The Printing Revolution Of Early Modern Europe, Eisenstein - B

 This erudite tome reviews the impact on the 15th and 16th centuries of the revolution begun with the printing of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455. "The advent of printing is to be taken to mean the establishment of presses in urban centers beyond the Rhineland in  the 1460's." Early books followed scriptal conventions using similar columns, abbreviations, initials and margins. Printing required previously unnecessary collaboration between creators of ideas and the implementers of the trade. Financing the bigger and more complex process brought together disparate specialists, as did distribution, marketing and sales. Learning by reading expanded and took on new importance.  Knowledge of all kinds spread widely, not through just the printed word, but also the illustrations that were equally abundant. Standardization extended beyond style of print to methods of presentation. Montaigne was the first to use the essay to convey ideas to a wide group of people. In addition to the sharing of sophisticated ideas, there was an abundance of 'how to' books on topics as diverse as making a dress and conducting an inquisition. Alphabetizing, indexing, tables of contents and cataloguing became systematized. Page numbers, punctuation and page breaks soon followed. "Typographical fixity is a basic prerequisite for the rapid advancement of learning." The concepts of authorship and literary property rights came to the fore. In essence, a new method of duplicating handwriting began and it transformed intellectual life in western civilization. 

 The shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance was under way when the printing revolution began, thus the focus in this book is on how it was affected by this change. For the medievalists, antiquity was part of their continuum. After a century of printing, it stood out as a distinct historical era. The past was set at a'fixed distance'. A sustained recovery of  the antique heritage could only be accomplished by an abundance of printed materials. Print enabled the spread of ancient languages and scripts. It furthered the study of and the rediscovery of the past. The age of printing accompanied the Renaissance, rather than engendered it. "Under the aegis of the early presses, a classical revival of Italy was reoriented. Under the same auspices, German Protestantism was born. Lutheranism  was from the first the child of the printed book, and through this vehicle Luther was able to make exact, standardized and ineradicable impressions on the mind of Europe." Although no one knows how an academic disputation written in Latin became so widespread, his ideas were literally before the world in a matter of months. The medium also provided the  RC church with the means to respond to the Reformation and to systematize its own liturgy. The new printings of the Bible in multiple vernaculars coincided with the beginnings of nationalism. Because Protestantism spread in many languages, it would be forever divided and lacking Catholicism's unity. "Protestant doctrines harnessed a traditional religion to a new technology with the result that Western Christianity embarked... on a course of historical mutation. Perhaps the civil war in Christendom was not inevitable, but the advent of printing did, at the very least, rule out the prospect of perpetuating the status quo."

 Printing had decidedly different effects on scripture and science*. It was clearly fragmenting and disruptive on the former.  Whereas on the latter, it transcended linguistic divisions and brought unity to scientific knowledge. This book was published in the early 1980's. The author closes with a somewhat prescient thought. "Since the advent of movable type, an enhanced capacity to store and retrieve, preserve and transmit, has kept pace with an enhanced capacity to create, and destroy, innovate and outmode."

* The book also tackles what I consider the desultory topic of the explosion of science in the 16th century. The ideas of  Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Descartes  became widely known.

The Bird Boys, Sandlin - C+

                                                  This is a PI novel set in Beaumont, TX in the mid-70's and quite frankly, is not very entertaining.  Phelan sets up an office, hires Debra, recently out of prison, and together they track down a man's long lost brother. The client's a skunk. The brother not so much. They may get to be more than work colleagues. End of story.

