This is a very good book about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It tells the story from the perspective of a boy from a local family; a surgeon assigned to work the debacle; his ex-wife, a worker at a Moscow factory; and her nephew. Artyom is a thirteen year old boy who lived 10 kilometers from the disaster. The day after the meltdown he, his mother and sister are shipped off to the Minsk area and settled in a vast warehouse. Later on, they are assigned their own hut. They find his dad in a hospital. He and the other men had stayed behind to help clean up their village. His reward months later is a horrible, horrible death from radiation poisoning. Grigory, a Moscow doctor, is tasked to work at the site and is kept on overseeing the declining health of the evacuees. For months on end, he performs surgeries, previously unimagined, on those whose lives and bodies have been transformed. Within months, he succumbs. Maria survives in the slowly crumbling Soviet structure that is dying in the era of glasnost and perestroika. She manages to assister nephew Yevgeni on a trajectory to worldwide success as a pianist.
As always, the sheer stupidity and inane unfairness of the Soviet system screams out for mockery, derision and elimination. It's a solid reminder that almost all that the Bolshies wrought was a colossal mess.
12.21.2014
Cities of Empire: The British Colonies and the Creation of the Urban World, Hunt - B +
The author posits that the great gift of the Empire, its true legacy, is urbanism. "This book seeks to explore the imperial story through the urban form and its material culture: ten cities telling the story of the British Empire." Commerce was the thread that started to bind the disparately structured (joint stock companies, royal governors, local legislatures, individual patentees) colonies into something resembling a system. The concept of Empire "became much more regularly employed as trade fostered some sense of shared interest and political community across Britain's congeries of territories."
It was "a mercantilist consortium of mutual commercial advantage". However, all of the shared interests, beliefs, convictions, and unifying Protestantism could not survive the imposition of some modest taxes on the Bostonians. The first English city in America became the 'cradle of liberty' and led the march toward the disassembling of the first Empire. When the 13 Colonies left, the West Indies and the sugar trade replaced them in import. Centered in Bridgetown, Barbados, the sugar trade was built upon the foundation of human slavery, a foundation that supported "opulent profits". "The staggering returns from the West Indies colonies funded the acceleration of the British Empire, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the Royal Navy." The author asserts that the harbors, ports, docks, wharves, warehouses, ships, sailors, merchants, and financiers that we associate with a burgeoning London and Liverpool all stemmed from the slave-driven sugar trade, which was much more profitable than the troubling United States had been. The Revolutions in America and France "forced Ireland to change from uncomfortable colony into a component part of the British Isles". The transformation from "problem to partner" took place in Dublin. And, it is the construction of Georgian Dublin, well-planned, thorough and grand, at the height of the Protestant Ascendancy in the late 18th century, that tied the city to the Empire. In 1800, Ireland became part of the UK, no longer a separate kingdom or colony, but an integral part of the mother country. The Irish joined the Scots as foot soldiers of the Empire.
"Much more than Boston, fetid Bridgetown or familiar Dublin, the British fell in love with Cape Town." It was the axis of the Empire's pivot to the east. Its purpose was to help secure British domination of India and ensure the demise of the French colonial competition. The British took the Cape in 1795 from the Dutch for a very simple strategic reason: revolutionary France had invaded Holland. As a crossroads, cape Town was an extraordinarily diverse city. Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, and every branch of Protestantism worshipped and lived side by side. No race was predominant. It connected east and west and it was from the Cape, in 1798, that Richard Wellesley, older brother of the future Duke of Wellington and Governor-General of India set sail for Calcutta. A generation earlier, in 1773, Parliament began the six-decade process of first diminishing and later eliminating the East India Company's monopoly, and began to exert control through the new office of the Governor-General. The Raj would be headquartered in Calcutta until its early-twentieth century removal to New Delhi. Anxious about French influences, Wellesley undertook the "establishment of dominion over the Indian subcontinent and witnessed the beginnings of the projection of British military and maritime power into the Middle East and south-east Asia." He built up Calcutta, which proved to be a springboard for next leap east, to China. By the mid-19th century, religion as a prime motivator had been long replaced by mercantile aggrandizement. The move into China was driven by the desire to peddle opium, not Anglicanism. "Hong Kong would be the resplendent if uneasy monument to the global reach of the British Empire and to British imperialism at the height of its ideological self-confidence." Hong Kong and the chant of free trade were the vise with which the British opened up the Middle Kingdom.
