Our Game, Le Carre - B

                                               This is a Le Carre from over twenty-years ago that I apparently missed.  Kindle offered it up, as I had purchased 'Night Manager', and this was next in line. It also is a novel where the author was fashioning his post-Cold War style.  Our protagonist is Tim Cranmer, a 47 year old whom the Office has sent off into retirement, as the services of the cold warriors were no longer required.  He's called back to London to discuss a few things when his protege and double agent, Larry Pettifer has gone missing, along with his former Soviet handler, Checheyev, and about $37m pounds.  Larry's also taken Tim's youthful love interest with him and some uninformed  police officials are trying to tag Tim with responsibility for participating in the scam. When the Office also suggests Tim is in on it, he packs up a .38 and his 'retirement' passport' and takes off after Larry. Larry's handler was actually Ingush and the money's been diverted to the Caucuses in the hope of throwing off the Moscow yoke. Tim and Checheyev go deep into the the mountains.  Larry has been martyred and Tim joins the cause. It is not LeCarre's greatest effort, but no one in the suspense business has ever written as well as him and thus, it's always a pleasure.

The Killing of Bobbi Lomax, Moriarity - C

                                               This debut novel received all sorts of accolades last year. Needless to say, it didn't work for me. The story is about a forger who sets up an elaborate plan to the deceive the Faith, a western state Mormon-like fanatical religion. He attempts to expose a false founding document, but is captured by the police after he uses a bombing to cover his tracks.

China 1945: Mao's Revolution and America's Fateful Choice, Bernstein - B +

                                               As the eight-year Sino-Japanese War entered its final year, there was hope in Washington that Chiang Kai-Shek could unify the country and somehow come to common cause with the Chinese Communist Party. Both Chiang and Mao Zedong had assiduously avoided using their troops in the fight against Japan, because both knew they would need them for the inevitable civil war that would follow. The country was in disastrous condition, described as a place of "medieval destitution" upon which war and famine inflicted approximately 25 million deaths. That a civil war was coming and that the communists would win was obvious to the State Department's 'China Hands', the young men born in-country to missionary parents and not tainted with Washington's delusional faith in Chiang.  In 1943, John Davies wrote, "The Communists are in China to stay. And China's destiny is not Chiang's but theirs."  As has so often been the case in US foreign policy, we had hopes and expectations that were incompatible with the culture of the foreign country and certainly, with the facts on the ground.
                                             In late 1944, FDR's newly appointed Ambassador to China, Gen. Pat Hurley, met with both Mao and Chiang in an attempt to establish a coalition government. In three thousand years, China had never had a peaceful power struggle and the concept of power-sharing was totally foreign to both parties.  Hurley was a Republican politician, lacking in international experience and incapable of listening to the State Dept. staff, the vast majority of whom recommended that we come to some accommodation with Mao.  Eventually, Hurley gutted the staff in China and with FDR's backing went all in for Chiang-Kai-Shek. The end of the war meant that "the United States and the Communists would no longer have a common enemy, and its disappearance would strip away the incentive to cooperate, leaving behind many reasons for each to see the other a mortal foe."
                                              In August of 1945, Chiang appeared to have the upper hand. He controlled the central government and had 39 American-equipped divisions. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria (Japan's puppet state Manchuko) changed the strategic balance. A Red Army was now in China. The 1.5 million Soviet troops in Manchuria slowly confiscated the Japanese assets for reparations, prohibited both American and central government access and began supporting the CCP. Better led, better organized, highly motivated and  supported by Stalin, the CCP began to prevail. The US options were to withdraw, support Chiang, or intervene. We chose to continue to support Chiang, and after Hurley quit in a mercurial outburst, sent in George Marshall as Ambassador. His task was to avoid a Chinese civil war. In January 1946, he engineered a cease fire between the two sides. It quickly fell apart. Chiang's hard-right colleagues could never accept power sharing with the CCP.  Both Stalin and Mao continued to lie, deceive and mislead the US about their intentions, which were to establish a Soviet-style dictatorship in China. Although it would take three more years, China was lost. "There was no doubt that, whoever lost it, China's emergence as a communist country closely allied to the Soviet Union and aiding revolutionary movements elsewhere in Asia was a tremendous defeat for the US."
                                                 The basic premise of  this book is that any accommodation with Mao would have been better than the outright enmity that led to Korea and Vietnam. It seems to me that accommodation would have been awfully difficult in 1945, and immediately thereafter. The lines were being drawn between the Communist bloc and the rest of the world. The China lobby in the US, led by Henry Luce of Time Magazine, was staunchly in the camp of the national government. On the other hand, continually backing Chiang and then spending decades trying to justify that support caused immeasurable damage to this country.  It led to McCarthyism, Red scares, FBI abuse, the need to not 'lose' Vietnam - all for a man who Joe Stillwell called 'Peanut' and who was, in the end, an incapable failure. The author's conclusion is that the US did not lose China. Stalin and Mao won it and there is nothing we could have done to alter the course of history. Notwithstanding the B +, this book is an arduous tough read.
                                           

