The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease, Kenny - B

     Mankind's transition to farming and the domestication of animals altered the dynamics of our battle with disease. "Large scale infection was the poxed handmaiden of agriculture and civilization ." Over our history, "pestilence has wiped out far more lives than famine and violence combined..." Prior to the eradication of smallpox in 1980,  hundreds of millions died in the first eight decades of the century.  Nineteenth century improvements in sanitation and twentieth century advances  in science have provided the species with unimaginable improvements in longevity and good health. 

  During the Stone Age, the population of our hunter-gatherer predecessors never grew materially because of their constant movement, violence, precarious food supplies and infectious disease, as pathogens diversity has always been higher in the tropics. When homo sapiens moved together to farm and live in cities, proximity allowed "species hopping infectious killers to spread." The agro-urban diseases of measles, smallpox and malaria have been history's great killers and have "had the larger role in shaping societies and economies." Trading over distance soon added to the exchange of infectious diseases. The Roman Empire stretching from the Atlantic coast, and eventually Britain,  to Egypt was a highway of non-stop disease transmission. Plague and pandemic accompanied the declines and border failures of the later Empire. It inhibited the expansion of Islam and, in the 14th century, the Black Plague killed up to half of Europe. Perhaps the most dramatic example of disease affecting humanity was the devastation of 90% of the peoples of America by the "microbial invaders from Eurasia and Africa" after the Spanish arrival in the New World. Disease, particularly typhus, stymied Napoleon in Egypt and Russia, and one of his lieutenants in Haiti.

  For most of history the primary way to avoid illness was to isolate, segregate and quarantine the sick. The 19th century's rapid industrialization and concomitant increase in urban population spurred the creation of clean waters systems and sewers. The ultimate game changer has, of course, been vaccination. The earliest recorded activities were in the 18th century in China and Constantinople. Europe  followed suit in the 19th century. WWII saw the American introduction of antibiotics in the form of penicillin. Life expectancy around the world doubled in the 20th century. The connectedness of the world may be resetting the equation between microbes and man. Both AIDS and Covid-19 were quickly spread around the world. Similarly, anti-vaccination believers are hurting the general health of the public, as is over cleaning and keeping children away from 'normal' microbe exposure. Overuse of antibiotics, in both humans and animals, leads to viruses that resist the medicines.  These trends can and should be stopped. "The massive decline in premature death is something we should celebrate and protect as humanity's greatest triumph."

These Truths: A History of the United States, LePore - B+, Incomplete

          The US Constitution "was meant to mark the start of a new era, in which the course of history might be made predictable and a government established that would be ruled not by accident and force but by reason and choice." The question of this book is whether our history shows that the self-evident truths of political equality, natural rights and the sovereignty of the people have been proven or belied. This book is  a civics primer, a political history, and "an explanation of the nature of the past."

          I. The Idea 1492-1799        Desperate and poor, outflanked by Islam, the nations of western Europe sailed west to find markets to trade with. The extraction of the wealth of the Americas was accomplished by 2M Europeans migrating west along with the 12M African slaves they forced to the Americas. In the section that became  British America, white settlers, between 1600-1800, numbered about 1 million. The imported Africans were 2.5M. The English were latecomers, over a century behind the Spanish, and decades behind the French. The Europeans, appropriately, asked themselves by what right did they come and conquer. The Spanish simply decided that God was on their side because the indigenous peoples did not worship as they did. Thus armed with right, they pillaged and plundered central and southern America. The English, at least, came as settlers and those settlers brought with them their rights as Englishmen. In Virginia, they came with James I's  charter. In 1619, twenty Englishmen were elected to the House of Burgesses, America's first elective body. Simultaneously, twenty Africans were sold into slavery in Virginia. Those who went to Massachusetts, the Pilgrims, were religious dissenters fleeing their perception of tyranny. They were followed during the reign of Charles I with thousands more leaving as England descended into Civil War. Ultimately, almost all the colonies were formed under the guise of religious freedom and toleration. Throughout the 17th and into the 18th century, British America, from the Caribbean to Massachusetts, slaves rebelled again and again, as did the indigenous Indians, both raising the question of by what right do you rule.

