The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction Of The Classical World, Nixey - B +

                                   That all superstition of pagans and heathens should be            annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims.                                                                                                                       - St. Augustine  AD 532

                                  "From almost the very first years a Christian emperor had ruled in Rome in AD 312 liberties had begun to be eroded." An onslaught against paganism began. Christianity triumphed. It is important to remember that the Roman definition of triumph was annihilation. In the fourth and fifth centuries the church destroyed. It destroyed art, statues, temples and perhaps, as many as 700,000 books. "This is a book about the Christian destruction of the classical world." It is a chronicle of immense devastation. Christianity offered guidelines for life and eternal bliss after death. And after Constantine, the church was offered preferment in the form of  tax exemptions and substantial pay for its bishops. "The struggle to convert the empire was nothing less than a battle between good and evil, between the forces of darkness and those of light. It was a battle between God and Satan himself." The Christians decided that the old religions were demonic and that the gods of the empire, Jupiter, Aphrodite, Bacchus and Isis were the paramount demons.  All the old religions were to be despised and eliminated. The toleration promised in the Edict of Milan was not to be. Before Christianity became official, it was found to be an irritant throughout the east. The reduction in sacrifices to the old gods affected the economics of animal husbandry. Many Romans found the new cult to be reclusive and their teachings offensive. When Christians refused to sacrifice and honor the emperor, they were frequently executed. However, the myth of mass Christian martyrdom was created a millennia later by the medieval church. The Romans were inclusive, whereas the Christians vigorously persecuted the "polluters of idolatry" almost immediately after taking over. Perhaps the most impressive building in the ancient world was not the Coliseum nor the Parthenon in Athens, but the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria. It housed the remnants of the great library, innumerable statues and towered over the city in a splendor of white marble. The opulence of the ancient temple offended the bishop of Alexandria. His name was Theophilus and in AD 392 he led a crowd that destroyed the temple. Constantine bestowed wealth upon his new church and funded his generosity by plundering the ancient temples of the empire. Plunder also helped him to build his new capital on the Bosporous. The spread of Christianity "was neither triumphant, nor joyful. It is a story of forced conversion and government prosecution. It is a story in which great works of art are destroyed, buildings are defaced and liberties are removed. It is a story in which those who refused to convert were outlawed and, as the prosecution deepened, were hounded, and even executed by zealous authorities." When Constantine made Rome a Christian state, approximately 10% of the empire was Christian. By the end of the century, the percentage may have been eighty. Tens of millions had been forcibly converted. In AD 408, whatever old temples were still around were ordered destroyed. The demonization of the Greco-Roman gods and literature stemmed from the often abominable conduct of those gods in comparison to Jesus as well as the often almost pornographic language of Ovid, Martial, Catullus and others. The church's repression of human sexuality was an early theme. John Chrysostom said "let here be no fornication." By the fifth century, the church had concluded that if what one rendered unto Caesar was in conflict with what one rendered unto God, then God prevailed. Christians took the law into their own hands when it pleased them. Under Justinian in AD 529 it became mandatory for everyone in the empire to convert, accept baptism or be relieved of all they owned.  "Moreover, we forbid the teaching of any doctrine by those who labor under the insanity of paganism to corrupt the souls of the disciples."  This law caused the Academy in Athens to close after a thousand years.   Its last teachers left for Persia.  The monasteries proceeded to scrape away or write over 90% of classical literature. The works of Archimedes, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and Pliny, heretics all, were destroyed. "The pages of history go silent. The triumph of Christianity was complete." The Dark Age descended on Europe.                                                                                                      The Roman Symmachus said, "We see the same stars, the sky is shared by us all, the same world surrounds us. What does it matter what wisdom a person uses to seek the truth?" This is a powerful and magnificent book.                                           