Michener's South Pacific: From Battlefront to Bestseller to Broadway, May - B

                                              Inspired after listening to the 2008 cast album recently, I decided to tackle the book and found I couldn't get very far. Although it won a Pulitzer in 1947, it couldn't hold my attention. So, I then turned to this brief history and have found it quite enjoyable.  Michener was in his early 30's, willing to leave his NYC textbook editor's job, when he joined the Navy and was made an officer. He was assigned to what was basically a dead-end backwater job on the island Espiritu Santo, miles from the action. It was there he met a French planter, Ratard, his Vietnamese lady-in-charge, Bloody Mary, and the coast watcher on whom he based a character, the Remittance Man.  Michener also travelled around the South Pacific and was appalled by the racial bigotry that was part and parcel of the American mindset in the theater. It became an integral theme in the book, which he decided to write in 1944. He finished it in early 1945, submitted it successfully to MacMillan, where he went back to work in early 1946. The novel was moderately successful when it was published in 1947. Two wondrous and surprising events followed. Rodgers and Hammerstein bought the rights to make a musical, and the book won the Pulitzer. It premiered at the Majestic Theater on April 7, 1949. It was, and continues to be, a rousing success beloved and known around the world. The musical adaptation also won a Pulitzer, thus making 'Tales' the only work so decorated. Almost a decade later, the movie followed. Michener continued on, writing Hawaii at age fifty, and living to the age of 90. This is a fun little read. Perhaps, I should try to finish 'Tales of the South Pacific.'

A Hero of France, Furst - B

                                               This is the latest in Furst's on going stories about the inter-war and recently, the early war years. He is a master of plotting, suspense and historical background. Our main character in the spring of 1941 is Mathieu, the nom de guerre of a man running the escape routes for downed pilots from occupied France to Vichy and  Spain. These 'passeurs' were considered the forerunner of the French Resistance. Mathieu's success draws the attention of the British, who offer funds in exchange for an occasional extra job. After June 22, the communists leap feet first into resistance activities. The Germans import a detective from Hamburg in their attempt to find the 'rat line'.  Fortunately for the good guys, Mathieu and his team escape the clutches of the police  and move on to the next job. Furst points out that at this point in 1941, the occupation of Paris took a harsher turn. The Gestapo and SS took over from the local gendarmes. I prefer the pre-war books, simply because they delve into the details of a time glossed over in the history books.

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust, Beer - B-

                                               This is the extraordinary history of Edith Hahn, a secular Jew who grew up in Vienna and was one exam away from her Doctorate in Law in 1938 when Austria's Nazi anti-Semitism roared onto the stage. She was dismissed from school and spent the next two years in a downward spiral, losing her possessions, her home and her freedom. She spent almost all of 1941 on an asparagus farm in Germany working as a slave laborer, and was then sent to a paper factory. In mid-1942, she was sent back to Vienna for transport to Poland. On the train, she took off her yellow star and, with the help of friends in Vienna, obtained Christian identification papers. She travelled to Munich and obtained a position with the Red Cross. A high-level businessman, exempt from the draft because he had lost vision in one eye, fell in love with her and proposed. He laughed when she told him she was Jewish, and they moved in together in 1943. They married late that year and in April, 1944, she gave birth to a daughter.  Her husband Werner was drafted late in 1944, promoted and sent east where he was captured by the Soviets and sent to Siberia. At wars end, she came out as Jewish and was made a a judge in the nascent legal system. Werner came home, but divorced her. Realizing the Soviets were as bad as the Nazi's, Edith escaped to England in late 1948. She remarried, lived a long life and wrote this book in the late-90's. She died a decade later.