          Up until the 1760's, Parliament had set the rules of trade and the colonies and taxed themselves. With the Sugar and Stamp Acts,  Pitt and the parliament attempted to change the established practices. The road to revolution was open.  And in New England, "the zeal for liberty raised the question of ending slavery." Many in the north wondered about the relative tyranny of imposing taxes versus enslaving a human being. After a year of war, the colonies published their Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. During the war, one in five slaves attempted to join the British, who offered them freedom. The Revolution saw slavery bend but not break.

          What we now know as the Constitutional Convention was convened in 1787 for the purpose of amending the Articles of Confederation. It was agreed quickly that the Articles needed to be set aside and some semblance of a national government needed to be established. "Slavery became the crucial divide in Philadelphia because slaves featured in two calculations: the wealth they represented as property and in the population they represented as people." The eventual compromises on the topic of representation was two votes for each state in the Senate and the three-fifths compromise for the House of Representatives. Ratification was put to the people for approval in their state legislatures.  The new government, led by Washington, began the process of ruling by choice and not power. A decade later when Washington died, a popular print was of he and the Archangel Gabriel giving the Constitution to the American people.

       With 640 pages to go, I'm pausing, likely stopping, as I don't have the patience for this. It is very, very good, but it is too long. Also, I am not certain I wish to spend close to 18 more hours grappling with our 'original sin'. I acknowledge wholeheartedly that it remains unresolved today. I've long thought that it is our signal failure as a nation. But my view is that the immigrants who poured into America in the sixty years after the Civil War, and then again in the last half century, built our phenomenally successful society with those here before them, and together they forged a nation that delivered these self evident truths from coast to coast. 

 

Wedding Station, Downing - B+

            This book is a prequel to a series of six that ended almost a decade ago. Five of those six, like this one, are named after a Berlin train station. Wedding was a blue collar neighborhood in the interwar years, populated by communists. 

             John Russell is a crime reporter, an English veteran of the Great War, who has been living in Berlin for nine years. He and his wife are estranged, and he stays because of his devotion to his six year old son. On the night of the 1933 Reichstag fire, a young 'line boy', a male prostitute, is brutally murdered. An SA officer was rumored to have been at the club. Russell diligently pursues the case and eventually finds the young man's diary in which he implicates five top SA men as homosexuals. A close friend suggests getting it to Himmler as it appears the SS and SA are on a collision course. He provides the information to the SS, who, a year later of course, were instrumental in the violent elimination of their rivals.

           He also works on other stories, the disappearance of a designer who happens to be Jewish and predicted the fire; a missing daughter inclined toward communism and devastating her dad, a general on the rise; a genealogist with information on people's now toxic Jewish heritages, as well as  a few others on the seedy side of Berlin life. The excellence of this novel is what epitomizes all good historical fiction. You feel as if you are living in Berlin in the winter of 1933 and watching the world around you fall apart.

Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, Seidule - B

      The author is a professor emeritus of history at West Point, a retired  Brigadier General and an author of four official West Point histories.  For decades, he "believed the Confederates and Lee were romantic warriors for a doomed but noble cause." The author was raised in Virginia, and attended Washington and Lee University.  He came of age, and lived, in a world where Lee was a "deity."  Although history has shown that the South seceded to protect slavery, the Lost Cause myth is built around the gallant defense of everything else: tariffs, states rights, nullification, etcetera, anything but slavery. It also promotes the idea of happy slaves in need of protection and posits that the North overwhelmed the South only because of its size. 

      He attended college in Lexington VA, a town where both Lee and Stonewall Jackson are buried. The University features the Lee Chapel,  "the St. Peter's Basilica of the Lost Cause religion." The chapel is not consecrated, has no Christian imagery and features a statue of Lee lying in repose on the altar.  After accepting an ROTC scholarship,  the author went on active duty and spent most of his time at Forts Bragg and Benning, both named after Confederate officers. The Army has always insisted the forts are named after 'historic names' and are not a political/historical statement. While teaching at West Point, he came to realize that Lee was the most memorialized name at the school. The consecration of Lee at the school began in the 1930's, ran through the 70's, and in almost each and every instance, the statue, plaque, barracks, road, or prize was in response to a specific event in the advancement of civil rights. The last example was a major increase in Black students after the 1968 assassination of Dr. King which led to the dedication of the largest dormitory at West Point - the Lee barracks.

