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.