11.11.2024
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.
10.30.2024
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.
10.18.2024
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.
10.07.2024
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.
9.26.2024
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.
9.16.2024
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."
Tell me Who You Are, Luna - B
Dr. Caroline Strange has it all: a Park Slope browns- tone, two boys, a great husband and a prosperous psychiatry practice. When a client tells her he will kidnap and starve a local reporter, she engages in a bit of cat and mouse with the police. She believes she can find the missing woman faster. As the story evolves, we learn that Caroline may not be who she appears to be. Three decades earlier, she survived a murderous night at her next door neighbor's house. Her hospitalized mother accuses her, and not the dad, of killing the Strong family. She may have manipulated her neighbor, but she's no killer. She tracks down the kidnapper and is saved by the NYPD in the nick of time.
8.31.2024
The Infernal Machine: A True Story Of Dynamite, Terror, And The Rise Of The Modern Detective , Johnson - B
Anarchy as a 19th century political concept was the principle that no rulers, or ruling class, were necessary in an equitable society. Anarchists believed people should work in small cooperative efforts, similar to the guild system that dominated Germany for centuries, without industrial sized, top down structures. The discovery of dynamite gave the anarchists the tool they needed to smash the state. The state response to anarchy was the birth of forensic science, and the fight to end the epidemic of violence.
Prior to 1866, when Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, all man made explosions were initiated by gunpowder. Nobel harnessed the raw power of nitroglycerin in a stable compound with porous silicate and called it Nobel's Safety Powder. The world called it dynamite. Its primary use was in blasting for construction projects. "Almost all of the iconic engineering triumphs of the period - the London Underground, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Panama Canal - relied extensively on the new explosive."
Innumerable attempts, including a few close calls, were made on the life of Alexander II. A dynamite attack at the Winter Palace killed dozens of staff, but not the czar. The New York Times referred to the assassins as "nihilists," and they finally succeeded in killing the czar in March, 1881. They used nitroglycerin. This led to an international explosion of nitro and dynamite usage against establishment figures around the world. Dynamite was more stable than nitro and thus, more popular.
Two Russian Jews left the Pale of Settlement , emigrated to New York and became partners in anarchy, fast friends and occasional lovers. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman wished to take action in America, and chose Henry Frick of Carnegie Steel as their target. With financing help from Goldman, Beckman went to Pittsburgh and twice shot the executive in his office. Frick lived, and Berkman went to prison.
In Europe, anarchists struck so frequently with bombs and guns that European countries met to discuss and coordinate their actions and eventually create Interpol. In Paris, Alexandre Bertillon was pioneering methods to identify criminals. He took photographs, measured various body parts, and cross-cataloged everything in such a way that an arrest in France could be researched in the records and the criminal identified.
In September of 1901 in Buffalo, NY, an American born anarchist shot President McKinley twice. He died eight days later. An immediate nationwide search for Goldman, who the assassin said inspired him, began. Goldman was arrested in Chicago, but was soon released as she had no connection to the crime. The new president encouraged, and a year later Congress approved, an Anarchist Exclusion Act. A few years later, the NYPD began a primitive fingerprinting section under the direction of Joseph Fleurot. A new Detective Bureau soon followed. Fleurot successfully put a man in jail based exclusively on his fingerprints. The new scientific approach to fighting crime drew national attention, and was part of the background to the development of the Bureau of Information's card cataloging system.
The 1914 Ludlow massacre that caused the death of eleven children at the hands of the Rockefeller's drove the anarchists into a frenzy of activity. They tried to block access to Pocantico Hills, but were arrested by the local police. As the outrage in the anarchist community grew, the NYPD created a Bomb and Anarchist squad and began to dramatically increase its understanding of the manufacture of the infernal machines. More and more attempts were made to bomb buildings in NYC. The police were able to stop an attempt at St. Patrick's Cathedral at the last minute, but failed to prevent a bombing of their own building on Centre Street. The outbreak of WWI led to increased bombings by the anarchists, and the largest explosion in NYC prior to September 11th occurred at a depot in NY harbor and was set by German saboteurs.
