Lawrence In Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Anderson - B +, Con't.

          This is a continuation of the March 6th blog on the first portion of this book.

          Lawrence arrived at Faisal's camp in December 1916. Now dressed in the white robes of a sheikh at his host's suggestion, he took up residence among the Arabs. In January, when Lawrence's position as liaison was made permanent at Faisal's request, he knew he was now in a position to "remake the war in Arabia in his own image." Some in Cairo wanted to see Aqaba—a port strategically placed at the northern end of the Red Sea's eastern prong—taken from the sea in an amphibious landing. Had they succeeded, the Allies could have prevented the Arabs from attacking the Hejaz Railway and advancing into Syria. Lawrence took a very dangerous step and informed Faisal of the Sykes-Picot Treaty, in which the Allies agreed to divide the Middle East and exclude the Arabs from a meaningful role. Lawrence and Faisal began to plan an attack to the north, inland and away from Allied interference. Lawrence came to understand that the road to Arab success lay in using the vast desert and its mountainous terrain to their advantage, prosecuting a guerrilla war. He also began to see the advantages of approaching Aqaba from the desert and occupying the city before the Allies arrived from the sea.

          In the spring of 1917, Lawrence met Auda, chief of the Howeitat. He was a formidable desert warrior, and Lawrence realized that with Auda he could take Aqaba. The fact that his superior officer indicated that Britain did not wish the Arabs to take the city gave Lawrence pause, but did not stop him. At this point, knowing full well the treachery the Allies intended, Lawrence resolved to lead an Arab revolt into Syria and attempt to thwart both Britain and France. While he and Auda rode east and fought a handful of hard-fought skirmishes along the way, he also orchestrated the Arab uprising in southern Syria. The Turks surrendered Aqaba on July 6, 1917. Knowing supplies were desperately needed, Lawrence rode 150 miles to the Suez Canal to notify Cairo immediately.

        Lawrence was hailed as a conquering hero, nominated for the Victoria Cross, made a Commander of the Order of the Bath, and promoted to major. He convinced the new commander, General Allenby, to support his thrust north into Syria, coordinated with a British army attack through Palestine. Working with Allenby would prove a challenge. When Allenby explained his tactical plan, the only thing Lawrence could think about was a small raid on a railway bridge. Meanwhile, his Arabs sat in Aqaba, growing restless while waiting for a chance to attack Syria. Allenby's campaign into Palestine succeeded, while Lawrence's efforts did not. He sent a messenger to Hussein in Aqaba telling him to come north. On his way west, he was captured and likely raped and tortured by a Turkish commander. His accounts over the years were inconsistent, leaving uncertainty about what exactly happened. His colleagues, however, were convinced that he became more remote and increasingly ruthless in his pursuit of revenge against the enemy.

        Late in 1917, Arab enthusiasm for Britain's efforts in the region began to fade. There was growing disillusionment over the Balfour Declaration*, and the Turks made public the terms of the Sykes-Picot Treaty.

         In January, on his way to meet Allenby, Lawrence led the defense of a small town under Turkish attack. He managed it so effectively that he was awarded the DSO, having inflicted casualties—killed, wounded, or captured—at ten times his own losses. He was promoted to colonel. That spring, both Allenby's offensive and an Arab attack in the desert failed. To make matters worse, Britain recalled thousands of Allenby's troops to reinforce the BEF in France, forcing him into a defensive posture. When Lawrence learned that Allenby was dissolving his camel corps, he requested—and received—its camels. With that added mobility, the Arabs would be able to attack Syria without British assistance.

         Soon, however, Allenby received a substantial number of Indian troops and resumed the offensive. He tasked Lawrence and the Arabs with destroying the railways around Deraa to isolate the Turks from reinforcements and supplies. They achieved all their objectives, and Lawrence was particularly proud of having destroyed his seventy-ninth bridge. Allenby's offensive was a complete success, and if the railways around Deraa remained severed, Turkish forces would be encircled. The British repeatedly instructed Lawrence that under no circumstances were the Arabs to reach Damascus first. The Arabs rendered the railways  unusable. Allenby then reversed course and allowed the Arabs to take Damascus. Lawrence and Faisal entered the famed city, where Lawrence appointed an Arab governor and briefly held authority.

         On October 3, Allenby, Faisal, and their staffs met, with Lawrence serving as interpreter. Following instructions from London, Allenby told Faisal to recognize French guidance, as Syria was to become a French protectorate. Faisal walked out. The next day, Lawrence requested leave and returned to England.

          "Everything that T. E. Lawrence had fought for, schemed for, and arguably betrayed his country for turned to ashes in a single five-minute conversation between Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau." They met in London on December 1, agreeing that Britain would control Palestine and Iraq, while France would take Syria, finalizing their arrangement before Wilson's arrival. When it was over, Lawrence fell into "a state of extreme depression and nervous exhaustion." The region continued in its fractious ways: the French exiled Faisal, and ibn- Saud was consolidating power in the desert. Churchill, appointed Colonial Secretary in 1920, sought Lawrence's help. Together they crafted what appeared to be a sensible settlement at the Cairo Conference, bringing a measure of stability to the region.

         Lawrence's only desire thereafter was to disappear. In 1922, he enlisted in the RAF under an assumed name. In retrospect, it is clear that he suffered from PTSD during these years. He retired in 1935, and on the morning of May 13 he crashed his motorcycle. He died on the 19th at the age of 46. Churchill delivered the eulogy.

          As indicated in March, this book has been a struggle for me. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2013, but it does tend to wander. To underscore that point, four additional narratives run alongside Lawrence's: a German diplomat and soldier - Major Curt Prüfer; a Turkish governor - Djemal Pasha; a Jewish Palestinian agronomist and spy - Aaron Aaronsohn; and an American oilman - William Yale. Their stories are important, and reading them carefully is worthwhile. However, I found it difficult to weave five parallel narratives together and chose instead to focus on the principal one. The events of a century ago are extraordinarily complex. Despite my criticisms, I have learned a great deal and gained a deeper appreciation for the intricate dynamics of the Middle East.

          Lawrence remains one of the most fascinating, enigmatic, brave, and perceptive military figures of all time—though he would likely have described himself as a civilian temporarily in uniform. Guerrilla wars are typically led by charismatic local figures rebelling against superior forces. In this case, he led the Arabs against his own country. He committed what could be considered treason and was later offered a knighthood, which he declined upon understanding the circumstances behind the invitation to Buckingham Palace—all before the age of thirty. He shattered every mold.

           *In 1918, Lawrence presciently observed, "If a Jewish state is to be created in Palestine, it will have to be done by force of arms and maintained by force of arms amid an overwhelmingly hostile population." He was also perceptive enough to see through Chaim Weizmann's reassurances to the Arabs about coexistence. In a report, he noted, "Dr. Weizmann hopes for a completely Jewish Palestine in fifty years."

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival, Greenblatt - A*

         Late Tudor England suffered from many maladies: the weather of the Little Ice Age, filthy streets, plague, entertainment featuring animal fights, religious conflict, and endless real and perceived conspiracies against the Queen—it was a cultural wasteland governed by a somewhat delusional, self-absorbed monarch. However, in the 1580s, from England “burst forth” magnificent advances in science and intellectual growth that propelled centuries of greatness. The author posits, “In the course of his restless, doomed, brief life, in his spirit and stupendous achievements, Christopher Marlowe awakened the genius of the English Renaissance.”

         The son of a shoemaker, he was born in Canterbury in 1564. At 14, he was awarded a scholarship to the King’s School, Canterbury. “Admission was a coup. It changed Marlowe’s life decisively and forever.” How he acquired the skills to pass the admission test is unknown. Learning and speaking Latin was a requisite for success. As the classics preceded Christianity, what one studied in school did not sound similar to the preaching one heard at church. Virgil and Ovid often wrote about lust and desire. “The books to which Marlowe was introduced in school offered an escape from the confining orthodoxies with which he and virtually everyone was hemmed in.” Three years later, he was off to Cambridge, where he was exposed to a rigorous academic life at a time of ongoing religious conflict in England. He brilliantly translated Ovid’s Amores, introducing a new style followed for centuries, and is believed to have indulged in proscribed sexual activities. He spent time in the library, hunched over a four-hundred-year-old atlas featuring the name of Tamburlaine, the title of his first play. After receiving his BA, he stayed on for another three years, declaring, as his scholarship required, his intention to become an Anglican prelate. He had no such intention, spent a considerable amount of time away from Cambridge, and consequently was denied the degree. When a letter from the Queen’s office arrived stating he had been in the service of the Crown, his degree was immediately granted.

         Marlowe had been engaged and sent overseas to spy by Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s secretary and spymaster, whose primary mission was to protect the Crown from Catholic assassins. It was an opaque world in which one was uncertain who was a friend and whom one could trust. In 1587, Marlowe moved to London and rented rooms near the two existing theaters. With the construction of the Rose on the south side of the river, written material to perform was needed to entertain the burgeoning crowds. Into this world, where plays lasted a few weeks, maybe a month, Marlowe introduced to the owner of the Rose Tamburlaine the Great. “Virtually everything in Elizabethan theater is pre- and post-Tamburlaine. No one in English poetry had ever spoken with the grandeur and magnificent self-confidence of Marlowe’s Scythian hero.” The play had not a scintilla of the era’s morality and was a vastly popular success. Henslowe, the theater owner, asked for, and Marlowe cranked out, the sequel. Both were written in unrhymed iambic pentameter—blank verse. It changed everything, not unlike the arrival of talkies. As popular as the two plays were, some thought them blasphemous.

        Henslowe suggested a series of plays on the Wars of the Roses, with Kit Marlowe collaborating with Thomas Kyd and William Shakespeare. Shakespeare did most of the work and is heralded as the author. He admired and emulated Marlowe’s writing but was wary of risk-taking. Marlowe’s next solo success was The Jew of Malta, fiendishly plotted and unlike anything before. The play was a Machiavellian portrayal of the rise of the Stanley family, the sponsor of the theater and the playwright, in Tudor England. In 1593, Lord Strange became the Earl of Derby, and because of his family’s loyalty to Catholicism and rebellious relatives in France, he was highly suspect in the hyper-paranoid world of Elizabeth’s court. A year later, he died of poisoning. For Marlowe, the taint could easily spread to him, particularly as he was indifferent and skeptical about religion and inclined toward homosexuality. He spent time in Sir Walter Raleigh’s circle and was thought to be sympathetic to the ideas of a scientist, believed by the authorities to be an atheist, who worked for Raleigh.

