The Six: The Lives of The Mitford Sisters, Thompson - B

                     The sisters were born in the heart of aristocratic England between 1904 and 1920. The ancient Mitford name preceded the Conquest. Their names were Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. They became a novelist, a countrywoman, a Fascist, a Nazi, a Communist, and a Duchess. They grew up in the closed world of their family and servants at their country estates and London home. They were uncharacteristically politicized in an era of extremist political philosophies. The 1930's tore their family apart and diminished their father's wealth. They remain a focus of fascination to the English for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was their extraordinary self-confidence and indifference to what people thought of them.

                    When his older brother died in WWI, their dad inherited a lordship, some financial assets, and an abundance of real estate. David Mitford sold off his father's houses assuring, that although his daughters upbringing was strictly upper-class, it was somewhat peripatetic.  They were not afforded the opportunity for a formal education, and grew up in a house with an austere mother and a loving father, a member of the House of Lords, a true conservative and a man wholly incompetent financially. The two best-known of the girls were Nancy, the oldest, and Diana, the third. Nancy had a successful career as a novelist writing about the upper classes she knew so well.  Diana was considered one of the most beautiful woman in the world and was the first to marry. In 1929, she and Bryan Guinness, heir to the vast family fortune, were wed. She was 18. Nancy, on the other hand, was a bit too quick and witty for the average upper-class male and drifted through her 20's single, but launching  her writing career.

                   The year 1932 saw the beginning of the unraveling of the family's place in society. Diana walked out on her husband and took up with Sir Oswald Mosley, former MP and leader in the Labour Party, and about to be founder of the British Union of Fascists. Mosley and the BUF were quite popular and were lauded by such disparate people as Lloyd George and George Bernard Shaw. However, Diana's conduct was wildly beyond the pale of its times. In 1933, Diana and Guinness were divorced, the epic-philanderer Mosley's wife died, and Nancy married a totally unsuitable womanizer named Peter Rodd. Nancy's next book mocked her new husband, as well as his family and satirized the fascists in the BUF. Soon, Unity, the fourth daughter, entered the arena as a serious fascist and joined the BUF. Diana and Unity went to Germany, attended the first Nuremberg rally and met Hitler. Unity decamped to live in Munich. She and Hitler became fast friends and met 140 times before the war's outbreak. She was sort of a "younger sister, court jester and talisman." Their dad made a pro-Hitler speech in the House of Lords. Diana actually obtained funding from Hitler to help keep the financially floundering BUF afloat.  She and Mosley married at Goebbels' house in Berlin in 1936. In response to all of the Germany-loving in her family, Jessica, the fifth, became a communist.  Jessica fell for her cousin, Esmond  Romailly, and followed him to Spain, where he reported on the Civil war.  She was pregnant when they married in 1937. The sedate and entirely normal sixth daughter, Deborah, had her coming out parties in 1938. Two weeks into her debut, she met and fell for Andrew Cavendish, the future Duke of Devonshire. They would marry three years later. The day after the war began, Unity put a gun to her head in Munich. Although she lived, she was in a childlike state and would be so until her death in 1947.

                  Lord David and Lady Sydney Mitford retreated from public life to their last remaining piece of real estate, an obscure island off Scotland's western coast. Nancy drove an ambulance in London and Mosley was arrested for being part of an organization "subject to foreign influence or control." Diana soon followed him into captivity. After 18 months in horrid prisons, the Mosley's were placed in a married accommodation for two years and eventually placed under house arrest in late 1943. Nancy's husband Peter, their brother Tom and Jessica's husband Esmond were all in combat positions overseas. Esmond died in late 1941 while flying over the North Sea. The ultimate blow for the family came when the only son and brother, Tom, was killed in Burma in early 1945. Lord and Lady Mitford split up and David became a recluse.

               After the war, Nancy continued her very successful writing career and moved to Paris to share her life with a Frenchman. Jessica was already in America, where she had remarried and settled down. Diana and Mosley also moved to Paris. David died in 1958 at the age of eighty. Jessica achieved literary fame when she published a history of their upbringing in 1960. Three years later, their mother died. Nancy's career continued very successfully in France until her death in 1973. Pamela lived comfortably abroad and in the English countryside until her death in 1994. Mosley died in 1980 and Diana lived until 2003. Jessica published an acclaimed book excoriating the American funeral industry in 1963 and became a bit of a media celebrity until her death in 1996. Andrew and Deborah lived a long privileged life as the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. She died in 2014 at 94.                                                                                                This group biography feels less like a history and more like a social analysis and assessment. The author constantly compares their lives to Nancy's novels which apparently were heavily autobiographical. One who has never read any of those novels (certainly almost all Americans) is at a distinct disadvantage. The concept of being 'famous for being famous' comes to mind in an attempt to understand their role in English society. One does walk away though with an admiration for their tenacity and marvels at the literary accomplishment of women who were not afforded any education.

The Big Goodbye: Chinatown And the Last Years Of Hollywood, Wasson - B

                   This is the story of the legendary movie told from the viewpoint of its four principals: director Roman Polanski, screenwriter Robert Towne, star Jack Nicholson and producer Robert Evans. The film was nominated for and won many of the preliminary awards, and was up for 11 Oscars, but only Towne took one home. The perspective is that it was the end of a brief era, that began in the mid-1960's and lasted barely a decade. The Hollywood of the studio moguls had been tottering for decades and the 60's saw it end, with sales of the legendary dream factories to holding companies and conglomerates. The decade was the time of the auteur young directors: Peckinpah, Coppolla, Friedkin, Bogdanovich and Polanski. They created movies of magic and integrity. The first was Bonnie and Clyde; the last was Chinatown. This time of free-flowing talent was followed by the blockbuster era, epitomized by Jaws and all that followed. In addition to pining for the Hollywood of that era, the book looks wistfully back on the inter-war years of a simpler, less congested and more bucolic LA.

 

Stripped, Freeman - B

                     Stride has left Duluth for Serena and a job on the Las Vegas PD as a detective. He starts a murder case that quickly graduates to a series of killings, all related to a murder forty years ago.  The killer believes he is the son of a murdered dancer and sets out to take vengeance against any and all who knew his mother and were part of her downfall. The investigation is totally complicated by the relationships from the past and the survivor's clout in modern day Sin City. In the end, a return to Duluth is the preferred option.

Return To Robinswood, Grainger - B

                  Back, after only two weeks, to my Irish soap-opera set just after the end of WWII.   The entire extended family comes together for Christmas, as everyone is happy and the Kenefick's and Murphy's work hard to put the estate back together.  The only interesting takeaway is the discussion of food. After the war, the UK continued rationing for a decade because it was not agriculturally self-sufficient and it was broke.  A major source of food, with a touch of irony were the abundant harvests of Ireland.   

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, Demick - B

                  This book is a highly-acclaimed best seller that tells of the takeover and on-going oppression of Tibet and its people by the CCP. Although the book ranges far and wide, it focuses on the town of Ngaba in western Sichuan province. The Tibetan plateau is a vast million square miles with an average elevation of 14,800 feet above sea level. It is larger than India, and is known as 'the roof of the world'. Tibet, prior to the advance of the Red Chinese, had a very loose affiliation with China, but was more of a place than an entity. The residents were nomadic Buddhists in a land with few towns. Beginning in 1950, the Chinese began the forced collectivization and subjugation of Tibetans in what they called their "Democratic Reforms" - a redistribution of land. Tibetans call 1958, the year of an aggressive crackdown, as the time "when the sky and the earth changed places." The temples were destroyed and the Buddhist monks turned out. The Dalai Lama fled to India. Mao's death in 1976 led to change. Economic activity took off. Ngaba began to recover some of the vibrancy it had lost under communism.  The traditional nomads made a fortune harvesting and selling medicinal herbs. Slowly though, the Han moved in, and soon vastly outnumbered the locals. A period of liberalization was reversed in the 1990's, after Tiananmen, when the Han began constructing massive infrastructure projects throughout the plateau. The year 2008 saw Chinese police fire on Tibetans and the beginning of a decade-long self-immolation wave. By the end of 2019, 156 people had committed suicide this way, with about a third of them in and around Ngaba. Tibetans poured over the border and joined a substantial expatriate community in India. The plight of these victims of communism has resonated and garnered sympathy around the world. But like their Uighur neighbors now under the heel of the regime, they are too far removed and isolated from free peoples to ever achieve any semblance of the free life they once enjoyed.

     

Blacktop Wasteland, Cosby - B

                   This somewhat unusual novel is about a black man, Beauregard, who has been trying to get out of the life, but keeps getting pulled back in. Like his daddy before him, he is a wheel man of exquisite skill, and is recruited for a job that will solve his many financial problems. When it goes sideways, he has to pull off a second in order to get out from under the man who was robbed in the first job. It's exciting and explores some interesting father-son dynamics, but I would suggest should not have shown up on a recommended list.

The Glass Kingdom, Osbourne - C

                   Once again, a highly acclaimed novel eludes me. Set in Bangkok and designated a NYTimes Notable book, it is about decay, unrest, karma, and greed. A 30-ish New Yorker absconds with $200,000 from her aging employer and hides out in an anonymous old luxury building that feels anonymous and safe. It isn't.

