A Man Without Breath, Kerr- B-

                                         This is the twelfth book in a series about Bernie Gunther, a Kripo (Kriminalpolizei) detective in Berlin.  Gunther is a standard modern detective - very skilled, a bit cynical and very witty.  Kerr is quite good at historical background and depicting a real sense of time and place.  The magic here is that the setting  is Weimar Germany.  Gunther quits the police in 1933 and acts as a private detective in the Nazi era, but finds himself in uniform when the war starts.  In all of the previous books that I've  read, the big picture is part of the background.  Unfortunately, here Gunther is an actor in a historical event, and I'm afraid this book is just not as good as its predecessors.  Gunther works for the Wehrmacht as an inspector in the War Crimes Bureau.   Yes, the Germans had a group inspecting other nations' war crimes. He winds up in the middle of the two month unearthing of Russian depredations at Katyn.  There are a few interesting plot points involving an NKVD spy in their midst, and a lot of solid information about what was going on in the spring of 1943. But, the story falls apart when Gunther engages in a personal tete-a-tete with, among all possible people, Field Marshall von Kluge and needs to be saved by, unbelievably, Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr.

The War Council, Preston - B+

                                         This book, which is subtitled 'McGeorge Bundy, the NSC and Vietnam', is cited in 'The Sleepwalkers' as an example of intergovernmental power struggles and intrigues. The book is referred to as "a brilliant study of the US entry in to the Vietnam War...showing that while LBJ and JFK were reluctant to wage war.....the NSC narrowed options....until war was inevitable."
                                          I believe the story told in this book is more nuanced than its citation above.  Mac Bundy believed in the US role as maintainer of worldwide institutional structures such as the UN and NATO that would preserve peace and stability. He accepted America's role as the indispensable state that had responsibilities around the world. He was a believer in containment. He was staunchly opposed to the NLF and believed that the US was required to establish and preserve a noncommunist South Vietnam.  He came to Washington in 1961 and worked for a President who wanted to be his own Sec. of State.  JFK picked Dean Rusk, whom the author says would have been a much better Undersecretary, because Kennedy did not want  interference with his ideas, and he knew he could manage Rusk.  JFK believed in  our commitment to South Vietnam, even though State, Walter Lippman, Sen. Mike Mansfield and the editorial board of the New York Times were some of the many voices recommending a policy of neutrality in  southeast Asia.  Standing up to the North, while building up the South was a broadly accepted policy in the Kennedy administration.
                                         War as the only option seems to be what the "Harvards" presented to LBJ.  By the time the fateful decisions on  the road to war were made in 1964 and 1965 the Administration was already operating in a narrow feedback loop consistent with the characterization above.  However, it wasn't just the NSC, as Defense was gung ho from the very beginning.  I'm looking forward to Caro's final book on Johnson, for what I hope is the definitive analysis

Standing In Another Man's Grave, Rankin - B

                                         This is the twentieth novel in the police procedural series about Edinburgh Detective John Rebus.  Rankin has always done a good job filling in with color and background on the city, it's neighborhoods and southern Scotland.  Rebus is a lot like Alan Banks, mentioned earlier this month, only more so.    Banks drinks; Rebus is close to being a drunk.  Banks quit smoking; not Rebus.  Both act on hunches, but Rebus operates way outside of the normal lines of inquiry.  In this book, Rebus is retired, but working as a civilian on cold case files.  He gets an idea about one of the cases that leads him down a road that everyone considers a long shot.  In total defiance of just about every conceivable boss, he gets his man with a bit of extra-legal coaxing. Left open is his application to rejoin the force.

The Hangman's Daughter, Potzsch - C+

                                         This first novel of a series about the Kuisl family of Bavaria proves you can write mysteries about just about anything.  The time is the years immediately after the end of the Thirty Years War (1618-48). The author's ancestors were the designated executioners in their town.  Apparently, the chores included torture and a mastery of the the many means of ending someone else's life.  The Hangman in this instance is a good guy who saves a woman accused of witchcraft and sorcery.  This book  seldom strays from the storyline and provides very little background or information about the era.  The Thirty Years War was fought over religion and the Peace of Westphalia established that a communities form of worship was up to its ruler.  We know Bavaria remained Catholic, but there is no mention of it in this book.