"A second revolution of rail and steam was rolling across the Empire ........industry and mass production would change the function of imperial cities.........the dirty, smoggy city of Bombay would come to take the colonial mantle from the Fragrant Harbor of Hong Kong." It was a city in a hurry, a city focused on making money and believed "to embody the Victorian spirit of progress." "In Bombay the British Empire would build a monument to its own modernity." And the monument that rose the highest was the Victoria Terminus, a train station to rival any in Europe, still in use and featured in 'Slumdog Millionaire".
Melbourne is cited as a city that embraced a concept of Empire based on race. The white colonies of Canada, New Zealand and Australia viewed their relationship with Britain as a partnership amongst the Anglo-Saxon tribe. In New Delhi, the Empire peaked and it is where the Raj ended and the sun began to set. August 15, 1947 was Independence Day in India - perhaps it was best that Churchill had lost 10 Downing Street the year before. Hunt closes with Liverpool, once the second richest city of the Empire, the city that had commanded global trade since the 1700's and in 1981, so bereft of hope, that riots there led to the first use of CS gas by the police on mainland Britain. The end of empire meant the collapse of trade and catastrophe for Liverpool. A key driver of 19th century globalization become a 20th century victim, as trade moved to the eastern British cities, closer to the other EU countries. By the 1990's, "Liverpool was Britain's Detroit, a city that had died through its own irrelevance to the modern economy." Today, matters have come full circle - Chinese investment is regenerating the Merseyside.
This is a very good book that tells the story of the Empire in fascinating, insightful vignettes; a superb and creative way to depict the history of the Empire upon which the sun never set. I'm not convinced he makes his case about urbanism, but that certainly doesn't detract from the history told here. This is a great book for those who are intrigued by the British and all of their accomplishments (and failures) overseas.
It was "a mercantilist consortium of mutual commercial advantage". However, all of the shared interests, beliefs, convictions, and unifying Protestantism could not survive the imposition of some modest taxes on the Bostonians. The first English city in America became the 'cradle of liberty' and led the march toward the disassembling of the first Empire. When the 13 Colonies left, the West Indies and the sugar trade replaced them in import. Centered in Bridgetown, Barbados, the sugar trade was built upon the foundation of human slavery, a foundation that supported "opulent profits". "The staggering returns from the West Indies colonies funded the acceleration of the British Empire, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the Royal Navy." The author asserts that the harbors, ports, docks, wharves, warehouses, ships, sailors, merchants, and financiers that we associate with a burgeoning London and Liverpool all stemmed from the slave-driven sugar trade, which was much more profitable than the troubling United States had been. The Revolutions in America and France "forced Ireland to change from uncomfortable colony into a component part of the British Isles". The transformation from "problem to partner" took place in Dublin. And, it is the construction of Georgian Dublin, well-planned, thorough and grand, at the height of the Protestant Ascendancy in the late 18th century, that tied the city to the Empire. In 1800, Ireland became part of the UK, no longer a separate kingdom or colony, but an integral part of the mother country. The Irish joined the Scots as foot soldiers of the Empire.