V2, Harris - B

                   This very successful writer of historical fiction has written mostly about WW2 and Ancient Rome. Here, he focuses on the Revenge rockets on which Germany wasted a massive fortune  in order to terrorize the UK, particularly London. There are two stories. One is about a German civilian who has worked with von Braun since the beginning, is the flight officer, and in the waning days of the Reich, struggles with the tightening  SS security apparatus. The British side of the story is based on the memoirs of a woman who was part of the team tasked with figuring out where the rockets were fired from. Armed with radar information about the arc of the lift-off and the location of the hit in London, they were able to calculate the parabolic arc and figure out where they were launched from. Fun read.

The Witch Hunter, Seeck - B+

                This is one heck of a read, featuring a serial killer(s) in Helsinki replicating multiple murders in a trilogy of mystery books. They plot, plan, execute and keep a few steps ahead of the police, especially the detective in charge who keeps finding disturbing personal connections. Nordic noir at its best.

What Once Was True, Grainger - B

                   I purchased this because it was presented as an Irish WW2 novel, and the simple uniqueness of that intrigued me. It's more of a romance themed soap opera, but did offer limited insight into the Republic's position of neutrality. It had been less than twenty years since the English had been ousted and it was simply too soon to move past 800 years of oppression and oppose the forces of evil in Germany. In the novel, an Anglo-Irish Lord dies, leaving his family bereft, causing his wife to leave and lease out the land, and compelling the family that worked the land to also leave. The central story is the love between the young RAF pilot who succeeds his dad and the 3rd daughter of the long-time manager of the farm. The farm manager has some interesting IRA skeletons in the closet as well. It's not especially compelling, but I'll likely read the next two books in the trilogy.

The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Agents at the Dawn of the Cold War - A tragedy in Three Acts, Anderson - A*

                   This book is an attempt to pinpoint when anti-communism went from being a worthy crusade to a dictator-backing refutation of our national values. The author, who grew up in Taiwan, S. Korea and Indonesia, places his father was stationed for USAid, and who saw aspects of the Cold War in person, selects 1944-1956. America's transformation was "nothing short of staggering." We went from toppling empires and supporting democracies to bankrolling the British and French overseas, and overthrowing the left-leaning governments of Guatemala and Iran. At home, we engaged in a Red Scare that "fueled cynicism and distrust of government."  The focus of the story is four men. Frank Wisner, Michael Burke, Peter Sichel and Edward Lansdale, all of whom worked for the OSS in WWII.

                    Wisner, a Wall Street lawyer, salvaged the OSS's operations in southeast Europe after they had been infiltrated by the Abwehr. Then in Bucharest, he witnessed first hand the Soviet Union's first perfidious occupation and takeover of a sovereign country. Burke, an upper-crust Ivy Leaguer, fought behind the lines with the Maquis. Sichel, a German-Jewish refugee to NY, was the OSS's blackmarket currency trader in N. Africa and Italy, and then ran agents in the Moselle region of France. Lansdale, a California advertising executive, was, because of his age, an OSS desk jockey in San Francisco, but one who had developed the ability to befriend anyone, particularly Asians, and so was assigned to be the Army's post-war deputy chief of intelligence in the Philippines. He was considered a genius in his ability to understand and observe people. The OSS, particularly Gen. Donovan, anticipated and wanted to be ready for the Cold War. Lansdale was ready in Asia and the younger three in Europe.

                 The transitioning of the OSS into a permanent peacetime foreign intelligence service was not a sure thing, in particular because it was vehemently opposed by J. Edgar Hoover. Indeed, in Sept. 1945, Truman shuttered the agency and moved its functions to the Depts. of State and War. The aggressive conduct of the Soviets throughout eastern Europe eventually led to a firmer America response. The National Security Council and the CIA were established in 1947. A year later, the CIA was tasked with covert responsibilities. As the agency slowly morphed from a think tank to an active opponent of communism, Wisner was slotted in to run covert operations. Burke was hired to start a revolution in Albania. Lonsdale was just back from four years in the Philippines and was training Air Force officers in Colorado. Sichel was running agents in W. Berlin.`

                   Burke went to Rome and began working with the British on the joint effort to undermine the Albanian regime.  It was doomed to fail as the mission was an extreme long shot and his UK colleague was Kim Philby. Even before the mission was finished, Burke was sent to Germany to begin planning destabilization activities in Poland and Ukraine.  Lansdale had been recruited by the CIA, and was now working on how to counter the Huks' peasant uprising in the Philippines. He knew he had his work cut out for him because he had witnessed the landlords, who had collaborated with the Japanese, slide right back up to the top of Filipino society when the war ended. He proposed countering the Huks on the ground and in the villages. He befriended a junior politician, Raymon Magsaysay, a future Filipino president. The two men teamed up in 1951 to assure the honesty of the national election, by challenging the Huks with land reforms and financial awards. With Magasaysay now the Defense Minister, they increased the army's pay threefold and ended the it's endemic corruption. Magasaysay was on the road to the top and Lansdale was right next to him. In 1952, Sichel was sent to DC because he could no longer stay in Germany after having married a German national. And after seven years in Berlin, he was ready to leave. He felt that the US was sacrificing the lives of countless  emigres by returning them to their homes on the other side of the Iron Curtain to foment revolt in a police state, a very unlikely eventuality. Burke, Sichel and others on the front line in Europe slowly realized that they were simply and conclusively sending brave men to their graves. While these men had their doubts, Ike was elected because of his record and his promise to ratchet up the war against communism.

                             Wisner was to be the new CIA Director in 1953, but Hoover despised him, shunted him aside with innuendo and implied threats and laid the groundwork for Allen Dulles to be appointed.  Wisner wound up as number two. Dulles' older brother, John Foster, was the new rabidly anti-communist Secretary of State and looking for opportunities in the wake of Stalin's death. After the British intimated that the popularly- elected PM of Iran, who had just nationalized BP, might get friendly with the local communists, John Foster pushed to overthrow him. Wisner was opposed and thought we should be aligning ourselves with the young nationalist, not the fading empires, but was he overruled. The CIA-led coup eliminated Mohammad Mossadegh, and propped up the Shah. Almost seventy years later, the US is still suffering the consequences of that decision. John Foster squelched Ike's plans to seek some sort of rapprochment and locked in the Cold War. The early Eisenhower years also saw Joe McCarthy resuscitate his Red Scare, and in cahoots with and fed an endless supply of material by Hoover, went after the CIA. To his credit, Allen Dulles backed him down and stopped him in his tracks.

      After Lansdale helped Magsaysay win a presidential election, he returned home, where Dulles told him that "we want you to do the same thing in Vietnam that you did in the Philippines." He arrived as the French were leaving after their defeat at the hands of the Viet Minh and Diem was assuming leadership in the south. After their first meeting, Diem asked Lansdale to come to work for him. Lansdale became indispensable and helped Diem hold down a revolt by a massive crime syndicate in Saigon, eliminate the influence of the die-hard French colonials and solidify Diem's standing in Washington. However, Diem and his brother, Nhu, soon began a slow drift toward dictatorship, thrilling the US overseers and demoralizing the idealist Lansdale.

                   John Foster Dulles was so happy with the Iranian coup that he set his sights on Guatemala. He put Frank Wisner in charge. In Guatemala, the man who had won the most recent election with two-thirds of the vote had decided to end the country's feudal structure and initiate land reform. He also took on an American fruit company, represented by Dulles when he was a a lawyer in NY. He also put a few communists in his government. Unfortunately for Jacobo Arbenez, these actions spelled the end of his career. The Army of Liberation marched in, and once again the CIA had triumphed over incipient communism. Cries of 'Yankee imperialism' rang out around the globe.

                  The Eisenhower administration believed in the CIA and expanded its budget and responsibilities. For Michael Burke, it was time to go; he retired in 1955 and returned to NY.  Wisner's doubts were mounting after his role in the Guatemalan coup the previous year. Continuing to lose people behind the Iron Curtain was gnawing at his soul. And he never received a satisfactory answer to his question: if we succeed in creating an uprising in eastern Europe and the Soviets crush it, which we know they will, what are we accomplishing? His conduct became erratic, prompting one colleague to conclude that"Frank is in real rouble."

                  The year 1956 saw a breakdown in Lansdale's relationship and influence with Diem, who was now an absolute and total dictator. Lansdale came home. In Moscow, Khruschev delivered his famous de-Stalinization speech in February. The news of it shook the world.  In the US, John Foster squelched any discussion of detente and stuck to the hard line. After years of the US encouraging revolt, it finally happened in Budapest. Peaceful protest morphed into spontaneous revolution, with Hungarians shooting the soldiers of the Red Army. They succeeded in expelling the Soviets from the city and the PM, Imre Nagy, declared that he would negotiate the end of Soviet occupation. The Soviets decided to leave, but Khruschev changed his mind the next day. The Soviets responded while the Hungarians awaited an American armed effort. It never came, and the Soviets brutally crushed the rebellion. Wisner was devastated. 

