The Smartest Kids In The World, Ripley - B +

                                               This book has received a vast amount of mainstream attention.  The fact that it is a topic I doubt I've ever read a word about yet it crossed my radar is proof enough. I've always thought that the key to a successful childhood education is parents who insisted on effort, achievement and accountability. Results would be even better in a school system that focuses on the same.  I've also believed that the great detractor from success in America is distraction - tv for most of my life and now, video games and social media.  The author sets out to find the answer to the question of why so many countries do better on international testing than the US.  Her methodology is fascinating: she analyzes the experiences of American exchange students in S. Korea, Finland and Poland. Each country is more successful than the US for similar, but different, reasons.  The South Koreans school day is  twice as long as the rest of the world's.  After the high school day is over, just about everyone goes to the cram schools that teach preparation for a nationwide test. Korean kids go to these 'hagwons' until 10:pm. The system works, but everyone deplores its intensity and emotional drain on all concerned. As for the Poles, they jump started their entry into the free world by decentralizing, educating their teachers, and emphasizing that school was critical to survive in a post-communist Europe. It is the Finns, though, that the author holds up as the best. The Finns concluded that the way to improve their country's prospects was to hire the best and the brightest to teach their children. It is as hard for a Finn to enter one of their teacher prep colleges as it is for an American to enter an Ivy League school. Respect for the profession is high and the result is one of the best educated populaces in the world. Ripley sums up by emphasizing rigor - you must work, because it's important. There must be accountability, and she takes a well-deserved shot at America's focus on children's self-esteem that leads to social promotions and a refusal to let 'Johnny' know there are consequences to indifferent effort and results.  She points out that in the adult world there are unending consequences to middling performances.  As the oldest child of a woman who today would be called a 'Tiger Mom', notwithstanding the fact she was no more Asian than she was a Yale Law professor, I am thankful for being held accountable for my actions. Good parenting knows no time, racial, or economic limits.  I am certain that the post-war NYC Catholic school system was not terribly different than the day to day life of all of my Jewish friends in NYC's public schools. I would further surmise that the public school lives of my Protestant friends in rural Texas or Indiana also emphasized rigor, accountability, and responsibility.  I suspect today's educators probably aren't interested in turning the clock back 50 years, but there might be some lessons to be learned there.

Hour of the Cat, Quinn - B

                                               This a very good historical novel and first in a trilogy about a WWI and NYPD vet who turns to private investigations as a career move in the early 1930's.  The year is now 1938 and the story is set in NYC and Berlin. The backstory is eugenics, the pseudo-science of racial defects, as practiced in America and Nazi Germany.  Forgotten by most in the US, we once led the world in the incarceration and sterilization of defective people, such as epileptics, the retarded, and mentally deficient. In a patchwork quilt of different state rules and protocols, the medical profession, with the approval of a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case, went about their business with funding from the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations.  Of course, the Germans took matters well beyond sterilization and into mass murder. What makes this novel fascinating is the author's breadth of knowledge about pre-war New York.  He can describe streets, locales, and neighborhoods with astounding detail and color. He introduces equally interesting characters.  His hero, Fintan Dunne, is an Irish veteran of the famous 69th Regiment of Joyce Kilmer, Father Duffy, and Medal of Honor winner, Col. William Donovan. I had only known of Donovan as the WWII mastermind of the OSS. I did not know about his rise from blue collar Buffalo, his ascendancy to the top of the Wall Street legal profession, or his unsuccessful run for Governor in 1932.  The Berlin portion of the story is a bit less interesting, as it details the Nazi move towards war and the rivalry between Gen. Heydrich and Adm. Canaris.  I suspect  that it will be the OSS where we find Donovan and  Dunne in the next two books.