       “It seems entirely possible that the peculiar atmosphere of liberty among those who assembled in Raleigh’s Durham House triggered in Marlowe his most transgressive and risk-taking impulse. Sometime in 1592, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus was performed—Marlowe understood that he had struck theatrical gold. He had unearthed a deep vein of popular fear and fascination." The play is considered a “tragic vision of a looming catastrophe.” Faustus is Marlowe’s most autobiographical and riskiest work. Faustus celebrates a Black Mass, in Latin—a language banned in England since 1559. It is imbued with Calvinist doctrine and features Faustus making a pact with the Devil. It stood in complete opposition to the evangelicals of his era.

          While plague killed one in six in London, Marlowe was away in the country, lounging with a wealthy friend and working on The Massacre at Paris. In May of 1593, Marlowe was arrested and summoned back to the capital. Although no charges were pressed, the reason for his arrest were documents in the possession of his friend Thomas Kyd, who may have implicated Marlowe as an atheist while he was tortured. Another supposed friend supplied the Privy Council with endless purported scandalous statements attributable to Marlowe. He clearly was in trouble—trouble that could only end in hanging. Nonetheless, nothing happened after he returned to London. On May 30, he spent the day in a bar with three friends. Around six in the evening, there was noise in their private room, and Marlowe was dead. All three men told the police that Marlowe had attacked one of them, who killed him in self-defense. Theories abound about what happened and why. As all four men had at one time, or would in the future, be in the service of the state, many believe he was assassinated for his atheism by officers of the state.

         “The medieval worldview was still intact in Elizabethan England. The structure of society was ordered as it was by God. For the cultural life of England to move forward, someone had to come along and break through the suffocating carapace of inherited dogma.” That person was the reckless cobbler’s son from Canterbury. “Through the fissures Marlowe had made, the light began to flow. Shakespeare saw that he could now enter territory into which no one before Marlowe had dared to venture.”

           I’ve found this to be an extraordinary book. The author is a brilliant writer, and Marlowe is beyond fascinating. The most profound contribution in this book is its depiction of the totalitarian and paranoid views of Elizabeth and her advisors. Perhaps that was simply the nature of the era—but it feels closer to a 20th-century dictatorship.

The Writing In The Water, Lindqvuist - B+

         Julia Malmro, a successful middle-aged writer researching a book, meets a 28-year-old cracker (someone who pierces firewalls for fun). They have a wild weekend fling, and Kim disappears from her life. Kim, though, is more than a wealthy slacker. While hanging out in Cuba, he uncovered a ring of 340 Swedish pedophiles, a painful process given that he was cut by his grandfather and abused by a physician. They reconnect at Kim's summer home a few months later when a group of neighbors are murdered just across the bay. The host of the party is a childhood friend. Kim takes a peek at the dark web and concludes it’s highly likely the victim had been hiding wealth, engaging in illegal activities, and was killed by professionals. Kim shares this with Julia and heads to the sanitarium where the host’s teenage daughter is being held. As she is being cared for by the electrotherapy torturer and abusive doctor who once treated him—and after he rescued Astrid from the lake following the shooting—he’s not about to let her be abused again. He easily saves her and manages to obtain a video from the boy she was talking to when her parents were murdered. Surreptitiously, he slips it to the police, who, among other things, hear Chinese spoken in the video. The lead detective now knows he has a case involving money likely coming from Shanghai, Red Army machine guns, and Chinese spoken in a Shanghai dialect. Kim decides it’s time to visit Shanghai, and at this point, everyone is certain the deceased—and at least one of his guests—was up to no good. In Shanghai, Kim learns that a major Swedish industrialist, one whom the government would not wish to embarrass or offend, was likely also involved. The two men confirmed as the killers, who had failed to kill Kim in Shanghai, are later found executed there. Kim stops in Cuba, does some work, and confirms the identity of the Swedish industrialist. There’s a fabulous ending with all the bad guys hauled in. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the two most successful Scandinavian thrillers to come to my attention—the Millennium series and Jo Nesbø’s books about Harry Hole. This is just as good, if not better.

The Death Of Trotsky: The True Story Of The Plot To Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy, Ireland - B +

        Lev Bronstein, later Trotsky, was the "precocious son of an illiterate Jewish farmer" from Ukraine. Josef Dzhugashvili, later Stalin, was the brooding, angry, and hateful former seminarian from Georgia. They first met in 1905 and despised each other from day one. Trotsky was a brilliant orator, tall and charismatic. Stalin had a withered left arm and limped because of webbed toes. Trotsky led the Red Army to victory in the revolution, while Stalin was the General Secretary of the party. Trotsky ignored everyone around him; Stalin cultivated and befriended all he met. Trotsky did not even return from vacation to attend Lenin's 1924 funeral. Stalin easily won the succession battle, expelled Trotsky from the party, later the country, and revoked his citizenship. Stalin seldom had much to say; Trotsky wrote prolifically from abroad.
        Ramon Mercader, the man who would eventually assassinate Trotsky, was a movie-star-handsome Spanish communist born in 1913. He fought in the Spanish Civil War and became further committed to the left. His devotion to the Soviet Union was so absolute that his recruitment was very easy.
        Throughout the 1930s, and in particular when the Great Purges began, Stalin tied almost all evils, failures, and counter-revolutionary activities to an affinity with Trotsky. Everything that went wrong in the country was attributed to his influence, even though he had been in exile for a decade and had no role or input in any aspect of Soviet society; his children, grandchildren, and relatives were either murdered or exiled. After a decade of wandering Europe, Trotsky was offered refuge in Mexico and arrived there in 1937. Within days, a handful of Soviet agents followed. Trotsky and Natalia stayed with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. He worked tirelessly refuting every accusation made against him. The NKVD was everywhere and knew every move he made. One of the family's devoted communist friends was Ramon Mercader. Trotsky had a falling out with the famous artist and moved to a smaller house. In 1938, Stalin learned that Trotsky was writing a biography of him. It was bad enough that he published endless denunciations of everything Stalin did, but this was too much. He began to punish those who had failed to capture and kill Trotsky. He assigned the task to an NKVD agent who had recently assassinated a Ukrainian in Holland. Pavel Sudoplatov had to organize an operation in Mexico that did not lead back to Moscow and figure out how to besiege a guarded, secure residence.
         The agents began crossing the Atlantic on forged documents. Trotsky's colleagues throughout Europe were being murdered. He predicted they would kill him at a time when events in the war would reduce the headlines. In May 1940, three months before he was killed, 20,000 communists rallied in Mexico City demanding his expulsion. A few days later, an NKVD force attacked, breached the wall, began firing guns, and threw incendiary bombs into the house. Somehow, no one was hurt. After a few days, Ramon arrived offering his sympathies and the loan of a car for the staff. Natalia had her suspicions, but he was incorporated into the inner circle. He left for a few weeks in New York, and months later he returned to Mexico.
         Stalin was advised of the effort's failure and asked to consider the next option. The primary risk of an assassination by Mercader was that his capture could expose all of the NKVD agents in North America. Nonetheless, he approved the order. Trotsky had become very fatalistic about his future, but on August 20, 1940, he was in high spirits. A terribly anxious Mercader showed up at about 2:20, unannounced, but was ushered in, saying he was coming to say goodbye. Before he went into Trotsky's office, Natalia thought that he looked anxious and unwell. He smashed the business end of a handheld ice axe with a foot-long handle into Trotsky's head. The gory wound was three inches deep. He died the following day.
         No amount of interrogation could stop Mercader from insisting that he was acting on his own because of his disillusionment with Trotsky and that he was not part of the NKVD. He maintained that position through a 20-year imprisonment. After his release, he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal and lived in Havana until his death in 1978. This is a solid book, with a little too much information at certain points, but all in all informative.

Inside Man, McMahon - B+

                Two members of the FBI's PARS unit, a specialized group consisting of quirky intellectuals who observe otherwise unfathomable patterns to solve crimes, find one of their CIs dead in his double-wide. When they realize a team of bad guys is on their way, they take whatever they need and torch the trailer to ensure that it isn't obvious he was a snitch. While waiting to draft another CI, they are sidetracked into a serial killer case and switch back to what is now finding a significant domestic terror group. With remarkable insights and deft touches, this team gets it all done. This novel is the second in the series and an improvement on the first.

Murder At World's End, Montgomery - B+

          In another twist on an Agatha Christie classic, it is the spring of 1910, and we are off the Cornwall coast in the house of a Viscount who has every room in his mansion sealed off because he fears the noxious gases that will emanate from the passage of Halley’s Comet. The night—and the comet—pass, as does the Viscount who is found with a crossbow bolt in his eye. He has met his maker in exactly the same manner as his father did two decades earlier. Suspicion falls on the newly arrived Stephen, whose baggage includes a criminal record. He must find the murderer and will do so in conjunction with the person he spent the night with in the attic nursery—bat-crazy old Aunt Decima, who is probably smarter than everyone in the building. They team up with the maid, Temperance, and are miles ahead of the dimwitted nitwit Scotland Yard sends. Off they go on a fun-filled investigation that leads to the murderer. And best of all, it’s the first in a series.

The Last Kings Of Hollywood: Coppola - Lucas - Spielberg And The Battle For The Soul Of American Cinema, Fischer - B+

        The great American studio system began to unravel after its most successful year—1947. There was an ugly strike, Olivia de Havilland sued Warner Bros. to break her contract, Harry Warner and Louis B. Mayer were testifying before HUAC, the Supreme Court ruled that the studios must sell their theaters, and television arrived. “The cruelty and hubris of the men who had created the system” tore it down.

          Twenty years later, the studios were on their last legs and turning to younger people to rescue them. The first of the arrivistes was a film grad from Hofstra, Francis Coppola. He had been working at Warners for five years when he met a recent USC grad, George Lucas. The two began a very close personal and professional friendship. A year later, a skinny kid from Phoenix talked himself into a job at Universal and quit Cal State without even emptying his locker. Steven Spielberg was going to work in television.