In My Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies, Blum - B +

                                  Late in WWII, the FBI assigned Bob Lamphere to the it's Soviet Espionage division. Meredith Gardner, fluent in German, spent the war code-breaking, utilizing his extraordinary linguistic and mathematical skills. These two men would lead the chase of the Soviet spy ring that unearthed the secrets of the  US atomic bomb. As the war wound down, the FBI field office in N realized that they were surrounded by Soviet activity. A Soviet cypher clerk in Toronto defected and a minor American agent told all she knew to the FBI. The Soviets had been aware of, and casually paid attention to, western atomic efforts since the war had. As the war turned in their favor, they started their own program, and the new head of Laboratory 2 asked the KGB to steal whatever it could.  Meredith Gardner was assigned to the team working on the Russian language cyphers after the war's end. By 1947, Lamphere was a supervisor in the Espionage section in Washington and asked if he could meet with someone in Signals Intelligence. His early meetings with Gardener were fruitless.  The code-breaker was reluctant to talk, but eventually warmed up when Lamphere was able to drop on his desk a bundle of illegally obtained memos from a Soviet office. Using the plain text memos, Gardener was able to crack the Soviet code. He came across some astounding correspondence between NY and Moscow. He showed Lamphere conclusive evidence that the Soviets had penetrated the Manhattan Project as early as 1944. Their superiors assigned the two men to work together to exploit the deciphered cable traffic. Meanwhile, the two Soviet agents running Operation Enormoz in NY were so successful- sending thousands of pages of documents to Moscow- that Laboratory 2 was officially building the Soviet bomb based on the KGB stolen information. Another cable that Gardener was able to read mentioned an agent codenamed- 'Liberal' and provided enough information that Lamphere might be able to track him down. The hunt for Julius Rosenberg was on.              Other names, all with a CCNY connection, were popping up. The FBI was on the trail of Max Elitcher, Joel Barr and Morton Sobell. They even learned that Liberal's wife's name was Ethel.  In late August, 1949, the US learned the stunning news that the USSR had an atomic bomb. Lamphere went to the AEC, custodian of all Manhattan Project files, to follow up on something Gardener had sorted out.  A KGB cable from 1944 had mentioned a specific document obtained from Oak Ridge. Lamphere read the document, saw that its author was K. Fuchs and further concluded that it had to have been shared by one of the fifteen high level UK scientists working on the project.  Some more digging confirmed that Klaus Fuchs, A German who had moved to Britain, was their man. The FBI alerted MI5 and soon, Fuchs confessed.  The British prosecuted him under The Official Secrets Act and he was spared execution. Indeed, he received only 14 years in prison. While Lamphere interviewed Fuchs, back in Philadelphia the FBI cornered Harry Gold, Fuchs' courier, and both acknowledged their relationship. The FBI squeezed Gold hard and he gave up a cornucopia of information. Both Lamphere and Gardener were still focused on Liberal and his wife, Ethel, but could not find a lead to him. They knew Gold had picked up material from Liberal in Albuquerque but no more.  The FBI uncovered and arrested David Greenglass in NY. Gold had given him up as someone from Los Alamos who had provided him with information.  Greenglass confessed and implicated his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. Rosenberg spent the next day at the FBI office but acknowledged nothing. He did, though, mention that his wife's name was Ethel. With further information from Greenglass, both Julius and Ethel were soon in custody.     Justice was swift in the early 50's. The Rosenbergs would not confess and were convicted of espionage. At Lamphere's request, Hoover wrote the judge in the case and requested clemency for Ethel.  She was convicted, on her brother, David Greenglass' testimony,* of typing notes for Julius. In NY District Court, Judge Kaufmann laid the Korean War and its tens of thousands of deaths at their door because they had provided the Soviets with atomic secrets, and sentenced the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Both Lamphere and Gardener knew from earlier Soviet cables that Ethel was not involved in espionage work. But, the fact that the Army had cracked the Soviet codes years ago was so confidential that even the President did not know it. It took twelve minutes to execute  both Rosenberg's in Sing Sing's electric chair on June 19, 1953. Both Lamphere and Gardener were haunted by Ethel's execution. Lamphere left the FBI and Gardener moved to England. In the late 90's, they met for dinner, but could not quite toast their accomplishments. The same year, Sasha, the Rosenberg's Soviet handler, sprinkled Russian earth on their graves on Long Island.

*Later in  life, Greenglass told the NYTimes that upon further consideration, it may have been his wife and not his sister, who did the typing.                                                                                  

                                                 

  

Hitler In Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood And America, Ross - C