The Birth of the West, Collins - B

                                               This is the story of how different  individuals and institutions came together a little over a thousand years ago to lay the foundation of the culture we now live in. 'Rome, Germany, France and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century' is the book's subtitle.  From a lawless dark age, there emerged stability and a well-ordered world, partially thanks to the conversion to Latin Christianity of Poland, Hungary, northern Germany and particularly the Vikings. Rome itself was emblematic of conditions in the west. While Byzantium grew and the Muslims spread their religion and knowledge around the Mediterranean, the city's population had dropped to 30,000 from over a million during the 1st century A.D. Rome was a perfect storm of failed governance involving the assassination and kidnapping of Popes and, in one instance, the exhumation of a Papal predecessor who had been dead for almost a year, dressing him up, and remonstrating against his performance. The center of the Christian world was a ghetto ruled over by local mobs. The Papal States were virtually defenseless and as late as 846, Saracens raided the eternal city.  A generation  later, the Vikings besieged a Paris of 3,000 inhabitants for eleven months.  In what had been Charlemagne's Empire, stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the Elbe, there was now chaos, war and total dysfunction. His heirs kept further subdividing his empire, which itself had no particular geographic, linguistic or administrative coherence.  The deaths of the last Carolingians opened up opportunities for men of talent, and Otto I of the Saxons and Hugh Capet in France stepped to the fore.   Otto I was crowned Holy Roman Emperor after he had brought a modicum of peace and stability to the eastern lands of Charlemagne's former empire.  He also helped secure portions of southern Italy from the Byzantines when his son and successor, Otto II, married Theophano, the Emperor's niece.  The son's peaceful succession  established a pattern and set in place an Empire (neither Holy nor Roman according to Voltaire) that lasted over 800 years.  Otto III appointed Pope Sylvester II, a reformer who had a very positive effect on the Church. He abolished simony, nepotism, clerical marriage, encouraged monastic reform, established new monastic orders,  and reformed the episcopacy throughout the continent.  "We have now come full circle. We began with the parochialism of Rome and the Papal State. Now we have come to the beginning of the massive reform of the papacy that the German emperors from Otto I onward had called for and struggled to achieve for one hundred years.  That reform was to make the papacy the greatest power in Europe after a gargantuan struggle with the very empire that had initially reformed it.  What is important here is that by 1050 the chaos of the late ninth and early tenth centuries has been overcome and a new polity had emerged, the German Reich.  Europe had been born, but it still needed a reformed church and papacy.   And the reform of the papacy led, in turn, to a struggle to define the politics of the West and still influence our ideas on the separation of church and state."    I do not know enough about the era to know if the author makes his case.  But,this book is very well written and has a wealth of information about the era for those so inclined.
                                                       

Lost Girls, Kolker - B

                                              The subtitle of this true crime book is 'An Unsolved American Mystery'.  It is the heart breaking story of the five Craigslist prostitutes whose corpses were found near Gilgo Beach on Long Island's south shore barrier island in 2010.  The book is in two halves: the first tells the women's  backstories; the second details the oft-criticized performance of the Suffolk County police and the bickering among the highly dysfunctional families that created these poor young women.  Their five stories are obviously different, but have so much in common that the NYTimes reviewer said, "..their histories bleed together in one long chronicle of childhood abuse, neglect and sorry choices".  Poverty, ignorance and limited choices that lead to teenage mothers having children out of wedlock is the repeated theme. Jobs at MacDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, call-centers and cleaning jobs at night along with truly useless men leads to a repetitive circle of despondency and desperation.  Eventually all of them leave their hometowns in Maine, N.C., Buffalo, Connecticut and upstate N.Y.  Ironically, the success of the police departments in and around metropolitan NYC in shutting down 'escort services' put these girls on the street and eventually onto the internet, where they could be self-employed and not need to share with their pimps.  The downside of what is known as an 'outcall' is that you have no protection and no chance to assess the john.  Exactly how they met their end and who the killer is is, as the subtitle says, unsolved.  The appalling media frenzy, epitomized by Nancy Grace and her ilk, is painful to read about. The only thing worse is the telling of how the families, one mother in particular, adopted their new roles of public grievers seeking out the spotlight and someone to sue or blame.  Ever since 'In Cold Blood' scared me decades ago, I've avoided true crime. Not a bad idea.