"Much more than Boston, fetid Bridgetown or familiar Dublin, the British fell in love with Cape Town." It was the axis of the Empire's pivot to the east. Its purpose was to help secure British domination of India and ensure the demise of the French colonial competition. The British took the Cape in 1795 from the Dutch for a very simple strategic reason: revolutionary France had invaded Holland. As a crossroads, cape Town was an extraordinarily diverse city. Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, and every branch of Protestantism worshipped and lived side by side. No race was predominant. It connected east and west and it was from the Cape, in 1798, that Richard Wellesley, older brother of the future Duke of Wellington and Governor-General of India set sail for Calcutta. A generation earlier, in 1773, Parliament began the six-decade process of first diminishing and later eliminating the East India Company's monopoly, and began to exert control through the new office of the Governor-General. The Raj would be headquartered in Calcutta until its early-twentieth century removal to New Delhi. Anxious about French influences, Wellesley undertook the "establishment of dominion over the Indian subcontinent and witnessed the beginnings of the projection of British military and maritime power into the Middle East and south-east Asia." He built up Calcutta, which proved to be a springboard for next leap east, to China. By the mid-19th century, religion as a prime motivator had been long replaced by mercantile aggrandizement. The move into China was driven by the desire to peddle opium, not Anglicanism. "Hong Kong would be the resplendent if uneasy monument to the global reach of the British Empire and to British imperialism at the height of its ideological self-confidence." Hong Kong and the chant of free trade were the vise with which the British opened up the Middle Kingdom.
"A second revolution of rail and steam was rolling across the Empire ........industry and mass production would change the function of imperial cities.........the dirty, smoggy city of Bombay would come to take the colonial mantle from the Fragrant Harbor of Hong Kong." It was a city in a hurry, a city focused on making money and believed "to embody the Victorian spirit of progress." "In Bombay the British Empire would build a monument to its own modernity." And the monument that rose the highest was the Victoria Terminus, a train station to rival any in Europe, still in use and featured in 'Slumdog Millionaire".
Melbourne is cited as a city that embraced a concept of Empire based on race. The white colonies of Canada, New Zealand and Australia viewed their relationship with Britain as a partnership amongst the Anglo-Saxon tribe. In New Delhi, the Empire peaked and it is where the Raj ended and the sun began to set. August 15, 1947 was Independence Day in India - perhaps it was best that Churchill had lost 10 Downing Street the year before. Hunt closes with Liverpool, once the second richest city of the Empire, the city that had commanded global trade since the 1700's and in 1981, so bereft of hope, that riots there led to the first use of CS gas by the police on mainland Britain. The end of empire meant the collapse of trade and catastrophe for Liverpool. A key driver of 19th century globalization become a 20th century victim, as trade moved to the eastern British cities, closer to the other EU countries. By the 1990's, "Liverpool was Britain's Detroit, a city that had died through its own irrelevance to the modern economy." Today, matters have come full circle - Chinese investment is regenerating the Merseyside.
This is a very good book that tells the story of the Empire in fascinating, insightful vignettes; a superb and creative way to depict the history of the Empire upon which the sun never set. I'm not convinced he makes his case about urbanism, but that certainly doesn't detract from the history told here. This is a great book for those who are intrigued by the British and all of their accomplishments (and failures) overseas.
Death of the Black-Haired Girl, Stone - B
The Times reviewer refers to this short novel as a "Hawthorne-like allegory and a sure-footed psychological thriller." It is a fine read, particularly for those with a penchant for New England colleges or some fine NYC Irish Catholic guilt, remorse and blue-collar alcoholism. The setting is a college campus, where a married professor is having an affair with, Maud, a black-haired beauty from Queens. He breaks it off when he finds out his wife is pregnant and she drunkenly confronts him late at night on a busy street with fatal, accidental consequences. Her failing city cop father struggles with the Church, which is very unwilling to bury her with her mother because Maud had written an incendiary article condemning the Church's vitriolic attacks on the abortion clinic near the college. All in all, a solid read.