         Coppola and Lucas left for San Francisco to set up Zoetrope Studio as an independent, hoping to free themselves from L.A. and the traditional studio culture. They ran up debt and produced only Lucas’ THX 1138, which Warner Bros. was threatening not to distribute. Francis’ failure to go to the mat for George eventually led to their break-up. In order to keep Zoetrope open, Francis accepted Paramount’s offer to direct The Godfather. The $75,000 fee might be enough to save the company.

          The Godfather became the most successful film ever made. It outgrossed everything before it and made Pacino, Caan, Duvall, and Cazale household names. Francis’ six percent of the profits made him wealthy and the most famous director in the world. Spielberg was overwhelmed when he saw it and sank into despair over a contract that kept him in television. Lucas followed with American Graffiti, another career-defining blockbuster.

           While his two elders prospered, Steven extracted himself from TV and successfully directed a feature film. He was then asked to make a movie about a shark from an as-yet unpublished novel, Jaws. The ever-efficient Spielberg filmed all of the on-land scenes on time. But when production moved to the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, everything went wrong. The boats were too small, the sea was uncooperative, the shark barely worked, and the equipment was not designed for salt water. The shoot ran far over schedule and budget. Spielberg feared being fired and had nightmares about that summer for years. Of course, 1975 saw the birth of the summer blockbuster—Jaws earned even more than The Godfather.

         As 1975 came to a close, the three men were working on Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The filming of Apocalypse in the Philippines became one challenge after another. Three weeks in, Francis removed Keitel from the role of Willard and replaced him with Sheen. Before production could recover, a typhoon wiped out the sets. Then Sheen suffered a heart attack.

          Lucas, meanwhile, was in London and Morocco filming Star Wars, uncertain what his team at Industrial Light and Magic could achieve, as the footage initially looked poor. He and his wife, the film’s editor, argued constantly throughout the process. When he screened an early cut at home, a friend suggested the opening crawl to introduce the story. Star Wars exceeded all expectations, outgrossing both The Godfather and Jaws. It was a game-changing phenomenon. Nineteen seventy-seven became a landmark year in Hollywood. Close Encounters opened at year’s end to critical acclaim, while Francis struggled to shape over a million feet of film into Apocalypse Now. Its release kept being delayed.

          The film finally premiered in late 1979, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Financially successful but critically mixed, it saved Francis from ruin, as he had personally financed it. The Empire Strikes Back was released in the spring of 1980. It too had a difficult production, but its success was enormous. George came very close to complete independence from Hollywood, as the studios were now only handling distribution.

           The studios still had money and infrastructure, however, and they began to fight back. Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg at Paramount partnered with Lucas as producer and Spielberg as director on Indiana Jones. The film was a major success and offered Paramount a franchise that could print money. The studio particularly loved Harrison Ford, the centerpiece of the series.

         Both Coppola and Lucas faced severe financial and personal challenges at roughly the same time. After buying land in Santa Monica and attempting to build an experimental, non-Hollywood studio, Francis had to file for bankruptcy—both for Zoetrope and personally—when the effort failed. Meanwhile, after a decade spent on the Star Wars trilogy, George and Marcia divorced. Her $50 million settlement strained his finances considerably.

          After the phenomenal success of E.T., Universal built Steven his own building on a quiet corner of the lot. They later asked him to direct Schindler’s List. Unsure whether he could handle such a difficult subject for his first truly “adult” film, he hesitated—but ultimately created a masterpiece.

        Francis was eventually able to pay off his creditors after reuniting with George to make Tucker, and by agreeing to direct The Godfather Part III. Lucas, ever the visionary, embraced the digital future and eventually sold Lucasfilm and ILM to Disney for billions. The two men reconciled and returned to working on smaller projects. Steven’s success continued well into the new century.

         Thus, our story comes to a conclusion. The impact of these three men on world culture is almost impossible to overstate. It is hard to think of anyone else whose influence has been so broad and lasting over the past century. Perhaps I am wrong. One thing I am certain of, however, is that the author does not measure up.

The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies And Their Century-Long Mission To Infiltrate The West, Walker - B+

         The leaders of the revolution all spent time abroad under aliases as they plotted against Tsarist Russia. A man in London known as Dr. Richter was later Lenin. Similarly, Trotsky and Stalin also lived at home and abroad for decades under assumed names. Deception was an inherent part of the movement. “Konspiratsiya” was in their blood. After the successful conclusion of the civil war, Lenin put the Cheka in charge of spies in foreign countries.

         Felix Dzerzhinsky tasked Meer Trilisser with foreign operations known as INO. By the end of the 1920s, “Trilisser had built the foundation of a unique espionage program that would endure in one form or another for a century.” His most successful agent was Dmitry Bystrolyotov, who throughout the twenties and thirties adopted numerous identities and spied on the French, Germans, and British with ease and charm. He was particularly adept at bedding young women with access to classified material. Upon his return to Moscow, he was an obvious target for Stalin’s purge, as he was a sophisticated Russian who had spent years abroad. He was fortunate to be sent to the Gulag and to survive. “Soviet intelligence would never fully recover from the destructive impulse of the Stalinist system to punish its brightest servants.”

          In the late 30s, the Center, now known as the NKVD, turned to recruiting young ideologues for the long term. They also took up wet work and assassinated Trotsky in Mexico in 1939. Innumerable illegals told Moscow that Hitler would attack in June 1941. It took Stalin days after the attack began to believe it was happening. During the first three years of the war, the NKVD sent 190 illegals to foreign countries and 15,000 operatives behind German lines. They killed eighty-seven high-ranking Nazis, including the Gauleiter of Minsk.

          The advent of the Cold War led to the creation of the CIA and heightened sensitivity at the FBI, thus requiring the USSR to adjust its foreign activities. They began to pursue placing long-term illegals overseas, which required extensive planning and training. For example, Yuri Linov was identified as a possible illegal because he had done well in high school English. Five years of university studying English and German were followed by years of KGB training. He lived in Kyiv for a while before going to East Germany. Yuri was sent back to Moscow after Berlin for more training. Provided with an Austrian passport, he was assigned to Vienna, then Dublin and Prague. Yuri was next sent to Israel, where he was arrested, tried, and sent to prison. He was exchanged a year later and went home to Moscow, but his career was essentially over in his late thirties in the mid-1970s. He continued to work for the KGB in Kyiv, but never again in a sensitive role.

       Intense surveillance by both countries meant that legals were incapable of spying in America or the USSR. Both sides turned to third countries, and the Soviets continued to hope for illegal success. A Czech couple, renamed Rudi and Inge, with West German passports, moved to Canada, where they succeeded and became naturalized Canadians. In 1968, the Center ordered them to move to the US. After a few years, Rudi told his sixteen-year-old son the truth. Peter agreed to work for the USSR and went off to McGill in Canada for university. The FBI eventually confronted Rudi, and he worked as a double for a few years. He and the family went into the witness protection program. He didn’t really accomplish much in his time in the West, but the FBI knew that one good recruitment by an illegal could have a vastly different outcome.

        In 1984, a Siberian couple who had just married and graduated from Tomsk State University were recruited and brought to Moscow. The two young ideologues were Elena and Andrei. They were coming into their own as the Soviet Union collapsed. Gorbachev’s reforms were followed by the Wall coming down and the end of the USSR in 1991. By then, Elena and Andrei were comfortably in Canada when they realized they were on their own. They had funded themselves by building a delivery business and had two sons. Andrei received an economics degree and moved the family to Paris for graduate school. Upon a return to America, Andrei attended the Kennedy School at Harvard and landed a consulting job in Boston. They stayed in touch with Moscow and were now reporting to the new SVR. By 2000, the FBI was on to them thanks to a Russian they had turned. Every action they took for the next decade was closely monitored. In 2010, after the US double agent in Moscow fled to the West, the FBI arrested* the five illegal couples they were following. They were quickly swapped, honored in Moscow, and provided with good jobs. Andrei and Elena's boys lost their Canadian and American citizenship and have lived most of their lives in Asia with a Russian passport. “Moscow pivoted to a new kind of illegal, adapted for the digital world. Instead of simply watching and analyzing American political life, these new illegals would be tasked with influencing it.”

        The Internet Research Agency is in a nondescript four-story building in St. Petersburg. Its mission is to use false social media posts to subvert elections in the West, particularly the US. They interfered in the 2016 presidential election, although “measuring the real-life impact of these illegal trolls is difficult.” It is known that 120 false Facebook accounts posted eighty thousand times, reaching 29 million Americans and reposted to another 97 million. Two years later, the US indicted thirteen Russians. The SVR has continued to pursue assassinations around the world, including at least one the FBI stymied in the US.

          At all points in time over the last century, it does not appear as if the illegals accomplished very much. Nonetheless, the Russians (particularly their KGB president) remain attached to the allure and romance of it all and are believed to still be trying.

*The 2010 arrests inspired the TV show “The Americans.” I’m not quite sure what led to the 1991 BBC production of “Sleepers.”

Midnight In Memphis, Dann - B+

         This superb police mystery is set in 1955. Burdett Vance knows he's on the wrong side of the chief when he's put in charge of the city's first Black homicide detective. It turns out that Eustace Johnson is very smart, hardworking, and a natural at police work. Out of the blue, he’s faced with what could become a major homicide investigation. Well-off young white women are being murdered, and the killer’s taunts imply he’s Black. Burdett isn’t so sure, particularly because the victims have connections to the city’s corrupt cabal of business and government men running Memphis. Eustace helps him see that all of the young women were involved with cocaine and spending time with the Black underworld on Beale Street. Good police work and a bit of luck lead them to the killer’s home, but he’s already gone. Eustace and Burdett keep at it and ultimately sort out who is responsible. Well done.

          I doubt I’ve read a novel set in Memphis since The Firm over thirty years ago. What makes this an intriguing read is its insightful presentation of racial tensions in the South during the final years of Jim Crow.

Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic, Ullrich - B+

         As the Great War ended, violence, mutiny, strikes, and revolution came to Germany. Elections in January 1919 led to a convocation in Weimar, a city chosen because of its historic connection to Goethe and Schiller. Nonetheless, violence spread around the country, particularly in and around Munich. Expecting some Wilsonian consideration, the country was offered the draconian terms of the peace treaty in May. It was signed on the fifth anniversary of the Sarajevo assassinations. The Weimar Constitution was adopted that summer. The following year, a right-wing revolt known as the Kapp Putsch marched on Berlin and occupied the offices of government. The putsch failed because the workers of the country called an effective general strike, as the return of Wilhelmine militarism was completely unwanted.
           In June of 1922, Foreign Minister Rathenau was assassinated. His offense was that he was wealthy, Jewish, and the man who signed the Treaty of Rapallo recognizing the USSR. The center and the left mourned. The right rejoiced. In early 1923, France occupied the Rhineland because of Germany's failure to pay reparations. German resistance was met with harsh French retribution. The financial pressure put on Germany exacerbated the already spiraling inflation. "The bottomless pit that was hyperinflation defied rational explanation, leaving Germany veritably stunned." Toward the end of the year, Chancellor Stresemann was able to resolve a few issues with France, enact currency reform, agree to the Dawes Plan to reduce reparations, and set the stage for the ensuing economic recovery. The center held.
           In June of 1925, seventy-seven-year-old Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was sworn in as president, committed to "serving the cause of nonpartisan unification of our people." Nonetheless, it was "a tacit constitutional change, a conservative refounding of the republic." During his first five years in office, he slowly increased the power of the presidency at the expense of democracy and the Reichstag. Black Friday on Wall Street led to a withdrawal of American loans and pushed Germany into a serious fiscal crisis. The following March, the grand coalition cabinet failed. This was "a major turning point in the history of the Weimar Republic. It marked the last time a government would be based on a parliamentary majority." The chancellor was given emergency powers and was able to appoint his own cabinet. In the Reichstag elections later in 1930, the Nazis received a quarter of the vote, second to the left-centre Social Democrats.
          Ironically, it was in Thuringia, whose capital was Weimar, that the right-wing fascists first achieved office. Wilhelm Frick, a fellow Beer Hall putschist with Hitler, held two ministries for a mere fourteen months, but "delivered a foretaste of what could be expected if the National Socialists came to power nationally."
         Hindenburg appointed von Papen chancellor in May 1932, a month after defeating Hitler in the presidential election. He quickly moved to replace all of the Social Democrats in ministerial offices in the Prussian state. Hitler twice requested the chancellorship from Hindenburg and was twice denied. At year's end, journalists pronounced the country saved from the Nazis. After an opponent maneuvered Papen out of the chancellorship in December, he met with Hitler in an attempt to find some common ground to present to Hindenburg. He was able to convince the president that, between the two of them, they could manage the man the Field Marshal called the "Bohemian Corporal." Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor and Papen vice chancellor. On January 30, Hitler was sworn in.
          Those around the president were comfortable with the Nazis' desire to overthrow Versailles and their disdain for Weimar.  Papen told people he would "push Hitler so far into a corner that he'll squeak." "Germany's governing elites could not have more negligently underestimated Hitler's craving for power." The Reichstag fire four weeks later led to emergency decrees gutting the constitution. Jews lost their equality under the law in April. By the summer, Hitler had complete and total control of the country.
          The author has published some truly excellent books on the Third Reich. My takeaway here is that the hateful rhetoric, vicious disparagement of people, and endless lying cast a not-so-distant mirror.

One Minute More, Rotenberg - B +

            It’s 1988, and Ari Greene has been on the Toronto PD for five years. He is assigned to a Quebec–Vermont border town for its annual Fourth of July parade, where he is told to keep his eyes open: Intelligence has reported that an assassin is headed for the G7 meeting in Toronto. While walking the perimeter, he discovers two bodies. The highly trained assassin is an attractive young woman who makes her way to Montreal. She is adept at soliciting the help of men and then disposing of them as she proceeds toward Toronto. Once word is received that a woman committed the murders, Ari realizes he saw her on a bus and escalates the manhunt. She remains elusive, killing as she goes, and eventually slips past the authorities. A police sketch leads to a university student who is shot by Ari’s partner twenty-four hours before the summit. However, her identical twin is still free. In the end, she does not.

          This is fine, but a genre switch in the eighth book of an almost two-decade-old series is a bit off-putting. I’ll look forward to the next straightforward police procedural.

John Doe Chinaman: The Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law, Lew-Williams, B

         When the Chinese came to America, they “endured a racial regime every day. This book is the story of that regime and the lives it touched.” They arrived in the 1850s, and the western states regulated “their ability to work, operate a business, own property, testify in court, seek education, and form families.”

          Chinese laborers—whether miners or workers in lumbering or agriculture—were subjected to violence and taxed because of their race. When over 20,000 arrived in 1852, the California legislature implemented the miner’s tax. Over fifteen years, the state collected $5 million, 99% of it paid by Chinese laborers. Many, however, realized that the tax “provided a path to conditional inclusion.”

         This Bancroft Award–winning academic history is structured so that each chapter focuses on one aspect of Chinese immigrants and the pushback from whites. Thus, the chapters on aliens and predators focus on laws targeting non-white foreigners and those vigorously opposing interracial intimacy.

          In the 1880s, a major effort was made by the Pacific Coast states to expel the Chinese. The federal government promised laws at the border, but vigilante justice “dislocated tens of thousands.” “The anti-Chinese expulsions that swept the West from 1885 to 1887 ushered in a new period of racial retrenchment.” Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1888 (not repealed until 1943), banning all laborers from entering. Local authorities initiated segregation but confronted constitutional roadblocks. Individuals committed consistent violence to keep Chinese communities out and often turned to arson. Oftentimes, entire neighborhoods were torn down under public health pretexts. Courts approved of “separate but equal” public schools. However, “whether they liked it or not, both lawmakers and the public had come to rely on Chinese workers, traders, consumers, manufacturers, businesses, and taxpayers.”

          Early in the 20th century, “exclusion laws gave federal officials broad authority over Chinese migrants, power that state and local officials lacked.” Chinese arrivals were required to pass through Angel Island, the West Coast equivalent of Ellis Island. The threat of refusal of entry and the risk of deportation were part of everyone’s experience. The San Francisco earthquake in 1906 destroyed the city’s birth records, leading to endless claims of U.S. citizenship, as an 1898 Supreme Court case confirmed that birthright citizenship applied to the Chinese. Because for decades white America paid little heed to the proper spelling of Chinese names, many slipped into an in-between space where they were allowed to stay but not exercise all of their rights. They lived in fear of government bureaucrats. Such insecurities affected every aspect of life. “By rendering the Chinese as perpetually precarious, exclusion restricted economic mobility, restrained Chinese political power, devalued Chinese lives and culture, and separated Chinese from white communities.”

         The prohibition of Chinese immigration was extended to the Japanese, Koreans, and other Asians. “The Chinese continued to live under specific economic, political, cultural, and spatial restraints.” Matters changed slowly over time, and it was not until the 1965 immigration law that all restraints on Asians were lifted. Today, there are 24 million Asian Americans in the United States. It should be noted that this law was pioneered by Jewish Congressman Emmanuel Celler, who served in Congress for 50 years and had seen the 1920s restrictive laws implemented. Although prejudice and tribalism still exist in America, Chinese Americans are free to pursue the American dream and have been quite successful in that effort.

         I am very familiar with the history of immigration on the East Coast, particularly the plight of the Irish, Italians, and Jews who came to America in the 19th century. They were all treated badly because of their foreign languages and non-Protestant religions. But compared to the Chinese, they were welcomed with open arms. This story is not surprising, but it is shocking in its severity. 

Predicament, Boyd - B+

          Gabriel Dax, a travel writer and occasional agent for MI6, is sent to Nicaragua in the spring of 1963. His task is to interview a leftist politician who may become the country’s next president. The meeting is arranged, but Dax is blindfolded and driven for hours to reach Tiago—who then refuses to speak with him. The next day, Tiago is assassinated and a military coup takes power.  Dax heads to New York to continue research for his book, only to be stabbed and hospitalized. Back in England, MI6 sends him to Berlin to 'bump into' a dangerous figure he previously encountered in Guatemala—now believed to be planning an attack on JFK during an upcoming visit. Working alongside the CIA, Dax conducts surveillance and confirms that an assassination is indeed in the works. On the day of JFK’s 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech, he spots the would-be assassin and alerts the local police. Then, noticing an open window above, he intervenes in time to stop a second gunman.

        Hints of police complicity, as well as possible Mafia and CIA involvement, linger in the background—alongside the specter of a lone gunman—matters that weigh on Gabriel’s mind on the 22nd of November.  Excellent.

Downfall, Rotenberg - B+

          A homeless man is found found dead by the river. On a cold, dark morning two days later, a Somali immigrant bicycling to work is clipped by a truck, falls down a hill, and lands on top of a dead homeless woman. Ari Greene is back on the Toronto PD, and he and Daniel Kennicott have the case. They begin their investigation. Then there is a third homeless victim. This woman had once been a famous lawyer—beloved and admired—married to a city councilman and the mother of an eleven-year-old daughter before turning to the streets. As they dig deeper, the detectives learn a great deal about homelessness in their city, including the fact that a great many people profit from it, in particular the drug companies that sell the drugs to the city that keep many people tranquil, if not sedated. The obvious possibilities fall by the wayside when they arrest the most unlikely suspect. A tour de force.

Blood And Treasure: The Economics of Conflict from the Vikings to the Modern Era, Weldon - B-

       The intent of this book is to “show both how economics can help understand war and how understanding war can help explain modern economics.” As I do not believe the author achieved his stated goal, I have posted only brief comments on some of his better examples.

       The Vikings were superb raiders, but later became conquerors and occupiers. The “Danegeld” tribute in East England and the taxes collected in Normandy were reinvested locally, establishing them as “excellent state builders.”