Spillover, Quammen - B

                                         This is the third book I've read in the last two years written by a National Geographic writer.   The first two were actually histories about T.R. and Garfield.  This one is about science and one conclusion I've come to is that NatGeo folks can write. The topic here is zoonosis - the transference of viruses from animals to humans.
                                         It's a scary topic because this transference has led to the Black Death, the 1919 flu pandemic, Hendra, bird flu, Ebola, SARS, Marburg, West Nile fever, Lyme disease and the big one - AIDS.  Science strives to find out who was the reservoir host and when and how the transference was made.  As most of these viruses are in the tropics, the challenge becomes bringing modern medical research to primitive societies, often in the midst of political turmoil.  Unfortunately for the physicians and researchers, their reward is often a grisly painful end.
                                         HIV-1 is the modern catastrophe that has garnered the most attention, as it has killed 30 million and there are another 34 million infected.  The scientists believe it has been around for a very long time and that there have been twelve spillovers.  The modern spillover took place about the year 1908 in southwest Cameroon, almost certainly through blood to blood contact, when a local harvested bushmeat from a chimp.  For the next fifty years, it remained contained in a small population, but started to spread through sexual contact in the late fifties.  It is believed to have left Africa in the sixties when Haitians took over for the expelled Belgian medical community in the Congo.  It came to the US in the seventies through the import of blood plasma from Haiti. The rest is, as they say, history.
                                         The concern in the scientific community is "the next big one".  Scenarios like the movie 'Contagion' is what is feared.  And the consensus expectation is that it will be some sort of avian flu from the Asian continent, thus affirming one of my life conclusions- no Africa or Asia on my bucket list.

The Right Hand Shore, Tilghmam - B+

                                         This superb novel, set on the Eastern shore of Maryland, was a NYTimes Notable Book of 2012.  The author's surname is the name an island in the Chesapeake Bay.  His ancestors were some of the earliest settlers. Thus, he is well equipped to write about a place that is neither black nor white, land nor sea, north nor south.
                                         The story covers three generations of Masons, owners of The Retreat, a plantation with a mansion and thousands of acres of farmland on the Chester River, and the blacks who were once their slaves and later their servants and employees. Before the Civil War, 'Duke' Mason sells most of his slaves south, as he fears having his lands confiscated should there be a war and a punitive peace.  This act haunts his son-in-law and granddaughter, the next two managers of The Retreat. Most of the the black families stay on, as Wyatt Bayly, husband of Duke's  daughter, is a fair man, perceptive businessman and without racial prejudice.  The tension throughout is based on his generosity to his foreman's son, his son's only companion and best friend.  So, when it's time for tutors for Thomas, Randall is included in the two-boy school.  Randall is so talented that Wyatt pays for him to go to college, albeit a Negro school, Howard, in D.C. Randall's sister is beautiful and her relationship with Thomas is the second major plot line.   There is some fabulous background information on the ill-fated quarter century of peach farming on the Shore, as well as the growth of the dairy industry.  The issues between the blacks and whites are not as predictable as you would expect. This is well worth the read.

The Right Hand, Haas - B

                                         Derek Haas co-wrote '3:10 to Yuma' and the tv show Chicago Fire.  He is the creator of a website, popcornfiction.com, which promotes genre short fiction.  I've read his 'Assassins Trilogy.' His books are short thrillers about men with extraordinary interpersonal combat skills.  In this story, his protagonist is an "off the books" CIA operative who takes on the Russian FSB, saves the gorgeous Marika from the FSB bad guys ( four or five times), prevents the assassination of the CIA head of EuroOps  and exposes a 20-year deep cover traitor at Langley. Phew! It's the type of book you enjoy when you need a brief break.

Sweet Tooth, McEwan - I

                                         I generally love McEwan, and I just checked to see and the NYTimes reviewer really liked this.  I wound up scanning the last 2/3rds, as I thought it rather flat.