   Hitler and Goebbels knew that film was a powerful force and hoped to sway opinion about the Third Reich by exporting Nazi films to the US and assuring that Hollywood did not disparage Germany.  This is the story of those who opposed them.                        Anti-Semitism was alive and well in the America of 1933. Germany hoped to manipulate the many unhappy veterans in the US, as well as the millions of unemployed. In LA, a former German military officer founded the Friends of New Germany. Keenly aware of their activities, intent and tactics was Leon Lewis, noted Jewish activist, lawyer and former national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Lewis was ably assisted by Joseph Roos. They recruited German-American veterans to infiltrate the FNG. Lewis' spies were able to spread some dissension and create turmoil at FNG, but were soon exposed. The FNG was prospering because they were able to take over the German-American Alliance, a civic service organization that happened to have $30,000 in the bank. Aware  that he needed help exposing the Nazi's, Lewis turned to the wealthiest and most powerful jews in LA - the studio heads. The studio heads were already under pressure from the German Consul in LA. The threat of exclusion from the substantial German domestic market was a serious financial matter in the middle of the Depression, and meant that for most of the decade, Hollywood did not make films critical of the Reich.  Georg Gyssling, the Consul and most popular German in LA, was relentless. He had contacts everywhere, knew what was in pre-production and vigorously stopped or modified anything that might unmask the Nazis. Finally in April, 1939, Warner Bros. released 'Confessions of a Nazi Spy'. The Warners, sons of a Polish cobbler, had wanted to make an anti-Nazi film and finally had the opportunity. The movie was based on a spy ring in NYC and used the information that came out at trial as the basis for the script. As it was a true story and not a polemical attack, it passed all of the industry's code hurdles. Gyssling tried, but could not stop it. The tide was turning. One of Lewis' men, Neil Ness, who had infiltrated FNG and Bund operations in LA, mesmerized an HUAC hearing with specific plans for sabotage up and down the coast. Indeed, Lewis and his operatives became the go-to source for information about potential saboteurs and fifth columnists and were relied on by the FBI, US Naval Intelligence and the security arms of the military contractors in California.                                                  In June, 1941, the US expelled Germany's diplomats. The FBI ratcheted up its efforts against German espionage and sabotage. The American Firsters and certain bigots in the US Senate blamed the Jews, and in particular Hollywood, for the drift toward war. Most opposition to war folded on December 7th. The FBI immediately arrested dozens of Nazis in the LA area and did so relying on information provided by Lewis and Roos. They remained vigilant throughout the war and triumphed when so many of LA's Nazis were jailed, and deported after the war.                                                                      "There are many ways to fight an enemy, not all of which require guns. The actions taken by Leon Lewis and Joseph Roos require us to change the way we think about American Jewish resistance in the 1930s. From August 1933 until the end of WWII, with few resources at their disposal, the two men and their courageous undercover operatives continually defeated a variety of enemies - Nazis, fascists and fifth columnists- bent on violence and murder. Without ever firing a weapon, they managed to keep Los Angeles and its citizens safe."                               The title of the book is certainly eye-catching, but I submit it's not as compelling as advertised.  Although there was virulent anti-Semitism and nascent fascists everywhere, mostly they met, talked, plotted, planned, purchased weapons, acquired facilities, but seldom acted. Lewis' people made endless efforts to infiltrate and expose, but frequently failed.  And, I might point out that Gyssling accomplished his mission for six years, before 'Confession'. Nonetheless, kudos to the author for unearthing Lewis' files and to Leon Lewis, who was clearly an American hero. 

Ice At The End Of The World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past And Our Perilous Future, Gertner - C