                By the end of Eisenhower's second administration, the US was "now regarded as just one more imperial power bent on the  3rd world's political and economic subjugation." Being tough on communism became the mantra of US policy for the next thirty years.  Ironically, Lansdale's retirement party was  the day of the Diem coup in 1963. The US was committed to a very different path than the one he had encouraged. Wisner's deterioration continued and his career took a downward spiral after he was hospitalized for mental illness. Sichel ran the Hong Kong office for years. In the 50's, he was tasked with the new mission of sending Nationalist Chinese from Taiwan to the mainland to undermine the regime. It sounded like the pipe dream he had walked away from in Berlin a decade ago, and he retired. 

                This is a magnificent book, very well-written, an easy read and a great spotlight on challenging times. The story is much broader than the four men referenced in the book's subtitle. As I have never been much of a fan of America's messianic and interventionist foreign policies, this is right up my alley. The reviews I have seen are all positive and the Times has put the book on their Top 100 for the year.

     

Snow, Banville - B+

                   The past is not even past, particularly in 1957 Ireland when a Garda detective investigates the vicious murder of an RC priest at a Protestant's home. The evisceration points in a likely direction, but the Archbishop would prefer no one looking  that way. The author has won a Booker and, needless to say, has a way with words. Three hundred easy-reading pages pass in a flash.

Bringing The War Home: The White Power Movement And Paramilitary America, Belew - B

  This is the history of the white power movement from  the mid-70's to its high point - the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1994. "It united a wide array of groups and activists previously at odds, thrown together by tectonic shifts in the cultural and political landscape." Loss of faith in the government in the tumultuous 1970's, particularly the country's failure in Vietnam, led to its formation. "The movements religious extremism was integral to its broader revolutionary character." 

  Countless people on the right viewed the US's failure in Vietnam as directly attributable to the weak-willed federal government. Based on their experiences in the military, many whites who fought there came away with a strong dislike for African-Americans. "The Vietnam War signaled a divide between the America of the past and one transformed by antiwar protest and the (civil) rights movement.."  After his tour, Louis Beam, a combat veteran living in Texas, began organizing and training Klansmen to be soldiers at a fifty-acre camp in south Texas. They harassed the Vietnamese fishermen on the Gulf coast and conducted patrols along the US-Mexican border. Significant tensions and violence followed. White anger escalated because of a fallacious belief that the Vietnamese fishermen were also receiving welfare. They began to burn Vietnamese boats in the Galveston area. Texas police, judges and the legislature shut down the white power training infrastructure in 1981.  

  In North Carolina, Klansmen and neo-Nazis began to work together toward the common goal of defeating communism. In Greensboro, the Communist Workers' Party organized an anti-Klan demonstration that led to violence on Nov. 3, 1979. Five demonstrators were killed by the supremacists. A year later, the prosecution of the 14 vigilantes led to state and local verdicts of not guilty. Greensboro garnered support around the country for the supremacists as they portrayed themselves as the righteous, and only, fighters against pernicious communist infiltrators, and anyone who didn't agree with them was  a communist. Some Vietnam vets engaged in armed conflict around the world, particularly in Central America and Africa. Rhodesia attracted Americans, but it was Nicaragua that became their focus because Nicaragua had actual, and successful, communists. The Sandanistas were a threat to the American-backed Samoza dictatorship. Similarly, El Salvador reminded them of another Vietnam. The CMA, an organization founded by a Marine vet from Alabama was actually the entity through which Iran-Contra funds and equipment flowed. 

  "In 1983, The White power movement declared war on the state." Instead of fighting for the US, they decided to destabilize it. The preferred method was to use cells that operated without a top-down system, thus requiring a common cultural narrative and assuring some insulation from the police. The movement featured ex-cons, as well as veterans and was centered in the Northwest, especially in  Idaho. The FBI engaged the movement vigorously and around the country, but was never able to convict more than a handful. The movement was armed to the teeth because of its effectiveness in stealing materiel from the military. With the end of the Cold War, the supremacists simply left behind their anti-communism and focused on anti-semitism and race-hatred of people of color. More people joined organized militias. But they now faced a state that had militarized policing and which crushed them at Ruby Ridge and Waco. At Ruby Ridge, the government used excessive force and broke its own rules of engagement to capture a man who had sold two illegally modified weapons, killing his wife and son in the process.* "It (Ruby Ridge) codified an alliance of tax protesters, radical ant-abortionists, militiamen, racists, Identity Christians, survivalists, conspiracy theorists, and those who simply believed the US government had grown too large." The following year, seventy-six Branch Dividians, violent cultists building a fort with a vast amount of weapons, died in a fire at their compound in Waco when it was stormed by agents of the ATF. Both events inflamed and further grew the movement.   

   The 1995 OKC bombing killed 189 and wounded over 500.  "McVeigh acted without orders from movement leaders, but in concert with movement objectives."  The movement fully supported his act of terror against a symbol of the state. "Indeed, the  bombing launched an almost immediate and widespread wave of violence as the militia movement, and the broader white power movement, took action around the country." Nonetheless, the FBI vigorously tamped down white power activity. The movement disappeared from public view until it re-appeared in the 2016 election. The inability of the state to prosecute and contain the white power movement or resolve the issues that led to its existence provide it with an opportunity to resurface once again.

    This is not an easy book as the prose is somewhat turgid  and the topic altogether frightening.  I do believe the author makes her case throughout. As the movement was extremely vibrant, I'm inclined to not believe it went on a twenty-year hibernation, but that today's vitriol and violence is a different offshoot that the author cannot yet diagnose.                                     

*The FBI agent in charge was demoted and Randy Weaver's family was awarded $3.1M in damages.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins Of Power, Prosperity, And Poverty, Acemoglu and Robinson - B

    The accumulation of wealth happens in societies where political rights are broadly dispersed, thus affording a wide swath of the community to prosper. 

    The discrepancies between the US and Canada and the rest of the hemisphere stem from the differences in their respective foundings. Throughout the colonies of Spain, the conquerors decapitated the local elites and began extracting tribute and wealth. The objective was exploitation of the land and the people. "After an initial phase of looting, the Spanish created a web of institutions designed to exploit the indigenous peoples." Whereas in Virginia, colonists were given land and the vote. They were incentivized to work and invest. Eventually, all thirteen colonies had governors and elected assemblies. America grew in the 19th century, while south of the border there was instability and uncertain property rights. The wide-open banking system and the industrial revolution brought prosperity in the US. The political process determines economic outcomes.

    Patterns of prosperity and poverty around the world have been marvelously consistent for over one hundred and fifty years. It is not geography, religion or culture."The great inequality of the modern world that emerged in the nineteenth century was caused by the uneven dissemination of industrial technologies and manufacturing production." The author's two recurring examples are Nogales, a city in Sonora and its compatriot in Arizona. They share everything except governing systems and have had radically different results. Similarly, East and West Germany and North and South Korea. Economic activity in the north of Korea is one-tenth of that in the south. Inclusive systems generate prosperity; extractive ones, failure. That said, extractive institutions can generate growth, but it is a growth based on existing technologies, and thus, has limits.  The planter elites in the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries created vast wealth on the backs of slaves cultivating sugar. The prime example, though, is the first 50 years of the USSR. The Communist Party re-ordered and grew the economy. But, by the 1970's the Soviet system had stalled as a prelude to collapse, because there were no incentives or property rights. On the other hand, inclusive societies may achieve success, for example Venice, and then drift into failure. The sea-going trading nation was the richest place in the world in the early Middle Ages. Its legal system encouraged business partnerships which in turn created upward mobility. The Doge was selected by a general assembly. In the 14th century, Venice slowly succumbed to aristocratic control and "went from powerhouse to museum."

    The Industrial Revolution in England was the most important event in the transition of mankind from subsistence economies to today's technological-based system of vast wealth and improving public health around the world. By the 18th century, the UK had broad pluralistic political institutions and enforceable property rights, thus creating an environment for entrepreneurial growth. The fields of textiles and transportation were the first to be transformed. While England and northern Europe embraced change, the absolutist regimes rejected it, thus causing their societies to fall behind Europe's. Free societies invariably trump absolutist systems.  The US and Australia eagerly adopted the revolution and had inclusive institutions that embraced it.  The end of absolutism in France opened up that country as well. The Russian, Austro-Hungarian,  and Ottoman Empires retained absolutist systems and fell further behind. China remained both closed, i.e. it discouraged any foreign trade, and absolutist. Of course, today's China is a much different story. It has succeeded by offering economic freedoms, but not political ones. The authors believe that China's oppressive politics will eventually stall economic growth.

    The success of inclusive states is not assured in any sense. "They are often the outcome of significant conflict between elites resisting economic growth and political change and those wishing to limit the existing...power of the elites." But, when conflict leads to reforms and broad-based empowerment, it also invariably leads to further success. 

    This book was highly acclaimed when it was published in 2012. Indeed, it is a brilliant exposition of a compelling idea. Jared Diamond offered his constructive critique that it did not hew close enough to his geographic considerations, but that said, the concepts are not mutually exclusive. However, it is a challenge to read because each chapter travels far and wide, spatially and temporally. My thanks to Wendell Erwin for suggesting (I think twice) that I read it.

    

    

First Wave, Benn - B

     This is the second book in the Billy Boyle series. This time, our Hardy Boy-ish hero is in North Africa for the US's introduction to war with the Germans. First though, the Vichy French need to be handled. The plot involves theft of the new penicillin wonder drug and French Nazi collaborators. As said earlier, pure light-hearted WW2-era escapism.

