Midnight At The Pera Palace: The Birth Of Modern Istanbul, King - B

                                                The Pera was the grand hotel one stayed at before or after taking the Orient Express. "During the interwar years, the Pera Palace was not only the place where transients and newcomers began their reinvention. But for wave after wave of refugees, migrants and exiles, the storied old hotel was a symbol of the transition from a past age to a new one - a place that embodied the ties between the East and West, between empire and republic, and between nostalgia and experiment in the only place on earth to have been the epicenter of Christendom and global Islam." Both the hotel and the new train terminal came late in the 19th century as the diplomatic world awaited the demise of 'the old man of Europe'.  It came with a war that ended with an Allied occupation of Constantinople. It was the only capital city of the central powers that was occupied. British, French, Italian and even Greek troops were involved. In less than a year, a resistance and revolution began under Mustafa Kemal, who was elected president at the Grand National Assembly in Ankara. The peace treaty dismembered the  empire but left the sultan on the throne.  He voluntarily abdicated and lived out his life on the Italian Riviera. "The dynasty of the House of Osman, which had governed an empire for more than six hundred years and had commanded Istanbul for four hundred sixty-nine, was no more." By 1923, the Allies were gone and the Republic established.  The forced expulsion/exchange of a million-and-a-half Turks and Greeks made the country more rural, Turkic and Muslim. Also known as Ataturk, Kemal ruled until his death in 1938. He relentlessly pushed his modernizing agenda of better education, national identification with their Turk heritage, sectarianism at all costs, disestablishment of the Muslim faith, conversion of the Hagia Sophia from a mosque to a museum, banishment of the Caliph, synchronizing Turkey's erratic system of keeping time with Europe's, and establishment of equal legal rights for women. Istanbul was the home of 1932's Miss Universe.
                                              WW2 came perilously close, but both sides honored Turkey's declaration of neutrality.  That, however, did not prevent Istanbul from becoming one of the major locales of diplomacy, intrigue and spying.  More than a quarter of the Jews who made it to Palestine during the war came through Istanbul.  Rather late in the game, in February of 1945, Turkey declared war on its former ally, Germany.  Turkey joined NATO in 1952, flirted with the EU and has recently turned back toward Islam. The author clearly pines for the days when it was a much more diverse place. Throughout the narrative, he weaves into the story the role of the Pera, which stood at the commercial and social center of the city. It still stands and has been recently renovated by a firm from Dubai. All in all, this is an interesting read about one of the world's more fascinating cities.

Red Nile: A Biography Of The Worlds Greatest River, Twigger - B -, Inc.

                                               Red is for all the bloodshed along its extraordinary length: 4175 miles. If the Thames were as long, it would flow into the Arabian Sea. The White Nile flows out of Lake Victoria and provides 95% of the water in the river in the winter and the Blue, which is further north and west flowing out of Ethiopia, 85% in the summer. It was the Nile River valley that was the exit from Africa used by the first homo sapiens to head north.  And it was along its annually flooded banks that civilization began.  Those banks remained untamed until the last century and were the foundation of the ancient world's largest source of wealth. Wealth attracts predators, first the Greeks and later, the Romans. "There is every reason to believe that the Roman rule of Egypt, from 45 BC until the arrival of the Arabs in the seventh century, was an effective pillaging of the country from which it never really recovered." The Arabs brought a new religion, created the modern city of Cairo and introduced a tremendous amount of new knowledge to the world. They maintained much of Greek culture and brought it to the west, and they developed medical, astronomical and scientific skills centuries before the Europeans.  Finding the source of the Nile became the ambition of generations of Europeans.  The Blue Nile's source was discovered by a Jesuit missionary, Pedro Paez, in 1621. The White Nile was a bit tougher, as it lay deep in the dark continent. The first failed attempt that we know of was by  centurions sent by Nero in the first century AD. It was not found until 1937, by a German explorer, Dr. Burkhardt Waldecker. The dream of damming the river was partially accomplished by Muhammad Ali in the 19th century, furthered by the British in the early 20th century and finalized by Nasser in  1970.
                                               I find it very hard to finish a book written in the stream of consciousness mode. When a section of a book mentions Herodotus, Napoleon, Agatha Christie and Anwar Sadat, I call it a day. Nonetheless, there's a ton of fascinating information in this book.

