Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy Of India's Partition, Hajari - B

                                              Thanks to my brother for this recommendation. I had originally passed this up because I had read the very well-done 'Freedom At Midnight' forty years ago.  In that book, the focus was on the British. Here, it is much more about the Indians and the Pakistanis. Partition on August 15, 1947 lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. One of the largest refugee crises of the century sent 14 million people on the road.  The tensions between Pakistan and India remain one of the major flash points in the world. A destabilized nuclear Pakistan torn between its army and civilian rulers, and overwhelmed by religious intolerance, violence, and Taliban extremism is a concern to all. The author's intent is to explain how Partition impacted both societies and laid the groundwork for the strategic disconnect 70 years later.
                                            The division of the Raj was the consequence of the ambitions of two men, both English- educated lawyers, Jinnah of the Muslim League and Nehru of the Indian National Congress. Nehru believed in an India populated by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and a multitude of minor religions.  Jinnah wanted an independent Pakistan as a safe place for the country's Muslims. Nehru held the upper hand until he spent the years from 1942 to 1945 in jail along with the rest of the Congress leadership. They had failed to support the war effort and were summarily imprisoned. During those years, Jinnah was able to convince the public and the leadership of the Raj that a separate Muslim nation was an appropriate part of independence. Congress, although favored by the British leadership - particularly the the last Viceroy, Dickie Mountbatten never recovered its momentum. In the year run-up to freedom, there was endless violence, especially in those locations that were coveted by both sides.  The Punjab in north central India was eventually divided, but only after slaughter perpetuated by both sides and the Sikhs, who were hoping for their own country.  The author poses that had not Mountbatten rushed things, perhaps it would not have been the disaster it became. In light of the religious and ethnic tribalism that sparked violence on a scale comparable t0 central Europe in the recently ended world war, it is hard to imagine how this could have come out any better.
                                             Independence brought chaos to the new capital at Delhi and the forced exile of thousands of Muslims. But, it was and still is the conflict far to the north, high in the Himalayas, over Kashmir, that has assured the countries are mortal enemies. They have fought two wars over it, and the author refers to it as "the wound that keeps the paranoia and hatreds of 1947 fresh for both". The new armies of the two nations fought a border war for over a year and reached a UN sanctioned settlement in 1948. Jinnah died the same year, leaving Pakistan virtually leaderless. The first army coup came a decade later. "Pakistani generals would helm the country for thirty-two of the next fifty years." After the generals lost East Pakistan, they settled on Islam to unite the populace behind the junta. The US poured millions into Pakistan in order to help the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Billions followed during the war on terror. Notwithstanding the Pakistani Taliban and other extremists, Pakistan's strategic concerns are India and making certain that Afghanistan doesn't support India. India in turn expends a fortune and a vast amount of effort to be prepared to defend against a Pakistani incursion. "It is well past the time that the heirs of Nehru and Jinnah put 1947's furies to rest."
                                       

The Strangler Vine, Carter - B +

                                               This delightful novel is set in Calcutta in 1837. Ensign William Avery is selected  to accompany Jeremiah Blake, a former officer of the British East India Company, on a trip to the far north. Their mission is to find Xavier Mountstuart, a writer very unpopular with  the establishment.  The journey provides a wealth of information and background on the castes of the Hindus, the Muslims,  the vast and various political  departments in India, and most interestingly, the Thuggee's, native assassins .  The party lingers at Jubulpore, the town from which the British battled the Thuggee terrorists under the firm hand of Major Sleeman.  As they progress deeper into the country, Avery starts to listen to and appreciate Blake's skepticism about the good being done in the country by the Company. They find Mountstuart when they are imprisoned with him. Mountstuart tells them that the Thuggees are a fiction of Sleeman's imagination, fabricated for the purpose of justifying the vast command Sleeman has constructed. Indeed, Mountstuart was sent by the Governor-general to investigate the Thuggee department. They manage to escape and then are betrayed by a British officer as the plot continues to thicken. Mountstuart is killed and Blake and Avery escape.  The powers that be eventually acknowledge that the Company  benefits from the Thuggee myth and that Avery and Blake are forbidden to disclose the truth. Blake goes to London. Avery accepts a promotion in exchange for silence. This book is a fine example of historical fiction. It delves deeply into the daily details of the British East India occupation and management of India, utilizes many real characters and brings the inquisitive reader into close touch with the time and place.