The Sleepwalkers, Clark - A*

                                         In the introduction to this extraordinary book, which is sub-titled 'How Europe Went To War In 1914', the author cites a historian who said, "it was the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang". Indeed, the seventy-five  years after 1914 saw the calamities of unspeakable war, an absurd peace, revolution and Depression, another war - even more horrid, totalitarianism and Cold War.  As the  war itself was an appalling slaughter of a generation and four years bereft of civilian or military competence, the run-up to it has garnered the attention of generations of historians.  Barbara Tuchman's 'Guns of August', which won a Pulitzer and which I read as a high school freshman fifty years ago, was my introduction to both grown-up history and this topic.  Somewhere along the way, either through the standard teaching of American history or after reading a biography of the oddly flamboyant, irksome Kaiser, I came to the popular conclusion that it really was the fault of the Germans.  Although Clark says there is no smoking gun and  "the outbreak of the war was a tragedy, not a crime", he tells a tale where there are quite a few culprits queuing up in front of the Germans.
                                       The book is detailed and complex.  There is much more here than Sarajevo, the dual alliance, the triple entente, mobilization and war. There are many moving parts and the author keeps coming back to the imperial rivalry between Russia and England.  The Russians had been expanding for centuries; they were pushing in the Far East, where England had allied with Japan, as a counter-balance.  The Great Game threatened English hegemony on the Indian sub-continent; Russia threatened English interests in the Mid-East by pushing into Persia. Most importantly, the Russians wanted Constantinople, an assured passage through the Bosporus and access to the Mediterranean, a threat to the English imperial lifeline, the Suez Canal.                                                    
                                       The decay of the Ottoman Empire is the source of immeasurable tension.  Its slow-motion collapse, which led to the creation of  Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia in the 19th century,  is the reason for the first two Balkan Wars, wherein the above four countries fight the Turks and then everyone turns on Bulgaria, because they won too much territory.  Toss in the Italians invading Libya, the creation of Albania, Serb ambitions for all of Serbdom and Montenegrin nationalism and you have an incendiary mess in and around the Balkans.  Why anyone would fight for these craggy mountainous hellholes is beyond me. As Bismarck said "they weren't worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier".
                                       Serbia comes off as a backward, impoverished, ignorant, violent country of thugs with a chip on its shoulder and ambitions well above its skill level.  There is a great deal of material on how and why the Russians back their "little brothers", as they were wont to tab their fellow Slav coreligionists. It is a policy rather than a strategy and one that makes no sense to the author. The Serbian government knew about the plans of the Black Hand and the Russians had actually contributed funding.  The assassinations on  June 28th created righteous indignation in Vienna.  The Serbs were happy about what happened and did nothing to appease Austrian concerns or help investigate the murders. The Russians took the position that the Serbs had nothing to do with it and viewed it as an internal Austrian matter.  The Austrians wished for a punitive war, but were incapable of quickly launching one and were waiting for some sort of approval from Berlin.
                                      The Treaty system was not as black and white as it is perhaps often presented. Indeed the so called Triple-Entente was scheduled to lapse the following year. Britain had a tremendous amount of flexibility in its accord to aid France and had no direct obligation to Russia. The Brits had actually been exploring options with the Germans. Germany and Austria did not have a coordinated policy either before the assassinations  or in July. No one expected that the events at Sarajevo would trigger a continental war. A month later, Serbia rejected the Austrian ultimatum because the Tsar and his ministers told them to. The French President, an ardent Germanophobe, who happened to be in St. Petersburg, signaled his assent to war. Russia wanted a go at Austria, felt confident and started a partial mobilization on July 25. On the 28th, Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized on the 30th, a day late, because Nicky got cold feet after a telegram from Willy. Germany declared war on the 1st, but Wilhelm held his troops at the border, while he tried to get in touch with George V. The British Cabinet only had a minority ready to vote to fight, but somehow the desire to tether themselves to the Russians, contain Germany and defer the implementation of recently approved Irish Home Rule led to an August 4th declaration.  What a mess!

Watching the Dark, Robinson - B+

                                         This is the latest in the series about DCI Alan Banks, set in the fictional town of Eastvale in Yorkshire, in the English midlands.  I suspect I've read most, if not all, of the books and must confess that he is my favorite English detective.  Banks is 62 at this stage and, as Robinson has aged him as the books have progressed since 1987, one must assume that retirement cannot be too far off. I believe that what I like most about him is that he is a decent guy, is very, very good at what he does, generates loyalty amongst his troops by simply being forthright and honest with them, and usually doesn't get along with his immediate superior, who always seems to be more interested in statistics than good policing.
                                         This story involves three homicides and opens with a cop being shot with an iron bolt from a crossbow.  Banks is very good with popular culture, particularly music, but this time shows his facility with  film. Someone asks about a crossbow death in one of the Bond movies and he immediately supplies the answer - 'For Your eyes Only'.  An Estonian journalist is next and Banks concludes the tie-in is a missing persons case that he worked on six years ago and travelled to Tallinn to investigate.  Banks is correct and while he in in Tallinn wrapping up most of the issues, his deputy at home, Annie Cabbot, solves the rest of the case.
                                         The main thing that makes a series like this work is the lead character; his idiosyncrasies, methods, inadequacies, but mostly his charm.  The other part is the author's ability to paint a  picture of what's going on in a particular place and time.  This one is filled with all sorts of information about cross-border migration in the EU.

The Idea Factory, Gertner - B--

                                         Perhaps the fault lies somewhere between my indifference to science and the author's presentation. But somehow, this story of Bell Labs, the most formidable commingling of science and business in the 20th century, is flat-out boring. That is not easy to do considering that the men of Bell Labs invented the vacuum tube, the transistor (from early germanium to silicon wafers), Unix computer language, Telstar (the first US communications satellite), binary digitization of information, as well as wireless and cellular telephony.  They were co-pioneers in the development of radar, sonar and lasers; huge contributors to national defense and along the way designed and built a national, smoothly functioning phone system that itself was filled with technological marvels. However, like all good things, Bell Labs pretty much fell apart when it lost its mission, upon the break-up of the phone company.