One Night In Winter, Montefiore - B +

                                              This is the second novel in this blog this year by the noted historian Simon Montefiore. This one is set in 1945 and is based on a true story.  A group of students (ages 6-18) who attend a special school in Moscow for the children of the elite are arrested.  Their crime was a clandestine worship of Pushkin and a juvenile passion for romanticism. The organs of the state keep them at the Lubyanka and  build a mountain out of a mole hill. The master of all deception, the one whose name is never mentioned, follows the case with particular interest and uses the children to test and diminish the parents. It's a very well done novel and includes details that only someone who wrote 'Stalin: The Court Of The Red Tsar' could dream up. It reminds me of a resolution I made years ago. I swore I would avoid anything to do with the Bolsheviks, particularly of the Stalin era, because of the sheer pain of reading of the deceit, dishonesty, and evil that dominated their perverse world. I'll continue to try to avoid them.

The Long Way Home, Penny - C

                                               This the tenth book in the series. By now, Gamache and his wife are retired and living comfortably in Three Pines. One of their neighbors, Peter Morrow, was asked by his wife to leave and to come back exactly in a year so they could assess where their marriage stood. Clara had usurped Peter's role as the most famous painter in Canada and he had not reacted well. His failure to return leads to a search by the now private citizen and former Chief of the Surete, Homicide Division for Quebec Province.  The search meanders through the area east of Montreal along the St. Lawrence and delves deep into the Canadian art scene. It involves revenge and a long-distance murder utilizing a toxic substance. For whatever reason, this one didn't work for me. I believe I'll call it a day on this series.

The Wright Brothers, McCullough - B +

                                             They were the third and fourth sons of a Protestant minister, Wilbur older than Orville by four years.  They first sold and repaired bicycles and then began to hand-build their own model. To say they were handy would be an understatement.  They could build or repair anything. Wilbur initiated the study of aerodynamics and the pursuit of a flying machine.  They sought a locale to test their first glider and were steered to the Outer Banks by the Weather Service. They were off to Kitty Hawk in the fall of 1900, back the following year and again in 1902. Their third glider was a success. "They knew they had solved the problem of flight and more. They had acquired the knowledge and skill to fly. They could soar, they could float, they could dive and rise, circle and glide and land, all with assurance. Now they had only to build a motor." With the help of Charlie Taylor, their shop assistant, they built a 156-lb. 4-cylinder motor with an aluminum block from Alcoa from scratch. On Dec.17, 1903 the Wright Flyer completed four flights. As successful as they were, it would take almost five years more for them to achieve the recognition, fame, honor and wealth that you would expect from their accomplishments. On August 8, 1908, Wilbur flew the Flyer III in Le Mans, France for only two minutes and two miles, considerably less than they had flown in Ohio. The difference this time was that it was in public before a startled press and government officials. Their place in history was assured. Orville followed up with proving flights on behalf of the Army at Ft. Myers, VA.  Feted on both sides of the Atlantic, they spent their next few years endlessly demonstrating their plane to the people of America and Europe.  They incorporated and later sold their airplane manufacturing business, sued many including Glenn Curtiss, a competitor,  for patent infringement and won every lawsuit they were ever involved in. They fought off all who laid claim to their preeminence as the first aviators. They never married. Wilbur died at 45 in 1912 and Orville at 77 in 1948.  When Ohio born and raised Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969, he carried a swatch of the muslin from the wing of their 1903 glider. This is a wonderful American story, set at a time now long ago and told by one of the best.