The Abstainer, McGuire - C

                     This novel is set in 1867 Manchester and features Jimmy O'Connor, a cop sent there from Dublin. His role is to try to find the Fenians, who are starting to make trouble, including the occasional act of terror. Most of the English cops don't trust O'Connor, who begins to have second doubts after a few failures. He leaves for the States to seek revenge on another Irishman who has killed his nephew. I am somewhat befuddled by the high-praise this book has received.

Make Russia Great Again, Buckley - B+

                  Christopher Buckley is a brilliant satirist, not as laugh-out-loud funny as Hiaasen was a few months ago, but nonetheless, very witty.  This is a faux-memoir written in a federal penitentiary by Herb Butternut, the Donald's 'favorite Jew' and his 7th or 8th chief of staff. At the center of Herb's problems are a US Cyber-Command artificial intelligence program called Placid Reflux that manages to rig a Russian election causing Putin to lose to a communist. One of Putin's henchmen has film and audio of the Donald's shenanigans at the 2013 Miss Universe contest. He threatens release of the Donald in flagrante delicto with all eighteen contestants - and he does. Nonetheless, the base doesn't care and the CIA manipulates Putin to not interfere,  and assures Trump's re-election. Sophisticated and very, very funny.

Immoral, Freeman - B

                  This is the first, from way back 15 years ago, in the Jonathan Stride series mentioned a few weeks ago. A teen goes missing and all fingers point to her lecherous stepfather. There's enough circumstantial evidence for the town's aggressive prosecutor to go to trial without a body. Plenty of twists, turns and even a side trip from frozen Duluth to Las Vegas.

The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from world War to Cold War - Nasaw - B+

                       At war's end, the living detritus of the conflict, millions of slave laborers, Holocaust survivors, prisoners of war, soldiers and civilians were homeless and starving in Germany. "By October 1, 1945, 2 million Soviets, 1.5 million Frenchmen, 586,000 Italians, 274,000 Dutch citizens, 300,000 Belgians, 200,000 Yugoslavs, 135,000 Czechs and 94,000 Poles had been sent home." This book is about the million displaced Eastern Europeans who refused to go, or had no home to go to. They were Polish Catholics fearful of communism and the Jewish camp survivors.  The majority of the million were from the Baltics and the Ukraine, many of whom had fled before the Red Army, some of them displaced workers, but also those who had collaborated with the Nazis.                                                                                                                The 1941 invasion of the USSR had afforded those who despised the Soviets many opportunities. Thousands went to work for the Germans, and up to half-a-million men joined the Waffen-SS to fight the Soviets. When the Red Army returned, the collaborators fled west and attempted to hide among the civilian displaced persons, preferably in the American and British sectors. Joining them were hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, clergy, doctors, shop owners and others who knew they would be persecuted by the Reds. Also with them, often on foot and occasionally in cattle cars, were the surviving Jews from all the corners of Europe who had been in the camps.The Jews were barely alive and lodged with fellow countrymen. "The fear of the survivors, in those first weeks and months after liberation, was that the American and British military were going to force them to return to the nations and the peoples who had murdered their families." Allied military policy, and the United Nations Refugee Relief Administration wished to treat all DP's equitably and repatriate them. Most Jews were still in striped pajamas and many were behind barbed wire in the same camps in which the Nazis had kept them. An American observer reported that the only difference is "that we do not exterminate them." The majority wished to go to Palestine. Both Britain and the US State Dept. were opposed. Their policy considerations were straightforward: ignore the humanitarian issues because foisting more Jews on the Arabs would drive them straight into the Soviet's camp.                                                                              Knowing Truman's concerns and anticipating a change in policy, Ike appointed Jewish chaplains as liaisons, stated that any Jew who did not wish to be repatriated be treated as stateless, and, materially improved living conditions. By autumn, 1945, all DP's were in accommodations sorted by nationality and religion.  The only ones willing to return home were the non-Jewish Poles, and by year end, a quarter million of them were repatriated. That said, there were an equal number of Poles who had no interest in living under communism. The Balts and Ukrainians did not wish to be repatriated, and the Jews simply wanted out of Europe.The financial and personnel demands on the US military charged with managing the DP's was such that the Army tried to close the camps. When that failed, they began to try to weed out the war criminals, collaborators, and those who had fought for Germany. Meanwhile, the Jewish problem in the camps continued to fester while the US and UK did battle over whether 100,000 DP's would be allowed to go to Palestine. Added to the mix in 1946 were 150,000-200,000 Jews who were in the USSR during the war and upon returning to Poland, were met with vicious anti-semitism and chose to flee to the American sector. The DP's became a political football with the USSR and Poland demanding repatriation, Britain and America opposed but without a plan for their future.                                                                                                                The UNRRA was replaced by the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which was basically a UK-US entity with the objective of resettling those now defined as refugees, who were people who did not wish to be repatriated for any reason, including fear of the regime in their former homeland. Settling a substantial number of Jewish refugees in the US was a goal of the administration and America's Jews, but any possibility of amending immigration laws fell by the wayside when Republicans soundly won the 1946 congressional elections. While America dithered, the UK, Canada and Australia began taking in refugees from Poland and the Baltics because of their severe labor shortages. Brazil and Argentina followed suit. Very few Jews were accepted by these countries. The most desirable DP's were single and capable of work in mines, on farms, or as lumbermen. The Jews didn't fit that bill, and when anti-semitism was added to the equation, they were stuck in Europe for years. The UK was allowing 1500 immigrants to Israel per month. So, illegal immigration exploded. The UN suggestion in response to the British desire to leave the Mandate behind was a partition that the Arabs refused to accept. Both sides prepared to fight. The Jews struck first, committing a major atrocity at an Arab village near Jerusalem and beginning to evict Arabs from Palestine. The British Mandate expired at midnight May 15, 1948. Within minutes Ben-Gurion declared the existence of Israel and Truman recognized the new state. By the end of 1948, 750,000 Palestinians had fled. One hundred and thirty-two thousand DP's replaced them.                                                                                                                                         The same year, the US addressed immigration reform legislation at a time when anxiety about communists sneaking in was at a high pitch.  A bill passed admitting 200,000 mostly Catholic and Lutheran DPs, which  was labelled "a shameful victory for the school of bigotry" by the Times. Complicating the process was a genuine concern that many of the Balts and Ukrainians were willing Nazi collaborators. Truman's re-election and a Democratic majority in Congress led to the Displaced Persons Act in 1950. It allowed a potpourri of 328,000 Europeans in, but only about 32,000 Jews because by then, the majority of Jewish DP's had been absorbed by Israel. Further anti-communist anxiety occasioned by the Korean War led to legislation that made it easier for former Waffen-SS and other Nazis to come to America. One of the consequences of the two US laws was a worldwide opening of doors in Australia, Canada, and Central and South America.                                                                                                                                                "The Last Million and their children could not escape history, nor will they let the rest of us do so. They stand as living testimony to the inescapable truth that the dislocations and displacements of the war in Europe did not magically end with the cessation of hostilities, but bled into the postwar and the Cold War that followed."

We Germans, Starritt - B+

                   This novel is written as a letter from an aging Eastern Front artilleryman, Oberkanonier Meissner, to his British grandson. The barbarism of war was amplified in the east where neither side offered any quarter to the opposition. It was a "thing of hatred and annihilation." Meissner witnessed years of extreme atrocities by both sides. The common lot for soldiers was starvation and considerable effort went into foraging, including killing civilians, and near the end, rear-echelon German guards, for food. By 1945, Meissner's squad was heading west and hoping to be met by Americans. They wound up surrendering in Austria to Czech partisans and were handed over to the Soviets. Back east, they went to a camp near the Black Sea. Years of fighting followed by three years of captivity led to a fatalistic acceptance by the author of all that came his way. Throughout, the thoughts of Meissner are interspersed with points of clarification or elucidation by the grandson. This is a superb telling of a difficult story that sheds light on the daily trials and tribulations of front-line soldiers and addresses the profound issues of responsibility and guilt by Germans. The author is a grandson of a former Soldaten.

Billy Boyle, Benn - B

                  This is the first in a decade-and-a-half old series featuring a Boston police detective as a lieutenant on Ike's staff in London. He is to be available to discreetly investigate matters of suspicion, and here looks into  multiple murders committed in and around the Norwegian forces and government in Britain. The interesting aspect of the book is its deft exploration of the Norwegians' wartime activities in the UK. However, there is quite a bit of the story that totally strains credulity, leading with the fact that Billy is supposedly some relation of Eisenhower's and calls him Uncle Ike. It is, though, a thoroughly pleasant diversion.

Whiteout, Follett - C

                   This novel opens soundly with a threat of  a plague like illness from a virus taken out of a highly secure experimental laboratory in Scotland. The virus is 100% fatal, but the founder of the business and his security chief put the genie back in the bottle. The story falls apart from there, when the founders ne'er-do-well son teams up with some thugs from Glasgow in an attempt to sell the virus to terrorists. Weak stuff.