        His verdict on Lee is treason to preserve slavery. After thirty-six years in the US army, he levied war against the US, the Constitution's definition of treason. Prior to his resignation, he was opposed to disunion, believed secession to be revolution and supported a perpetual union. However, he did state that he would follow Virginia if necessary. "Lee chose the Confederacy because of his abiding belief in slavery." His wealth came from marrying Mary Custis, the only child of Washington's adopted son. Their wealth derived from owning approximately 200 slaves. He supervised the whipping of three slaves who had escaped and been recaptured. He believed in slavery and fought to maintain it. After the war though, he encouraged his soldiers to reconcile, signed the amnesty oath and requested a pardon. He died in 1870.

       One must agree with just about everything Gen. Seidule says. Lee violated his oath. He was a slaver, and one who on at least one occasion turned to violence. He believed in slavery, and in his last years, was bitter about the South's loss and the prospects for the future. However, he is not guilty of everything done in his name in the last 150 years, nor is he responsible for his "deification" that the general so ardently pushes back against. Clearly, the monuments must go. For Black cadets to live in a barracks named after Lee is wrong. For soldiers of color to serve at Ft. Lee or Hood or any of the 9 forts named after Confederates is wrong. 

       I am a northerner and recently I learned that my great-grandfather was in the Union Army. But my opinions were formed long ago. I condemn the South, its war and its quarter of a millennium treatment of Africans. However, I believe any assessment of Lee must be made by the standards of the mid-19th century and not today. I do not believe Lee was wrong to choose Virginia. At that time, people's first identity was to their home state. Furthermore and most importantly, the Union was still believed by many to be consensual and not irrevocable. And let's not forget that our country has never produced a more capable field commander. That said, this book has forced me to continue to reconsider this era of our history.

      

   

A Tip For The Hangman, Epstein - B+

      This superb novel is about Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe, on scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and recruited, while a graduate student, as a spy by Sir Christopher Walsingham, the Queen's secretary. His first task was to work as a footman for Mary, Queen of Scots.  He exceeded all expectations when he deciphered her letters to Catholic plotters on the continent. He worked for Walsingham at the castle where Mary was held for the five months between her arrest and execution. The Privy Council asked the university to award his degree, which he had not finished, and released him from service, but with the admonition to stay in London as he may be needed again.

     Five years later, he was the toast of London, a successful playwright when the summons to Whitehall came. Another cipher, another plotting Papist, but this time it was his patron, Lord Strange. He winds up playing a double game, letting Strange think he's a Papist supporting the Catholic cause. It's a road that is almost impossible to negotiate. After Walsingham dies, Sir Robert Cecil takes over, and does not trust Marlowe. The Catholics were never sure of him either. Death, treachery and double dealing abound.  And, Kit meets his end at the hands of a team of lowlives in a bar in 1593.                                                                                                              History does not know why Marlowe was killed. The endless theories are almost 21st century in their varied hypotheses: it was the Catholics, the Queen's men, Sir Walter Raleigh, a debt collector or perhaps, it was no more than a barroom scuffle. This is a  historical novel of the first order. It artfully delivers a great feel for the time and places: Cambridge and London, the late 16th century. N.B. The explicitness of Marlowe's homosexual relationship with Tom Watson can be/ is  off-putting.

Untraceable, Lebedev - B

            A Russian defector, living in the German iteration of a witness protection program, attracts the attention of his former masters. They learn that he recently helped with the investigation of a mysterious poisoning case. He was uniquely positioned to advise on the matter. After all, he was the chemist who invented Neophyte.  Notwithstanding the fact that he is dying of cancer, the SVR sends a hit squad. While the old mans sits with a bottle in his hand reminiscing about the old days in his closed-off world of science and security, the two hitmen circle closer and closer. Meanwhile, the old pastor, a priest who survived years of communism, sees the defector for what he is - - a man hiding from his past. The thoughts of the defector, the pursuers and the priest are all vehicles for deep Russian introspection about life, death, despair, poison, the police state and the soul crushing evil that the totalitarian state inflicts on its people.

The Border: A Journey Around Russia, Fatland - B-

                  Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, And The Northwest Passage

       The author circumnavigated Russia with one question in mind: "what does it mean to have the world's largest country as your neighbor?" There is no one or simple answer. The dissolution of the USSR led to the creation of 14 new states.    