The Founding Conservatives, Lefer - C+

                                               Our, particularly my, tendency to think of the Founders as all on the same page until the contretemps around the Constitutional Convention and Federalist Papers and not really bi-partisan until after Washington, is a function of what the author calls the consensus school of post-WW2 historiography.   They really weren't monolithic in anything, not even their desire for freedom from Great Britain. The author's two primary points are that the conservatives saved the revolution from leftist extremism, and that they firmly planted the seeds of free market capitalism in US soil. The two most prominent conservatives were John Dickinson and Robert Morris. Dickinson was a successful lawyer,  educated in England, and was the author of 'Letters From A Farmer'.   His 'Letters' , which spoke eloquently for American freedom in the early 70's, made him one of the most famous men in the colonies and the  empire.  He penned the First Continental Congress's petition to George III in 1774.  Morris was a  skilled merchant who in 1775 was able to smuggle two-and-a-half tons of gunpowder into America and provide Washington with desperately needed supplies.  His success led to a dominant role as the member of the Continental Congress with significant executive authority over matters of business, finance, procurement, and armaments. Neither was overly enthused, though, about pushing for independence, and Dickinson didn't even sigh the Declaration. Morris did.  Both were members of the financial elite and were uncomfortable with the radicalism of Sam Adams, his cousin John, and the the rebellious Virginians.  Throughout the war years, there was endless political controversy about how to pay for the war, how to manage  scarce resources, whether to provide pensions for the officers, and who and what to tax.  Dickinson drafted the Articles of Confederation. His draft  initially provided for a strong central government, but a more state-centric solution prevailed.  Morris continued his financial and organizational wizardry,  enabling the Continental Army to stay in the field until Yorktown.  Both men were participants in the Constitutional Convention, where Dickinson played a constructive, active role.  Proponents of tradition, structure, the rule of law, and the importance of enterprise, they certainly were deserving of the characterization "conservative revolutionaries".  I found this book enlightening, as I knew very little about the internecine politics of the war years.  But at times, it felt as if the author struggled to fit facts into his thesis and find modern comparisons.

Saints of the Shadow Bible, Rankin - C+

                                               The shadow bible was a very old, leather-bound copy of 'Scots Criminal Law' that the Saints swore allegiance to over thirty years ago.   However, they reserved the right to determine which rules of the criminal justice system they adhered to.  If a particular bad guy had an unfortunate accident, perhaps rectifying a miscarriage of justice in the more rule-bound courts, well, who's to say that's wrong. At this stage of the game, all of the old crew is retired, with the exception of John Rebus, who has been readmitted to the force. Rebus is trying to keep his nose clean in order to stretch out a few more years on the job that constitutes his life, when the activities of his old gang come up for reconsideration.  The impetus is the overturning, by an ambitious minister, of the double jeopardy rule in Scotland.  Tied into the ancient case to which a new corpse is added are the two sides of the upcoming referendum on Scottish disunion, along with some drug dealing, a car accident and a revenge killing.  Notwithstanding his advanced age, continued smoking and drinking, and conflicted loyalties, Rebus doggedly pursues all the matters to their logical conclusions.

Beatles v. Stones, McMillian - B

                                                 "The Beatles want to hold your hand, but the Stones want to burn down your town." - Tom Wolfe.  That said, the early Beatles leaned more toward thuggery than the Stones. They came from tough working class backgrounds,  lived in council estates, were 'Scousers' from Liverpool, and spent two and a half years drinking, popping pills, and being quite rowdy on the Reeperbahn, in the rough and tumble port city of Hamburg.  Mick, Keith,  and Brian Jones were the sons of middle class families and lived their entire lives in the much more sophisticated capital city of London. Mick did well enough that he was admitted to the prestigious London School of Economics. It was their respective managers who molded each groups public image. Brian Epstein insisted the Beatles clean up their act.  The Stones adopted their somewhat raunchier approach naturally and let Andrew Loog Oldham tout it.  The British tabloids played up a rivalry that both groups refused to articulate; indeed, they were friends, spent a lot of time together, shared music and travelled in the same circles. They both evolved into more sophisticated musicians as time went on. But, "in the end" the lads from Liverpool were first: they sold more records, were better songwriters, and edged the Stones in creativity, genius, and popularity.  I submit the Beatles had a greater social/cultural impact, perhaps because I believe the mid-to-late sixties was their era and the Stones owned the more turbulent epilogue. That said, I love both bands, and  in the last decade I saw Paul McCartney's first US tour singing Beatles tunes in decades and the Stones most recent effort - each were awesome, unforgettable and touching. Thank God for the British invasion and this fine brief prelude to 'Tune In'.