The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio To Win The Presidency, Tobin - B +

                                              The author posits that FDR may have become President, but would not be the President he became, were it not for his polio.  He acquired the disease in 1921 at the age of 39.  Just about everyone was exposed to the polio virus in that era, and it was a very long shot to have the misfortune to be crippled by it. (The author prefers to use 'crippled' as it was the usage of the time.) Roosevelt was very, very ill. Hospitalized for months, he could not even sit up, his physician was afraid he was losing arm and shoulder strength, that matters were continuing to deteriorate, and that he could spend the rest of his life on his back in bed.  FDR was famous for never letting anyone know what he was thinking about anything and he never shared his feelings about his illness.   While everyone worried, he maintained his steadfast optimism and good cheer, and it is assumed, he determined to not let polio define him.  He would continue to pursue the Presidency. I've never given any thought to the rehabilitative effort that he, his family, his doctor and his nurses put into getting him on his feet and capable of his herky-jerky assisted "walking".  To say it was a massive undertaking would be an understatement.  The rehabilitation changed his relationship with his wife, mother and children.  He removed himself from their company for great periods of time, particularly to the south in the winter, as he concluded that it was only in warm weather or in warm water that he was making progress.  His progress was limited, and by the two-year mark it had stabilized. It was clear that the progress he had made because of his enhanced upper body strength that allowed him to use crutches while his legs were in braces was about as good as  it would get.
                                              FDR's comeback began at Madison Square Garden in the summer of 1924.  Al Smith's people wanted an establishment Protestant to nominate  him and no one was better suited for the job than the party's most recent VP candidate.  He used his crutches to cross the stage, hung onto the podium with all his might and brought down the house with his famous 'Happy Warrior' speech.  While FDR worked on his rehabilitation, his aide Louis Howe kept his name and tales of his improving health in the public eye.  FDR made some progress in his general mobility while at Warm Springs, GA and had hoped to continue there when the politics of 1928 intervened. In order to help carry NY, Smith felt he needed Roosevelt as the nominee for Governor. FDR refused all summer, but when push came to shove in late September, he accepted.  He had retained his ambitions, but Smith had accelerated the timing of his advance. When Smith lost, FDR became the leading Democrat in the US. With Hoover ensconced in the White House and the nation prosperous, 1936 was the objective.  Overwhelmingly re-elected in 1930 while  Hoover stumbled, FDR and his team moved their date forward.  Overcoming smears that he was syphilitic, FDR triumphed at the Chicago convention and at the polls in November, 1932,  His wife and  his closest aides thought his illness provided new character traits. The author agrees with oldest son, James Roosevelt,  that the experience strengthened  an already very durable and strong man.  The author also posits that his illness kept him away from the intramural wars in the party in the mid-20's, and gave him a story of courage and overcoming adversity that he was able to tell.   Once, an aide told him he couldn't do something, and he responded, "I've done a lot of things I can't do."
                                             Needless to say, this is a superb book and one that offers fabulous insight into one of our great Presidents.  His courage and willpower are obvious.  I am also struck by the fact that his family's wealth was just as important  to his political success.  Although he held titular jobs between 1921 and 1929,  almost all of his time and effort went into his rehabilitation.  His father's wealth supported him and his family the entire time.  The parallel with Jack Kennedy's career twenty years later is eerie.

Final Sacrament, Forrester - C

                                                I was obliged to start the 2nd book in the series (see 7/1 post) earlier than planned. Two years have passed, Clarenceaux appears to be safe, Elizabeth is somewhat disconcerted by the birth in Scotland of the boy who would succeed her decades later, and Lady Percy is desperate to find the proof of Elizabeth's bastardy and reinstate the Catholic church.   Clarenceaux has hidden the document, refuses to offer it to the Catholics, for they will revolt, and refuses to give it to the Protestants, for they will kill him, because he knows the truth. And herein lies the failure (as is so often the case with the middle book of a trilogy) of this story, because his decision confuses me. I'm not sure why he would have to die if he surrendered it. In any event, he stages a conflagration in a castle, kills his bitterest enemy, destroys the document and presumably survives. After all, there is a third book.

