On the Italian-Austrian front, years of stalemate ended in the fall. The Italians had fought bravely over the course of eleven unsuccessful Battles of the Isonzo. With meaningful German assistance, the Austrians attacked south from the Tyrol and routed the Italians in the Battle of Caporetto. On Nov. 7, Lenin overturned the Provisional Government and initiated Bolshevist rule in Russia. The next day he announced that ending the war as soon as possible was an immediate goal. An armistice with Germany was signed at Brest-Litovsk in March, 1918. The war would be decided in the west.

                   Germany's final offensive began in March, and was within 40 miles of Paris in early June. But that was the end. The army began to disintegrate and in September, the Kaiser asked Wilson to organize an armistice. The Germans agreed to an armistice in November a week after the Austrians. The Great War was over.  

                    This is an excellent book providing me with a massive amount of information and insight about a front that I never knew much about.  Every time I read about this war, I ask myself how in the name of God could the politicians and generals think that endlessly sending hundreds of thousands to their death charging fixed positions could be considered a tactic. Lastly, I am reminded of a historian's quote about the First World War - "It was the catastrophe that begat all of the other catastrophes of the 20th century."

The Queen's Lies, Clements - B+

                            This is the fourth in the 'Agents of the Crown' series, and Dr. John Dee faces two almost insurmountable challenges. He and his aide create a rifled cannon that in a test destroys a French ship so completely that the navy's treasurer hands him 1,000 silver pounds and tells him to deliver 50 in one year. The money is stolen and Dee's aide is murdered. He has no idea how to build the cannons on his own and can't do it without the money. Then, Catholic enemies from the continent murder his household staff and kidnap his son. As background, Walsingham, Dee's boss, is up to his old tricks of trying to find anything to show the queen that her cousin, Mary, is plotting against her. Elizabeth, on the other hand, prefers leaving things well enough alone regarding Mary. These books show how incredibly complex affairs were in Elizabethan England, and this one ends with Mary dead and Elizabeth livid at those who executed her, and fearful that this will provoke a Spanish invasion. The year is 1587.

Trust Her, Berry - B

                   Two sisters inform on the IRA, have to kill a captor, and escape to the south. The Republic offers them citizenship and new identities allowing them to put Belfast behind them. A few years later, Tessa is kidnapped in Dublin, and both women and their families are once again under the thumb of evil men. The sisters mange to throw a curveball to the UVF and the IRA leading to a truce. Interesting, but the trauma of life in Ireland, particularly the debacle that is Belfast, is better learned in the Sean Duffy novels by McKinty.

Bad Monkey, Hiaasen - B

          For decades, this author has been telling laugh out loud  stories about overly caricatured Florida characters. This particular novel is about a decade old and is receiving publicity because there is a new Apple TV limited series with Vince Vaughn. Only Hiaasen could blend together a cop demoted and moved to the roach squad in the Keys, his pathologist girlfriend who likes having sex on a morgue table, a medicare fraudster who has his own arm amputated to fake his death, an unscrupulous builder bribing everyone, a voodoo lady in the Bahamas who rides a Medicare approved scooter, a runaway Bonnie and Clyde from Oklahoma who are notorious because he was a high school student and she was his teacher, a nitwit deck hand, a weed soaked pilot, a conch fisherman, and on and on. Always fun.

Losing The Signal: The Untold Story Behind The Extraordinary Rise And Spectacular Fall Of BlackBerry, McNish & Silcoff - B+

                In October, 2011, the two top executives of Research In Motion (RIM) were in Canada and Dubai when they spoke on their Blackberry's. Under attack from Apple and Samsung, rising competitors in the mobile phone space, RIM was reeling and a 3 day outage caused by a server collapse in England would prove to be the beginning of the end.  

               Jim Balsillie was raised in Quebec. Brilliant and ambitious, he set his sights on the University of Toronto and Harvard Business School. After graduating from both, he turned down Wall Street, and returned home to run a small manufacturing business. Mike Lazaridis, from Windsor was a superb scientist who dropped out of the University of Waterloo to start a computer software company with a friend, and in 1984 incorporated Research In Motion. In the early 1990's when Balsillie's firm was acquired, he took his severance money, invested in, and became a partner of Lazaridis' at RIM. Their goal was to create a wireless data transmission device. In the 1990's, they wrote software, manufactured modems, and tried to keep the business going. With a new chip that Intel made for them, RIM was able to build an interactive two way pager in 1997.  The Bullfrog worked in a demonstration for Bell South, but never did again. The Leapfrog followed, and Bell South placed a $50M order. They were able to go public later that year.