      To the north is the Arctic Ocean with a coastline extending from Murmansk, abutting Norway, to the Bering Straits, a few miles from Alaska. It is cold, forbidding and filled with the detritus of the Soviet era. Climate change is affecting the Arctic more than anywhere else, and the historic islands in the Arctic Sea, which saw centuries of explorers are being inundated by the rise of the sea. At 19 kilometers, the N. Korean border is the shortest. The country is, of course, the most closed, corrupt and poorest place in the world, one that barely survives thanks to an illegal black market economy, and trade with Russia and China.  The deluded populace believes the US started the war in 1950, that we are on the verge of attacking, that the North and South will unify under the leadership of the North, and that it is the best place on earth to live. In 1858 and 1860, Russia forced a severely unequal border treaty with China, taking vast amounts of Chinese land and allowing the Russians to build Vladivostok, which means 'Ruler of the East'.  The borderlands are China's most northern territories, and abut Russia's Far Eastern District, which is actually east of Siberia. The District is one-third of Russia's land and has 6m people, while the bordering smaller Chinese region has 40m. Mongolia has been a battleground between its two massive neighbors for centuries and had been a Buddhist theocracy until Stalin's 1930's suppression. The country was not part of the USSR, but was a satellite state that Moscow completely controlled. Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world and was home to the USSR's nuclear testing programs. Its border with Russia is just over 4,000 miles. A fifth of the population are Russian and live in the north near the border, thus unnerving the government, which is anxious about maintaining positive relations with the Russians. In Azerbaijan, it is not anxiety but dislike of the Russians and their history of conquest and oppression in the Caucasus. Ethnic tensions, the essence of the history of the region, permeate life in Azerbaijan because of its breakaway region, Nagorno-Karabakh, which is ethnically Armenian. Similarly, in neighboring Georgia, the animosity is over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway republics recognized as independent by Russia. It seems that the less history and contact with the Russia of the Tsars, the USSR and Putin's Russia, the better off one is. The only Asian neighbor that is a successful country is China and it has never been subservient to or reliant on Russia. As for the rest, the only calculus is who is worse off.

        In Ukraine, all Russian speakers believe the Rose Revolution was a US plot, and between the annexation of the Crimea and the war in the Donbas, tensions are higher at this border than anywhere else in Europe. And sadly for this accursed country, Chernobyl is now a major tourist attraction. In Belarus, the Soviet Union is alive and well. Statues of Lenin are still standing and the KGB hasn't bothered to change its name. Its border with Russia is completely open. In Lithuania, only 5% of the population is Russian. It was the first country to declare its independence in 1991. Poland's long history with Russia is a lengthy litany of hatred that lies just below the surface today.      It should be noted that both Lithuania and Poland only border Kaliningrad, not mother Russia itself. Latvia was heavily Russian when it was part of the USSR and consequently, today it is one-quarter Russian. It suffered at the hands of both sides in WWII, but the most difficult memory is the thousands who were sent to Siberia and the Gulag. Estonia too is heavily Russian. Its border with Russia is still not settled by treaty. The two countries have also been arguing about monuments, particularly one memorializing a soldier of the Red Army. Finland was Swedish for seven centuries and was conquered by Russia in 1809. It was a stand alone Grand Duchy when it declared its independence in 1917. They fought and lost to the USSR in the 1940 Winter War, and lost twelve percent of their territory. They were affiliated with the USSR during the Cold War, but not occupied like the countries behind the Iron Curtain. Today, the borders of Russia, Finland and Norway meet at a cairn above the Arctic Circle. From there, it is 117 miles north along the Norwegian border to the Arctic Sea. This border is NATO's oldest with Russia, dating to 1949. As in Asia, the country with the least interaction with Russia, Norway, is the most successful. Finland had extensive contacts, but was never occupied and it's a close second. All the rest continue to struggle with the latest iteration of evil. 

            Erika Fatland is a Norwegian journalist in her thirties with a real case of wanderlust. She traveled alone over 12,000 miles 'around' Russia. She concludes, "It is not just its neighbours that are disparate; Russia contains within its border myriad disparate histories, terrains and ethnic groups."  The country lost half of its population when the USSR dissolved. Her guess is that further border disintegration is in its future. As for me, I have a fondness for offbeat travelogues and, that said, still skimmed quite a bit. 