The Vanishing Half, Bennett - A*

           This is an extraordinary novel dealing with the topic of race in America. Twin sisters growing up in the woods of Louisiana see their father lynched as children, and come of age in a community almost completely populated by very light-skinned African- Americans. They run away as sixteen year olds and try and find a life in New Orleans. Stella applies for a secretarial job and, once working, realizes that her colleagues think she is white. She abandons Desiree and "crosses over". Desiree marries a very black man, and after her marriage fails returns home to Mallard with her daughter, Jude. Jude grows up experiencing racial abuse from the lighter-skinned locals, and later, as a college student, finds freedom in LA. There she meets her aunt and her privileged blonde haired cousin. Undoubtedly, the most intriguing story line in the book is Stella's. She lives a lie, dissembles around her husband and daughter, is unable to build friendships, is worried that blacks will notice, and is wary, if not fearful, all day every day. This is flat-out an extremely powerful story of not just racial identity, but family and love. This is a truly magnificent book.

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, And Less Than Four Minutes To Achieve It, Bascomb - B

                  Running four laps, four quarters, in four minutes was long considered beyond man's capability. Some thought death awaited. The story of its pursuit begins in 1952 with Wes Santee of Kansas, John Landy of Australia, and Roger Bannister of England. All were at Helsinki, and none of them took home an an Olympic medal. Bannister was crucified by the tabloids for letting down his country. All three were determined to improve, and the Oxford grad and St. Mary's Hospital medical student began focusing on the mile. By years end though, Landy had run 4:02.1. While Landy trained, Bannister struggled with a med student's schedule, as well as a graduate study for Oxford on the biology of long-distance running. He was unquestionably a scientist-runner, who grasped the physiological issues he was facing. Meanwhile at KU, Santee convinced the Jayhawk coach to let him out of relays so he could focus on the mile. Throughout 1953, the three men ran, trained, went to school and became the number one story in the world of sports.

                 On the morning of May 6, 1954, a dark rainy day, Bannister went to work at St. Mary's in London. At mid-day, he went to Paddington Station and took a train to Oxford. Just before the 6 p.m. start, the race organizers asked Bannister and his pacemakers if they wish to race. Bannister said no, but his colleagues said yes. His splits were 57.5, 1:58, 3:00.4, and he finished with a 3:59.4. He had achieved immortality. Seven weeks later, Landy broke the record.They raced each other in the  Empire Games that summer and both ran under four minutes, with Bannister the winner. Santee was never so fortunate. Today the record is 3:43.13 set in 1999 by Hicham El Guerrouj. Needless to say, races are no longer held on cinder tracks.

The Law of Innocence, Connelly - B+

             This particular year, the author has chosen to return with the sixth in the Lincoln Law series featuring Mickey Haller. Bosch does have a small role helping his half brother. The book is unnerving because a sword of Damocles hangs over Mickey's head right up to the final pages. He is framed for a murder and the prosecution is loaded for bear with a chance to put away a prominent member of the defense bar. He's confined to the local prison where he is at risk, starving and beaten half to death. He and his team find it difficult to find the third party perpetrator who would show his innocence. There is a sense of impending doom throughout. As always, a thorough background on LA is prominent, as is a deep dive into the criminal justice system. And as usual, another great one from Michael Connelly.

House On Endless Waters, Elon - B

          An Israeli novelist on a visit to Amsterdam goes to the Jewish Museum, where he sees a video of the Jewish Quarter before the war and what appears to be his mother holding an unknown brother. He is now on a search for truth and identity. He returns to Amsterdam, takes up residence near the apartment his parents lived in and begins to research the past. Simultaneously, he begins to write his mother's story and the slow-motion dehumanization and destruction of Amsterdam's Jews. The more he progresses,  the more he learns about a series of decisions that altered, and saved, his life. This is a wonderful story and one that would be very meaningful as an introduction to the sorry story of Europe's Jewry in the war.

Funeral For A Friend, Freeman - B

              This novel is apparently part of a long-running series featuring Jonathan Stride,  chief of detectives in Duluth, MN. There are two stories here, one featuring a deadly stalker pursuing a young runaway under Stride's, and his wife's protection. The second involves the murder of a journalist in pursuit of an alleged rape by the local US congressman three decades earlier. Unlike almost every major series I can think of (eg. Harry Bosch, Ian Rutledge, Alan Banks and Guido Brunetti), the story is less about the principal, but more about the actual crimes themselves. There are some interesting twists and it's always fun to visit a new locale.

The Forgers, Murrow - C

      Eerily written in the first person, this highly acclaimed novel explores the world of rare books, its sellers and buyers, and the occasional interlopers, the forgers. Perhaps because I was reading it before, during and after a trip, I couldn't quite get going, or perhaps, it's a pretentious, tedious bore.

The Searcher, French - C

          Cal is a former Chicago cop retired early to rural Ireland and slowly shaping up a deserted and dilapidated shambles of a house. A 12-year-old, Trey, keeps hanging around and eventually convinces him to look for a missing older brother, Brendan. As Cal begins to dig, he learns that the sleepy village filled with affable souls has secrets. Drugs from Dublin may be coming into the area. And of course, drugs bring danger.

Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy, Macintyre - B

       Ursula Kuczynski, born in 1907 to a wealthy Berlin Jewish family, became a communist as a teenager. She was naturally rebellious, active, passionate and altruistic. As the Depression rolled over Germany, her husband was offered a job in Shanghai and she went east in 1930. She was recruited by Moscow; her job was to befriend the German ex-pat community and report any and all information. She was sent to Moscow for training and then, back east, this time to Mukden in Manchuria. Now known as Sonya, she supported CCP partisans attacking the Japanese. When someone in her network was blown, she was recalled and sent to Warsaw. She was awarded the Order of The Red Banner for her success and courage. Before the war broke out, she moved to Switzerland, where she married for a second time to a fellow Soviet agent, and together they moved to England near the UK Atomic Research Centre. There, she met another German communist, Klaus Fuchs and became his handler. He never understood why the US and Britain didn't share their secret with their Soviet ally. He passed on an atomic treasure trove that allowed the USSR to eventually build its bomb. While Sonya raised children and passed as a completely domestic homemaker, she also ran a network in the UK and soon, MI-5 was interested. When Fuchs was sent to America, she passed him off to a new handler. She co-opted an OSS effort to such an extent that all of their German agents returned home to Germany late in the war were actually communists reporting to her. When Klaus Fuchs confessed after the war, she knew her time was up, and notwithstanding innumerable and obvious connections to him and the deep suspicion of some in MI-5, she left for East Germany in 1950. She lived in Berlin until her death in 2000. As she aged, she was rewarded with honors, a second Red Banner, and published her memoirs. She even toured Britain. She lost her faith in the USSR, but not the core principles of communism.

All The Devils Are Here, Penney - B

            Setting the most recent Gamache novel in Paris seems like a great idea. After all, just how much can be written about Three Pines, close to the Vermont border in Quebec.  All of the Gamache family is in Paris when Armand's godfather is run down in an attempted murder. Stephen is very old, very wealthy and a hero of the Resistance. When Armand begins to dig, he winds up finding a vast international plot that quite frankly, strains credulity. There are  just too many evildoers and plot twists to believe. 

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, Wilkerson - A*

                Our country is built upon a centuries old caste system that is "the infrastructure of our divisions." It is "a fixed and embedded ranking of human value..." It's based on ancestry, and rigidly assigns boundaries and groupings. India has had one for over a millennium, Nazi Germany had one for just over a decade and America itself has a "shape shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid." In America, race is "the frontman for caste." It is a system we are born into without choice, but with a lifetime of consequences. "Caste is the operating system for economic, political, and social interaction in the United States..." For the average white person, it keeps blacks in their place.

              Slavery was in place for a quarter of a millennium in the South, where Africans were the prime building block of the region's economy. It was legal and made lords of those in the dominant caste. It was also the first time an enslaved subgroup was enslaved in perpetuity. African-Americans will not be free as long as they were enslaved in this country until 2111. And the first hundred years of that freedom under Jim Crow was far from free. For the vast majority of white Americans, they didn't become 'white' until their ancestors arrived here. "Hostility toward the lowest caste became part of the initiation rite into citizenship in America." We have inherited these "distorted rules of engagement." The New World made people white, black, brown, yellow and red.  The distinction between caste and race is a difficult one to articulate. Perhaps race attaches an inferiority based on color and caste is denigration based on a categorization. Caste is inheritable, endogamous (restricting marriage to within the same caste), and requires a quarantining and separation. Separation has been diligently enforced in the public water, beaches and pools in the US. Lower caste members, blacks in America, Dalits in India, were and are assigned the lowest most menial tasks in the work force. Dehumanization and stigmatization are two more foundations of caste and are enforced by terror and cruelty; lower caste members are permanently inferior.

     Disruptions to the caste system have consequences to both the lower and higher class members. When blacks achieved power during Reconstruction, the white response was vicious re-suppression through the Jim Crow laws. The Civil Rights movement led to mass incarceration of blacks. As blacks successfully began to rise up to become wealthy athletes, members of Congress, Secretary of State and even President, the cognitive dissonance for lower caste whites led to alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide to such a degree that white life expectancy declined.

     To be in a lower caste is to be perpetually repressed. "The subordinate castes are trained to admire, worship, fear, love, covet and want to be like those at the center of society...""Caste is more than rank, it is a state of mind that holds everyone captive, the dominant imprisoned in an illusion of their own entitlement, the subordinate trapped in the purgatory of someone else's definition of who they are and who they should be." 