Preparation For The Next Life, Lish - B

                                               This novel has received rave reviews and wound up on my list because it is set in a community that I once lived and worked in - Flushing, NY.  Northern Queens and the end of the #7 Line were never anything special, but forty years ago it certainly was middle-class.  Today it is dominated by various Asian immigrant groups and is known as Flu-Shing.  I have walked through it, but never sensed the desperation of life that is set forth here. Everyone is hustling everyone else with an almost incomprehensible ruthlessness. It is life lived in primal fear and total poverty. It is a zero-sum game that almost feels like life on the savannah. A woman from Uighur in the US illegally falls in love with an American who has just done three tours in Iraq. She is totally broke and is trying as hard as possible to get ahead of the financial curve by working for less than the minimum wage in food joints/restaurants/markets etc. He is so spaced out-on 5 different prescription meds for his war wounds, depression, nightmares and schizophrenia that he seldom knows what day it is. They inquire at the City Clerk's Office on the procedure to marry. Hope for them recedes when the son of the nightmarish Irish couple he rents the cellar from for $400 per month returns from ten years in jail. Jimmy is a miserable angry shite and you know something bad is going to happen. It does. But, Zou Lei is as tough as nails and embodies every single character trait for which we honor and praise immigrants as such an important part of our history. I, for one, hope that all of those who are as different from us as our ancestors were from mainstream America a century and a half ago continue to come here, work their fannies off and make it in America.  Queens County is the most ethnically and linguistically diverse place in the world. This street-level view of poverty and - I hate to repeat the word - utter desperation is an eye-opener.  It's not for all, but is for those with an affection for NY, the knowledge that our ancestors were once in this boat, and a sympathy for those on the bottom.

The Deluge: The Great War, America And the Remaking Of The Global Order, 1916 -1931, Tooze- B

                                               This fascinating book is a study of how the US came to dominate the world. The book covers the decade-and-half from the time the US entered the world stage with its entry into WW1 up until it became the last country to fall to the Great Depression.  It is a thoughtful, considerate, and wide-ranging academic treatise. "Mapping the emergence of this new order of power is the central aim of this book." It also addresses how the liberal world order established in the early 1920's came apart, and how the imminent dominance of the US impelled Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Hirohito to take such radical steps to establish themselves before they lost all room to maneuver. "By common agreement, the new world order had three major facets - moral authority backed by military power and economic supremacy."  By preaching the moral supremacy of democracy, Wilson broke down the firewall between domestic politics and foreign affairs, thus revolutionizing the balance of power politics of previous centuries.  "If the idea of reordering the world around a single power bloc and a common set of liberal, 'Western' values seemed like a radical historical departure, this is precisely what made the outcome of WW1 so dramatic." He contends that the Western Powers lost their grip in the 20's because the US failed to cooperate with the British, French, Germans and Japanese to stabilize the world economy and assure the collective security.
                                             Although Wall Street had financed the Entente from the beginning, Wilson was firmly neutral and as opposed to Britain's naval reach and continuing imperial aspirations as he was of German aggression. He hoped for a negotiated peace without a winner, but with the US as the acknowledged indispensable power and world leader.  In a January 1917 speech, he spoke directly to the people of Europe in a plea for peace, and in response, an increasingly desperate German high command unleashed unlimited submarine warfare.  With no other choice, the US joined the Allies, but only as an 'associate'. Throughout 1917, significant changes took place in Europe. Russia revolted and withdrew from the war. In Germany, opposition to the war led to a breakdown of the Empire's political structure as the Reichstag and the military government were in constant opposition. The Entente powers prevailed in 1918 as Germany collapsed because of Americas economic muscle and their political cohesiveness. In Britain and France, the political class offered expanded democratic opportunities to their people in exchange for their popular support.  Lloyd George loosened the strings,  gave a seat at the table to the major commonwealth nations and "secured the foundations of the empire as a key pillar in the emerging, world order."  In the final months of the war and into the winter of 1918-19, Wilson was more concerned about the French and British empires interfering with his vision of the future than he was about the fine points of finishing off the Germans. He was desirous of a League of Nations in which the US would stand astride the world as its acknowledged financier, conscience and leader. With his 14 Points encapsulated in the Armistice and praise from all over the world, he expected to succeed in Paris.
                                            As we well know, he did not, as Clemenceau was intent to exact his revenge and he did.  Germany was disarmed, it's forces pushed back from the French border, the Rhineland demilitarized and occupied and the Saar's coal committed to France under a complex League of Nations administration. War guilt was assigned to the Germans and the reparations came in much higher than Germany anticipated or could pay. The author points out that there was a theoretical possibility of a restoration of the pre-world order if, as Keynes suggested, the reparations were manageable and America cancelled it's debts.  Lloyd George upped the reparations and Wilson wouldn't dream of forgiveness. Realistically, it took a second and more massive conflagration before statesmen became that forward thinking. Wilson, characterized here as fickle, arrogant, inflexible and inconsistent, would not compromise with the Senate on Article X of the treaty on collective security.  Felled by a stroke as the nation faced a red scare, violent union-management relations, inflation followed by deflation and recession, Wilson and America left the world stage.
                                           "Layer by layer, piece by piece, issue by issue, the Entente coalition had disintegrated. The price that the collapse of this great democratic alliance would exact defies estimation."  The author asserts that our return to ongoing involvement in the daily affairs of the world would have surprised Wilson, whose view was much more conservative than the worldview  FDR/Truman/Ike implemented. He also makes the case that our involvement is a must - that disengagement is not an option for the USA.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Kolbert - B +