        A strong case may be made “that Genghis Khan’s economic legacy dwarfs that of almost any other individual.” His Mongols conquered from China to Hungary, and a century later his heirs extended their reach to Iran and the Baltics. Khan established a true meritocracy, and they saw fit to share all of the booty extracted from conquered tribes. They standardized money, weights, and measures, and provided a primitive safety net in hard times. The Pax Mongolia was the first era of globalization. The Khan showed the Europeans the advantages of opening up and trading far and wide. But the devastation wreaked in China made them wary of outsiders.

         Both the longbow and the inexpensive crossbow changed the face of European warfare around the millennium. The longbow had an extraordinary rate of fire and propelled England to victory after victory. England succeeded where others did not because of a “state-driven agenda to create a culture of archery.” England’s throne was more stable than Scotland’s or France’s, affording the monarchy the chance to employ a more democratic weapon, as they feared uprisings less than their enemies.

          During the Renaissance, soldier of fortune Federico de Montefeltro made so much money that he “assembled the most comprehensive library outside the Vatican and paid for Raphael’s training.” He was not alone, and the warriors of the era “helped fund the flowering of knowledge which transformed medieval Italy into Renaissance Italy.”

         Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War was achieved in battle, yet ably assisted by the Bank of England. It was achieved as much through financial strength as raw military power. Although France’s population was over twice Britain’s, the British commanded more wealth because they were more industrialized and incredibly more efficient at collecting taxes. The creation of the Bank of England meant that Britain could also borrow money responsibly. It was a modern state which simply functioned better than its competitors.

          When the southern, states’ rights, debtor-friendly states seceded in 1861, it gave the North the chance to strengthen federal government borrowing, which is what occurred when the United States passed the Legal Tender Act. “The modern US dollar was created by the pressures of the American Civil War.”

        World War II saw the introduction of total war, making the tasks of domestic administrators as important as those fighting overseas. In the UK and the US, the ability to outmanage and outproduce the Axis is what led to eventual triumph.

Heart Of The City, Rotenberg - B

           After the stress of being indicted and acquitted, Ari Greene left Toronto and went to London for a year. A barrister there got in touch to tell him that he had a twenty-year-old daughter from a long-ago relationship with a woman who had just passed away. He welcomes Alison into his life and they fly to Toronto.

           In his new job as a construction worker, he stumbles across the body of a noted and despised condo developer and calls 911. Soon he is face to face with the Toronto PD again. He is also helping the lawyer who defended him without charge, and believes that the lawyer’s client—who is the police’s number one suspect—is actually innocent. He begins to look into the case himself. As he and the police focus on different likely suspects, the construction manager is found murdered in exactly the same manner as his boss. Ironically, Alison helps Ari and the police solve the case. This one is simply not as good as the others in the series.

Lawrence In Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly And The Making Of The Modern Middle East, Anderson - B, Inc.

        In 1914, a handful of Orientalists were traveling through the southwestern reaches of the fading Ottoman Empire, seemingly engaged in innocuous pursuits. They were not. An American, William Yale, claiming to be on a grand tour, was actually scouting for oil on behalf of the Standard Oil Company of New York. A German, Curt Prüfer, supposedly updating a Baedeker’s guide, noted British outposts along the Nile while cruising south. Aaron Aaronsohn, a Jewish agronomist, was planting the seeds of Zionism, and Thomas Lawrence of the Palestine Exploration Fund was quietly preparing for war on behalf of the United Kingdom. The Ottomans were on the cusp of a decision that would “bring on their own doom and unleash forces of such massive disintegration that the world is still dealing with the repercussions a century later.”

         Lawrence grew up in Oxford, read history at Jesus College, and toured Syria while researching his thesis. Yale applied to Socony’s foreign service upon completing college. Prüfer came of age in a newly unified Germany where Wilhelm II encouraged what some have called “a toxic nationalist mythology.” His remarkable ability to pick up languages, including both Turkish and Arabic, led to work at the German embassy in Cairo. By his twenties, Aaronsohn was a renowned agronomist who sought to demonstrate that Palestine could support a far larger population, as it had in the past, than it did in the early twentieth century.

         When the Ottoman Empire joined the war, Lawrence was sent to Cairo to join a military intelligence unit, where he began to argue for the advantages of encouraging an Arab revolt. For Aaronsohn and Palestine’s Jews, Muslim hostility, Turkish looting, and deportations threatened their very existence. Major Prüfer was assigned to work with the Turks on an assault on the Suez Canal. The Germans and Turks successfully crossed the 120-mile-wide Sinai and, in January, reached positions only a few miles from the canal. The British repelled them by moving warships into the waterway.

          During a major locust infestation, Aaronsohn traveled the length and breadth of Syria and Palestine and came to two conclusions: there was no future for Jews under Arab sovereignty, and the region was largely undefended. He sent his brother to speak with the British in Egypt. At about the same time, Yale achieved an important goal for Socony—obtaining drilling concessions in Arabia. Throughout 1915, both sides tried to secure the support of Emir Hussein, the guardian of Mecca and Medina. Britain prevailed by promising independence for Arabia. In June 1916, Faisal committed to a revolt against the Turks.

           The Arab revolt was somewhat slapdash and got off to a poor start. In October, the British Oriental secretary traveled to Medina, with Lawrence tagging along out of sheer boredom. He eventually persuaded Hussein’s eldest son to allow him to travel inland and assess the situation.

           At a little over two-fifths of the way through the book—just as the narrative seemed ready to wander into another diversion about the other three minor characters, without Lawrence and Faisal yet meeting or a shot being fired—and knowing this author’s tendency to roam widely around a subject, I reluctantly stepped away. I have been fascinated by Lawrence since I first saw the 1962 film, one of the half-dozen movies I admit to having watched probably six times. I have learned a great deal about the Middle East since I was thirteen years old and am still amazed at how badly the British and French mishandled this part of the world more than a century ago. When they eventually stepped back from their roles as imperial powers, the United States jumped in and clumsily stirred the pot a bit more. I would have liked to read the details of the Hejaz revolt and perhaps gain some insights into the Paris Peace Conference, but I do not have the staying power.

The Impossible Thing, Bauer - B +

           Guillemot birds lay five-inch eggs by the hundreds of thousands on the cliff ledges along England's North Sea coast. Each egg is completely different and unique. The eggs were poached by men hanging off the cliffs in harnesses. Most of the eggs were blue or brown, and occasionally green. During the summer of 1926, a young girl was lowered down by a stronger lad and came back up with an all-red egg that a broker paid ten pounds for. The broker, George Ambler, was prepared to auction the egg, but became so enamored of it that he kept it for his own viewing pleasure. As the birds return for their entire lives and lay the exact same egg every year, Ambler committed to buying them all, and history suggests there may have been as many as 30. In 1940, Ambler either fell off Metland Cliff or was helped off; either way, no one mourned him. His staff sold the eggs, kept one, and quickly forgot him.

            A century later, the surviving red egg is sitting in an attic and is robbed almost immediately after Nick puts it up on eBay. Nick and his buddy Patrick, an autistic medical student, begin to search for the stolen egg. They have only a vague understanding of its history. They narrow in on a museum director who is a world authority on birds' eggs. With some deft maneuvering, they find not only the egg, but the other 29 as well, which they joyfully liberate in order to put a century of greed to rest.

           This is a very different, yet intriguing read. And yes, there were 30 red Metland eggs, although no one knows what happened to them.

Canticle, Edwards - B

          A canticle is a song of praise. This novel is set in medieval Bruges in the last years of the thirteenth century. The world of the Church is unsettled: concerns about the endless selling of indulgences are rising, and, more importantly, some in Europe are translating the Word of God into the languages of the people. The Church must maintain its role as the interpreter of holy matters for an uneducated populace.

          Young Aleys is a holy child, enthralled by the beauty of her mother’s psalter and by her daily experience of God’s love. After her mother dies, her father requires her help in managing his woolens business and teaches her to read and write. Having spent so much time poring over the Latin in her mother’s book, she becomes uniquely skilled in both Latin and the local tongue. When her father pledges her to the man in charge of the drapers’ guild, she runs to the Franciscans, who readily accept her.

          Friar Lukas settles her with the holy women in the begijnhof, as she is the Franciscans’ first convert in the Low Countries. The begijnhof has attracted the attention of the bishop, who believes the Dutch translations of the Bible may have originated with the reclusive women known as beguines. He believes he must stage a dramatic suppression of heresy to please the pope. When Aleys prays over the sick in the hospital, some are reported cured. The bishop does not want the people focused on miracles when he needs heretics. He convinces Aleys to surrender to a life of holy seclusion in an anchorhold attached to the cathedral. Her only exposure to the outside world is through her maid, Marte, who tends to her needs, and Lukas, her confessor. When a crazed Lukas unlocks her door and attempts to attack her, she flees. Breaking her vow of seclusion should lead to excommunication.

         The papal legate clearly has no desire to condemn her at trial, and the matter is set aside. However, the bishop then presents Marte as a heretic responsible for the widespread translations circulating in the city. Knowing that Marte and the entire begijnhof will be burned, Aleys steps forward and proclaims that the translations are hers. She pays the ultimate price at the stake.

The Zorg: A Tale Of Greed And Murder That Inspired The Abolition Of Slavery, Kara - B+

         The Portuguese began the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century, operating sugarcane plantations off the western African coast and soon shipping captives to support the Spanish in the Caribbean. A century later, the Dutch supplanted them. The English joined the trade in the 17th century, and by the eve of the American Revolution, the island of Jamaica’s exports were five times those of the thirteen colonies. The slave trade transformed “Britain into an economic superpower.” The mass murder of enslaved Africans aboard the Zorg helped ignite the movement to abolish the slave trade in the United Kingdom and, eventually, in America.

         Luke Collingwood, an experienced slave-ship doctor, set sail from Liverpool aboard the William under the command of Richard Hanley in October 1780. By year’s end, they reached the African coast and anchored on January 15 at Cape Coast Castle. Hanley and Collingwood began the months-long task of acquiring Africans from middlemen. Two months later, they had forced 382 people aboard.

         Around the same time the William left Liverpool, the Zorg sailed from the Netherlands, and by March the ship held 244 captive Africans. A British privateer soon captured the Zorg. Hanley purchased the vessel and appointed Collingwood as its captain. The William then sailed for Jamaica. Under Collingwood, the Zorg departed in August with 17 crew members and 442 enslaved Africans. For a cargo of that size, more than 30 crew members were customary. There was also a passenger, Robert Stubbs, a ruthless man returning to England who had once captained a slave ship. The expected arrival in Kingston was early November.