Kearny's March: The Epic Creation of the American West, 1846-1847, Groom - B

    When the war with Mexico started, President Polk ordered Gen. Kearny to take his 2,000 man Army of the West from Kansas  down the old Santa Fe Trail to capture the New Mexico Territory. Afterwards, he was to go a further 1,000 miles and add California to the flag. At the same time, 7,000 Mormons were leaving the US and heading west, as were a few families that would be known to history as the Donner Party, and already ahead of them was US Army Captain Fremont's third topographical expedition to the coast. Kearny's march..."was an astonishing, daring and difficult adventure..."

    The 962 mile trek was no walk in the park. Indians were a risk, as was the weather, and the simple fact that, as you progressed, there was no wood and cooking was done with buffalo dung. The heat was intense; men and horses began to die. Kearny persevered and entered Santa Fe on August 18th. "For the first time in its history the United States had taken by military conquest a territory belonging to a foreign nation - and, remarkably, without firing a shot." 

   California, where very few officials ruled on behalf of faraway Mexico City, was initially just as easy. A substantial influx of Americans frightened the locals, whom the Yanks rebelled against in the summer of '46. Fremont had entered California with less than a hundred men and the belief he was under orders to capture California when war broke out. Time has never resolved whether he had, or had not, received such orders. He pitched in to help his countrymen, and soon found out that a naval ship arrived to announce the war and raise the American flag in San Francisco. Commodore Stockton sent Fremont to conquer Los Angeles and it too fell without a fight. 

      In September, Kearny took 300 men and headed for California. Halfway there, he learned that conquest was no longer necessary and he sent back two-thirds of his men. It was over a thousand miles through unchartered desert and extremes of weather. After months on the trail, Kearny then learned that a rebellion in Los Angeles had freed much of southern California from American rule. His troops were exhausted, had lost most of their horses and were riding mules. They engaged in a vicious skirmish with Mexican forces and had to send Kit Carson to San Diego for help from Stockton. In the nick of time, the Navy rescued Kearny. Together, the two services recovered the City of Angels.

    When Kearny left Santa Fe, he sent Colonel Alexander Doniphan and a thousand men south to march on Chihuahua and capture the city and province. Once again traveling great distances, the Americans marched to El Paso and on to Chihuahua defeating the enemy at Brazito and overcoming a larger force at Sacramento.  After occupying the capital for two months, Doniphan was ordered to head hundreds of miles southeast to Saltillo. They had marched 3,500 miles before a grateful Army ordered them home.

    The triumph in California was sullied by contretemps, arguments and insubordination pitting Kearny against Stockton and Fremont, that led to a court martial of Fremont later in the nation's capital. The three month trial was a national media circus that featured Fremont's father-in-law, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton attacking General Kearny. When the 'Pathfinder' was convicted, he was offered a degree of clemency by Polk and the opportunity to stay in the Army. He declined. Kearny was named Governor General of Mexico City, but died later in 1848. Fremont lived to 1890, but never again accomplished anything to equal his feats as an explorer. Polk had always intended to be a one term president. He had accomplished a vast expansion of the country in the southwest and had settled the Canadian border with the UK.  He fell to cholera three months after leaving office. The victorious General Zachary Taylor had succeeded him. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo settled the war. The US paid Mexico $18M and garnered the entire southwestern United States. The war was condemned by many, including Ulysses Grant, who said it was "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation." A century later,  John Eisenhower said, "The fact is that Mexico stood in the way of the American Dream of Manifest Destiny." The war proved to be a training ground for what came next, because almost every general in the Civil War had fought in Mexico. I am not sure who of my friends recommended this book, but thank you.

Smoke, Ide - B+

    In the fifth book in the series, IQ, Isaiah Quintabe, leaves behind LA, its violence and cast of despicable characters, for breathing room in the exurbs. Of course, it all follows him and he has to resolve multiple issues, including a serial killer on the run, an ex-con after him and threats to his girlfriend, Grace. The author hits a new stride here with a more cohesive plot and the development of the story of Q's best-friend, Dodson, who transfers his 'hood' skills to a white-collar office. The next in the series is teed up because Grace is missing and Q is on his way back to LA.