The Story Of Silver: How The White Metal Shaped Modern America And The Modern World, Silber - B-

 To qualify as sterling, silver must be 92.5% pure. The standard establishing the pound sterling was announced in the reign of Elizabeth I. In the US, Hamilton established a bi-metallic currency system with a gold to silver ratio of 15:1. The system held until 1873 when Congress demonetized silver. That led to a contraction of the money supply which slowly deflated real estate values and agricultural prices.  William Jennings Bryan, known as the Great Commoner, became famous for making his "Cross of Gold" speech, espousing a return to bimetallism, at the 1896 Democratic Convention. However, the gold standard reigned supreme from the middle of the 19th century until the 1930's. In order to increase the money supply, FDR took the US off the gold standard in 1933. In addition to fixing gold at $35 per ounce, the US took steps to increase the value of silver. Since the Chinese yuan was fixed to silver, this led to a strengthening of the Chinese currency and a severe decline in trade, making the weakened country particularly susceptible to Japanese aggression. Decades later, the Kennedy administration freed silver from government involvement and let the white metal float at market prices. In 1965, all links between US currency and silver prices were severed, leading, at least in the minds of some, to the inflation of the 70's. With inflation perking up and silver the only hard metal hedge, speculation in the new commodities markets was likely. In the early 70's, Bunker and Herbert Hunt began buying contracts and accepting physical delivery of silver. Bunker Hunt was so paranoid about America confiscating his wealth that he shipped his silver to Switzerland. By 1979, inflation was in double digits, silver closed the year at an unbelievable $34.45 oz., and the Hunts were still taking delivery. The Comex Board stepped in in January reducing the number of futures contracts a person could own, thus beginning a slide in the price of silver. The  levered Hunt's were forced to mortgage all they had to avoid bankruptcy. Eight years later, a series of judgements forced them to file Chapter 11. A decade or so later, Warren Buffet made a long play on silver's role as an industrial commodity and made quite a bit of money.          I started this book knowing two things about silver. One was that William Jennings Bryan became famous for excoriating gold and supporting silver. The second was that someone in the Hunt family tried to 'corner' the silver market in the late 70's. That was the limit of my knowledge. And I suspect that is all anyone really needs to know. The author is a renowned financial historian, but most of this is a real  snoozer and I clearly never have, and never will, understand monetary policy or theory. 

Chestnut Man, Sveistrup - B+

                                 A special thanks to my friend, Wendell Erwin, for recommending one of the best thrillers I've read in awhile. This is a page-turning novel set in Copenhagen, featuring a brilliant serial killer. The characters are a social justice minister, a detective who wants out of the murder squad and a washed-up Europol cop sent back home for punishment. The twists and turns are non-stop, the pacing is perfect and the book is as good a police procedural/thriller as any out there.

A Long Night In Paris, Alfon - B

                                  This is a very interesting Israeli novel that has won a prestigious international fiction award. It features a team of semi-official Chinese commandos pitted against Israeli security personnel and Parisian police from one end of Paris to another. The action takes place over a 29 hour period that starts with the arrival of an El-Al flight from Jerusalem landing at  nine in the morning at Charles DeGaulle. As the Chinese are efficient and somewhat indiscriminate, the bodies begin to drop. It's the perfect read for quarantine time.

The Fragility Of Bodies, Olguin - B

                                  This is a fascinating Argentinian novel set in Buenos Aires and featuring a 30ish woman journalist. Veronica comes upon a potential story of kids hit by trains, which she researches and pursues. She starts with the train conductors, many of whom suffer severe emotional trauma after hitting someone. But, the real story is that kids from the ghetto are playing chicken on the tracks, for money and at the behest of gamblers. It's a 100 pesos if you time the jump right. You lose if jump early; you are dead if you're slow. She gets the story, but in a country like Argentina, justice is often partial. This is a different and fun read.

Trace Elements, Leon - B

                                  In this, the 29th novel in the series, Guido follows a hunch that a motorcycle fatality was not the accident that it appeared to be. As is always the case, an exploration of some aspect of life in Venice is center stage. Here it is corruption, venality and pollution, specifically of the water supply, in the Veneto. Donna Leon has lived in and been writing about Venice for decades and presumably, knows the area as well as any American could. She charts the decline of life in Italy, a country haunted by indifference and corruption, and the slow-motion destruction, by rising seas and tourism, of the city she loves. I long ago concluded that writing was the one area of creativity not diminished by age. The author is approaching 80, but continues to crank out mini-masterpieces.