12.13.2014
In Love and War, Preston - C +
This is one of those interesting little novels that make the best of/notable lists at years end. Esmond Lowndes is banished to Florence in 1937 for being caught at Oxford in bed his with buddy. His dad is the fictional number two to Oswald Mosley in the British Union of Fascists. Esmond is sent to the continent to establish a radio station for English speaking right wingers. While there, he observes Europe's slow descent into the abyss and, after it starts, he tries to fend for his Jewish assistant, Ada, with whom he has fallen in love. With little enthusiasm, he continues his Fascist broadcasts, thus avoiding internment. Facing expulsion, Esmond and Ada seclude themselves in a villa in the country, doing occasional jobs for the resistance. In the summer of 1943, Italy withdraws from the war, Ada is pregnant and the world is full of hope. That hope is quickly shattered when Germany occupies Florence in August. As the Germans and Italian Fascists escalate their attacks on the leftists and the Jews, the resistance matches their violence. Soon, assassinations, bombings and raids are the reaction to each train to the north. Esmond loses Ada to the Nazis, and immediately thereafter killing becomes easy, second nature. Captured and tortured, he manages to propel himself and Carita, the obnoxious fascist oppressor of Florence, out a window to their death. This is a well-written, craftily created tale that provides a bit of insight into the German occupation of northern Italy after Italy surrendered. As I've intimated recently, I don't do well with WW2 novels, perhaps because the history itself is so peerless.
12.07.2014
Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies over America on 9/ 11, Spnecer - B +
Thanks to Tim Farrell and Marcella for this recommendation. We tend to focus on what happened in the hijacked planes and on the ground that terrible day. This absolutely remarkable book tells what happened at the FAA, at the American and United Airline Operations Centers, at various military bases, at the numerous air-traffic-control centers whose professionals who dealt with the unfolding disaster and in particular, it tells about the pilots and crews of the thousands of planes in the air that morning. I'm not terribly sentimental about much that's happened in my lifetime, but I felt proud to be an American as I read this book. It's hard to imagine any other people handling their jobs that day as well as all the folks in this book.
The book has the pace of a thriller and is filled with information I was never aware of or thought about. There were 400 planes over the Atlantic. A Delta flight was "thought' to be hijacked and treated very carefully over Cleveland. One United flight that never took off from LaGuardia had four Arabs in first class - they left the airport and were never identified. All the flights from Asia had to go somewhere else - thank God for the Canadians. Totally unprepared for anything like this, the FAA was able to clear US airspace and by noon, the military controlled the skies. It's a superb book and a great story.
The book has the pace of a thriller and is filled with information I was never aware of or thought about. There were 400 planes over the Atlantic. A Delta flight was "thought' to be hijacked and treated very carefully over Cleveland. One United flight that never took off from LaGuardia had four Arabs in first class - they left the airport and were never identified. All the flights from Asia had to go somewhere else - thank God for the Canadians. Totally unprepared for anything like this, the FAA was able to clear US airspace and by noon, the military controlled the skies. It's a superb book and a great story.
12.04.2014
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, The CIA, and the Battle Over a Banned Book, Finn and Couvee - B
Published in 1957 after a decade in the making, 'Dr. Zhivago' was awarded the Nobel Prize. The 1965 movie received 5 Academy Awards. The remarkable first and only novel by a 65-year-old poet, Boris Pasternak, rocked the world. That he had survived until the thaw after Stalin's death was a surprise. "Through much of his life, Pasternak assisted people imprisoned or impoverished by the regime." He never towed the Soviet line, but in the early thirties had penned a note of sympathy at the time of the death of the dictator's wife. It is presumed that is what saved him. Pasternak passed the novel to an Italian communist publisher in 1956. The KGB found out after the fact and began its campaign to stop the publication of the book. For a year and a half, the Soviets tried their heavy-handed, clumsy best to stop publication, but it came in late 1957. A year later, the CIA sponsored Russian edition was distributed at the Brussels World Fair and soon later, the Nobel followed. A drumbeat of condemnation rained down on Pasternak in Soviet papers and on tv and radio. He was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. Under intense pressure, he withdrew his joyful acceptance and rejected the Nobel Prize. He penned a letter of apology to Khruschev, pleading to not be expelled from Russia. As the book grew in worldwide popularity, he was excised from Soviet society, and died in May of 1960 at the age of 70. He was intestate and there followed thirty-years of "unseemly struggles" over his affairs. In 1989 in Stockholm, his son Yevgeny accepted the the gold medal for the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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