Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1945-1956, Applebaum - B +

                                               Eastern Europe consists of the eight states that were occupied by the Red Army in 1944 and 1945 and became part of the Soviet Bloc. They were Poland, E. Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania. "The war gave Stalin an unprecedented opportunity to impose his particular vision of communist society on his neighbors." This book is a history of how totalitarianism prevailed, and focuses on Poland, E. Germany and Hungary.
                                               Zero Hour is the point in time when the fighting stopped and the survivors stumbled into the daylight of a world that was either partially or totally destroyed. Warsaw and Berlin were leveled; Budapest fared better, but three-quarters of its buildings were damaged. Millions were dead and civilization had ceased to exist throughout the region. Into this vacuum came the rapists, thieves and murderers of the Red Army. The Soviets began to take their 'reparations' and shipped east personal property, factories and even electric power plants. On the heels of the invaders were the Moscow communists who were slavishly loyal to Stalin and ready to follow orders. Their first job was to join coalitions of national liberation and cooperate with other political parties. They were accompanied by NKVD-trained men who built new police states. As the Soviets had done in eastern Poland from 1939-41, they arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned and occasionally executed those who 'might' oppose the new communist era. They were particularly brutal in Poland where the Home Army had fought so bravely yet were treated by the Reds no better than the Nazis. "Everywhere in Eastern Europe, their control over the secret police gave minority communist parties an outsized influence over political events." In the first round of elections, the communists were embarrassed and began the process of purging voters, imprisoning and exiling opponents and stuffing ballot boxes. "By the end of 1948.....politics had become something that happened not between several parties but within a single party."
                                          High Stalinism, the author's characterization of the brutality of the five years preceding the tyrant's 1953 death, encompassed all the states of eastern Europe. The Reds cracked down on their number one enemy, the Catholic and Protestant establishments that survived the war. Schools, hospitals, and monasteries were closed and their lands confiscated. 'Enemies of the state' were subjected to Soviet-style show trials, imprisonment and for some deportation to the Soviet Gulag. Culture, sport, construction and education soon followed the Soviet model. Stalin died on March 6, 1953. In June, Berlin workers struck and rallied against the state. The Soviets declared martial law and Soviet tanks restored order. Three years later, after Khruschev's 'secret speech', there were riots in Poland and an exercise of a certain amount of independent nationalism that Khrushchev allowed. But not so in Hungary where the Soviets brutally crushed the Hungarian Revolution. Thankfully, 1989 brought an end to the Soviet domination of eastern Europe.
                                         Anne Applebaum is an excellent writer and this is an excellent book. I cannot, however, remember why I noted it for consideration. Most of the material was covered in Tony Judt's 'Cold War' and other books about the aftermath of the war. A number of years ago, I vowed to stop reading anything about the Bolsheviks and the seventy-five year nightmare they perpetuated. A world in which the truth is abhorred and lies, deceit, cheating, brutality, injustice, and dozens of other false ways of living are elevated is too unpleasant to explore. Never again, and I hope I stick to it.

                                           

Glass Houses, Penny - B +

                                              This is the  thirteenth book in the Armand Gamache series and, I believe, the most complex and best so far. The opening pages are about a trial in Quebec that is the result of a murder six months earlier in Three Pines. Only in the closing chapter do we even find out who the defendant is. This in and of itself builds a massive amount of tension throughout the book. The flashbacks to the crime build up a parallel and very compelling storyline about the plague of drugs, opioids and new synthetics on both sides of the border. Armand is now, after a third request, back at the Surete and fully in charge. He realizes that the drug cartels are winning and creates an amazingly complex plot to halt them in their tracks. Armand succeeds in the end, but is suspended for his choice of methodology. This has been a fabulous read.