"On June 14, 1917, Congress passed The Espionage Act, perhaps the most sweeping implementation of state-mandated patriotism ever produced by the United States government." Because of their well-known opposition to the war and the draft, Goldman and Berkman were arrested the day the law passed, tried, and convicted after a jury deliberated for 39 minutes. In the spring of 1919, a NYC postal inspector identified dozens of bombs mailed to important people around the country and was able to safely remove them. One, however, exploded at the door of the home of the US Attorney General. The DOJ created a Radical Division, and put a young J. Edgar Hoover in charge. Hoover led the charge to deport Goldman and Berkman, and was at Ellis island on December 21, 1919, when the two anarchists were among 249 people sent back to Russia. The two were so disillusioned that they left Russia two years later. With the exception of a speaking tour to the US in the 1930's when Goldman was allowed to return, they both spent the rest of their lives in exile in Europe.
One last big explosion on Wall Street in 1920 was the end of the movement in the US. "The guild system did not prosper as a blueprint for social organization in the twentieth century. But terrorism did." This is an intriguing book with a significant amount of interesting information. I believe it misses being really good because it lacks consistency.
The Winner, Baldacci - C, Inc.
"Mr. Jackson" is a criminal mastermind with a vast set of skills. He has cracked the US's national lottery, and selects down and out people to be winners. He manages and controls the money after the announcement of the winner, pays his people a huge return and gives them unlimited control of the principal after a decade. It's a win-win. LuAnn Tyler of nowheresville Georgia proves a bit more complicated because her wastrel of a boyfriend is in the drug business and is killed the day LuAnn leaves him. The locals want her for murder. After winning, LuAnn and her infant daughter, Lisa, leave the country. A decade later, and against the direct admonition of Jackson, she, Lisa, and Charlie, once Jackson's man and now LuAnn's general factotum, secretly return to America. She meets Matt Riggs, a terribly skilled carpenter/GC working on her house, but actually a former FBI man in the witness protection system.
Most of my Inc.'s are long, tedious history books, infrequently novels, particularly ones written by a noted page-turner. At the half-way point, I jumped ahead to find an enraged Jackson has kidnapped Lisa, the FBI is on LuAnn's tail, and Charlie has been nearly killed by Jackson. LuAnn and Riggs get the jump on Jackson, and Riggs shoots him. The FBI drops all charges against LuAnn after the IRS cleans her out for non-payment of taxes. Riggs proposes and provides some ideas on how they can all get by. LuAnn smiles and points out that she has $100M in a Swiss bank. Total balderdash!
8.25.2024
Left For Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World, Dolin - B
Charles Barnard, veteran mariner and sealer working for the NY firm of Murray and Sons, set sail on April 12, 1812 on the brig Nanina for the Falklands, which they reached five months later. The crew set to work killing and skinning as many seals as possible. In early 1813, they learned that the US and Great Britain were at war. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the HMS Isabella, sailing from Australia to England, had faltered nearby, and the crew and passengers were stranded. Six Britons set sail in a longboat and reached Buenos Aires, 1200 miles to the northwest, Soon a brig, the HMS Nancy, was dispatched to rescue the castaways. Meanwhile, the Americans and British had met and agreed that the Nanina would take the Britons to the mainland, in exchange for the goods on the Isabella.
Upon arrival in the Falklands, the Nancy's captain, William D'Arandra, viewed the Americans as enemies and not saviors, refuted the agreement, took the Nanina as a prize, and declared all of the Americans to be prisoners of war. He directed the Nanina to sail to London and he took the Nancy to Buenos Aires. The Nanina was so overcrowded that the prize master decided to sail to Buenos Aires as well. The US consul negotiated freedom for the Americans, and was almost able to recover the ship, but it sailed for London.
D'Arandra had left five men, including Capt. Barnard, on the Falklands without explanation or remorse. After two years, they were rescued by a British whaler. A few months later after the whaler sailed to the Pacific, the men went ashore in Peru. Barnard boarded an America ship which sailed to Hawaii and China, where he boarded another ship that took him home, four and a half years after he had departed.
The prize court in London awarded the Nanina to D'Arandra, but Murray and Sons appealed the decision as soon as the war ended. In 1818, the Admiralty reversed itself and ruled in the Americans favor.
Most of the principals in this story quickly faded from view. In 1829, Barnard published memoir of his story with a second edition following a decade later. There is a small museum named after him the Falklands.