Trigger Mortis, Horowitz - C

                                                I downloaded this because Simon Schama, noted English scholar and historian, wrote a positive review, and over the years Ive read a few of the novels authorized by the estate of Ian Fleming. The year is 1957 and the principal character is Bond - James Bond.  His opponents are SMERSH and a mysterious Korean, Jason Sin. The insidious cold war plan is to disable a Vanguard rocket so that ground control aborts it and blows it up in mid-flight. Simultaneously, a Vanguard faux rocket and real bomb will be put on the IND tracks and somehow sent on its way from Sin's Coney Island warehouse to midtown Manhattan.  On the way to stopping it, Bond overcomes being buried alive six feet under in a wooden box, races on a motorcycle to catch the speeding train, and rides on the roof of the train, killing innumerable bad guys and derailing the train before the bomb gets to 34th St., where it was supposed to blow-up the Empire State Building. All in all, this is a very weak effort.

Make Me, Child - B

                                               The reviewers seem to like this one. Then again, who is going to criticize what has  just about become a thriller-genre national institution.  I had some discomfort with Reacher getting out of his comfort zone. He spends lot of time on planes and even in a luxury hotel. I'm pretty sure he'd have trouble getting a room at the Peninsula, Chicago's finest hotel, in his 2-day-old $50 outfit from a rural general store. Im also beginning to wonder about his age. He acknowledges graduating from West point in 1983. That puts him in his mid-50's and he's still doing things that I doubt people his age can do.  But, he is Reacher. In this one, he teams up with (and starts a relationship that is still ongoing when the book ends) a former FBI agent and they jointly pursue some very, very bad people. Of course, they do more than pursue. In the end a very insidious venture is finished off.