Munich, Harris - B +

                                               This is an engaging novel by a master storyteller that is about the four days in Sept.   1938 that encompassed the 'Munich Crisis', the appeasement of Hitler and the betrayal of Czechoslovakia. It is very, very thorough and adds two imaginary friends, one British and one German, to the mix of real historical characters. The German is part of the Oster Conspiracy contemplating eliminating Hitler, and the Englishman a close secretary to Chamberlain. Their attempts to influence events are the focus of the 'thriller or spy' aspect of the book. The novel was very well received in the UK and 'The Times' was complimentary of its positive depiction of the man they referred to as the most maligned PM in British history.

IQ, Ide - B

                                               This is a fabulous debut novel set in the dregs of south central LA and featuring Isaiah Quintabe as a smart- really smart-high school dropout and sort of a modern day urban Sherlock. He takes on cases the LAPD doesn't follow up on, solves them and may or may not charge for them. The central story here is his hiring by a famous rapper who was almost murdered by a monstrous pit bull sent by someone close to him. Isaiah almost gets killed but does resolve the crime, and along the way, proves himself to be a young man of inestimable character. I've already downloaded the follow-up.

Spy Games, Brookes - B-

                                               In the previous novel by this author, Philip Mangan, a journalist was the front man for the British security services and his handler was a relatively new former army officer, Trish Patterson. Mangan is biding his time in Ethiopia when he is approached by a Chinese man with a great deal to offer the UK.  It becomes apparent that 'Rocky' is also part of a significant and multi-layered factional battle with the PRC communist party. Mangan and Patterson run the field ops, but there is a complex chess game being played out a few pay grades over their heads. All in all, again, a pretty good read.

Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind, Harari - B +

                                               This fascinating book was written by a young Oxford historian. He breaks human history down to three different eras, delineated by cognitive, agrarian and scientific revolutions. While discussing the early ability of homo sapiens to speak and organize, he makes a breathtaking observation. He states that it is extremely hard to control more than 150 people in a group at a time. It is fiction that enables "large numbers of strangers to cooperate successfully by believing in common myths that exist only in people's collective imagination." "There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings." The author also posits that the life of the hunter-gatherer was pretty good, and more interesting and healthier than most of what has followed. The foragers had diverse diets, were extremely fit and had an abundance of free time.
                                               After two-and-a-half millennia of gathering and hunting, in about 9500 BC humans began to manipulate the lives of a few plants and animals.  Today, 90% of what we eat comes from a handful of plants domesticated in that era: rice, wheat, corn and the potato. The species flourished because it could multiply faster in a settled environment over a foraging one. By creating food surpluses, humankind established an environment in which kings, soldiers, priests, and thinkers made history. Harari suggests that while the elites were making history, they enslaved and suppressed the vast majority of the human race. Furthermore, a more compact living space shared with domesticated animals led to greater illnesses and disease than the hunter-gatherers experienced. The necessary tool for the elites to organize society was introduced by the Sumerians in the fourth millennium BC. The first writings appeared and helped the elites to organize societies that were quite substantial, peaking with the Romans who ruled millions and were organized enough to collect taxes and maintain a public polity that ruled the vast Mediterranean basin and beyond. Money was another step in the process of allowing large societies to function smoothly by establishing universal means of exchange. Perhaps the two most important unifiers that came later were empires and religion. "Commerce, empires and universal religions eventually brought virtually every sapiens on every continent into the global world we live in today."
                                               The third revolution began in Europe about 500 years ago.  Explorations of science led to the industrial revolution and the extraordinary transformation of life in the last two hundred years. In less than a century-and-a-half, mankind developed methods of mechanical propulsion that took us from a steam propelled railroad to an Atlas booster to the moon. Along the way, we have changed the planet, not for the better, and replaced the family and the local community with the state and the marketplace. Since 1945, the various states of the world have provided us with a peaceful seven decades, quite unlike anything in humankind's past. Today, Homo Sapiens is breaking out of its biologically determined limits and moving toward intelligent design. Scientists are now creating life in laboratories. Whereto? Only time will tell as we approach an almost godlike capacity to change the physiology of mankind.