The Secret Guests, Black - C

                     This ManBooker-winning Irish author goes a bit overboard here in a novel with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret sent to Ireland to avoid the Blitz. Off they're sent to a rundown castle in the Irish Midlands with an aged, widowed, and dimwit Duke as host. The sisters are overseen by a young woman from the Secret Service and a Garda detective, selected because he was from the 5% of the Republic that was Protestant. Celia Nash and Det. Strafford  eventually conclude that they have security concerns. Soon enough, the IRA arrives, and in a comedy of errors, two of the three attackers are killed and Miss Nash is gravely wounded. Maybe it's a satire and I missed the point.

The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III, Baker and Glasser - B+

"Delegate hunter, campaign manager, White House chief of staff, treasury secretary, secretary of state, James Addison Baker III played a leading role in some of the most critical junctures in modern American history." He was principled, but practical, with a fervor for "getting things done. He was born into a world of wealth in Houston in 1930." Privilege was his birthright, but it came with formidable demands of duty and discipline." The law firm  Baker Botts was founded by his great-grandfather after the Civil War. His grandfather was one of the builders of the city, a virtual pillar of the establishment. His father was a WWI hero as well as a tough taskmaster. Growing up, Jimmy had little interest in school, but rather preferred hunting and tennis. He was an indifferent student at Princeton and upon graduation in 1952, joined the Marines. A year later, he married Mary Stuart of Dayton, Ohio and Finch College. He graduated at the top of his class at UT Law School in 1957. Back in Houston, while starting a family and pursuing his law career, he became a doubles partner at the Houston Country Club with a young oil man, George Bush. His world fell apart in 1970 when his 38 year-old wife, mother of their four sons, died of cancer. Tiring of the law, he took up George Bush's suggestion that he get involved in politics. He remarried in 1973 to a good friend, recently divorced and with three children of her own. With the help of then- Ambassador to China Bush, he was appointed Undersecretary of the Commerce Dept. in 1975. A year later, he moved over to Ford's re-election campaign. He was instrumental in garnering the nomination for the president and then was made campaign manager. After Carter's election, Jim Baker returned to Texas to practice law. He took his one shot at electoral politics and ran for and lost the 1978 race for Texas Attorney General. He managed his best friends presidential run in 1980 and pulled off an upset of the frontrunner, Ronald Reagan, in Iowa. Throughout the primaries though, Reagan slowly pulled away. He withdrew Bush from the race in late May and maneuvered him to the VP nomination. He managed Reagan in the two debates, is considered to have out-negotiated Carter's men and was rewarded with the WH Chief of Staff job. As he was non dogmatic and much more establishment than Reagan's people, the conservatives were none too happy. Baker set out to, and did, master the job. When Reagan was shot in March, Baker handled the crisis skillfully and calmly. He courted journalists and was very solicitous to members of Congress. He shepherded the 1981 Tax Act through to passage. As the recession continued to clobber America, Reagan's poll ratings fell and the Republicans lost seats in the House in 1982. The following spring, the commission Baker designed to stave off problems with Social Security delivered a compromise satisfactory to both sides. At this point, all he wanted was out of the hardest job in Washington and harder in this administration because of the President's lack of focus and the backbiting by the hard right. The roaring economy of 1984 led to a Reagan landslide in November. When Don Regan proposed they swap the Treasury and WH Staff jobs to Baker, he jumped at it. At Treasury, he had a presidential mandate to redo the Internal Revenue Code. He led the charge and reconciled the competing political interests in support of the change. The 1986 Tax Reform Act was a monumental success that had true bipartisan support and could not have been accomplished without the skills and commitment of Rep. Rostenkowski and Sen. Packwood. Simultaneously, Baker arranged the Plaza Accord to bring down the price of the dollar. He had always worried that the crazies would start trouble in Central America, and right after the mid-terms Iran-Contra surfaced. Baker was behind the appointment of Alan Greenspan to the Fed. He worked out the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement with the Canadian PM Brian Mulroney. Reagan turned a corner, and spent his final years negotiating with Secretary Gorbachev, and leaving office with some of his highest ratings. Jim Baker now turned his attention to his best friend, George Bush. The nomination was clinched in March. As he was reluctant to leave the Treasury, Baker put off joining the campaign until the summer, at which point Bush was trailing Dukakis by 17 points. Helped by the negative, over-the-top attacks orchestrated by Atwater and Ailes, Bush won handily. He asked Baker to be Secretary of