A Necessary Evil, Mukherjee - B

                             This is the second book in a series set in India in 1920 and first seen here in May of last year. This time, Capt. Wyndham and Sgt. Banerjee, his Cambridge-educated assistant, witness the assassination of the heir to a throne in southern India. The kingdom at the center of this story is thousands of years old and its diamond mines were mentioned by Ptolmey, one of Alexander the Great's generals. Wyndham and Banerjee pursue the case, while the author enlightens us on the intricacies of the Raj after the Great War, and the attempt by the Governor-General to bring the dozens of principalities and kingdoms into a Chamber of Princes supporting the UK. The Raj held together for another 27 years.

Something In The Water, Steadman- B

                                                      A British couple honeymooning in Bora Bora find - something in the water - and off we go. Pull out all the cliches because they fit: page-turner, summer read, beach fun, thriller. It was written by the young British actress who played Lady Mabel on season 5 of Downton and has already been optioned by Hollywood. Read it when looking for fun.

The Temptation of Forgiveness, Leon - B

                                                      Commissario Guido Brunetti is at it again. He teams with Paola in the raising of two teenagers and negotiates the endless politics of the Questura. Along with his usual colleagues, Guido resolves an apparent drug-related crime that actually is tied into a heart insurance/prescription drug ring. Venice remains the center of the series.

Smoketown: The Untold Story Of The Other Great Black Renaissance, Whitaker - B -

                                                      This is the story of the flourishing of Pittsburgh's  black community from the 1920's through the late 1950's. It saw the finest black paper in the country, the Pittsburgh Courier, the two best Negro League baseball teams, the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays, a flourishing of the performance arts, and the birth of August Wilson. Most of Smoketown's story is centered in the Hill District, just east of downtown. The lead in this story is the Courier, which rose to become the nation's most successful  black newspaper by endorsing and promoting the career of the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis, in the 1930's. The paper had been started by a dreamer, but acquired in 1910 by Pittsburgh's most successful black entrepreneur, Cap Posey. As a river town on the underground railroad, in a state that had led the way in the emancipation and education of blacks, Pittsburgh had a small, well-educated, and cohesive black community. Robert Vann built the paper into an economic success and overtook the Chicago Defender as the leading voice of black America. He also led the charge that started blacks voting Democratic when the paper endorsed FDR in 1932. That same year, the  Black Yankees and the Pittsburgh Crawfords opened Greenlee Stadium, the first ever built by a black man. Red Greenlee was a bootlegger, the owner of the numbers racket in town and the bank for the city's negroes. He was also an entrepreneur extraordinaire who brought 5 future Hall of Famers to the Crawfords. Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson though, were the sidemen for Satchel Paige, the most famous of them all. The late 30's and the war years saw Lena Horne, Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine all achieve national prominence. During the war,  the Courier fostered the promotion of blacks in the military, and one of its reporters, Wendell Smith, was Jackie Robinson's travel companion and spokesman starting in 1947, when Robinson became the most famous black in America. The paper pioneered women in roles other than the society pages and  heaped praise on the nascent civil rights movement. When mainstream white papers began to follow the civil rights movement and hire the best black reporters, the end came quickly for the Courier as it went bankrupt in 1966, and the memory of Pittsburgh as the crossroads of black America faded away. A son of the Hill District, August Wilson, has immortalized the era in his works.

