1.31.2022
Razorblade Tears, Cosby - B
Ike and Buddy Lee are the fathers of Isiah and Derrick, who were an interracial married gay couple. They have absolutely nothing in common but the desire to find and exact revenge on whoever murdered their sons. While in pursuit, they spend a lot of time talking about dealing with a gay son. Neither of them had handled it well, and both suffer from grave misgivings about their conduct. Their success carries a heavy price.
Looking For The Good War: American Amnesia And The Violent Pursuit Of Happiness, Samet - Incomplete
"More than seventy-five years on, World War II remembrance continues to distort the country's past... such is the...mythology... of WWII - the good war that served as prologue to three-quarters of a century of misbegotten ones..." "In 1945, the United States was a power as dominant, its vanquished enemies as inhumane, as any the world had seen." All of our wars since then have "inherited that wars moral justification."
The highpoint of America's fond remembrance and idealization of the war came around the celebration of the 50th anniversary of D-Day and was led by historian Stephen Ambrose and journalist Tom Brokaw. Both men spoke of an almost universal support for the war and ignored the depths of the opposition articulated by the America Firsters, which opposition ran very deep in the midwest and mountain states. While focusing on the character of the generation, both writers paid little heed to the violence necessary to win the war. And because that violence led to a world we were enamored with, one in which we were heroic, "it leads us repeatedly to imagine that the use of force can accomplish miraculous political ends even when we have the examples of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan to tell us otherwise."
The premise of this book resonated with me, as our messianic approach to foreign policy has troubled me for decades. But once the author passed beyond the introduction, bafflement became the order of the day.
1.27.2022
56 Days, Howard - B
This is a pretty good police procedural/psychological thriller set in Dublin during the opening weeks of the pandemic in 2020. Oliver and Ciara meet by chance and quickly hit it off. They decide to tackle the challenges of the lockdown together as a couple at Oliver's apartment. Both are cautious and careful, as each of them is hiding a very big secret.
1.21.2022
Catching The Wind: Edward Kennedy And The Liberal Hour 1932 -1975, Gabler - A*
"Ted was the heir, the one who said after Robert's death that he now had to pick up his brothers' fallen standard, and his own death, however tarnished his personal reputation might have been, not only stirred memories of his brothers but also signified the end of the Kennedy era in American politics and for many, the extinguishing of a last flickering hope." He lived in their shadow, in their reflected glory. He was always the 'least' of the clan. Yet he accomplished more than they ever had, he was one of "the most consequential legislators of his lifetime, perhaps in American history."
This book is the first of two volumes that "tell what is perhaps the most important story of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries in American politics: the story of the shift in the nation's political tectonic plates from liberalism to conservatism." "This book tells how he caught the liberal wind and tried to keep riding it, and in telling that story, it attempts to tell how the entire country, for a brief time, seemed to have caught the wind too, before it stopped blowing."
The ninth Kennedy was born on Feb. 22, 1932. Joe Kennedy raised his children to be very close and to always compete to win. Family was both a fortress and a weapon. Ted's childhood was lonely and friendless as he shuttled to an endless array of schools as his parents were constantly on the move. Rose moved him so often that the schools he would alight in for a few months couldn't even sort out what grade to put him in. His life settled down in high school when he was able to go to one boarding school for four years. His time at Harvard was brief after his freshman year expulsion for cheating and in the summer of 1951, he joined the army. Ted met regular, rough, poor, and Black people in the service and began to develop a sense of empathy, as well as learn how to handle life on his own. That said, his assignment to the MP's at NATO headquarters in Paris had Joe's hand behind it. He left after two years, and went back to Harvard, albeit on probation. He finished in the top half of his class and lettered in football. He was then on to Virginia Law School, where he and his lifelong friend, John Tunney, studied and had a fair amount of fun. Ted's grades were mostly gentlemen's C's, but somehow he and Tunney won the prestigious Moot Court competition. He married Joan Bennett of Bronxville and Manhattanville College in the fall of 1958 and graduated the following spring.