          Each day, the enslaved were brought up from the hold to exercise, eat, and allow the crew to clean below decks. The Zorg’s first major mishap occurred when a storm drove the ship off course. Early in the voyage, Collingwood fell ill and named Stubbs his successor. As time passed, scurvy afflicted both crew and captives.

         In late November, they reached Tobago—about 1,100 miles and ten days from Jamaica. They were twenty days behind schedule and had already lost 62 enslaved people and 6 crew members.  After a navigational error, the Zong sailed 300 miles past Jamaica and had to turn back against the wind. They were still ten days from port with only four days’ worth of water remaining. The crew decided to throw some of the enslaved overboard to preserve supplies for the rest. Fifty-five women and children were murdered first. The men followed the next night. In all, about 130 people were drowned. The Zorg docked on December 22 with a mortality rate approaching 50 percent. Soon thereafter, Collingwood died. The surviving enslaved people were sold, and the atrocity might have faded from memory.

         The Zorg had been insured by its owner, William Gregson. A key clause covering “all other perils, losses, and misfortunes” was generally understood to apply to events such as slave insurrections. Gregson filed a claim, although what had occurred was unprecedented. A jury found in his favor. Two weeks later, an unknown likely a clergyman, published a long letter in the nation’s largest newspaper, calling the killings murder and asking how Parliament could legislate the procedures the killing of partridges while ignoring the destruction of human life. Britain’s leading abolitionist, Granville Sharp, sided with the insurers and demanded a retrial, arguing that incompetence—not a genuine water shortage—had led to the massacre. The insurers’ lawyers then pivoted and requested a murder prosecution. A retrial was granted, but Gregson dropped the case. There was no retrial, and no one was ever tried for murder. Nevertheless, the Zorg had “exposed the vast carnage to the public.”

         Sharp published the trial transcripts and wrote an essay that energized the abolition movement and contributed to its eventual success in Britain and America. The campaign was by Thomas Clarkson, a Cambridge scholar who tirelessly traveled the country building support. Parliament came close to abolition in the early 1790s but retreated when war with France began. The United Kingdom abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1833.

           This magnificent book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It does, however, suffer from a significant drawback: there are relatively few hard facts about the episode, and the author relies more on conjecture than one expects in a work of history. Nonetheless, it is highly recommended and very good.

Desperation Reef, Parker - C +

          A quarter of a century after her young husband dies surfing Mavericks, forty-six-year-old Jen decides the only way she can conquer her fears is to face the waves and enter the contest herself. Her twin sons, Casey and Brock, also surf in the competition. Both brothers have powerful enemies: Brock runs an emergency relief charity that has attracted the hatred of some right-wing militants, and Casey has exposed locals who practice de-finning sharks. The family prevails against their opponents and surfs a lot. Meh.

Arctic Passages: Ice, Exploration, and the Battle of Power at the Top of the World, Mulvaney - B-

          This book is a hybrid, examining both the current competition over Arctic shipping lanes, the consequences of a shrinking ice pack, and the brutal history of Arctic exploration. Much of Europe’s exploration of the Americas was driven by a desire to find a route to Asia. From the late fifteenth century through the nineteenth, the English searched for a Northwest Passage and unceremoniously failed, losing hundreds of lives in the process. Today, sailing from Amsterdam to Yokohama via the Northwest Passage would be 4,500 miles shorter than the route through the Panama Canal; the same is true of the Northeast Passage compared with the Suez Canal. That said, we are still at a point where these routes are open only a few months each year. Arctic sea ice retreats more with each passing year and is now roughly half of what it was fifty years ago.

         The first person to successfully sail the Northwest Passage was Roald Amundsen, and others followed in the early decades of the twentieth century. Throughout the first half of the century, both Canada and Denmark began asserting control over their northern regions, and Canada proclaimed sovereignty over every island stretching north to the Pole. At the dawn of the Cold War, the United States and Canada jointly constructed a line of radar listening stations in the far north. Canada has sought to impose controls over what it considers its territorial waters, while the United States argues that the Passage should be treated as international waters.

          The Northeast Passage extends for 3,000 miles across the top of Russia, from Siberia to Murmansk, which is ice-free year-round and is known as the headquarters of the Northeast Passage. The first person to travel the full length of the passage was a Finn who sailed west to east in 1878. Russia began focusing on expanding the Northern Sea Route in the final decades of the old regime. Much later, Gorbachev invited the world to sail the route. Putin’s Russia has sought both to expand use of the NSR and to control and manage it, charging fees for icebreaker escorts.

         Many are intrigued by a possible route much farther north than the coasts of Canada and Russia, one that “would traverse the very top of the world.” A route over the Pole long seemed hopeless, until sea ice began to melt faster than anyone anticipated. In all likelihood, however, it will not become consistently reliable until the end of the century. The decades that must pass before this becomes a reality lie beyond our collective ability to foresee.

The Secret Life Of A Cemetery: The Wild Nature And Enchanting Lore Of Pere-Lacahaise, Gallot - B

         This is a delightful homage to the world’s most famous—and most visited—cemetery. The author is the son and grandson of men who created funeral monuments. He went to law school in Paris and is now the Curator, living at the cemetery with his family. Père-Lachaise was built in 1804, the first cemetery constructed pursuant to new rules promulgated by Napoleon. It was landscaped and designed with individual burial plots arranged in rows like city streets. It was expanded in the mid–19th century to 110 acres. A 2011 law proscribed pesticides, and it has been re-wilding for more than a decade. During Covid, foxes were sighted there for the first time in memory and now live in a small community in one of its quietest corners. It has also become a major bird-sighting venue, featuring dozens of species that nest there. The three million visitors who come annually visit the gravesites of Frédéric Chopin, Édith Piaf, Molière, Oscar Wilde, Modigliani, Seurat, Marcel Proust, and, of course, the most visited of them all—Jim Morrison. Today, there are 1,000 interments, 1,300 ash scatterings, and 550 sets of ashes placed in columbariums. The theme of this book is that it is a special place shared by the dead and the living.

Killing Ants, O'Quin - B+

        Esteemed Baton Rouge banker Ted, now a stockbroker, sits down with a walk-in client. She tells him she wants to move custody of the securities her late husband left her into a brokerage account. Ted processes and deposits most of the holdings but sets aside the “speculative file,” planning to deal with it after the weekend. Mrs. Lewis dies before he ever does. When Ted finally opens the file, he realizes he is sitting on $21 million in stocks that no one else knows about—fully endorsed by a woman with no family, no heirs, and no trail. The temptation is immediate, and permanent. Not long after, Ted meets a younger, aggressive, stunning blonde and falls hard. They plunge into a wild, reckless affair that ends abruptly when her father catches them together and sues Ted for ignoring his account at the firm. Ted’s wife throws him out. His children shut him down completely. Though the lawsuit is fueled more by vengeance than substance, Ted settles. The U.S. Attorney agrees to accept the plea, but the judge still sends him to prison for a year.

          Ted comes out leaner, tougher, and clearer. He sells his baseball card collection, moves into a trailer park, and begins training for a marathon. Quietly, methodically, he figures out how to access the stocks he has been hiding for years. A chance meeting with an old friend—now a minister—gives him the solution he needs. Ted arranges for the securities to be placed in a charitable account he can manage. The plan works almost too well. Ted rebuilds his life and slowly reconnects with his children. The foundation’s assets swell far beyond expectations, enriching both Ted and the church. Anticipating the 2008 crash, Ted shorts the market and hits his personal target of $10 million. Now he faces a new problem: controlling the minister’s increasingly extravagant behavior, fueled by sudden wealth. And while he’s at it, Ted decides it wouldn’t hurt to bring down his accuser and his prosecutor. He succeeds. He arranges for the foundation to be paid out to the remainder beneficiary, leaves the state, and disappears. Living quietly in Colorado, Ted eventually hears from the FBI—and escapes once more, this time for good.

         Kudos to my friend, neighbor, and first-time author who handed me this book last week. Well done, Greg.

A Short History of Poland, Rappaport - B-

        The Poles are a Slavic people once known as “the dwellers of the plains,” as the country has few natural boundaries. Long ago, it was a republic presided over by an elective chief called the king. While Europe was feudal, Poland stood for independence and liberty.

        Poland adopted Christianity in the 9th century. Bolesław the Great is considered the founder of the kingdom of Poland in the 11th century. Nonetheless, it remained a land through which rival armies marched, and the Germans, in particular, expanded their control. It was “the Polish clergy which saved Polish nationality, history, and language, and in the midst of the general chaos and anarchy maintained order, morality, and unity.” Casimir the Great, in the 14th century, took important steps to reform and unify the country, including recognizing the status of the Jews. A royal marriage led to the creation of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth a century later. In the 17th century, the Cossacks, committed to the Orthodox religion, rebelled and launched the country into a civil war in which they succeeded in transferring their loyalties to Russia. Wars with Sweden and Russia, combined with the plague, depopulated the country. When the Turks invaded in 1672, Poland sent John Sobieski into battle, and he defeated them, leading to his coronation as king. Sobieski pushed Poland to the apogee of its international fame a decade later when he rode to Vienna at the head of an army, lifted the siege, and defeated the Ottomans. Praise poured in for “the Liberator of Christendom.” When he died in 1696, the Austrian emperor said that “such a great king should never die.”

        He was succeeded by a Saxon line that drove the kingdom into ruinous wars and depopulation. The weakening of the state and the monarchy in the late 18th century aroused the ambitions of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Endless wars allowed them to advance their boundaries deep into Poland, initiating the first partition. Some dissenting nobles asked Catherine II to help them, leading Russia to invade and occupy Warsaw and resulting in the second partition. A rebellion against the Russians, led by Kościuszko, valiantly fought the superior army but eventually succumbed. The Polish nation disappeared.

