HMS Ulysses, Maclean - A*

                                               This book is the 1955 debut novel of noted WWII storyteller Alistair Maclean. I believe that much of his later material, often made into movies, had a bit more emphasis on the fiction, whereas this is based on his real life experience as a seaman on the Murmansk run.  Less important than the Battle of the Atlantic or supplying the Royal Army in Africa and Europe, the convoys north were often comprised of rust buckets manned by men worn to exhaustion and in the most disagreeable weather imaginable--weather so horrific that no one ever changed and men slept fully dressed.  The novel concerns the Ulysses, a light cruiser with over 700 aboard. The wind, sea and cold faced by the crew assaulted the body and mind. The ship itself, coated in 300 tons of ice, was as numbed as the men aboard it. The convoy escort left Scapa Flow on a Monday morning and by Tuesday afternoon, off the coast of Iceland, half of their ships were so battered, that they were ordered home. "What nobody had any means of guessing, was that this howling gale was still only the deadly overture...At 22:30, the Ulysses crossed the Arctic Circle. The monster struck." They spent a night fighting towering seas, 10 degrees weather and 120 mph winds.  On Wednesday morning, the escorts met their convoy in the Norwegian Sea.  Twenty-four hours later, the subs took out an escort carrier. The following dawn, a wolf-pack sunk 6 of the 18 merchantmen, and a German cruiser, with a radar system immeasurably better than the Royal Navy had assumed they had, holed the Ulysses, taking out all of its radar capabilities. By Saturday, a mere 36 hours from the safety of the Kola peninsula, the convoy's thirty-six ships were reduced to twelve; they had fired their last depth charges. Despair, exhaustion, starvation and fear were the orders of the day. An attack by dive bombers hits the Ulysses with a bomb and one of the planes, a Focke-Wulf Condor crashed into the ship. About the only things working on the ship were the engines. All day and into the night the bombers kept coming after the defenseless convoy. Even a German surface marauder joined the fray. On Sunday, five ships entered the harbor at Murmansk.
                                            I believe this is one of the finest novels I have ever read. Each chapter, indeed almost each page, is superb in its telling of the hardships endured and the strength of the men enduring. I believe the dangers of a Arctic convoy will be seared in my memory for some time.  There is a description of men thrown into the freezing sea to be either drowned or incinerated in a blazing oil fire that could provoke nightmares. A lifeboat is found with all aboard frozen solid and still drifting; an eighteen-year-old floods a powder magazine knowing he can't escape with the bulkheads battered closed.  I am astounded at the excellence of the telling and the horror of this experience.

The Lost City Of The Monkey God, Preston - B

                                               Rumors of the mysterious city in the deep jungle of what is now Honduras have existed since Cortez penned a letter about it in the 16th century. Over the years, various attempts have been made to find it, but usually the murderous jungle stopped all seekers. Deadly snakes, ants, flies and creatures of all sorts make the locale truly inhospitable to human inquiry. In the late 30's, an American claimed to have found the outer walls, but offered no proof and did not disclose the location. A Californian named Steve Elkins has been the motivating force behind the actual recent finding of the White City.
                                              Elkins took his first trip deep into the jungle in 1994. He realized that aimlessly hacking through the jungle was a pointless exercise. He hired the Jet Propulsion Lab to study satellite imagery and they found a walled-off valley that they labelled Target One, T1. A hurricane, which led to major economic and political failures in the banana republic, delayed action into the new century. Improvements in technology led to a LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) search in 2012 that concluded that not only at T1 but also at T3, there were hundreds of acres of now-covered man-made improvements. Three years later, assisted by the Honduran military a team consisting of archaeologists, a film crew, the author (working for 'New Yorker'), a 'National Geographic' photographer, three British SAS jungle specialists and various other support personnel, helicoptered into the T1 valley. It was a lost paradise that appeared to have not been visited by humans in eons.  They found a complex, sophisticated and unique city beneath the extensive foliage and, after the strong encouragement of the archaeologists, left everything untouched.  The first expedition had established T1 as an important site and a quick flyover of T3 pointed to an equally important and larger city a few miles north. The Honduran government vowed to protect the sites from looters and deforestation, while international conservation organizations volunteered to raise money. A handful of the Americans, two of the British and the majority of the Honduran explorers came down with leishmaniasis, a deadly and disfiguring tropical disease. The Americans were treated at the NIH and the author was one of the lucky ones, as his disease went into remission. Some of the others were permanently disabled by the disease. In the following years, 'Leish' affected almost all of the military teams assigned to protect the site. The Honduran state has committed resources to and has staked the nation's reputation on the proper archaeological exploration of T1. Indeed, in 2016, the Honduran president extracted the first pottery from the site and renamed the valley the City of the Jaguar.  It is expected to take centuries to fully explore the city assuming that disease doesn't prohibit man's ability to explore there. The author closes with the question of what happened to the original inhabitants. Since their desertion of the valley is traced to 1500, there is only one reasonable conclusion: like 90% of pre-Columbian America, they succumbed to western diseases.