Deal Breaker, Coben - B
This is a three decade old debut novel featuring sports agent, Myron Bolitar. Myron played basketball at Duke and for the Celtics before an injury sent him to Harvard Law School. He realizes someone is trying to blackmail his client, Christian Steele, the number one pick in the NFL draft and the franchise QB everyone wants. The issue is his former girlfriend, Kathy Culver, a beautiful, perfect sorority sister who disappeared eighteen months ago. Kathy's sister, Jessica, also a former girlfriend comes to Myron convinced that her sister's disappearance and her father's recent murder are connected. Myron digs through massive amounts of sleaze, lies, infidelities, and violence on the way to figuring out that it was his All-American client behind it all.
Refiner's Fire, Leon - B
Guido and Claudia investigate the troubling actions of 'baby gangs,' teens running rampant in Venice. While looking into one boy in particular, they focus on his indifferent dad, who was a hero during Italy's deployment in Iraq. As it turns out, he was far from a heroic soldier, but rather was the organizer of antiquities theft. When rival gangs meet, he shows up and saves a boy from a fire. Weak tea that leads to the question is the end near for this special, but aging author.
8.14.2024
The Great River: The Making & Unmaking of the Mississippi, Upholt - B
"The Mississippi River drains more than a million square miles, an expanse that encompasses forty percent of the continental United States: all of seven states, parts of another twenty-five, and a small scratch of two Canadian provinces." This is a story of The Great River, as it once was, and all of the engineering efforts that the US Corps of Engineers has used to tame it.
Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to travel the river in 1541. Two Frenchmen, Marquette and Joliet, arrived a century and a quarter later. La Salle was the first to descend the river to the gulf. Explorers, trappers, missionaries, and farmers followed. When France sold the Louisiana Territory to America in 1803, the entire watershed became part of the US.
Mankind's first interference with the river came when an Ohioan created a boat with a winch that was able to clear the underwater snags of trees that blocked the river. The snagboat "did more to change the ecosystem of the antebellum south bashing open the Mississippi's ancient waterways so thoroughly that, in a strange way they began to disappear." Congress asked the Corps of Engineers to improve navigation on the Mississippi and the Ohio. Rocks and rapids were dynamited, and after the snags were removed, so were trees along the banks. With the trees gone however, the banks began to shift. The steam powered riverboat changed the Mississippi, as it became a busy highway moving the nations' people and goods in both directions. However, as the Civil War approached, the railroads became the prime movers in America.
The levees on the river had started "as a waist-high barrier along the New Orleans riverbank in 1720." They spread north and south but were not able to stop flooding. Among hydrologists, there were two schools of thought: one believed in expanded levees and the other proposed extensive reservoirs to control the flooding. The eventual conclusion was to deepen the river by channeling it between extensive levees. By the 1920's, ninety-percent of the floodplain was cut behind levees. The river was tamed, or so it seemed. In August 1926, the Great Flood began. It rained in the heartland for months. By the following April, a million acres were underwater and fifty thousand people lost their homes. Levees failed all along the lower basin. "By the end of that spring, the levees along the Mississippi and its tributaries had failed in more than two hundred places. In June, a second flood crest caused by snowmelt in the north, poured through the still-open gaps. Water covered 16.5 million acres across seven states." The Flood Control Act of 1928 acknowledged that the river could not be channeled, and must have outlets in the lower basin. Spillways were constructed in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In 1954, the Mississippi River and Tributaries project was completed.
Since then, there have been new and many challenges. Attention turned to expanding locks and replacing aging dams. Thanks to Clean Water laws, the river is cleaner and safer than ever before, but a significant challenge has been keeping the Asian carp away from the Great Lakes. Today, the river faces the consequences of climate change. Reading this, one thinks of the old Yiddish adage - 'Man plans and God laughs.'
War of the Roses: Stormbird, Iggulden - B+
This excellent historical novel is the first of four on one of England's early civil wars. The seeds were sown generations earlier when Edward III died in 1377 after half-a-century rule. His oldest predeceased him leaving the crown to ten-year old Richard II. The regent was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and the king's uncle, but it was John's son who became Henry IV after deposing the unpopular Richard.
Our story begins in 1443 with Henry VI on the throne. There was universal regret that he was a fraction of the man his father was. England's most famous battle king died prematurely and was succeeded by an infant who grew to be a man more interested in prayer than governing. Facing ongoing war over England's possessions in France, Henry desired an end to the fighting in France and agreed to a truce to assure twenty-year peace in exchange for England abandoning Anjou and Maine. The fourteen years old Princess Margaret of Anjou became his queen. All of the English residents in Anjou and Maine felt abandoned and began a guerrilla war campaign against the French. France declared the peace broken and invaded in force. Many in England were unhappy with the king's abandonment of France, none more so than Richard, Duke of York. He was in charge of English forces in France and relieved by the king. All but Calais was lost.