The Deserter, De Mille - C +

                                 The author is a noted storyteller and knows how to tell a tale. My primary issue here is that I think it could have been told in half the time. The deserter refers to a Delta Force officer who did some really bad things in Afghanistan. He was set up by the CIA which is trying to terminate his command with extreme prejudice. The two CID officers sent to Venezuela to find him only know half the story. There's some good background information on the self-inflicted collapse of the country.

Black Sun, Matthews - B

                                  This is a very good novel set in the Urals in the fall of 1961. The Soviet Union's scientists were days away from exploding a thermonuclear game changer. Under the supervision of Andrei Sakharov, they actually dialed down the magnitude of the explosion by changing the tamper from uranium to lead. In the novel, the change of the tamper is the event behind a murder and an investigation by Moscow's Maj. Alexander Vasin from the KGB. I believe it is the first in a series. The author is a historian, who has apparently turned to writing a thriller and has done it very well.

Mengele: Unmasking "The Angel of Death", Marwell - B

 Mengele has "emerged as the embodiment of not only the Holocaust itself but also the failure of justice in the wake of the war." He was born into a caring, upper middle class, Catholic home in 1911. He studied medicine, anthropology and genetics at university. He came under the sway of a professor focusing on racial differentiations. He then studied at the University Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Josef Mengele received multiple degrees, and was a published scientist when he joined the NDSAP and SS in 1938. He married the following year. His first job in uniform was to select racially pure Germans among those seeking resettlement in recently acquired Polish lands.  He then spent two very difficult years on the eastern front as a doctor for a combat engineer's division. After a few months working on genetics in Berlin, he was off to Auschwitz in May, 1943, where he came into his own and prospered. Camp doctors had many responsibilities, including the infamous 'selection' process for the newly arrived. In his spare time, Mengele created his own institute for the study of certain cancers, eye color, twins, growth anomalies, and physical anomalies, and he provided specimens to the SS Medical Academy. He was obsessed with and studied gypsies. His infamous twin research was done in conjunction with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. "Certain research required the simultaneous death and dissection of twins." Mengele shipped tissue samples, body parts and the eyes of twins to the Institute. His research was criminal and monstrous, but was part of the scientific establishment. His son, Rolf, was born in March, 1944 and he hoped that his wife and son would move to Auschwitz, but it never worked out. The camp was closed in January, 1945. He was in a Wehrmacht doctor's uniform at war's end, and when he surrendered to American forces. By August, he was released. With millions of prisoners and dwindling food supplies, the Allies were far from thorough. He would spend the next three years as a farmhand in Bavaria. His family spread the word that he was dead, no one knew otherwise, and he made his way in 1949 to Argentina. Argentina was sophisticated and safe.  His father's business in Germany helped him and allowed him to establish himself in Buenos Aires. In 1954, his wife divorced him. A year later, he visited Europe, saw old friends, and met with his brother's widow. Because she had inherited a piece of the business, Karl Mengele, for the strategic well-being of Mengele and Sons,  arranged a marriage between his son and his daughter-in-law. Things were going so well that Josef Mengele applied for and received a German passport in his own name. An anonymous tip in Germany led to an indictment and an extradition request, but by the time it reached Argentina, Mengele had relocated to Paraguay. After the Israelis captured Eichmann, he was on the run. His wife left for Europe and he moved to Brazil. One of the reasons Mengele could hide successfully for so long was his family's money. He received regular financial assistance from Germany. Little is known of his life in Brazil. Rolf visited him in 1977 and they discussed his role in the war but came to no conclusion. He was unrepentant to the end. He drowned on a Sao Palo beach in 1979.                     

Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth To Modern America, Miller - B+

  This history is focused on the extraordinary growth of midtown Manhattan and its role in setting the urban standard for the country and indeed, the world. The city's peak came in the late 1920's and coincided with Gentlemen Jimmy Walker's terms as mayor. He was elected in 1925 with the vigorous support of Governor Al Smith. The charming Walker had dazzled as a State Senator. "New York was the capital of everything - America's financial, industrial, engineering, architectural, publishing, theatrical, musical, radio, advertising, opinion making, sports and fashion center." The city was larger than most states, had a budget bigger than many countries, and was flat-out corrupt and riddled with self-dealing and Tammany managed lawlessness. The 1920's roared in NY because of Prohibition, an absurd law that never had a chance of succeeding in America's big cities. By the time Walker became mayor, there were more speakeasies in NY than there had been saloons before the law. Prohibition was never seriously enforced in NY, and boot-legging was the source of endless crime, corruption and massive amounts of cash. Throughout Manhattan, night clubs sprang up. They were owned by gangsters and were a place where hoods, pols, entertainers and blue bloods all mixed. The mix of cash and the continuous violation of Prohibition's enforcement laws led to the first organizing of crime and the creation of NY's five families. The midtown of Jimmy Walker's NY had been transformed a decade and a half earlier by a construction project on the east side of the city.  The NY Central's rail lines ran north from grand Central Station like an open sore, utilizing coal burning locomotives, polluting, spewing ashes, and making noise. The train yards had eliminated the city's cross streets as far north as 57th St. The company's chief engineer proposed building a new, more efficient terminal, constructing an office building over it, and paving over Park Avenue. This was all made possible by using electric trains. The new Grand Central transformed the city. By the mid-20's, 43 million people per year would pass through the terminal. A massive building boom followed on the east side. Its apogee was the new Park Avenue which became the "most stupendous aggregation of multimillionaires the world has ever seen."  From 5th Avenue to Sutton Place, apartments for the wealthy were going up at a rapid pace. Up and down 5th Avenue below 57th St. and east along 42nd St. to the river, up went one skyscraper dedicated to commerce after another.                                                                                                         A young immigrant from Byelorussia, David Sarnoff, rose through the ranks of RCA and made it a NY based broadcasting powerhouse. It sold radios and produced content, leading to RCA becoming the fastest growing company of the era. RCA created NBC, the nation's first network. Sarnoff purchased the Victor phonograph company and began research into television. Sarnoff was a visionary, but one with rather pedestrian and bland programming ideas. Soon, Bill Paley's CBS network would challenge him and the two titans would go head to head for the next forty years. The focus at CBS was constantly changing entertainers and a vast marketing of every conceivable product. The 1920's also saw two engineering marvels that improved life in the city. The Port was severed by the Hudson River, thus leading to a trans-river ferry system that grew to the point where almost everything  shipped to and fro the American heartland crossed on a lighter. Thirty-five hundred rail cars were floated across the river daily. The states of NY and NJ created a port authority that built the longest tunnel, the Holland, and the longest bridge, the GW, in the world in an attempt to end the ferry system. The Lincoln Tunnel was added a decade later. A century later, there still is no commercial train line under the Hudson.                                    Everything about the city was bigger and better than anyone could imagine when, in the waning weeks of the decade the stock market collapsed, and with it, the whirlwind of prosperity the Roaring 20's had created. F. Scott Fitzgerald said the Jazz Age was brought "to a spectacular death in October, 1929." But, "no other decade in the life of the city was more exuberantly alive or enduringly creative." Thanks to Bill Barry for the recommendation. There is a never ending joy in reading about our 'city'.

The King's Evil, Taylor - B

                                  The series progresses, and Marwood's efforts have caught the eye of the King. The challenge is that  the issues are more complex and Marwood finds himself betwixt and between powerful courtiers, including the Duke of York, the King's brother and heir. Marwood is assigned to investigate a murder and stumbles upon paperwork that could possibly characterize the Duke as a bigamist and his children illegitimate. Great insights into the time period in a breezy, easy narrative.