After The Music Stopped, Blinder - B +

                                               This is another book about the financial crisis. It is by Alan Blinder, Princeton Prof and former Vice-Chair of the Fed, a heck of a writer, and it is very good. His goal is to paint the big picture "whys" and not go into detail about the steps along the way.  He does that well, but there's no way to discuss the events without going through the narrative, a pretty familiar tale of woe. His charts are helpful and  they highlight just how out- sized the real estate bubble was.  When the bubble was combined with substantial leverage, crazy pay schemes, excessive liquidity, reduced regulation and complacency, the Great Recession was the result. He discusses the problems of late 2007 and Bear Stearns, as the preliminaries, leading up to Fannie, Freddie and what he calls Lehman Day - Sept. 15, 2008- the day the world came very close to stopping.  Two days later, the Fed extended an $85B loan facility to AIG, and TARP soon followed. The world's central banks all cut interest rates on Oct. 8 - the wagons were circled.  He feels strongly that what Paulson and Bernanke, followed by Obama and Geithner, did had to be done.  He cites evidence that without the bailouts and the stimulus, matters would have been materially worse. He faults Paulson for switching from buying 'troubled assets' to injecting capital into banks, and faults everyone for not selling the plan to America. The political failure to sell what was done to save the system is part and parcel of today's dysfunction. Also in for some sharp words are President Bush for cutting taxes while waging war,  President Obama for not successfully pursuing mortgage relief, and the Republican Congress for not even considering any reform measures.  He offers ideas for reform and points out that Medicare can not be sustained for the long term.  He is a skilled writer and a fine teacher. I won't say this is a must, but it's pretty good.

A Foreign Country, Cumming - B +

                                                As I read the second novel first, this is the previous one. Tom Kell is only eight months into exile when he gets the call.  The Service really needs some help  - Amelia Levene, his old friend and boss and the next  Chief, with an appointment on the books with the PM at 10 Downing Street,  has gone missing.  Someone needs to find her and Tom does in Tunis.  She's there with a man twenty years younger, who just happens to be the son she gave up for a French adoption as a twenty-year-old au pair three decades ago. But Kell is good, really good, and figures out that this Francois is a fraud. Her real son is being held by the DGSE, as the French try to pull one over on the next C of MI-6.  If she's dismissed for scandal,  it's business as usual on Her Majesty's Secret Service and the old school chums will let the French have their way in the Levant.  I'll leave the plot at this point for those who will read this and say I believe both books are worth the effort. This, and the newer one I read first, are excellent examples of spy craft  and go into significant depth two or three times per book on different ops.  For what ever reason, I thoroughly enjoy those sections (although I concede some may find it boring) and for me, they enhance the already superb plot.

A Colder War, Cumming - B +

                                             Tom Kell has been benched by MI-6 for passively participating in a joint venture with the Cousins that involved someone being rendered to Guantanamo.  Its has been in the process of being "looked into" for a year-and-a-half when the Chief asks him to do a personal favor - try and sort out why one of their mutual friends, Paul Wallinger, an  agent in Turkey, flew his Cessna into the side of a mountain.  A few weeks into the process, the Chief also tells him of her suspicions of a mole and offers him a chance to come back in from the cold. So he's off, but everywhere he turns bodies keep piling up. First, the Greek flight engineer who worked on Paul's plane commits suicide. Then Paul's mistress in Croatia, whom Tom believes is working for the Hungarian intelligence service is found dead.  After six weeks of intensive spying on the likely candidate, the mole is found in Istanbul, a disaffected Yank working for the Russkis.  The Brits proceed to try to take him in without an assist from the CIA.  I won't divulge the finale, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty good tale. I have enjoyed this so much that I've already downloaded the earlier book by the author about Tom Kell.

Countrymen, Lidegaard - B, Inc.