Unrest in Kent, fueled by dictatorial local judges, innumerable taxes, and the animosity of bitter men returning from France, led to a peasants' rebellion headed by Jack Cade. The peasants marched on London, breached the city walls, crossed the London Bridge, actually besieged the Tower, stole all they could carry, and wreaked a night of terror on the city. At long last the queen was pregnant when she held Henry on the night he descended into utter senselessness, and five months later watched as the assembled lords of the realm asked Richard of York to be Protector and Defender of the Realm.
The Silver Bone, Kurko - C
This Booker nominated novel is set in Kiev in the aftermath of WWI. The Russian Civil War is raging, spewing death and starvation throughout the city. Samson watches Cossacks kill his father, and then they slice off his ear. Two Red Army soldiers arrive at his apartment and tell him that they have been billeted there. He realizes that they are stealing and plotting to desert. Since he has just joined the police department, he arrests them. As he learns the ropes of conducting investigations, he finds a silver femur in a crate in a basement. He believes it is the key to two deaths, and makes inquiries in medical circles. His life is disrupted by 'Await Death' written on his front door. He and a colleague wait in his apartment for the expected attack. They kill two intruders, one a member of the Cheka, and the other is one of the two soldiers who had been living in his flat. He finds the owner of the bone, a deluded tailor who had it made in the belief it would replace his diseased femur. Obviously well received and acclaimed, but not by me.
Shades of Mercy, Borgos - B+
This is the second in the series featuring Porter Beck, sheriff of Lincoln County, Nevada. Fentanyl is pouring into the county, and the man behind it was a dear friend of Porters years ago. When the dealer's prize bull is destroyed by a military drone hacked by someone nearby, all hell breaks loose. The sixteen year old girl, a hacker of extraordinary skill, is working for the Feds and trying to lure her former Chinese handlers into the open. It's a compelling and well done thriller.
7.27.2024
A Death In Cornwall, Silva - A*
This is the 24th in the Gabriel Allon series, and the 14th to appear on this blog. By my estimate, Gabriel is well into his seventies and thankfully, is retired from the Mossad. He lives in Venice and restores Old Masters. He is called to Cornwall by an old friend who is investigating the murder, presumably by a serial killer, of an Oxford professor. Both the detective and Gabriel conclude that the serial killer angle is a misdirection. The professor, an expert on wartime art provenance, was likely killed because of her investigation of the past of a Picasso in a Geneva gallery. The painting was owned by a Parisian Jew who perished in Auschwitz. When the grandson of the owner falls down the stairs in Montmartre, their suspicions are confirmed.
Gabriel decides he must recover the Picasso for the family and help solve the murder. An intricate plan follows. He will have a wealthy friend swap six of her late father's collection for the Picasso. As Gabriel will paint the six pictures, it is also necessary to hire an established art consultant and a provenance specialist. All goes well until the day of the transfer, when the killers murder the Geneva dealer and steal the Picasso. Now, Gabriel must follow, find and dispose of the killer. His trek takes him to Paris, Cannes, Marseilles, Corsica, and Monte Carlo.
He ascertains that the killer is the head of security for a corrupt British law firm in Monaco and he hatches a plan to out the law firm while catching the killer. Along the way, he uncovers an amazing amount of corruption at the top of the Tory Party in Britain. Gabriel's team's investigation and the information they uncover leads to the downfall of a British government, the return of the Picasso, and the death of the killer. Another excellent book in one of the four series I've been following for decades. Gabriel Allon though, upon reflection, surpasses my other favorites, Ian Rutledge, Jack Reacher and even Harry Bosch. Thus, the grade is in the nature of a lifetime achievement award.
Hapsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire, Jonas - B +
This superb history views the Second Mexican Empire as "a unique position from which to understand the globally destabilizing effect of US encroachment under the guise of Manifest Destiny." The story is rooted in "European astonishment at unrelenting US expansion." When the Civil War broke out, European powers led by France declared Mexico's loans in default and invaded. They proclaimed they were protecting Latin America from the predatory US.