                              Greenland is the world's largest island - about three times the size of Texas. The ice sheet is 1500 miles long and almost 700 miles wide. It holds 3 quadrillion tons of ice.  This book studies its research and exploration over the last 150 years and  science's expectations for the future.                                                           Fritzhof Nansen, noted Norwegian explorer, scientist and later, diplomat, led the first team to cross the island in 1888. To access the ice sheet, they had to climb from the coast and cross a crevasse zone. The sheet peaked at about 8,000 feet above sea level. The team's success was heralded around the world and inspired Robert Peary to plan for a longer northern crossing. In 1892, Peary's party traveled from the west coast to the east and returned to their starting point on the northwest coast. He travelled a total of 1200 miles, wheres Nansen had only gone 350. He adopted as many Inuit practices as possible. He used reindeer sleeping bags and clothes and accomplished his mission with 20 sled dogs purchased from the Inuit. Twenty-years later, Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen replicated Peary's trip as part of a long career of living amongst, studying and trading with the Inuit. In the 1930's a seismic test conducted with TNT estimated the ice to be 8,000 feet deep and predicted that if it melted, the world's oceans would rise 25 feet.  Moderns scientists with sophisticated equipment calculate that the estimate is off by a mere 8 inches.                                                                      After WWII, Paul-Emile Victor led a French team to the middle of the ice shelf to continue earlier explorations. Victor observed that the ice "was a recording machine of times and climate past." The French established a major camp and drilled the first deep ice core while eight men wintered the 1949-50 season there. They also learned from further seismic testing that the center of the island was actually below sea level. As the French continued their work, the US Air Force began to expand the WWII era base at Thule on the northwest coast, which was not far from Peary's original camp. "The advent of the Cold War and modern glaciology happened in tandem and happened at Thule." It was to be America's front line against the Soviets. To build bases, install radar installations and conduct operations on the island, it was necessary to understand how the ice moved and changed year to year.  In the 1950's, Air Force scientists concluded that the ice was in equilibrium. The summer melt was equal to the winter snowfall.                                                                                                                   Ascertaining past weather through the study of tree rings, ocean cores and ice cores came to the fore in the post-war era. In 1957, the US was able to drill 1350 feet. Nine years later, they drilled to 4450 feet and hit bedrock. Utilizing a mass spectrometer, US scientists were now able to determine the temperature on the day the snow fell, even if it was tens of thousands of years ago. As the strategic weapons of the Cold War shifted from bombers to missiles, the US scaled back at Thule, the money dried up and scientists had to find other funding. The Danes took the lead in Greenland and drilled to 6300 feet in the eighties. Simultaneously, deep drilling was pursued in Siberia and Antarctica. A decade later because of concerns about a warming planet, US and European teams drilled from the center of the ice pack 10,000 feet to the bedrock.                                                                                                                               The assumption that the ice sheet was in balance became less certain in the late 20th century. An analysis was conducted by the US using planes crisscrossing the island with a laser altimeter as a measuring device. The ice sheets around the world were clearly melting and adding volume to the world's oceans. Scientists did not know how to measure or estimate the pace of the melting, as both air and water temperature effect the melting. Greenland appears to be losing about 286 billion tons of ice per year. Greenland's ice melt may be slowed by the fact that the island is a bowl hemmed in all around by mountains. Greenland's glaciers flow through those mountain passes. It is expected that West Antarctica will melt first because a portion of the ice sheet is already over the ocean. Clearly, no one knows the future or if it will be decades, or hundreds or thousands of years before the ice melts, or if it can be slowed down. But, science is confident of at least a one meter rise in this century and that that will lead to the flooding of the world's coastal cities.

                             

And The There Were None, Christie - B

                            I have recently learned that Agatha Christie's 1939 novel is the best-selling murder mystery of all time. Ten people receive letters inviting them to Soldier Island, off the Devon coast. After dinner on the first night, a voice booms out from a victrola reciting the crime of murder that each person has committed at some point in the past. Most of the murders were passive in nature. None of the ten knew each other or had met previously. No one had met their unseen hosts. As each spoke about the death they were accused of causing, all expressed innocence, yet some clearly knew they were guilty of some act that led to another's death. As they discussed matters, one guest downed a glass of brandy laced with cyanide and dropped dead. Overnight, there was a second death. In the morning, the daily boat from the shore didn't show and of the ten little soldier pieces in the dining room, now there were only eight.                                                                                                                               The same morning, the men thoroughly investigated the island and the house and found no one other than the eight guests. The host/killer could not be found. At lunchtime, the old  general, who acknowledged responsibility for a death  of an underling whom he held in contempt and who said he welcomed the end, was found dead staring at the sea. He had been hit from behind. The seven concluded that there was no outsider and that it had all been orchestrated by one of them. Accusations and alibis flew.  The next morning, the cook was found with his head bashed in and  there were but 6 figurines left.   By noon, the party had dropped to 5. When the Judge was shot that evening, they confirmed that the rhyme about the ten soldiers paralleled  the murders.  Within a day, it was one man and one woman, Lombard and Vera.  She picked the gun out of his pocket and shot him before committing suicide. There were none.                                                                                              Scotland Yard was baffled. Years later, a note was found in a bottle. Justice Wargrave confessed to it all. He had collected the stories of misadventure by nine people. He manipulated the whole thing and faked his death on the island. After everyone was gone, he killed himself in such a way that appeared consistent with the diaries kept by a few of the victims.                                                                                       

Manual For Survival: A Chernobyl Guide For The Future, Brown - B

                            In August of 1986, a mere four months after the accident, the USSR published a 'Manual For Survival' filled with lies and inconsistencies. The manual said that only 54 people had died. The objective of this book is to better understand "the medical and environmental effects of the disaster." The author is a noted MIT historian who points out that research into Chernobyl was not only difficult because of Soviet/Russian intransigence, but because all of the major nuclear powers were equally reticent to disclose their own mishaps  throughout the Cold War. "As time passed, doubt and skepticism became a major by-product of the accident. The blown reactor contaminated not only the soil and air but also the political atmosphere and public faith in science."