         The occupiers dismantled the language, institutions, and culture of the country. Prussia and Austria Germanized their lands, while the Russians worked to incorporate their portion into their empire. When Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw, the Poles joined his cause and his invasion of Russia. The Congress of Vienna considered reestablishing Poland but did not. A rebellion against the Russians in 1830 failed. Throughout the 19th century, the seeds of independence rested in people’s hearts as Russia crushed the language and made Poland a portion of its empire. Thus ends this century-old book, without reaching the painful chapters of the 20th century.

The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair, Dicker - B, Inc.

         Marcus is a successful NYC author who is struggling with writer’s block and unable to start his second book. With his agent and publisher pushing him, he heads to a seaside town in New Hampshire, where his college mentor and good friend Harry resides. Harry talks to him about the book that propelled him to fame 33 years ago. The book had been inspired by a teenage girl he had fallen deeply in love with, and who was going to run away with him. Nola disappeared and was never seen again after the day they were to depart. Nola’s remains are found on Harry’s property, and he is arrested for first-degree murder. Believing in Harry’s innocence, Marcus starts to investigate. When I can sort out who done it in a whodunit on page 184 of 636, I figure it’s not worth the effort to finish.

The Winter Warriors, Norek - B++

         This is a novel about the 100-day Winter War of 1939–40. A key character is Simo Häyhä, a Finnish country boy who won a nationwide contest as the best marksman in the country and went on to become the greatest sniper of the war. In the fall of 1939, Finland called up all the men in the Civic Guard. Village men were kept in the same unit, and Simo and his neighbors were assigned to the 6th Company near the border. The Russians invaded on November 30 on a broad front along the length of the border. Snow fell that first day as the Finns burned everything and slowly retreated. Simo’s unit acted as a rearguard, and in his first action he shot five officers in five seconds. As his unit marauded around the slow-moving, ill-equipped, and inadequately dressed invaders, he killed daily and became known as the White Death. The 6th Company successfully held off a much larger attacking force. The Russians were so enraged by the success of the White Death that they set a trap for him, with six mortars and five anti-tank weapons zeroing in on him in a single day. Miraculously, he escaped. He was circulated around the front whenever his services were required. At month’s end, his best friend was killed, and revenge became Simo’s only objective. The next day he got the Russian sniper—a 490-meter shot without a scope.

         Indeed, the Red Army had been totally unable, after five weeks of war, to advance against the Finns. They were humiliated, and rumors began to surface at home. Stalin began to negotiate, and put Timoshenko in charge. He reorganized the army and, in mid-February, took a massive gamble. He sent an army across the frozen Gulf of Finland, 120 kilometers to the Finnish side. They fought on the ice for a week, during which 12,000 died, slightly more Russians than Finns. Across the entire front, the Russians kept throwing wave after wave of men into the maw of battle. The negotiations offered Finland the same terms as before the invasion, including Finland giving up land on its eastern border. On March 6, a Russian sniper hit Simo and blew off most of his jaw. His body was tossed on a sled with the dead until hours later someone saw him twitch. He was rushed by sled to the rear. A surgeon miraculously put him back together, but he was disfigured for life. On March 9, Finland signed an armistice, forfeiting ten percent of its land to the invaders. The Red Army had advanced fifteen kilometers. An officer observed, “All we’ve done is take enough territory from them to bury our dead in.” When Simo awoke, he learned that he could not speak, and that his farm was lost to the Russians.

         The Red Army had lost 400,000 men, the Finns 70,000. The Finns, though, had created a nation. As Hitler watched the wretched performance of the Russians, he had no hesitation about attacking the following year. Simo underwent twenty-six operations and recovered his ability to speak. He retired to a farm near the border and was consistently honored throughout the nation. He lived to be ninety-six, and just before he died he released a memoir he had written shortly after the war. Whenever asked about all those he killed, he responded that if they hadn’t done what they did, there would be no Finland.

        This is an absolutely great book. A fascinating aspect is the insight into the thought processes—the slowing of the breath, the focus, the emotional detachment, and the light touch on the trigger—required of a successful sniper. Much of what he did was accomplished while enduring temperatures as low −50°C. The obvious comparison to the Russian failure eight decades later is striking. Their disillusioned, poorly led and trained, often alcohol-fueled, indifferent warriors achieved fifteen kilometers in one hundred days. Today, they have failed to reach many of their objectives in a war fought longer than World War II. As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

The Darkest Winter, Lucarelli - B

         This novel is set in Bologna over the winter of 1944–45. Because both the Allies and the Germans had declared it an exclusion zone, there were no troops there, and the Allies refrained from bombing it. Consequently, it was filled with 600,000 refugees.

         Commissario DeLuca has been assigned to the Political Division, although for most of his career he has been a homicide investigator. A few days after examining a naked corpse, he is summoned by the SS, told that the deceased was an SS officer, and tasked with finding the killer. He is told that if he can't find the killer, ten hostages will be shot. That same morning, the local prefect asks him to look into a different murder, and a fellow citizen, likely in the Resistance, asks him to take on a third case. Just about everyone in Bologna is freezing cold, half-starved, and all of them consistently lie to DeLuca. The Germans say little and are perennially dismissive of the Italians. The Italians are fed up with the war and don’t trust a soul. The city is the height of despair, hoping only to survive until spring. DeLuca navigates through treachery and slowly strings together the answers. This is a very good procedural, and more importantly, a superb depiction of a community and a people at the end of their rope.

Gods Of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, And The Birth Of The Modern City - 1986-1990, Mahler - B+

           The late 1980s were “the most convulsive and consequential years in the modern history of New York.” The city “had completely unraveled, besieged by crack, crime, AIDS, homelessness, and political scandals.” New York had been experiencing tumultuous times. Small manufacturers and their jobs had left the city in the 1960s. In the following decade, forty-five Fortune 500 companies and a million people left New York. But the 1980s started off positively as Wall Street settled down, prospered, and boomed. People and immigrants were coming back. However, the rising tide did not float the outer boroughs or the Black and brown communities, where poverty and violence were increasing. Arriving on the scene were the “crisis opportunists” who helped put the city back on track, but who also contributed to a more divided New York, one in which the rich got immeasurably richer while the middle and lower classes stagnated.

         1986 began with Ed Koch’s third inauguration. The city was better financially and socially than when he became mayor, but the cuts in services were starting to wear. Deinstitutionalization by the state of mental health facilities put more poor people on the streets, at a time when Koch was allowing developers to close the city’s SROs. Koch came under fire when the SDNY’s Rudolf Giuliani began investigating a parking payment scandal in Queens and soon uncovered massive amounts of fraud throughout city government. The AIDS crisis kept expanding, and crack cocaine flooded the city. Notwithstanding Koch’s appointment of a Black police commissioner, there was a spate of white cops murdering Black New Yorkers. The year closed with the city and its mayor “shaken.”

         1987 offered little improvement. The AIDS epidemic accelerated, and the gay community damned Koch for his silence on his own sexuality and his failure to commit to helping. Racial tensions worsened as a jury acquitted Bernard Goetz, the subway vigilante who had killed one and injured three Black youths with a pistol. The city was calm over the summer but faced a tax crisis after Black Monday in October saw the largest drop in the history of U.S. markets. When a Queens jury convicted the men behind the Howard Beach assaults of manslaughter, not murder, Al Sharpton led “the largest, most disruptive civil rights action in New York’s modern history.”

          1988 opened with Al Sharpton relentlessly accusing just about everyone in city and state government of extreme racism for not accepting Tawana Brawley’s phony kidnapping and rape narrative. He propelled himself to national prominence with his outlandish behavior and accusations. AIDS, crack, and homelessness continued to haunt Koch and the city. Nonetheless, at his annual year-end press conference, Koch told the city he would be running for a fourth term.

          1989 saw the city’s jails and courts overwhelmed on the heels of the most violent year in New York’s history. Then, in April, the Central Park jogger case became a national headline. A successful, Ivy League–educated white woman was raped and beaten senseless in the park, and five Black teens were arrested. In the midst of a summer featuring Do the Right Thing, the mayoral primary pitted Koch against David Dinkins. In the final weeks, a white gang murdered a Black teen in Bensonhurst. In the September vote, Dinkins prevailed. In the closest race in eighty years, Dinkins edged out Giuliani. David Dinkins inherited a city in trouble.

          Dinkins was as unlucky as Koch, as the city continued its downward spiral, and he lost to Giuliani, who ran on a law-and-order platform appealing to New York’s white ethnics. New York City prospered in the 21st century, but “the great working-class city was gone, and so was any realistic expectation that it might ever be bound by a single civic culture.” I’m not sure the author connected the dots between the late eighties and today’s New York, and certainly never points out what the opportunists accomplished, but it is nonetheless an intriguing read.

This Here Is Love, Perry - B+

 

         This astounding novel begins in Tidewater Virginia in the final decade of the seventeenth century. It is about freed Blacks, slaves, enslavers, and indentured whites. Of course, it is mostly, and brilliantly, an exposition of the unimaginable pain and suffering inflicted upon the Africans. From their capture, passage, and sale; to endless mistreatment, beatings, rapes, and indignity piled on top of indignity; to seeing their children sold, Africans suffered every minute of every day. The indentured whites at least had hope for a future, but they too were treated only marginally better than the animals in the pen. The primary goal of the enslaved was to seek freedom and hope that they or their children could find it. The lead characters—Andrew and Phoebe Carrabus, their son David, Bless, and even the indentured white boy turned slaver, Jack—find love and a bit of freedom in a tortured world. An excellent read.

History Lessons, Wallbrook - B +

                         This is a totally fascinating novel about a Black woman, a first-year professor at a prestigious but fictional university that sounds like an Ivy, or near Ivy. Daphne Ouverture is the daughter of a Haitian man and a woman from the Ivory Coast. Immigrant mothers are often depicted as serious taskmasters, with their daughters as their most important project, and that is the case here. Daphne is an expert on the lives of 18th- and 19th-century Black women in France and its empire. Her focus is both their treatment and their depiction in art and literature. When an aspiring, hero-in-the-making professor is murdered while texting her in French, she is inadvertently caught up in a whirlwind. As a historian seeking out the truth, Daphne begins to look into the matter, and she herself is attacked twice by someone searching for it. She devotes more and more thought to sleuthing and ultimately figures it out just as two bad guys are arrested while trying to recover whatever they think she has. They, along with the man who hired them, are arrested. Daphne suspects there is more to the story, however, because the decedent was engaged to a stunning, wealthy local woman while still having affairs with undergraduates, raping the unwilling, and stalking Daphne. Daphne’s assorted skills can strain credulity at times, but they do lead her to solutions.