When the Louisiana Purchase was followed by the mid-century annexation of Texas and the taking of the western half of the continent from Mexico, Europeans were alarmed at the growth and ambition of America. Catholic France was perceived to be the bastion to protect "Latin peoples against Anglo-Saxon aggression." France invaded in late 1861 intending to establish a monarchy. The fact that no one other than a handful of Mexican elites wanted a change in government did not faze the French. At the first battle, Puebla, Mexico handily defeated the invaders. France sent over close to 40,000 reinforcements in the next year. Puebla fell in the spring of 1863. The Juarez government fled Mexico City before the French occupation. As the French extended their power north, the Archduke Maximilian was offered the throne.
Napoleon III left nothing to chance, honoring and flattering Maximilian and his wife Charlotte in Paris for a week. "Paris was the apogee of the Mexican Empire." There was no enthusiasm for the venture in London or Vienna, and the US House passed a resolution opposing the monarchy. Nonetheless, the royal couple arrived in Veracruz on May 28, 1864 with a 400 page draft of protocols for managing their court. They were warmly received in the capital and for a time "things went their way." Maximilian's first major challenge was the Catholic Church's insistence on a restoration of its property and a reinstatement of its primacy in Mexico. He refused to succumb to their demands. In the summer of 1866, imperial forces began to lose skirmishes, then battles, then entire regions in the north of the country to resurgent republican troops. The French began to evacuate. US diplomacy made it clear that it was totally opposed to the monarchy. Charlotte went to Paris to plead for more French assistance, but was rebuffed by Napoleon III. A visit to the pope was also to no avail. She returned to her palace near Trieste in declining health.
That fall, Maximilian began to consider abdication. Instead, he proclaimed his desire to stay and transform the empire to a purely Mexican entity after the French left. The emperor went north to the city of Quereatro to join his army, but was surrounded and besieged by republican forces. It was soon over and the emperor was a prisoner. Maximilian and two of his generals were tried and sentenced to death. On June 19th, they faced a firing squad.
Maximilian's remains were embalmed and returned to Vienna. A memorial chapel in his honor was dedicated in Quereatro in 1904. "In death, Maximilian lent himself to the purposes of others just as he did in life. Time, architecture, and memorial masses celebrated every year on the anniversary of the execution reinvented the empire. Chapel and ritual elevated the empire of vanity to a sacred plane where it became a redemptive sacrifice and a triumph over death." This is a very wellwritten and wondrously short history that has taught me about something that I knew virtually nothing about.
The Granite Coast Murders, Bannalec - B
Commissaire Georges Dupin is on a two week vacation on a lovely Breton beach with his Parisian amour Claire. He is bored beyond belief and desperate for something to do. An assault is made on a local politician, and body is found in the local quarry. Raring to go, Georges is restrained by his administrative assistant, Claire, and the local gendarmes. His inquiries are subtle, and hopefully, unnoticed. Although Claire had enthusiastically designed this vacation and she too had eschewed any work responsibilities, she has been surreptitiously speaking to the clinic where she is a cardiologist. Another body is found near the quarry. With the help of his hotelier, whose niece is a policewoman, Georges solves the case, hands it off to the local police and returns to his holiday. The second week is a resounding success. What we learn about Brittany in this book is that there are vast sections of the coast with a unique pink granite for miles.
The Princess of Las Vegas, Bohjalian - C
Crissy has a really good gig at a second tier casino. She sells out two shows a night, five days per week in her permanent residency performing as Princess Di. Over the course of a few days, her world falls apart as the two owners of her casino commit 'suicide,' her sister shows up in town, and a fella she just met falls from a cliff outside of town. Some very bad men are after her workplace, her sister and her. As this author has written some great page-turners, this is a real disappointment.
Pitch Dark, Doiron - B+
This is another excellent novel in this series. Mike Bowditch flies almost to Quebec to check in on someone who he believes is being pursued by a bounty hunter. The man calmly offers Mike a cup of coffee that is doped, and Mike awakes tied up and disarmed. He then pursues the man and his daughter to the border and although he commits a crime by crossing over, he accomplishes so much that all is forgiven.
Rain Dogs, McKinty - B+
In the fifth in the series, Sean Duffy is assigned a pretty straightforward suicide to investigate. A young woman journalist from London has jumped from the top of the oldest castle in Northern Ireland. The live-in gatekeeper does not know how she evaded his closing search, but he found her in the keep in the morning. Suicide it is until Sean notices her shoes are on the wrong feet. He and Sgt. McCrabbin begin the investigation. There was a Finnish business delegation at the castle that day, and they were escorted by a former policeman now in the security business. Their stories don't add up and Duffy knows he's on to something when an attempt is made on his life. Another great cruise around the Troubles in the late 1980's that ends on a high note with Duffy taking his pregnant girlfriend to the hospital to deliver their daughter.