      The stress of being in a lower caste has meaningful negative health consequences. Being lower caste is a significant factor in heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes among blacks. Sub-SaharanAfricans generally do not have any of these diseases. When Africans immigrate to America, they develop them at levels similar to native blacks. Black women have been proven to build up more visceral fat because of discrimination. When whites are mistreated in clinical trials, veins constrict and their bodies react poorly. Being on the bottom of the pyramid is bad for your health. "The caste system takes years off the lives of subordinate-caste people..." 

     The most significant disruption to the American caste system was  the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. He was not as threatening because of his upbringing in Hawaii and the fact that his father was Kenyan, not part of enslaved America's history. That said, only 40% of whites voted for him. The caste system sprung into action when McConnell spoke of limiting him to one term. Voter suppression of blacks became a Republican strategy. Shutting down the government became the norm. Obama was handcuffed. The 2016 election saw lower caste whites voting against their interests in order to elect a white bigot appealing to their baser nature. In fact, they were voting to preserve their caste.

     The price we pay for  caste is a safety net with holes, leading to below average education, health care, life expectancy, and infant mortality. Whether the system continues or diminishes  is up to us all, but it is primarily the decision of those in the dominant caste. This issue will be seriously challenged as the dominant caste loses its majority status in the future. "A world without caste would set everyone free."                                                                                                               This book has been acclaimed as the most important of the century. And, it is extraordinary. Yet it is far from perfect. Wilkerson eloquently makes her case and is unnervingly accurate and on point throughout. She is capable of going a bit afield at times. Comparisons to India's millennium long caste structure are enlightening;  Germany's 12-year genocide less so. Nonetheless, this is a magnificent must read for any thoughtful American. We have a caste system, even if most of us would not be willing to acknowledge that. Read this book and I suspect you will agree with the author.

     

The Sentinel, Child & Grant - B+

      Jack no middle initial Reacher is still at it, this time in small-town Tennessee in the middle of an international ransomware attack on Pleasantville. He comes to the aid of the town's IT manager, blamed for the mess, fired and shunned. It's more complex than it appears because the FBI gets in touch and asks for his help. The Russians are hacking for higher game. Interestingly, this is the 25th in the series and the first of three he'll be co-writing with his brother. Thereafter,  Child will be done. Apparently, there's a tv show in the making,  or he could just enjoy what the Times estimated is a billion dollar fortune. I scrutinized every page to find some slippage from what we all expect. There's one plot twist that seemed a bit more complex than I'd generally expect. Certainly forgivable and forgettable, i.e. the plot point, not the series. Looking forward to next year's new addition.

The Tatooist Of Auschwitz, Morris - B+

                    This extraordinary novel is actually based on the true story of Lale Eisenberg of Bratislava who arrived at Auschwitz in March 1942 and survived the war inking thousands of numbers on the poor souls who were transported Auschwitz and Birkenau. One of the first he met was Gita Furman, also a Slovakian. He was a master of surviving by trading and working the black-market that existed between the prisoners, guards and Polish day laborers. He and Gita started a love affair that amazingly lasted through almost three years in the camp. When the SS fled in January, 1945, Gita escaped to Cracow with some Polish girls. She hitched a ride to Bratislava with a long-haul trucker. Lale was transported to Austria, where he escaped in the chaos of the war's end. They found each other in Bratislava. They married and escaped communism in 1948. The established a  post-war life in Australia, where they raised a son born in 1961. The book was a massive best-seller a few years ago, although it has been modestly criticized for some embellishments along the way.  It is, regardless, a great love story. I suspect that for those who know nothing about the camps, this book serves a slightly educational purpose. It fails though to present the enormity of evil at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and The Rise of Reagan, Perlstein - B+/Incomplete

       This is the third volume of the author's majestic, incisive decade-and- a-half, 2600 + page analysis of the rise of the right from the mid-1950's until Reagan's presidency.  The previous book ended with Nixon's landslide reelection. This one is about the ensuing presidential term when America lost faith in itself. In this era, Reagan emphasized the language of American exceptionalism at all times, often flying in the face of very unpleasant facts. "This is a book about how such rhetoric came into being ..." 

     Nixon declared that he had achieved peace with honor and attempted to celebrate the return of the POW's as a triumph. He and his administration had spent four years politicizing their imprisonment. The New Yorker magazine suggested it was as if "the North Vietnamese kidnapped 400 Americans and the US had gone to war to retrieve them." Many, many Americans were disconcerted by the sanctification of men who had bombed civilians in an undeclared war while our ally imprisoned 10,000 political prisoners in much harsher conditions. One man traveling the country dismissing Watergate and "choking up" over the POWs was the governor of California. "He was an athlete of the imagination, a master of turning complexity and confusion and doubt into simplicity and stout-hearted certainty." He was an ebullient optimist. That imagination and his inherent optimism had brought him through his chaotic childhood.

     In the late winter of 1973, Sen. Sam Ervin and Judge John Sirica began their separate pursuits of Watergate.  Nixon fired his two closest aides, his White House Counsel and Attorney General in April and announced that he would conduct an investigation of his own. Ervin's televised hearings began in May and the new AG, Elliot Richardson, appointed Archibald Cox as the Watergate prosecutor. The televised hearings captivated the nation and day by day, shocking detail by shocking detail, the Nixon presidency began slipping away. That summer, inflation and a fuel shortage continued to diminish life in America. In late June, the most damning, compelling and memorable witness of the hearings, John Dean, White House Counsel, buried the entire Nixon Administration with a 295-page opening statement and days of precise testimony. The following month, a White House aide testified to the existence of a recording system at the presidential mansion. Nixon continued to stonewall the issues around Watergate and the Ervin Committee finished its revelations.

    The fall saw the Pinochet coup in Chile, the indictment and resignation of the Vice President, the YomKippur War, the nomination of Gerald Ford to replace Agnew, and the Saturday Night Massacre. Calls for impeachment rang out around the land and in the House. The devastating Arab oil embargo followed.  The energy crisis hurt everyone and contributed to Nixon having the lowest approval rating of any president ever by the time he presented his State of the Union. Just about the only Republican still enthusiastically supporting him was Reagan. Soon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson and Mitchell were indicted. In April, Nixon hurt his case further by releasing transcripts of the White House tapes that revealed him to be guilty as charged, and a frequent user of "expletive deleted' language. On July 24th, the Supreme Court approved District Judge Sirica's subpoena of the White House tapes. By the 9th of August, Nixon was flying to California resigned and disgraced.

           I began the Perlstein series three and-a-half years ago knowing it was a highly acclaimed treatise on the rise of the right, in order to better understand the results of the 2016 election.  I am leaving the series a third of the way through this tome as I believe I have accomplished my objective. And I wish to add that the first 281 pages of this book are extremely well done, if not excellent. I simply do not wish to slog through the Ford and Carter years. 

            My readings here confirm many of the conclusions I've  come to believe over the decades about our country. There is nothing new about hate, vitriolic personal attacks and the ability to preach and act in the face of reality and facts. Delusional conduct, speech and belief are inherently human traits. The only difference today is the 24-hour news cycle, the ability of loonies to spread their ideas wide and far through today's internet platforms and, for the last four years, a chief executive willing to light fires and fan flames. The Founders endlessly declaimed against partisanship. This country fought a civil war that killed 620,000 - 750,000 in a population of 31 million. Immigrant anarchists led to widespread unrest, labor wars and fighting in the streets in the late 19th-century. Bryant led a populist pushback on behalf of farmers against the railroad barons and Wall Street. The religious right in the rural west  and south imposed the absurdity of Prohibition on the urban north.  The Depression created further class fissures in our society. A century after the Civil War, the South fought a losing battle against civil rights for people of color. The Vietnam War remains as divisive today as it was in 1965. A woman's right to chose has been the established law for 47 years - but, one would hardly know that. It hasn't been, and I guess it never will be, pretty.

Winter Counts, Weiden - B

     This is a pretty amazing book, written by a Denver lawyer and professor, who happens to be a full-blooded member of the Lakota Nation (they do not use the word Sioux). It is a mystery and features a young man who is a private vigilante. The occupation exists on the reservations because the US has jurisdiction over all felonies on reservations, but it traditionally ignores all personal violence/sex crimes. Virgil's nephew is framed for possession of drugs, and through his story we learn about the lack of heat, starvation, suicide, corruption  and health issues on the rez. 

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking Of America: A Modern History, Andersen - Inc.

      This book "chronicles the quite deliberate reengineering of our economy and society since the 1960's by a highly rational confederacy of the rich, the right, and big business." The fair and democratic America that came about in WWII "slowed, stopped, and reversed" in the 1980's. Reaganism promised a nostalgic return to Bedford Falls and delivered Pottersville. 