                              Hospital 6 in Moscow provided the best possible care in the world because the Soviets had over decades built a skilled staff specializing in radiation poisoning. They attended to the first responders starting the night of the accident. Additionally, thousands of people from Ukraine and Belarus made their way to Moscow to be treated at other institutions in the city. It had taken two weeks to evacuate the 30 km. Zone of Alienation and thousands had been poisoned.  The Politburo investigated and concluded 'operator error' was behind it all. "The Ukrainian Communist party....were  the first authorities to realize how dangerous the disaster was and to take action." Ukrainian officials organized a massive medical examination of  500,000 residents in 1986 and the years immediately following. They distributed iodine pills, researched radiation in the food chain and sent their children south into the Crimea for early summer camp. Moscow preferred to cover up the ongoing threats. Politically motivated Soviet apparatchiks ordered people be sent back into the Zone; Belarus complied, Ukraine ignored the order. The Soviet state ordered the liquidation of animals in the Zone, but had them dismembered for distribution. So, the wool from thousands of sheep were sent to a wool plant outside of Kiev and poisoned hundreds of workers, killing many. One Ukrainian public health doctor was able to stop the tanning of hides that would have polluted the  drinking water in his hometown. The Soviet system was unwilling and unable to dispose of or bury contaminated food. They spread it out as far as possible in order to dilute the poison. There was even a procedure for blending contaminated sausage with healthier sources of meat. At every level and by every measure, the radiation and the ruin it created spread far beyond the Zone.

                                 In  1988, the Soviet Minister of Health opened a conference with the statement "Definitely, today we can be certain that there are no effects of the Chernobyl accident on human health." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supported the Soviets. Of course people were sick and finally in 1990, it was acknowledged that a million Ukrainians had been affected. The Ukrainians made an attempt to grapple with their tragedy. In Belarus, recognizing the crisis took longer. One of Belarus' leading scientists reported alarming amounts of radioactivity and was indicted and demoted for his efforts.  Soon though, the Belarusians were pushing back against the Soviet orthodoxy. Perestroika unleashed the truth.  

                                   A joint western effort led by the IAEA in 1990  began to take an objective look at what had happened, but found that the information on a million Soviet citizens was still controlled by the KGB and inaccessible.  Most assessments of Chernobyl were hamstrung by the US-Japanese studies of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Receiving a high dose of radiation because of a bomb for a 100 seconds is different than an extended period of low dose radiation that enters the food chain. The IAEA study played down any long-term health issues. The IAEA has long been viewed as a lobby for the nuclear energy interests and the Ukrainians and Belarusians pushed back on its conclusions. They insisted that thyroid cancer in children was epidemic. Today it is recognized as the major medical outcome of the disaster. But, in the 1990's, there was limited interest in correctly analyzing Chernobyl. All of the US materials on the consequences of fallout were classified. After all, between the post-war Pacific and Nevada tests, the US had exposed the world to immeasurably more radiation than Chernobyl. The US had no desire to release information about childhood thyroid cancer.  Endless infighting, jealousy and politics amongt the various international agencies continued into the 1990's.

                               "Now it is clear that most of the foreign experts, global leaders in  radiation medicine, were wrong. WHO, UNSCEAR, and IAEA conceded that, seven years after Ukrainian and Belarusian officials announced the problem, the still skyrocketing increases in thyroid cancer in children were due to Chernobyl exposures."   After the USSR collapsed, the states that followed failed to deliver basic services to their people. There was no longer money for clean food, healthcare or removal from the irradiated areas. Life almost came to a stop. "The 1990's were grim years for Chernobyl research. As the safety network retreated, state and international agencies shifted the burden of managing the post accident risk society onto the shoulders of exposed residents, the people with the fewest resources to manage it." In the decades since, some NGO's have been able to help the victims, but the contamination and untreated illnesses continue, while westerners treat the Zone as a tourist destination.

                                   The text of this book is only 313 pages, but the narrative feels choppy at times. It's worth the effort, if only to better understand the indifference of the nuclear powers to their citizen's health and well-being.

      

                                          

                     

A Dangerous Man, Crais- B+

                           I believe that if you asked any reader of crime fiction who the master of LA noir is today the answer would be Michael Connolly. That said, Crais' seventeen novels about Pike and Cole are just as good as Connolly's Bosch. This is a great one. A young bank teller is almost kidnapped, but the bad guys are stopped by Joe Pike who happens to be transacting business at the bank. As it turns out, her parents were in the witness protection program and the man her mom put away decades ago is after her. It's a fabulous read that I recommend to all.