7.04.2024
Everest, Inc.:The Renegades and Rogues who Built An Industry at the Top Of The World, Cockrell - B
In the forty years after Hillary's first summit, 349 people climbed Everest. In the past three decades, over 11,000 have. Ninety percent of the recent summiteers were clients of a handful of mountain-guiding companies. Seventy percent of climbers reach the summit compared to ten percent before the guiding companies began. This is the story of how the change took place.
In 1985, 55 year-old Texas oilman Dick Bass summited Everest on his fourth try. He was the first to achieve the Seven Summits and an amateur who paid professionals to help him. His success inspired a new approach to mountaineering. A year later, a company was offering guided trips to all seven summits. Guiding on Everest would prove to be a challenge because it is very easy for people to die in the death zone above 26,000 feet. Hypoxia, high altitude pulmonary or cerebral edema are very real risks. And guides, by definition are supposed to stick with their customers. "By 1990, most experienced Himalayan climbers would agree that the list of veteran mountain guides with the experience, nerves, and logistic prowess to pull off an Everest climb could probably fit in a fortune cookie." However in the spring of 1992, "eight average Joes" were the first guided to the summit. Guiding amateurs to the top was possible and soon the business boomed.
"The percentage of expeditions on Everest that were guided had gone from zero in 1989 to about forty in 1995." Everyone was proud that there had been no casualties. The following year that would change. Rob Hall was a noted New Zealand alpinist and the most successful guide on the mountain. His 1996 trip included Jon Krakauer, a journalist working for 'Outside' magazine. On May 10th, approximately 33 climbers guided by two different companies made the attempt. Hall and handful of his clients summited at 1:45 pm, a quarter of an hour before the agreed upon turnaround time. Hall did not stick to the turnaround time, summited with his final client at 4 pm, and was then notified by base camp that a storm was coming in. Eight people died that day including Hall. Krakauer's award-wining magazine article was called 'Into Thin Air' as was his best-selling book. Krakauer's writings piqued worldwide interest and an influx of technology soon allowed live streaming and sat calls from the mountain. In 1999, the discovery of Mallory's remains was flashed around the world.
Soon, record numbers were climbing.The lead guide companies "had installed so many redundancies and systems, coopted so much technology, and hired an increasingly talented and well-trained Sherpa workforce, that they believed they could get just about anybody to the top." Better weather forecasting and a medical facility at the base camp helped. The Sherpa's were the backbone of the mountain climbing culture and were seldom recognized or paid handsomely for their death defying efforts every day. Many started their own guide companies. Approximately a decade ago, climate change began to affect the mountain. In 2014, an avalanche killed 16 Nepalis. The Sherpas refused to work and the 2014 season was shut down. The following year, an earthquake struck the base camp killing 19.
The two tragedies reduced the number of western climbers and guides, and soon companies headed by Nepali's, Japanese and Indians were hosting more and more Asian clients. Also, a portion of the Hillary Step broke away, easing the path to the summit. A Nepali climbed the fourteen 8,000 meter peaks in seven months and captured the climbing world's attention. The guiding businesses expanded to the 8K peaks. Today, it is a mostly Nepali owned business, and climbing the highest mountain on earth remains as enthralling, enticing, and beautiful as ever.
Hunted, Mukherjee - B
This an intriguing thriller written by a Scot of South Asian extraction whose first five books were police procedurals set in the 1920's Raj, focusing on racial issues. This novel is about a family of Londoners whose mom and dad fled Bangladesh. One of their daughters was caught up in a protest and rendered a vegetable at the hands of the US VP security team. Her sister, Aliyah, fled to the US to revenge her sister and to go to work for a group of domestic terrorists. But, things are not always what they seem. Perhaps a stream of terrorist activity promulgated by former special force officers in conjunction with rogue FBI agents just might put a right wing extremist in the White House. Plot turns, twists, and double dealing carry you along at a fast pace here.
6.29.2024
Continental Reckoning: The American West In The Age Of Expansion, West - B
"Between February 19, 1846, and July 4, 1888, the United States acquired more than 1.2 million square miles of land." The three events that expanded our nation were the annexation of Texas, settlement of the Oregon issue with Great Britain, and the US victory in the Mexican War. The acquisition of all this territory placed great stress on the compromises made between the Northeast and Southeast over slavery.