                                                This is an important book and one from which I learned a great deal.  I couldn't finish it, I believe because of the translation and  the extensive quoting from diaries.  As it is my third incomplete this summer,  I hope it just means a run of less than stellar picks and not a decline in patience.  The only Jewish community in occupied Europe (excepting to my surprise, Bulgaria) to survive the Holocaust virtually unscathed was in Denmark.  This is a history of how that transpired. It is based primarily on the diaries of two Jewish families. Long before the Germans occupied Denmark on April 9, 1940,  the Danes had made a conscious effort to resist Nazism's philosophical poisons, particularly anti-semitism.  When invaded, they did not fight or attempt to resist the Wehrmacht, leading to an almost consensual occupation.  The Danes were left in charge of day-to-day administration and the Germans used a very small occupying force.  Because they retained their sovereignty, they were the only occupied country ruled by the Foreign Office. During the so-called 'peaceful occupation', the Danes were able to take the position that there was no 'Jewish problem' in Denmark.   At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, the liquidation of the Scandinavian Jews was deferred, which meant the issue did not come to a head  until the summer of 1943.  By then the Germans were losing and wanted to impose a stricter regime on the Danes. Peaceful occupation came to an end with the imposition of martial law on August 29, 1943.  Denmark's 6,000 or so Jews were targeted for 'final solution'.  However, because they were so integrated into society, exactly how they could be extracted without substantial unrest was uncertain.
                                                Just to the north, neutral Sweden had maintained a sensible center-oriented government and society that eschewed the extremes of communism and national socialism.  They were shocked in 1942 when the Germans rounded up Norway's Jews.  In late September 1943,  Berlin ordered Copenhagen  to initiate a round-up of the Jews.  Word spread quickly after the Germans leaked the news and the Jews began to head toward the Baltic. There was a vast outpouring of civil and political opposition to the German's plans. "Germany went from being  a neighboring country that for strategic reasons had occupied Denmark under favorable terms to being an assailant perpetrating violence on the Danish people." Only a few hundred elderly Jews were picked up on the first night of the 'aktion' - the rest were in hiding or on the run. The Swedes, knowing that their trading with Germany put them in poor  standing  with the Allies, opened their coast and country to the Danish Jews.  Thus, the Jews of Denmark had a viable escape route. The most befuddling aspect of their escape is that the Germans more or less let them go.  It appears as if differences between the Gestapo, the Army and the Foreign Office, along with a high volume of agricultural goods flowing to the Reich, and a general reluctance to upset the proverbial applecart led to the Germans looking the other way. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that a free press in Sweden was reporting on events in Denmark.  In any event, over the course of a week,  almost all of Denmark's Jews (some were sent to  Theresienstadt, where they survived) escaped across the Baltic  to Sweden, where they were welcome.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The most impressive aspect of this story is the lack of anti-Semitism on the part of most of the Danes.  Starting with the King, who felt a responsibility to protect his people, everyone considered their neighbors and colleagues as not distinct because they, or their ancestors, worshipped differently.  It's a totally  refreshing  and pleasant  contrast to the rest of Europe and the Americas.  The second most fascinating aspect of the tale is the aggressive steps the Jews took to escape. They were not frozen in situ out of fear.  Amazingly (again in contrast to just about everywhere else - the author mentions Italy and Bulgaria as exceptions), their apartments, valuables and assets were there when they returned in 1945. All in all this is a very interesting story that is in total contrast to the usual anti-Semitism, violence, subjugation and destruction that played out almost everywhere else in Europe.

Hunting Shadows, Todd - B

                                               This is the sixteenth book in a series that I thoroughly enjoy.  Last year, I praised the series, but was disappointed with the fifteenth novel.  I was critical of the lack of the usual sense of place, the downplaying of Hamish's role and the plot in general.  The authors have made a fine comeback. In the opening chapters, I felt as if I were lost on the Fens and thankfully, Hamish  haunts Rutledge every step of the way.  Once again, one is almost overwhelmed by the pain in post-war WW1 England.  Loneliness, despair and a wonder about all the horror that had happened pervade every chapter. Northwest of London, two men have been shot by a hidden rifleman. Only a vet would have a rifle, the skill to use it and presumably a grudge against a former captain in the army. Why he also shot the local Tory MP candidate confounds Rutledge. There is no apparent connection between the two. As the investigation progresses, Rutledge becomes convinced that the murderer is a sharpshooter, trained as a sniper, and someone whom the trenches deeply affected. He pounds away relentlessly and eventually finds his man. A sharpshooter he was - but not in the Great War.