Night Heron, Brookes - B

                                              This fabulous debut spy novel is by a BBC reporter who we have seen  compared to John LeCarre.  The setting is China about a decade ago, and the novel features Li Huasheng, who escapes from a labor camp after twenty years of re-training and imprisonment. Before he was sent away, he had been providing classified data to the British by running a small group of unhappy scientists at different government labs. He figures his only way out is to restart that process, and he does. Thus, we are led on a detailed tour of modern, urban, gritty Beijing and the challenges of spying in a police state. Like LeCarre, the author takes his time and thoroughly and thoughtfully explores the depths of intelligence and counter-intelligence work. However, he never quite loses you in the details.  I've already downloaded the next two the author has written.

Pride Of The Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic - Sandomir B +

                                              This is the story of two remarkable American heroes. Lou Gehrig is rightfully considered one of our greatest athletes, finest gentlemen, and is the man who gave the most famous speech in the history of sports, a speech that has been referred to as baseball's Gettysburg Address. His tragic early end is known to sports fans and students of American history. Gary Cooper is the actor who pulled off the cinematic depiction of that speech with such humble strength that it is seared in the memory of all who have seen it. April 25th, 1939 marked  the end of Gehrig's string of 2130 starts over fourteen years for the fearsome Yankees. He was disintegrating before everyone's eyes and pulled himself from the starting lineup.  Six weeks later, doctors at the Mayo clinic told him he had ALS. He made his 'luckiest man' speech at the Stadium on July 4th. He finished the season on the Yankees' payroll, and thanks to Fiorello La Guardia, spent a year as a Commissioner of the NYC Parole Board. He died on June 2, 1941, two weeks before his thirty-eight birthday.  Samuel Goldwyn acquired the rights to a biopic, cast Coop in the lead role and signed the Babe and Bill Dickey to play themselves. Cooper spent six weeks trying to learn to play baseball as a lefty. Throughout the film, Babe Herman, a Dodger great, and a natural southpaw, did most of the heavy lifting. The focus of the film, however, was not baseball, but the romance between Lou and Eleanor. Theresa Wright became famous for her portrayal of Eleanor Gehrig and she and Coop, pulled off the perfect on screen love affair.  Ironically, of the speech itself, only a few sentences have survived in a newsreel. It is the movie version depicted by Cooper that has become a stand-in for  the real thing. The film was a rousing success, was nominated for 10 Oscars and became a patriotic stand-by as the war took over American society.  After a request to give the speech on the first night of a USO tour, Cooper gave it every night thereafter during his time in the Pacific. In his final appearance, a few months before he died in 1961, he said,"If anyone asks me if I'm the luckiest guy in the world? My answer is yep."  This is a sweet book and once again, leads me to question being raised a Dodger fan.

Orphan Train, Kline - B +

                                              This superbly written novel is based on the story of one of the last survivors of the Orphan Train which ran from the east coast to the midwest from 1854 to 1929. The Children's Aid Society of NYC sent over a quarter of million foundlings west to what was supposed to be a better and safer life. In the novel, all ended well for Niamh Power, a nine-year-old Irish immigrant sent to Minnesota in 1929. Her story is not without its harrowing moments and the terrible price she paid as an adult after experiencing the loss of everyone she ever loved. This is a wonderful, heartwarming book and I thank my colleague of many years ago and friend, Mike Grisz, for the recommendation.

American Fire: Love, Arson, And Life In A Vanishing Land, Hesse - C

                                           Notwithstanding a handful of favorable reviews, this book appears to me to be of little redeeming value. For five months, over the winter of 2012-13, Accomack County, Virginia was the site of over seven dozen fires. The fires became the preoccupation of everyone in this dying bit of the rural south on Virginia's eastern shore.  The authorities had hundreds of watchers out every night, and finally, in early April, they saw and caught their witless man and the girlfriend who thought it would be fun. Charlie Smith confessed immediately. Tonya Burdick pleaded guilty after a trial. Both are in the hoosegow.