                      

               Lazaridis continued working on a modern, simple mobile device that could handle emails. He desired the utility of a laptop in one's hand. The device would be called a BlackBerry. The Blackberry's ability to check office emails at a time when two way paging was trendy was revolutionary. And it began to catch fire, not with gear heads, but with big time businessmen, bankers, and lawyers. Soon, everyone wanted one. Bill Gates and Jack Welch were early champions. It changed the world of email as instantaneous responses were now expected. 'Fortune' named it a "cult brand." A Nasdaq listing raised more capital, and soon the co-CEO's were billionaires. They passed Palm, Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola to take the lead in personal digital assistants. On September 11th, the fact that they were the only network functioning added to their cachet. Washington was so impressed that each member of Congress was issued a BlackBerry.

             Soon thereafter, they added voice and offered a full-fledged smartphone. In 2003, Oprah endorsed the phone and BlackBerry moved into the consumer market. Within a few years, they were at the top of the telephone pyramid, sitting on top of the world.

             In January 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world. Apple partnered with Cingular Wireless, recently acquired by ATT, to offer full data and internet access that no carrier had ever allowed before. Plus, the 'Jesus phone' was sleek and stunning compared to all that preceded it. RIM had just spent five years of management distraction fighting a patent infringement case in the US that cost in excess of a $600M settlement. Right after the iPhone introduction, the two co-CEO's were faced with both American and Canadian investigations into the backdating of options. Lazaridis, the pure technician and computer expert, felt blindsided by the mess that he believed was in Balsillie's domain. Then, when he took apart the iPhone, he was flabbergasted. Apple was offering the internet on a phone; they were offering email. RIM responded by assuring their carrier partners, Verizon and Vodafone, that they would deliver a touch phone in nine months. The iPhone was growing by leaps and bounds, and beginning to take away their share. Lazaridis delivered the BlackBerry Storm, but it was not ready for prime time. A NYT tech reviewer said "it had more bugs than a summer picnic."

           In early 2009, the Ontario Securities Commission penalized RIM and its two co-CEO's.  Balsillie was subjected to a more severe penalty, and for the first time, the two men began to drift apart. Verizon told Balsillie that almost all of the millions of Storms sold were defective, had to be repaired and demanded $500M from RIM. The company was in a major crisis, notwithstanding that it was still the fastest growing company in the world.  Lazaridis went back to the lab. He concluded that RIM had to move away from Java, and find a new operating system. He told Balsillie that "very few companies have ever survived a platform change." However, when Verizon told him they were implementing a new 4G system, RIM did not have an answer or a product. They began working on a tablet that they called PlayBook, but Apple trumped them with the iPad. RIM was losing badly in the US, but still amazingly successful in the emerging world where 4G was a distant pipe dream. The company continued to increase revenue and profits, but with an aging product line. 

           When 2011 Q1 earnings showed a material decline in revenue leading to a dramatic drop in the company's stock price,  the company began layoffs and the shareholders called for the removal of the co-CEO's. The 3 day server collapse in October of 2011 caused all BlackBerrys worldwide to go dark, and shocked the tech world. In January 2012, the two man team that had built Research In Motion announced their joint retirement.

            "If the rise and fall of BlackBerry teaches us anything it that the race for innovation has no finish line, and that winners and losers can change places in an instant." This is truly fascinating story that is very well told. Thanks to my friend David Gutowski for  another excellent recommendation.

Skies Of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over The Roof Of The World, Alexander - B+

                   Approximately 1700 airmen of the US Army Air Corps died in 600 crashes attempting to supply China by flying over the Hump.  This is their story.

                   Fearing a Japanese blockade, China began to build a road south from Yunnan province to Burma. "Threading a torturous course across mountains, jungle, and plunging gorges, an ancient mule track ran between Yunnan and Upper Burma." The Japanese closed the Burma Road in the spring of 1942. FDR committed to an "aerial" road to "keep China in the war." The so called Ferry Command was established with bases in western India and southern China. The Himalayas were in between the two. The route taken was to fly east to Burma before turning north. They did not attempt to fly over the highest mountains but, at 20,000 feet, just below them. Nonetheless, impossible weather that the planes were ill equipped to handle dominated the challenges the pilots faced. The cold dry air from the north met warm monsoon winds from the south and led to violent drafts that could toss planes up and down 4,000 feet per minute. The deadly crashes began, as did airmen parachuting into the jungle. As the war progressed, the Americans and the British coordinated their search and rescue efforts along the route between India and Burma. Late 1943 saw the beginning of Japanese fighter planes attacking the operation, leading to the initiation of night flights for the first time in the CBI theater. That same season, the Army medical staff concluded that the pilots suffered from 'Humpitis' because the weather was the scariest imaginable and it broke many men. Nineteen forty-four saw some real dismay on the part of the Allies who concluded that supplying the Nationalists was unproductive, but at FDR's insistence a ground effort was made to open the road was as a continuation of the flights over the Hump. A Japanese offensive in China put an end to any American hope that the mainland could be used as a base to bomb Japan. 