The Ninth Hour, McDermott - B+

                                               This novel, a NYT notable book for 2017, is about Irish Catholic nuns and women in long-ago Brooklyn.  Featured are the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor.  When a young, pregnant Annie's husband does the dutch act, it is the Little Sisters who come to her rescue. She goes to work at the convent's laundry and that is pretty much where young Sally is brought up. When Sally is contemplating a vocation, Sister Lucy tells her: "If we could live without suffering, we'd find no peace in heaven." Suffering, particularly a woman's in marriage, is a constant theme. Sally decides to pass on the nunnery just before she discovers that Annie's humanity doesn't fit within the strict rules of the day. And Sally's decision to help her mother is a shocking finale to this well-crafted story.
                                            There is no exact specification of exactly when this transpired, but my guess is it is the Brooklyn of my grandparents, vague traces of which I think I remember. Annie's best-friend, Liz Tierney, wife of a doorman at the St. Francis Hotel and mother of six, makes the wittiest and most stinging observation in the book when referring to the local parish priests. "Princes of the church - spoiled children they are. The nuns keep things running."

The One Device: The Secret History Of The iPhone, Merchant - B-

                                               "The iPhone might actually be the pinnacle highpoint of capitalism to this point." "The iPhone isn't just a tool; it's the foundational instrument of modern life." This is the story of how the iPhone was developed to became a crucial accessory currently owned by over a billion people. Steve Jobs inventing the iPhone is as mythical as Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb. It was teams deep in the organization that did the essential skunk work. In Cupertino, a group focusing on human/computer interactions (UI - user interface) began exploring touchscreens and did so with outside help. Touchscreen technology had been developing as early as thirty-years before when it was researched at CERN in Europe, but it was the UI team at Apple that perfected it. No one could quite envision a usage beyond a possible large email reader until Jobs reversed himself and announced in late 2004 that he wanted a phone. It would take years, and there would be endless issues addressed at Apple before the creation of the iPhone. The initial work was an attempt to evolve the iPod into a phone, and along the way, the marketing team insisted on a keyboard like the Blackberry. Jobs kiboshed the key board and went all in on the touchscreen. The original iPod steel case proved to inhibit phone reception and the switch to aluminum was made. The concept of combining a phone with internet access, music and unlimited apps was something that no one in particular ever envisioned. Manufacturing was done in Asia and Samsung saved the day at a late hour with a new chip to power the phone.  Google contributed their maps app on a handshake deal. Corning adapted a glass it had made fifty years earlier, for which it had never found an application, for the screen. The iPhone launched in June 2007 and, as they say, the rest is history.
                                              There are sections of this book, mostly about the mining and manufacturing that goes into the phone that I skipped. The development process was intense and took a heavy toll on the health and personal relationships of all involved. Virtually none of the senior project managers stayed at Apple. I certainly hope they all are rich. There were two facts that I found fascinating. The iPhone has the equivalent of 3.3 billion transistors in its chips. The 1969 Apollo Guidance System had 12,300. Jobs insisted that outside developers not be allowed access to app development. Almost everyone disagreed with him and, after a slow start for iPhone sales, he relented. The app store propelled sales through the roof. Apple collects 30% of whatever the apps monetize. That is now a $40B per year business.

Trophy, Jacobsen - B++

                                               This is an absolutely fabulous Danish novel that opens with an amazing prologue. A  couple are hiking in the very far north of Norway in the early spring when they are kidnapped, drugged and told they are now prey for a team of hunters. The man is given a hunting rifle with three bullets and they are told to take off.  The story focuses on two people investigating the event. One is a private investigator hired by the daughter of the shooter, who discovers a CD in her father's safe after his death. The other is a policewoman looking into the suicide of a Danish soldier who served in Afghanistan and was part of the hunting team. This is a helluva read with a ton of fascinating plot twists along the way. I suspect I like the stories set in the frozen north because of my affection for Colorado in the wintertime. Thanks again, Wendell. The only reason this doesn't merit an A is that I never give the thriller/police procedurals that high a grade.

Chicago, Mamet - B+

                                               This novel is the author's homage to his hometown. Set in the late 1920's, it features Mike and Parlow, two beat writers for the Chicago Tribune whose lives and work are very different from that of their legendary editor and owner, Robert McCormick. McCormick may have dealt with the great economic and political issues of the day, but Mike and Parlow hang out with crooked cops, mobsters, prostitutes and con men as they cover street life in the city. Their focus is the murder of Jackie Weiss, a tavern owner; the role played by his moll, Lita Grey; and why the mob went after him. The lead of Mike's article is "Jackie Weiss had died of a broken heart, it being broken by several slugs from a .45." As for Jackie's establishment, the Chez Montmartre, "it purveyed edible food, and liquor which, while not imported as advertised, was sufficiently cleansed of poisons as to not induce either dementia or blindness." There was a lot going on in Chicago, and Jackie could have gotten on the wrong side of the Irish on the north side, the Italians on the south or the IRA, which was in town running guns. Mamet's way with words is extraordinary; life in the Roaring 20's was quotable and enjoyable. A great book.