The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made, O'Toole - B+

                                                      Thomas W. Wilson was born in and raised in the south, the son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers. He attended college at Davidson before graduating from Princeton in 1879. After a half-hearted effort at the law and having dropped his first name, Woodrow decided on an academic career, and married Ellen Axson, also the oldest child of a minister. He received a PhD from Johns Hopkins and taught at Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan before returning to Princeton as a full professor. He longed for a life in politics, but settled for success as a teacher, author and lecturer. At thirty-nine, he suffered from chest pains and paralysis of his right hand. The physician who treated him decades later surmised that it was a mini-stroke. In 1902, he was offered and accepted the presidency of Princeton. Ten years after his first stroke, he woke up one day having lost the vision in his left eye and with no feeling in his right arm. In 1907 and again in 1909, he dueled with the trustees of the university and evidenced the intransigence and inability to compromise that haunted his second term as president. A year later, Democratic pols offered him the New Jersey governorship, and likely, the 1912 nomination. After his election in NJ, he offered some progressive ideas to the legislature, and began running for president. With the Republican schism, the Democratic nomination would be priceless and Wilson claimed it on the 46th ballot at the Baltimore convention. He was a gifted orator, indeed a fantastic public speaker, and his campaign theme about addressing wealth inequality resonated with the public. He easily won a sweeping electoral victory and entered the White House full of hope. It is at this point though, that the author points out that the fifty-six-year old Wilson had no friends, was seldom introspective, and always faulted others for his stumbles.
                                                         He met with early success as tariff reform, the income tax and the Federal Reserve were soon enacted. That said in 1913, Wilson probably had another minor stroke, and was bedridden six times from stress-induced stomach turmoil and exhaustion, even though he played golf three times per week and spent only about six hours per day working. His first foray into foreign affairs was trying to cope with a  revolution in Mexico. His approach was to make a series of moral pronouncements, and just assume that because he was right, everyone would follow. Thus, a morals-driven foreign policy with the goal of spreading democracy was introduced to the world. In August of his second year in office, he was met by war in Europe and the death of his wife two days later. Juggling neutrality would challenge Wilson, Congress, American business and the American people for the next two-and-a-half years. The most signifiant challenge was the sinking of the Lusitania in May, 1915 and the overwhelming complexity of Britain's and Germany's conduct at sea. He impulsively solved his personal grief and loneliness by proposing to a younger woman, Edith Galt, two months after he met her in 1915. Wilson believed in, worked hard at preserving and proclaimed neutrality. But the American people supported the Allies and American businesses were growing wealthier supplying them.  Wall Street lent Britain and France substantial sums. "Wilson's decision to standby in silence as American banks lent $500 million to the Allies effectively brought US neutrality to an end." In 1916, tensions were heightened by continuing submarine attacks, which Germany thought an appropriate response to the illegal naval blockade that was starving them. Wilson ran for reelection with the party citing his work keeping America out of war. He barely won and he was  convinced that the Germans would soon adopt unrestricted submarine warfare. They did on Feb. 1 and the US severed diplomatic relations. On April 6, 1917 the US declared war on the Central Powers and went to war "to make the world safe for democracy." In the two-and-half years prior to the US declaration, Wilson had sought to find a way to stop the war. He believed that the unsullied US was in a unique position to mediate. He also articulated a need for a league of nations to prevent future militancy, and spoke of "peace without victory." His emissary, Col. Edwin House went Europe and tried to find a means to end the war. The Europeans thought Wilson was naive and weak, particularly after the Lusitania, and a British  diplomat referred to the Colonel as "the empty House." The US was entering the world stage led by an idealistic president who generated little respect from the Europeans.