                  Whether the effort put into the airlift was worthwhile has been debated ever since. Some believe that the Chinese tied down the enemy and kept some quality soldiers away from the Pacific.  Others suggest it prepped our airlift skills. Many think it was a fools errand. This excellent book has been quite enlightening. Unlike Tuchman's history of Stillwell in China, this author is very critical of 'Vinegar Joe.'  She takes his acerbic style and distaste for allies to task. On the other hand, she also eviscerates the gross incompetence, if not corrupt cowardice, of Chiang. The author mentions Chiang's conversion to Christianity, something I suspect I knew but had forgotten, as part of the obsessional devotion of Henry Luce and the old China lobby. As so many of them, including Luce, were the children of missionaries, it goes some way in explaining their irrational enthusiasm. Lastly, she points out that Sara Delano, FDR's influential mother, grew up in China as part of the reason for his belief in helping the Nationalists

Camino Ghosts, Grisham - B+

                 This is the third in a series loosely structured around a bookseller, Bruce Cable, in the fictional north Florida town of Camino Island. Bruce tells a young writer, Mercer, who is summering there, to read a book by a local, Lovely Jackson, telling the story of her ancestors, Africans who occupied and owned the island off the coast called Dark Isle. She had left there in the mid-fifties as a teenager, the last of the descendants of escaped slaves to live on the island. Now a developer wishes to build a massive project on Dark Isle.  Mercer begins to write the story of the slaves, and a local lawyer begins a pro bono legal action to declare Lovely the owner of the island. The efforts to help Lovely entices  some of the 'characters' around town and some financial aid is forthcoming. An archaeological dig is pursued by a national organization interested in slaves' cemeteries. A friend from the NYT is invited to the trial, at which no one can crack Lovely's story.  A Times article rallies Blacks and historians from around the country to her cause. The trial judge rules that Lovely owns the island. The story explodes nationally, and led to Mercer's book becoming a #1 bestseller, the creation of the Nella Foundation, named for Lovely's ancestor who washed ashore after a  shipwreck, and the establishment of the island as a revered and protected place. There are none of the usual twisting, intriguing, and legal surprises in this book, but rather it looks like John Grisham is trying to tug at some heartstrings. As usual, exceptional.

The Welath Of Shadows, Moore - B+

                  Ansel Luxford is a lawyer in St. Paul in 1939 when he seeks an opportunity to go to D.C. to prepare for the coming war. He obtains a position in the Treasury Dept. working in a secret unit focused on hurting the German economy. Nazi Germany is an autarky with few trading partners. He and his boss, Harry White,  approach the Brazilians at an international conference to offer them a premium in dollars over the gold Germany is paying for iron and cotton. They refuse. A Brazilian tells them they were betrayed by an American, and they learn the FBI believes that there is a Soviet agent in their department.  They conclude that the person opposing them, who planted the Soviet agent rumor is Breckenridge Long of State, a noted fascist sympathizer. They concoct plan to out Long by bringing to the attention of the White House a memo about the experimental gassing of Jews in Poland that Long buried in the archives.  Treasury Secretary Morgenthau is able to isolate Long, and give the Research Dept. the green light to proceed. Soon, all the nations of Latin America make trade deals with the US, and some agree to freeze any German money within their borders. Realizing that the Cash and Carry program that FDR had created could not work for more than a few months, Ansel and his staff create Lend-Lease. They cheer when the US enters the war.

                Three years later, the US principals are together with their friendly adversary, John Maynard Keynes, in Bretton Woods, N. H. trying to sort out the postwar order. The goal is to finance the reconstruction of the war torn countries, re-establish trade relationships, and intertwine the world's economies to the point that war just won't be an option.  Thus, the World Bank and IMF a re created.

               This is historical fiction at its best. Keynes, White, Long and Morgenthau are all noted characters in the history of the era. Long was a racist sympathizer, and White, the first chair of the IMF, was later determined to be a Soviet agent. Even Ansel Luxford is real. The author points out that "this is fiction though one that's been sketched upon a canvas of reality."