The first event in the making of the West and the ensuing national transformation was the discovery of gold in California. The population and economy exploded, and thenceforth "the region would be the most culturally and ethnically mixed part of the nation." The region's isolation, population growth, and gold created wealth led to a booming, diversified, and quickly mature economy. One observer said it was as if "the lights went on all at once." Throughout the country, Indians were starved, slaughtered, and evicted from their homes. In the fortyyears after the finding of gold, 90% of the indigenous peoples were eliminated in California.
An important question was if, and how, the western half of the continent would come under the suzerainty of Washington. Surveys in the 1850's were the first steps in establishing what lay between California and the settled eastern half of America. Of prime import was agreeing on a route for the first transcontinental railroad. The Southerners, hoping to spread slavery west, were pining for a southern route through Texas and the New Mexico Territory.
"The emerging West's fluidity, its sheer up-for grabness, brought a near fatal continental disharmony." "Bleeding Kansas was as clear an instance as we would have of how the emerging West could interact with the East to shift the nation's course, in the case of making national calamity more likely." The territory of Kansas adopted two constitutions - one endorsing slavery and one outlawing it. Violence ensued, and the federal government backed the slaveholders, although there were only a few hundred slaves in the state. Kansas would only join the union after the southerners seceded. The western aspect of Kansas's struggles was about the confiscation of land given to the Indians in order to accommodate railway interests. Indians lost approximately one-fourth of the lands of the entire state.
The war saw a profound expansion of federal power through laws establishing land grant universities, 160 acre homesteads and the Pacific railway. The West was further organized by the admission of new states and territories. The government's concern about the safety of travelers going west led to ongoing confrontations and more death for the Indians of the Plains. As the war closed, the government had to implement policies integrating the freed slaves, resolving the status of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese in California, and continuing to incorporate the Hispano's who became American by treaty. The plan for the hundreds of thousands of Plains Indians was to make them Christian herdsmen or farmers.
Binding the West to the rest of the country became a priority. The two most important tools in the process were the railroads and the telegraph. With governmental financial support, the first transcontinental telegraph was completed in late 1861. Eight years later, the country would be linked by a railway system stretching from coast to coast. Roads spread to every corner of the West carrying freight and passengers. "More land in the nation was pulled into connection with other places...than in the previous two and a half centuries." Railways and roads led to extensive exploration and mapping. Ethnologists and linguists studied the indigenous people of the plains with the goal of "occupying native homelands and commanding their resources" and "fitting Indian peoples properly within the nation with as little disruption and conflict as possible."
The number of non-Indians on the plains grew from 179,000 to three and a half million. The Americans who poured into the West were a diversified group, creating cities and towns with the highest percentages of foreign born in the US. The majority, about 60%, were men. "The West can be imagined as a college of masculine subculture at work seizing and transforming the land." Women and children would eventually follow as the land was settled.
"Farmers, ranchers, and miners did not intend to cut the legs from under Native Economies, but they were doing exactly that." Cattle ranching is a "prime illustration of how the West was being sewn into a larger national and global framework." Cattle were amassed in the southwest, but needed in the northeast. Thus began the cattle drives north to railheads, and the physical transformation of the region. "Ranching imposed both and economic an cultural order on the national homeland." The grasslands where the Indians grazed their horses and where the bison roamed were consumed by cattle and later fenced-in. Farming also took away more grasslands. The foundation of Indian life on the plains was gone.
Washington believed it imperative to make the Indians farmers. Many tribes tried, but failed, because the prairies where they lived were not susceptible to long term agrarian success. Drought, fires, and most often locusts and grasshoppers defeated them at every turn. The reservation system led to the once mighty freemen of the Plains living on handouts from the US government. In the end, it was not the US Cavalry that removed the Plains Indians from their homes. It was financially driven civilians seeking wealth in mining, stability in farming, and a market for cattle.
This book is the winner of this year's Bancroft Prize. Academic histories have their ups and downs, and chapters about locusts, mining camps, the economics of farming, and the legalities of mining claims can be wearying. But the big picture perspectives about how the West drove so many national issues, about the absorption of the lands taken from Mexico, and the physical reordering of half of the United States are intriguing and fascinating.
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