                                                      The US did a superb job organizing a war effort from scratch. In addition to the existing cabinet, Wilson brought in Bernard Baruch, Herbert Hoover, and William Howard Taft to get things moving. And move they did. On the domestic front, the administration engaged in propaganda that was very effective, but also in censorship and outright suppression of free speech. Eugene Debs was prosecuted and jailed for decrying the draft and castigating war profiteers. "Wilson is still remembered as the president who repressed dissent more often more harshly than any other occupant of the White House." He opened up the year 1918 with his famous Fourteen Points speech outlining America's optimistic war aims. The first members of the AEF went into the line in April. "By the Fourth of July, the United States had fulfilled its promise of a million man army in France." The German's last offensive had failed and the end of the war was within view. November brought armistice and a Republican majority in both houses, in response to some heavy-handed politicking by the President.
                                                        Wilson wanted a peace that would benefit all, and a league of nations. His allies wanted revenge. He sailed for Europe in December, without a prominent Republican in his entourage. He was hailed by millions as the savior, "Moses from across the Atlantic." He considered Clemenceau an "old man" and Lloyd George, a "second rate politician." In the early going, Wilson accomplished the drafting of the covenant for the League of Nations, before returning home for a visit in February. During his time home, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, both leader of the Republicans in the Senate and Chmn. of the Foreign Relations committee encouraged a discussion of all the terms and possible modification of Article X of the covenant. Wilson would not hear of it. The majority of the country was with him. Unfortunately, he was shy of the two-thirds he needed in the Senate. Back in Paris, doing battle with the indefatigable Clemenceau, who remained hell bent on revenge and  France's security with little concern for Wilson's ideals, wore out the president and sent him to bed. Wilson got his League from Clemenceau and George, but compromised elsewhere and gave them a blank check on reparations. "Self interest had triumphed with a vengeance, and U.S. Secty. of State Lansing did not believe the peace made in Paris would hold. It was humiliating, unduly punitive, and impossible to carry out." On June 28, 1919, the treaty was signed.
                                                        Wilson came home in physical decline and with his oratorical skills lost forever. He was three votes shy of the number he needed and was told that if he would accept a few reservations, he would have his treaty. Both the French and the British indicated they would allow the modifications. Wilson said  he "would consent to nothing. The Senate must take its medicine." He took his case to the people and barnstormed the nation for weeks until he collapsed of 'nervous exhaustion'.  A stoke felled him with a year-and-a half left in his term. However, the words stroke or paralyzed were never mentioned in public as the First Lady and Wilson's doctor, Rear Adm. Gary Grayson, began the coverup. The Cabinet received only a partial briefing, considered invoking the disability clause in the Constitution, but deferred any decision. No one knew who would determine disability and the Vice-President, Thomas Marshall, had no interest in becoming president. Washington engaged in watchful waiting. History suspects that the chief architect of the deception was Edith Wilson, with Grayson and the president's secretary, Joe Tumulty, as accomplices. Wilson was capable enough to remain intransigent, resisting all attempts at compromise and the treaty failed on November 19, 1919. "In the end, it was Wilson who broke the heart of the world."  His last three years saw slow improvement in his health, but  he never recovered. He was paralyzed and could not walk more than a few steps. He and his inner entourage flummoxed all and he remained in office until the end. He had hopes that he would be called upon for a third term, but Grayson quietly let the powers that be know he was unable to run or serve. He left a bitter man, rejecting his few friends and delusionally dreaming of bringing the treaty to the people. He died in February, 1924, and is buried at the National Cathedral.  His wife declined the offer of a state funeral and burial at Arlington.
                                                          It seems to me that a brilliant man who loved privacy, eschewed the company of other men, particularly successful strong ones, and deplored negotiations in any form, was at best, tolerant of lesser minds would be better suited for many things other than politics and government. But he chose a public life and achieved fabulous highs in his first term and abysmal failure in his second.  I have long held Wilson in low regard because of his insistence on the messianic foreign policy that I have long abhorred. There is nothing here that has changed my view on that, but I have come away with a somewhat higher regard for the man's intelligence, skills, idealism and integrity. Regardless of how one feels about, or comes to a new conclusion about Wilson, this is a great book. It is extraordinarily well-written and a pleasure to read. I recommend it to all.