State. The greatest issue of Bush's presidency was responding to Gorbachev's unwinding of the communist empire. In time, Bush ignored the right-wingers and fully embraced working with the Party Secretary and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze. Baker met Shevardnadze in Paris, and then hosted him for a few days in Colorado. Shevardnadze painted a bleak picture of the crumbling USSR, and essentially asked for help holding off the Soviet hardliners. When the Wall fell in November, Gorbachev stood by and did not intervene. The US was shocked and had no plan, but both Bush and Baker were careful not to dance on the East's grave. The reunification of Germany was an incredibly complex issue. The West Germans simply wanted to move on and get it accomplished. Thatcher was opposed. The US proposed that the two Germanys work it out and let the four occupying powers chime in as needed. The USSR agreed and received Baker's assurance that NATO jurisdiction would not spread an inch east. In the spring, Lithuania declared its independence, and the E. Germans voted for a Parliament headed by Helmut Kohl's party. Changes were swift and unpredictable, and in both the US and the USSR, the cold warriors fought every concession. At a summit in Washington in May, Gorbachev conceded that a united Germany could choose to join any alliance it preferred. In September 1990, Germany was reunified and forty-five years after the end of WWII, the Four Powers relinquished their occupation rights. Immediately, another great crisis came to the forefront. The invasion of Kuwait would occupy the world's attention for the next year and a half. Baker traveled the world putting together the coalition that supported the US's leadership. He flew 100,000 miles in ten weeks and held 200 meetings. The Soviets reluctantly assented, and coalition forces booted the Iraqis from Kuwait. It was a clear-cut victory. He had promised Gorbachev he would try to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle and he did. At one point, he spent 23 consecutive days on the road and arranged for a conference of all interested parties in Madrid. That summer, 1991, saw the attempted coup against Gorbachev. The coup failed, but led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It formally ended on Christmas day, 1991. Suffering from Graves disease and a thyroid condition, Bush's last year was marked by a severe lack of energy on his part, a deteriorating economy, and disarray in the White House and in the reelection campaign. In mid-August 1992, Baker was back as Chief of Staff and helping the campaign. A disengaged Jim Baker couldn't help, and Bush was handily beaten by Bill Clinton. Unsure of what would come next, the 62-year-old Baker signed on with Baker Botts, where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had worked, and the Carlyle Group. He also began to explore a 1996 run for the presidency, but it did not come to pass. His next foray onto the national stage came in 2000 when he masterminded the younger Bush's post-election efforts in Florida. Once again, the fixer came through for the Bush family. Throughout the Bush 43 presidency, Baker took on various high-level assignments, even though he had been opposed to the 2nd Iraq war.  When his dear friend George Bush died in 2018, he was at his bedside. Today, he is 90 and his grave in a Houston cemetery awaits him. This book has been criticized as being hagiographic and it is a very valid criticism. It is extremely pro-Baker, and dismissive of both Reagan and Bush. But it is a truly great biography that sheds light on some fascinating times. I suspect history will be kind to Reagan because of his unwavering optimism and his fortitude in pursuing the Cold War. And whether Baker/ Bush will be credited for handling the collapse of the USSR, I do not know. But for those of us who remember the Wall going up, all that it symbolized for 38 years and the fact that it came down, the fact that eastern Europe was freed and that the USSR disintegrated without a shot being fired is still the most significant geopolitical event since 1945 and is an event that remains hard to fathom. The authors heap praise on Baker for "getting things done", and that he did. A text of 585 pages has worn me down, but I'm glad I persevered.

The Dig: A Novel Based On True Events, Preston - B

                     This story is set in Suffolk in 1939 and features an excavation of burial mounds on private land. A widow, Edith Pretty proceeds with the project that had been a dream of her late husband. She hires Basil Brown,  a local man with decades of experience with the soils of southeast England. Brown proceeds to unearth the most important archeological discovery in the country's history. A ship from the Anglo-Saxon era is found, and various museums battle over who will display it. In the end, the intervention of war stops all the plans in their tracks. This is a delightful read and one that has been turned into a good, if not better, film by Netflix.

The Mercenary, Vidich - B+

        This is the fourth high-quality CIA thriller, partially based on historic characters, that the author has penned. The mercenary in question is former CIA and former KGB. It's another heck of a page-turner with action in Moscow, a visit to the Lubyanka and a finale at a Czech border crossing.