     For hundreds of years, everything about our society focused on "making America perpetually new." By 1970, the perpetually growing economy fed by productivity enhancements had struck a reasonable balance between capital and labor. However cultural nostalgia in the 1970's began a pushback against the rapid fire changes of the 1960's, which were highlighted by civil rights, female emancipation, increasing crime, birth control, Medicare, immigration reform and voting rights legislation. America began to not just celebrate the past, but to "restore and reproduce" it. Hollywood led the way and intellectually, Milton Friedman provided business with a rationale. Profits above all else and end to governmental interference, which he labeled statism, became the mantra.  Former ABA president Lewis Powell articulated the necessity of counter-attacking, particularly in the courts, those criticizing and tearing down the capitalist system. The Powell memo was enthusiastically read and embraced by many, including Charles Koch and Richard Scaife Mellon. They began funding the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover and  the Heritage Foundations. They further weaponized capitalism with right-wing legal foundations, PACs, the Business Roundtable and extensive lobbying for business and against government and taxation. Between Watergate, defeat in Vietnam, inflation and skyrocketing oil prices, the government was extremely out of favor and taxes became a bugaboo. The man able to sell this new era to the country was Ronald Reagan, who among other things was a very nice guy, and carried just enough focus on individualism to appeal to baby boomers along with older conservatives. 

     I decided to bail on this book about a third of the way through. I completely agree with the premise that something has gone completely off the rails with the massive degree of today's income inequality. But the author is not thorough enough for my standards. One should not discuss the 1980's without mentioning that the national debt tripled under Reagan. A discussion of tax cuts that mentions only the percentage decline in marginal rates without discussing the overall total taxes collected is inaccurate. And a significant impact on the overall topic has been globalization (see Japan's automotive assault on Detroit). I'm not sure he addresses the impact of technology either, but I did bail early.

     

A Time For Mercy, Grisham - B+

               We are back in Clanton, Mississippi in 1990, and our featured lawyer is Jake Brigance of 'A Time To Kill' fame.  He represents a 16-year-old boy who shoots and kills the mean-spirited s.o.b. who is beating his mother unconscious. The problem is the guy was a very popular cop in town. Grisham is the master of fabulous, tension-filled trials and really rises to the top of his form here. As always, he skillfully delves into racial issues and both black and white poverty in the deep south. And, being a lawyer in small-town America is no financial dream either. Another masterpiece.

The Hapsburgs: To Rule The World. Rady - B

     "The Hapsburgs were the first rulers whose power encompassed the world."  Indeed, at their peak, the sun never set upon their lands. They ruled the Holy Roman Empire intermittently from 1273 and continually from 1438. They sat upon the Spanish throne for two centuries. Upon the HRE's demise at the hands of Napoleon in 1806, they ruled the Austrian Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918.  They had "a vision of a world united under the ethereal sway of a single sovereign, who was dedicated to the service of religion, peace among Christians, and war against the unbeliever." Uniquely, they recognized that the many and varied component parts were not homogenous and they seldom attempted to manage them in a unitary system.

     They can be traced back to the 10th century in what is now the Aargau region of Switzerland. By inheritance, luck and survival, a Hapsburg count became the most powerful man in mid-13th century Swabia. Going forward, the family's ability to produce sons was one of its strongest suits. Rudolf I maneuvered into the crown, but since it was elective, was unable to keep it in the family. Because they were lords over many diverse territories, primogeniture did not work and in the century after Rudolf, their position diminished. In the mid-15th century, Albert, and then Frederick III, were elected HRE in addition to being dukes of Austria and kings of Bohemia and Hungary. Frederick's forty-five year reign established the family's role in central Europe and fortuitously acquired the Low Countries by virtue of his daughter's marriage, and his son-in-law's subsequent death. His marriage of his daughter to the Spanish heir assured that his grandson, Charles V, was both HRE and king of Spain, which had just begnu its conquests in America. The Philippines were soon added.

       He was 'Lord of the World' and 'King of Kings'. Notwithstanding the reach of his empire, Charles' revenue was half of France's king and a quarter of the Ottoman's emperor. Nonetheless, he was an excellent ruler: he conquered Tunis and recovered lands held by the infidel Muslims, he commissioned the first map of Germany, he attempted to reform the church and reduce the attractions of Protestantism, and he married his far- flung family to every royal house from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. He abdicated in 1555 and turned Spain over to his son and the empire to his brother. 

     In the east, Ferdinand I was faced with the twin challenges of the Ottomans and the Reformation. The Turks would occupy portions of Hungary for the next century-and-a-half. Although he was devoted  to the church and considered Luther a heretic, there was nothing Ferdinand could do to stop the spread of Lutheranism throughout Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and even Austria. In Spain, Phillip succeeded to Spain itself, along with the New World, the Low Countries, Burgundy, Sicily, Naples and Sardinia. He was fully committed to maintaining the supremacy of the church. The northern provinces of the Low Countries, the Netherlands, committed to Protestantism and fought a long,  successful campaign for freedom. Phillip's naval adventure, the famous Armada, failed against England, but he sponsored a Christian fleet that defeated the Turks at Lepanto. Although the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 established that people were to follow the religious beliefs of their princes, religious conflict spread throughout the empire, and by the early decades of the next century, Protestantism dominated the empire. Catholicism prevailed in Bavaria, Lorraine, Tyrol and inner Austria only. 

     A devoted, if not fanatical, Catholic, Ferdinand II became emperor in 1618. He faced opposition in Bohemia, where the Diet deposed him. The Spanish Hapsburgs rallied to the Catholic cause and the Thirty-Years War had begun. It proved to be the most destruction Europe would see for three hundred years. It encompassed the entire continent and drew in Africa, America and Asia as well. Five million people, 20% of the empire's population died. Germany, in particular, was devastated. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia settled the war and allowed (within reason) people to practice the faith of their choice. Leopold I was HRE, from 1658-1705, consolidated power and presided over the defense of Europe from one of the greatest outside threats it ever faced. In the spring of 1683, the Ottomans headed north. A hundred thousand men marched into Hungary and Austria and encircled Vienna. King John Sobieski of Poland and Charles of Lorraine lifted the siege and sent the Ottomans in retreat. Three years later, they liberated Hungary and threatened Ottoman rule in the Balkans. "By perseverance and the work of his generals, Leopold had renewed the connection between the Hapsburgs and the imperial office that sustained the dynasty's claim to greatness." However in Spain, the death in 1700 of Charles II without heirs ended the Hapsburg line there and led to the War of the Spanish Succession. 

     The 18th century saw the Hapsburgs complete the re-conquest of Hungary and extend their control as far south as Belgrade. Under Maria Theresa (1740-80) and her son Joseph II (1765 as co-emperor and sole until 1790) the Hapsburgs achieved breathtaking accomplishments in military and fiscal reform, systematizing the government, controlling the nobles, educating the populace and even converting serfs into yeoman farmers. They greatly expanded Vienna's role as a cultural capital as the Enlightenment unfolded in Europe. Joseph reformed the church, authorized limited freedom of worship, and is believed to have met with a million of his subjects. He closed hundreds of monasteries and religious houses that served no public purpose. Francis II (1792-1835)was emperor when the wars of the French Revolution threw Europe into two decades of ceaseless violence. At the Congress of Vienna, 1814-15, Austria retained its central European core, acquired Trieste, the provinces around the northern Adriatic and the presidency of a new German Confederation. The focus of Metternich, the Prussians and the Russians was the maintenance of the status quo and it would be for decades. Indeed, the world they re-established lasted, more or less intact for a century.

     The year 1848 saw revolution spread throughout Europe. It appeared as if the empire would be dissolved, with the German provinces joining a new country, Bohemia, as the basis of a Slav state, with Lombardy-Venetia and Hungary independent. The forces of reaction militarily held the empire together. The twenty-one year old Franz Joseph became emperor. Hungary had declared its independence and it was violently returned to the fold. Franz Joseph ruled as an absolute monarch in a changing world. He lost all say in Germany after the Prussians won the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. By the Settlement of 1867, Franz Joseph acceded to Hungary's partial independence, allowing it local rule and representation, and provided a constitution for both halves of the empire, now known as the Austro-Hungarian. The dual monarchy was "inseparable and indivisible." The empire adopted a policy of 'muddling through', as the process of governing a state spread over vast distances, with varying economies, dozens of languages, many religions, multiple political parties and raging nationalism was beyond the skill set of Franz Joseph and the institutions surrounding him. Yet, his religious faith, steadfastness, commitment to his people,  strength in the face of his son's and his wife's tragic deaths and sheer longevity held the far-flung empire together. The final chapter, of course,  began with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Indicative of the empire's many challenges, the posters announcing the mobilization were printed in 15 languages. With the help of the Germans, the much-depleted army held on, but the home front collapsed. As the new emperor, Karl (1916-18), quickly gave up his desire for a separate peace and aligned with Germany, the Allies adopted the dissolution of the empire as a goal. The tottering dynasty could not hold together the disparate nations together and the empire disappeared at war's end. Ironically, Karl's son, Otto, lived 99 years and was an important European-wide visionary who might have been a very good emperor. Central Europe may have been better off.                                                                      I became intrigued by the Hapsburgs while on my first trip to Europe, specifically to Austria, in 1987. I was reading a book in which an English author made the case that, notwithstanding the importance of nationalism and the many failures of the old man of Europe, as the tottering 19th-century empire was known,  central Europe was much better off then than it was in the 20th century. From a multi-cultural tolerant society, the nations were soaked in blood under the Nazis and imprisoned by the communists.