The Source: How Rivers Made America And How America Remade Its Rivers, Doyle - C, Inc.

                                                      "Rivers are the defining feature of America's landscape." We have over 3 million miles of rivers in the lower 48. "This book is about how our ideas have shaped the rivers of America - and how the rivers have shaped our ideas."  Both Washington and Jefferson were concerned about the new nation's need to spread over the Appalachians and the fact that there was no river that crossed the mountains. Instead of a river, it would be a canal in NY that connected the seaboard with the expanding country. As important as the Erie Canal and the Hudson River were to the economy of the young nation, it was the mighty Mississippi and its tributaries the Tennessee, the Ohio, the Illinois and the Missouri - that linked together the United States.  The great rivers of the west were managed by the Corps of Engineers for the simple reason that the only engineers in the new nation were graduates of the USMA. The full federalization of the nation's rivers came after the 1927 Mississippi flood forced the federal government into the flood control business.
                                                       From my perspective, this book lacked a unifying narrative, which is why I skimmed a great deal. A section on sovereignty discussed the Colorado River Compact, a section on taxation discussed how states developed systems to pay for canals, a section on regulation discussed utilities, and the closing section on conservation reviewed the efforts going on around the country to revise some of the consequences of industrialization and over-population.

The Knowledge, Grimes - B-

                                                       I was pleasantly surprised to see that the 87-year-old Grimes had published her 24th novel in the Richard Jury series that goes back to 1981. The ageless Jury and his cohort of odd-ball friends, Carol-anne, Melrose Plant, Diane Demorney, Marshall Trueblood, Vivian Rivington, and his priceless Sergeant, Wiggins, continue to delight and amuse. The pub in this one is named after "the knowledge" that London's cabbies have to acquire to pass the strenuous test to become licensed. Knowing every nook and cranny of the city allows them to establish a cabbies-only place so off the beaten track that no one else can find it. As always, this was  a delight.

Mischka's War: A Story of Survival from War-Torn Europe to New York, Fitzpatrick - C

                                                       The author is a noted historian of the Soviet Union, and this is a book written about her husband, a theoretical physicist, whom she married in 1989. Mischka Danos was born in Latvia in 1922. Six years after his 1999 death, Fitzpatrick opened a box that held her husband's diary, as well as his mother Olga's, from before WW2 and up to the early 1950's. She decided to write this history.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Mischka was the second of three children born in a Riga that had suffered throughout the first War and the ensuing Revolution. His family struggled financially until his mother opened a dress shop.  Mischka attended the University of Riga as an engineering student in 1941, and somehow avoided both Soviet and German conscription. He was employed at the State Electrotechnical Factory, a critical provider of radios and electrical equipment to the Soviets, and, after Barbarossa, the Germans. Olga used her shop to employ and hide Jews from the Nazis. In 1944, when the Soviets were re-taking the Baltics, Mischka, fearful of being drafted by the Germans, transferred to a university in Dresden. Olga utilized her contacts in the German military and also fled Riga. Her husband and two other sons remained in what again became the Soviet Union. Mischka survived the bombing of Dresden and headed to a town near the Danish border. He and Olga had concluded their best bet was to get as close to the western Allies as soon as possible.
                                                        The end of the war saw both Olga and Mischka in Flensburg as displaced persons (DPs). Because the UK and the US did not recognize the Soviet occupation of Latvia, they were not subject to forcible return. Mischka enrolled in Hanover Technical University in January, 1946. He graduated in 1946 and went to Heidelberg to study for his doctorate under his mentor, who was offered a full professorship. In 1949, he married Helga Heimars. The focus of those in charge of the DPs turned from repatriation to emigration from Europe. Argentina, Australia, Canada and the US were the preferred options. Sponsored by a Jewish family she had helped in Riga, Olga left for New York in 1950. A year later, Mischka and Helga followed. He did some postdoc studying at Columbia, before obtaining a job with the US Government, where he would work for forty-years.
                                                         Clearly, the author is devoted to her late husband. And his story is mildly interesting. But there just is not enough here to merit attention.
                                                       

The Sandman, Kepler - B+

                                                      This is the fourth book in a Swedish series about Joona Linna, a police detective who in a previous novel put away a serial killer who has been in a highly-secured psychiatric facility for thirteen years with no outside access allowed.  Suddenly, a kidnap victim, assumed and declared dead quite a few years ago, appears running on a railroad track in the dead of night. The search for other victims and a likely accomplice is back on. This is a high-quality police thriller, and the good news is that there are seven books in the series. Amazon is rushing translations for publication later in the year. Thanks again to Wendell Erwin, finder of Nordic noir.

The Cuban Affair, DeMille - C+

                                                      This is a light-hearted beach read that felt way longer than its already hefty 448 pages. Mac is a captain of a fishing boat out of Key West. He is also a decorated Army officer with two tours in Afghanistan. A group of Cuban-Americans contact him and make him a massive financial offer to go to Cuba. So, off we go on a romp that predictably isn't predictable and leads to intrigue, love and a boat chase. Its one saving grace is a bit of background on Cuba, and interestingly for me, the background of a notorious prison building in Havana. Villa Marista was once a Catholic boys' school, run by the Marist Brothers, one of whom was my high school chemistry teacher.