                                               This is a book that was on almost all of last year's notable lists and earlier this year won the Pulitzer for General Non-Fiction.  Our world has seen five mass extinction events and the author points out that we are in the midst of a sixth. I was fascinated to learn that it wasn't until the 19th century that science realized that prior species had become extinct. There was no place in the scientific mindset to comprehend the concept until Georges Cuvier, of the French Natural History Museum, proposed it as the answer to all of the odd fossils that no one could explain. Science came to grips with the concept of extinction and is busy working on the causation and consequences of the first five, of which the meteor-driven 'nuclear winter' is the best known.
                                              While writing this book, the author travelled the world to study the current cycle of events. She started in Panama, where the collapse of the world's frog population has been documented and studied. She has seen where the last Great Auk died in Iceland about one-hundred and fifty years ago. It will come as no surprise that  the change agent initiating the collapse of innumerable species is the planet's most successful mammal - us. And it is not just the consequence of the Industrial Revolution that is at issue here. It is our mobility that has spread disease and destruction throughout the world since we 'left Africa'.  The extinctions are accelerating because of the consequences of almost two hundred years of burning fossil fuels and spewing 365 metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere, which is increasing temperatures and, more importantly, changing the ph factor of the world's oceans.  Whether it is the oceans' coral reefs which appear to be in their last decades or the large herbivores of a shrinking forest, the extinction is ongoing and undeniable. Some wonder if we will follow. Others are confident that we'll figure it out. Either way, this is a superb read.

The Edge Of The World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe, Pye - B-

                                               The author, an Englishman, takes the position that the impact the Mediterranean cultures had on the development of Europe has been well-documented. He argues that the the North Sea cultures are equally important and presents his case. The Frisians, predecessors of the Dutch, were traders, sailors and masters of the watery marshes along the coast, and we're the first to re-introduce and mint silver coins in the 8th century.  Venerable Bede, an English monk, is famous for his 8th century publication of 'The History Of The Church In England', the establishment of the system of dating from A.D. (Anno Dominus), and systematizing the date for Easter.  He studied the tides and the moon's effect on the same and may have discerned that the earth was round.  He is credited, along with the Irish, for spreading books and writings far and wide. The Vikings were raiders, slavers and pillagers who sailed to Vinland in North America, Iceland, Greenland, deep into Russia,  south to Constantinople and as far north as the White Sea. They developed a compass and knew the earth was not flat because when one sailed away from shore, the land fell from sight.  Though they came bringing hell on earth, the Vikings started to settle and in particular, founded towns in Ireland. Limerick, Wexford, Cork, Waterford were settled by the raiders, as was their capital, Dublin. The Dutch were the first society to engage in extensive, if not near universal, realignment of their land through dikes, storm sewers, sluices and  water  pumps.  Although I believe he wanders too far and wide in his discourse (over half of the chapter called 'Science' is about the Mongols), he closes with a few compelling points. The Hanseatic League was the first time merchants gained an upper hand vis-a-vis whoever was governing their various cities. He then draws a straight line to the  Dutch, their extraordinary and sophisticated trading, the Dutch East India Company, share ownership and of course, capitalism.  I do not know enough to know if he makes his case and he does tend to wander. Thus, my enthusiasm is somewhat limited.

Red Eagles, Downing - C +

                                              Downing has written a series that Ive followed and I automatically downloaded this. After I finished, I realized it was his first book from the 1980's. It is a WW2 novel in which a Soviet deception of a German agent in the US leads to a German/Soviet mission to steal uranium that is being transported from Tennessee  to New Mexico. The mission succeeds. The book does not.