Pleasantville, Locke - B +

             Many years after we met him in 'Black Water Rising', Jay Porter is approaching 50, mourning his late wife, putting in just enough effort to keep his law office open and struggling with his two kids, particularly his 15-year-old daughter. He's about to lose the case he's been pursuing against a polluting chemical company to another lawyer when he gets roped into defending a young black man framed for a murder because he's running his uncles campaign for mayor of Houston. The DA is the opponent. It's a  very good read and in my opinion, the best of the four books by this author that I've read this year. Pleasantville is a section of Houston built in the post-war era to provide suburban-like housing for Houston's black middle class.

The Salzburg Connection, MacInnes - C

     This thriller is from the late '60's and includes some of the great standbys of  the era. A box, sunk in an Austrian lake by the Nazis, is pursued by Americans, Brits, Austrians and most importantly, Russians. The Nazis are still in business in and around Salzburg, where most of the action takes place. Unfortunately, the book is way too long, packed with many characters and not terribly interesting. I had been hoping for some old school comfort food. 

Death In Mudlick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opiod Epidemic, Eyre - B

      This story is set in West Virginia, where some of America's major drug distributors pumped millions of Vicodin and OxyContin pills through small-town pharmacies with the help and support of local businessmen and without any government oversight. The state led the nation in deaths from opioids as a result. The author is the reporter who exposed the misdeeds of  AmerisourceBergen, McKesson, Cardinal Health and Sav-Rite. He won a Pulitzer for his reporting.

     The 2005 death by oxycodone intoxication of a forty-five-year- old former miner, Bull Preece, revealed that over 45 days, he had 630 pain pills in his possession. Bull's death was the beginning of the end for the secrecy under which the distributors operated. That year, the DEA and the WV Attorney-General had pursued and obtained awards against Purdue Pharma, the aggressive maker and seller of Oxy. McKesson had flagged the activities of a Sav-Rite pharmacist in Kermit, who managed the pharmacy that had supplied Preece. Preece's sister filed a wrongful death action against both the Ohio physician who prescribed drugs for her brother and the local Sav-Rite. The lawyer learned that people from all over the east coast daily filled prescriptions in Kermit, WV, that suppliers delivered massive amounts of meds and that in essence, the Sav-Rite was a 'pill mill'. The owner, Jim Wooley, had even opened a pain clinic where doctors could come and write scripts all day for compensation. The DEA also began to investigate and learned that Wooley's Sav-Rite was delivering 54,000 pills per day in a town with 209 people. In 2009, the government closed the Sav-Rite. Preece's sister, Debbie, settled the case and began assisting  others who worked with her attorney, Jim Cagle. Soon, Cagle had 29 lawsuits in Mingo County Court.  He eventually decided to up the ante and go after the pharmaceutical distributors. The WV Attorney General deputized Cagle, and an associate, to help on a case the state was oursuing. The election of a new republican AG with ties to the industry led to a stalling of the process and years of lies and subterfuge. The distributors took the position that they were not responsible if doctors prescribed drugs and pharmacists filled the orders. They eventually settled the state's suit for $36M. Then, the towns and villages pursued them and Congress aroused itself from its lethargy and began to investigate. The five CEO's of the largest distributors faced Congress in a hearing in May, 2018. The committee report eviscerated the conduct of the companies and the DEA. The litigation against the distributors became a national trend, with 1500 cases consolidated in a federal court in Cleveland. That court released information showing that between 2006 and 2012, 76 billion pain pills had been sold in America and that the states leading the way were West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee. The story is ongoing, sad and shocking.

The Children Of Ash And Elm: A History Of The Vikings, Price - B

     In the Scandinavian creation myth, the first man and woman were Ash and Elm. In the middle of the first millennium, two events transpired that disrupted the routine of life in Scandinavia. The first was the long collapse of the Roman Empire, which disrupted established trade routes, and the second was a massive volcanic eruption that shrouded the skies with a 'dust veil' that reduced temperatures for decades. This 'Mighty Winter' may have reduced the population by half. The new societies that arose from this chaos were more centralized and militaristic. 

     "There was no single convenient event or factor that set the 'Viking Age' in motion." The urge to seek overseas wealth, along with a desire to expand trade, were linked to the social challenges of providing opportunities for younger men disenfranchised by inheritance laws and minimal marriage prospects in a polygamous society. "Raiding and commerce were two components, almost two varying expressions, of the same phenomenon: the pursuit and consolidation of power, expressed through the acquisition and redistribution of portable wealth." The generally accepted starting point for the raids that terrified the British Isles for centuries is the 793 attack on Lindisfarne. "The Vikings were back the following year, and they knew what they liked: isolated, undefended, but very rich monastic houses." Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands and France were all attacked. The raids became larger and larger; one in Ireland referred to a 'flotilla'. Starting in 834, they came with hundreds of ships and thousands of men. Seasonal raids evolved into a continuing Viking presence. Coastal attacks led to deeper intrusions, including raids up the Seine to Paris, the Rhine to Aachen and the Thames to London. The Vikings eventually occupied northeastern England, the area known as the Danelaw.

     The Vikings travelled east, as well as west, throughout the Baltic region and down the Volga as far as Constantinople, and even the Silk Road. They went north, founding the Faroe Islands and Iceland. This diaspora brought wealth and a degree of stability and prosperity to Scandinavia. It took a vast number of people at home in Scandinavia to build and supply the warships that travelled far and wide. The vast majority were enslaved and the capture of slaves was a primary objective of the raiders. The overseas Viking presence led to the colonization of the aforementioned Danelaw, the urban centers on Ireland's east coast and Normandy.

     The Vikings were exposed to Christianity even before their raiding began. Christianity eventually took root and did so contemporaneously with the slow consolidation of political entities into states and kingdoms. In the 10th century, Denmark and later Norway began to adopt the new religion. Sweden came much later.  

     In the 10th century, Icelanders accidentally discovered Greenland and sent out colonists. From Greenland, intrepid explorers went to North America, wintered there and fought off unwelcoming locals. Recent discoveries have shown that the Vikings landed in northern Newfoundland. Some believe the Newfoundland site may have been used as a landing place for further exploration for as long as a century.

     "As might be expected, the social, political, economic, and ideological motors that drove the Scandinavian transformation of the eighth to eleventh centuries wound down in different ways, at different times, and paces in different regions." England was unified under William the Conqueror, victor at Hastings, just after the defeat of Harald at Stamford Bridge. Vinland was too far and not sustainable. Greenland was abandoned when the tusks it traded with the continent were replaced by ones from Africa and Asia in the early 15th century. In the end though, the interchange of peoples and ideas, the willingness to accept change and the new religion led to the establishment of a more stable order,  one where raiding was no longer necessary or desirable.

     

The Fortress: The Siege Of Przemsyl And The Making Of Europe's Bloodlands, Watson - C

     "This book tells the story of one fortress-city that was pitched into the calamity and on which, for a few months early in the First World War, the fate of all Eastern and Central Europe rested. The city was called Przemysl." The city, in central Galicia, was a crossroads between east and west, a place where Jews, Polish Roman Catholics, and Greek and Russian Orthodox believers lived. The people of Przemysl who enjoyed the freedoms and prosperity of the Empire were to see their lives and world destroyed by war.

     The chaotic collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's eastern front in August, 1914 sent thousands of soldiers, stragglers, deserters and refugees into the city. The army's better troops marched past the city and the general staff issued an order: "The Fortress Przemysl will, for the moment, stand on its own and is to hold at all costs." The 35 outdated forts spread in an arc on the city's eastern side were manned by second-tier, older troops. Orthodox churchgoers and Ukrainians were evicted, and many were summarily executed over concerns about their loyalty. On September 23rd, the Russians surrounded the 131,000 soldiers in the city. As ancient as the forts were, the Russian artillery was equally outmoded thus necessitating an infantry attack. The Russians made an all-out effort on October 7th that failed to crack a single fort and the following day a Hapsburg relief army was on its way to Przemsyl. The fortress was holding back the Russian advance.

     Although stalled at Pryzemsyl, the Russians occupied eastern Galicia and began a program of returning it to its "primordial Russian roots." They required use of the Russian language, banned Greek Orthodox services and foisted Russian Orthodox practices on the population. They did all they could to erase the Polish and Ukrainian cultures. They turned a particularly vicious eye on the Jews. Cossack cavalrymen began pogroms that sent half of the 40,000 Jews fleeing to Austria. Soon, the Tsar's army authorized a mass deportation of Jews to the east.

     By November, the fortress was once again surrounded and isolated. This time, the Russians would not attack. A long siege and starvation was now the strategy. As the noose tightened, a running joke was that the difference between Troy and Przemsyl was that at Troy, the heroes were in the belly of the horse and at Pryzemsyl, the horses were in the bellies of the heroes. Three ill-conceived, poorly-led and badly-fought relief attempts over the winter caused the Hapsburg armies over half-a-million casualties. By March, 1915, the defenders were sick from lack of food and barely hanging on. On the 22nd, they surrendered and the Russians marched in. 

     The Russian occupation was short-lived as the Germans recaptured the city on June 1. At war's end, the city became part of the new country of Poland. Two decades later, in 1939, the USSR brutally occupied the city. They in turn were followed by the Nazis in 1941. The Soviets returned in 1945 and when the boundaries between Poland and Ukraine were redrawn, the city wound up again in Poland.