Danubia: A Personal History Of The Hapsburg Empire, Winder - B

                                              This  enjoyable history appealed to my longstanding interest in the lands of the Hapsburgs. Years ago, I read a book praising the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the proverbial 'old man of Europe'.  The premise was simply stated: the multicultural, multi-lingual lands of central and eastern Europe were  helluva lot better off in the 19th century than they were in the 20th.
                                              This book goes much further into the past  than the 19th century. The story starts in the lands lost by the Roman Empire to the invaders from the east in the 5th century. They were later occupied by Germans, Czechs, Moravians, Slovakians, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Bulgars, Lithuanians, Serbs, Croats and Maygars. The Hapsburg name first appears in 1273 when Rudolf  I was elected Holy Roman Emperor.  And from 1440 on, only Hapsburgs would hold that title.  Some ruled capably; many did not.  Charles V, through a series of deaths, dynastic marriages and outright flukes, wound up in the 16th century as King of Spain, ruler of much of America and the Holy Roman Emperor.  He held sway over more of the world than anyone ever had.  Charles eventually ceded the eastern lands and the title of emperor to his brother, Ferdinand I.  During Ferdinand's reign, the first great clashes between Christianity and the Muslim Ottomans took place in the Balkans and Hungary. "The frontier zone that marked the border between the Hapsburg lands and the Ottoman Empire was a shifting, frightening reality from the fifteenth century to the end of the eighteenth."  The last great Ottoman attempt at Vienna was in 1683.  It came perilously close to succeeding.
                                               After their defeat at Vienna, the Ottomans slowly gave way, and land they had occupied came under the Hapsburg flag.  What had been northern, Alpine, Catholic and German now incorporated Protestant Hungary, Romania and the Slavic north Balkans - a virtual hodge podge of ethnic tensions.  As the process unwound, the people of these newly claimed lands had nothing in common with their rulers. Thus, the retreat of the Ottomans brought no relief to Vienna.  The latter half of the 18th century saw very capable rule by Maria Theresa and her son, Joseph II. Joseph, in particular, modernized the state and lifted most of the legal, cultural and social restrictions that had been placed on the realm's Jews. Joseph died in 1790 and within a decade-and-a half (1806), the Holy Roman Empire was kaput. "The enterprising young Napoleon made waking up in Vienna and reaching for a newspaper something to be dreaded." Between the battles of Austerlitz and Wagram and his making the Hapsburg princess, Marie Louise, his wife, Napoleon dismantled the Empire and humiliated the Hapsburgs. But, as the author points out, surviving was the core Hapsburg competency. With the Holy Roman Empire gone, they declared Austria an Empire, survived Napoleon and helped rewrite the ground rules for the post-war era at the Congress of,where else - Vienna.
                                              The year 1848 was a watershed one on the continent. Revolution broke out in Paris, Prague, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest and many smaller cities.  The forces of suppression prevailed, but the genie had been let out of the bottle. People were returned to their status as 'subjects' but had begun to think of themselves as 'citizens' of possible nations. Natural rights were on everyone's tongue. Soon language was seen as a vehicle to nationhood. If there was anyplace where that would not work it was the Austrian Empire, where the teenaged Franz Joseph ascended the throne he would occupy for sixty-eight years. German, Italian and Romanian unification all followed and nibbled at Austria's territories.  The Austro-Hungarian Empire emerged. "The two halves of the Empire carried on in parallel, held together by Franz Joseph's startling longevity. Both halves boomed..." To the south lay the unhappy Balkans, the collapsing Ottomans and the intrusive Russians. What the author calls a "forcefield of nationalism'"created a slow motion disaster for the Empire, which during a century or so first threatened and then destroyed it."
                                             The beginning of the end of course came for the Hapsburgs when Europe spun out of control in August, 1914.  Ironically, the 1917 collapse of Russia placed the Empire in a relatively safe and secure strategic position. It was too little too late for the Empire's many, many nationalities. "The Empire ended and its subjects looked out onto a new and - as it would prove - terrible world. Almost everyone in the old Empire seems to have taken turns to be destroyed by one aspect of the twentieth century or another."
                                            These types of unstructured histories can be trying to read. but they do have their many hidden gems. After all, I've just learned that the Baron von Trapp was part of the Empire's four ship navy that went to China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion. As is the case with traditional structured, even academic histories, I enjoy trying to find out how Europe imploded in the 20th century and this book helps in that pursuit.
                                           

The Girl In The Spider's Web, Lagercrantz - B +

                                               I have read Sherlock Holmes and James Bond books not written by Conan Doyle or Ian Fleming.  Some of those 'authorized' follow-ups have been pretty good.   This one is very good. Here, the author has the setting, a very good story, Blomkvist and Salander. Unfortunately, very good is not the standard that Larsson established - he often achieved greatness. The emphasis is heavily on the world of hackers and hacking.  Salander hacks an NSA system in a search for her twin sister and information about her father's criminal empire. That leads to the American and Swedish authorities looking for her, while at the same time, the world's leading authority on AI is killed in Stockholm. The son of the AI genius is an autistic savant who is sought after because it is believed he can draw the face of the killer. Pretty soon everybody  is looking for the boy, Salander and a lot of unseemly Russians. I'll leave it at that - no one likes a spoiler.
                                              Lee Child in Sunday's Times review was able to make the distinction between good and great much better I can. He said, " It is no exaggeration to say that as an invention she's in the same ballpark as Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter. She's a classic antihero - fundamentally deranged, objectively appalling, lawless, violent and deceitful, but fiercely loved by millions of readers because she has good reasons for the way she is and a heart of gold. Can she be brought back to life by different author- or will she lie inert on the slab?"  Child concludes "the sublime madness of Larsson's original isn't quite there."  That said, great characters, a solid story and the virtual assurance of a continuation of the battle with her twin sister means that this series has legs.  I'm sure I'll pre-order the next "Girl".