                         Of course, this is a fun read with a solid storyline. The most intriguing aspects are the author’s insights into being a highly educated Black woman in a white world, her empathy for the young and abused, and her witty takedown of some of academia’s excesses.

Hollow Spaces, Suthammanont - B+

          Thirty years after their father was acquitted of murder, Brennan and Hunter sit in their mother’s apartment as she slowly dies. Brennan never believed he did it, but her brother and mother both did. Eventually, their mother tells them that she now believes he didn’t do it. Sister and brother decide to see if they can solve the case. Fascinatingly, this is a story about pursuing their father’s life as well as exploring the dynamics of siblings who have never gotten along. It’s love, hate, and disagreement—the things that bind families forever. And the author is brilliant at assessing families, spouses, lovers, relationships, partners, guilt, and infidelity—truly exceptional. As they pursue the matter and talk to people, they are threatened. There are phone calls and physical warnings. The man who prosecuted their father is now running for Manhattan DA. Nonetheless, they soldier on. They lose their mother, but come to a satisfying resolution. Simply said, this is really good.

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution, A Story Of Hubris, Delusion And Catastrophic Miscalculation, Anderson - A*

          The Shah visited Jimmy Carter in November 1977 and had a productive, successful two-day visit. Earlier in the year, the CIA had estimated that the Shah was positioned to control the country for another decade. A year later, opposition overwhelmed the country, and he fled Iran in early 1979. The Iranian Revolution “has been profoundly significant and is one of the most important political developments of the modern age.” In the almost half century since, it has led the West, particularly the U.S., to be at odds with the Muslim world; it has dominated Middle East politics; it contributed to the disastrous 1983 deployment of U.S. Marines to Beirut; encouraged the U.S. embrace of Saddam Hussein; and was a factor in America’s endless wars in the region.

         The irony of the revolution is that it was unanticipated, spontaneous, and totally unprepared for. No one, including the revolutionaries, thought that it would succeed. This book focuses on the handful of people whose decisions were decisive: Reza Pahlavi, Jimmy Carter, Ruhollah Khomeini, and the three men’s limited cohorts of advisers.

        Pahlavi came to power in 1941. He twice stopped opponents from dethroning him. In 1953, the CIA helped him recover his throne after a coup. A decade later, the imposition of martial law ended Khomeini’s first challenge. When the 1970s began, the Shah’s closest friend and adviser, Asadollah Alam, sensed that the reign was under stress. The disparity of wealth was extreme, corruption endemic, and the conservative clergy opposed to all modernization efforts. Alam frequently, but unsuccessfully, tried to encourage the Shah to engage with and listen to the people, and to provide a limited right to vote.

        Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Shah achieved some of his longest-held goals. He managed his relationship with the U.S. to the point where Iran was free to purchase any and all U.S. weapons systems, and he ended six decades of humiliation and exploitation by nationalizing the oil industry. Working with the Saudis in 1973, the Shah managed a quintupling of the price of oil. When the money poured in, he spent it immediately on infrastructure and weapons from the U.S. Iran’s military became the fifth largest in the world and the consumer of half of America’s overseas arms sales. Americans poured in by the thousands to sell products and manage businesses. As more and more posters of the Shah appeared, he became completely isolated, listening to and seeing only a handful of people.

       The vast spending program in a pre-industrial society caused massive disruptions to the electrical grid and transport system, soaring housing costs, hyperinflation, and a collapse of the agricultural base. “Hand in hand with all this was colossal corruption and staggering waste.” With the regime extremely repressive, the Shah was ignorant of the turmoil building among the people. In late 1976, the Saudis rejected an OPEC price increase and dramatically increased production. Iran’s economy stalled immediately. An old hand at the visa office noticed that his office was flooded with people looking to leave and who had already sent their money to America. When his report was inadvertently sent to Washington and raised questions, Ambassador Sullivan screamed at him and blackballed his career. The U.S. was so out of touch with Iran’s reality that while making a New Year’s Eve speech on the last day of 1977 at a state dinner in Tehran, Carter said, “Because of the great leadership of the Shah, Iran is an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world.”

       On two occasions, the regime threw Khomeini a lifeline without which he could not have succeeded in overthrowing the Shah. The first was in 1964, when he was exiled rather than imprisoned. This allowed him to launch from Iraq and later Paris a consistent series of attacks on the “American Shah.” Although he was not widely followed, he maintained contact with the clergy. In the first week of 1978, the regime’s newspaper published an unnecessary, scurrilous, and slanderous attack on Khomeini that had a butterfly effect. It began with riots in Qom and ended the Shah’s reign. The regime bestowed on Khomeini a prominence he had long sought, and the deaths during the riots provided the “disparate religious opposition a unifying cry.” After the initial riots, the country returned to normal. Only the most insightful American consuls outside Tehran saw massive trouble coming. One ally of both the U.S. and Iran, Israel, said it was already planning for the post-Shah era.

        At the end of August, in the oil town of Abadan, arson at a cinema killed 400 people. Although the fire was as swift as it was deadly, the delayed arrival of the fire department and the failure of nearby hydrants incensed the populace. In the following days, the government was silent and no one attended the funerals. History would show that the arsonists were Khomeini’s men, but a whispering campaign against the regime began immediately. A few days later, Khomeini joined the finger-pointing. At this point, the Shah replaced his prime minister with a truly incompetent and corrupt politician.

        During nationwide peaceful marches on a Muslim day of mourning, the government became alarmed because the marches were spontaneous, and the Shah declared martial law. The following day, September 8, marchers from the Tehran slums walked toward the city center and were fired upon by the authorities. Hundreds were killed on “Black Friday.” A week later, an earthquake killed 12,000 people in an obscure city far from the capital. A strike by oil workers followed. The hue and cry for revolution grew louder, and neither the Shah nor Khomeini was interested in finding middle ground. By November, the streets of Tehran were a battlefield. The Shah handed the government to the military and appointed a general as prime minister. Khomeini called for a nationwide strike, but his plea was ignored. Nonetheless, in December the people took to the streets peacefully.

        In Washington, the few men who understood Iran knew that the Shah could not survive, and slowly the idea caught on. The Ayatollah, in Paris, called for revolution and the abdication of the Shah. In Tehran, the vast American and European expatriate communities began to pull up stakes and leave. In the new year, the Shah announced he would take an extended vacation as he named a moderate prime minister who tried to form a coalition government. On the 16th, he and his wife left Iran forever.

       Throughout the crisis, the U.S. showed an appalling, if not woefully ignorant, inability to understand virtually anything about Iran’s culture, history, or religion. Only one person in Tehran and one in Washington spoke Farsi. Iran shared a border with the USSR, compelling Washington to view every issue through the lens of the Cold War. Fear of a communist revolution was always Washington’s top priority. Ironically, everyone in Iran knew that a conservative Muslim population would never partner with atheist Reds. In Washington’s eyes, Iran was also the Pentagon’s largest purchaser, paying cash for half of all U.S. weapons sales abroad. When the first attempt to forge a future in Tehran began, two different parts of the U.S. government approached the same Iranian figures with opposing instructions. It was not America’s finest performance.

       The Ayatollah returned to Tehran on February 1. He defiantly announced a new prime minister and rejected the U.S. and the army. A few weeks later, the army declared its neutrality in the “current political dispute.” The U.S. embassy cabled Washington that it had begun destroying classified materials. On February 14, a mob stormed the U.S. embassy and shot up the ambassador’s residence. The new regime began executing leaders of the old government and the army. Sixty-five hundred of the U.S.’s 7,000 residents left for home. When the U.S. Senate criticized the mounting executions, 100,000 people marched around the embassy.

       The Shah wandered from Egypt to Morocco to the Bahamas and Mexico in the months following his “vacation.” In the fall, the U.S. was advised of a tightly held five-year-old secret: the Shah was dying of cancer. His U.S. allies, particularly David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, lobbied to allow him to enter America. As pressure mounted on Carter, he asked his staff, “What are you guys going to advise me to do if they overrun our embassy and take our people hostage?” On October 23, the Shah arrived in New York for treatment. A week later, after the publication of a photo from Algeria showing the Iranian prime minister shaking hands with Zbigniew Brezhnev, the embassy in Tehran was attacked on November 4. Khomeini praised the attackers. Endless negotiations followed until the U.S. attempted a rescue mission that failed so dramatically it worsened matters. The Shah’s death in Cairo in the summer of 1980 changed nothing. The Ayatollah announced that the Great Satan must continue to be confronted. The hostages were freed on January 20, 1981.

        Senior members of Reagan’s campaign team met with Iranians that summer, and many believe that, like Nixon’s men in 1968, they told the enemy to wait for a better deal. Unlike 1968, there has been no confirmation of the misdeed. To some extent, the revolution could only have happened in the waning days of the analog era. No one in the U.S. had seen translations of the Ayatollah’s endless and virulent screeds. We simply did not know who we were dealing with. Embassy communications to Washington consisted of brief cables and lengthy typewritten memos sent in diplomatic pouches, often telling State what it wanted to hear. Again, very few in Washington understood what was happening.

       The Shah, derided for the brutality of his secret police, was probably responsible for only about 100 executions in his final decade. At least 8,000 were executed in the Ayatollah’s early years. The consequences of the revolution have been nearly 50 years of repression at home, the spewing of hatred abroad, and the ongoing export of the revolution to Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. Vehement anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli propaganda has harmed Jews and Israelis worldwide. In the end, however, it was primarily the indecisiveness, isolation, insecurity, and delusional beliefs of the King of Kings—the Shahanshah, the Light of the Aryans, the Shadow of God—that condemned himself, his family, his country, and much of the world to the disasters that followed. “The Iranian Revolution helped legitimize a current of religious zealotry and violence that is now likely to bubble up from the earth almost anywhere and at any time.”