Jack in the White House, Bobby as AG and Ted in the Senate was Joe's plan. Ted worked very hard in 1960, and made significant contributions to Jack's victory. Joe advised his sons that Ted would run for the Senate in 1962 and began the process. The vaunted Kennedy organization went to work, favors were called in, money was spread around, and most importantly, the hardest working Kennedy went to work. Ted hustled from one end of the state to the other. Both Jack and Bobby professed neutrality but pulled an endless number of strings. Ted was the best campaigner in the family, an extrovert who loved people, in contrast to his diffident brothers, who despised retail politics. He beat Ed McCormack in the primary, and George Cabot Lodge in the general. He won because he was the best candidate. As the ninth child in the family, Ted understood how to defer to and how to work with, if not charm, older people and this was a very important skill when he went to the Senate. It was run by the southern bulls who commanded all of the important committees. He went slowly, stayed quiet and averted attention. He was there to become a Senator and not cruise by on his last name. He loved the Senate and wanted to be a Senate man. He courted James Eastland, chair of the Judiciary Committee which Ted had joined. And as unlikely a pair as anyone could imagine, they became friends.
The assassination of John Kennedy changed Ted's mission because he felt he had to carry on the dream and the hope engendered by the young president.
"And that task would be both a thrilling obligation to honor his brother and an agonizing burden he would never be able to lift." His first Senate speech was in support of the civil rights bill that Jack had introduced and LBJ now pursued. It passed in June, 1964. That very night, Ted was in a plane crash that very nearly killed him. The doctors were unsure he would live or ever walk again. Six months later, he walked out of the hospital. He had made good use of his time and elicited legions of scholars to tutor him on political and economic issues. Someone compared the Ted Kennedy transformed by injury to FDR forty years earlier, when the young Franklin had grown and matured after contracting polio. And although Ted was a better and stronger human being, the best athlete in the family would spend the rest of his life in pain wearing a four pound brace every single day. The Senate he returned to, after the 1964 Democratic landslide, was focused on fulfilling longstanding liberal dreams. Amongst the flood of new laws was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which was a topic near to JFK's heart and which Ted had an instrumental part in passing. He slowly and methodically became a player in civil rights and community healthcare as well.
Losses in the 1966 mid-terms and the increasing unpopularity of the Vietnam War began to take the wind out of the sails of the triumphant liberals. Both Kennedy senators opposed the war, but only Bobby was willing to go public with his concerns. Ted was an institutionalist and traditionalist and was unwilling to take on the administration. His Immigration and Refugee Sub-committee held hearings putting the US actions in a very bad light. It would not be until January, 1968, after a twelve day visit to Vietnam, that Ted decisively parted with LBJ. As Tet unraveled the US commitment to Vietnam, and as Gene McCarthy rattled LBJ, Bobby dithered about running for president. Ted was completely opposed because he did not think the establishment could be beaten and he feared for his brother's safety, that some wacko out there would go for a twofer. Bob announced on March 16 and LBJ withdrew two weeks later. A week later, MLK was assassinated. Bobby's campaign drew crowds and he started winning primaries, although most believed he could not catch Hubert Humphrey's deep party support among the professional politicians. Bobby's victory in the California primary was an ecstatic moment that ended in tragedy and another death. Ted eulogized his brother at St. Patrick's, and descended into a summer of overwhelming grief. He spent it sailing up and down the Long Island and Nantucket Sounds.
Ted committed to carrying the flame forward during a speech in August. "Like my three brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard...I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, to excellence, and to courage..." He returned to the Senate, but didn't really participate. Colleagues noticed that his drinking ticked up a notch or two. He ran for, and was elected, whip of the caucus and prepared to face the presidency of Richard Nixon, a man who relied on fear and resentment to propel himself forward. Ted's plan was to establish a liberal counterweight to Nixon's agenda. He "embraced the burden in the Senate of saving the country's soul for his late brother..." Ted slowed down Nixon's ABM plans and spoke up against the ongoing conduct of the war. He worked hard, but continued to drink, and it was apparent to all that he still was buried in grief for Bobby. His life further spun out of control in July when he drove a car off a wooden bridge at Chappaquiddick, killing Mary Jo Kopechne, and inexcusably failing to report the accident. Upon reflection, he knew he had "cost himself the inheritance his brothers had left him." "There would be no resurrecting Camelot after it, no Ted Kennedy regency." For many, the party and the whole liberal cause went off that bridge too. It would be a remorseless pain for the Kopechne's for the rest of their lives and it would haunt Ted for every day of his remaining forty years.
Physically diminished by a 20 pound weight loss and emotionally scarred, he returned to the Senate and realized he had to start over. And he did. Many observers felt that he was a stronger human being, and in turn, a better Senator afterwards. A speech against the war in September led the paranoids in the White House to renew their snooping and focusing on Ted as an existential threat. The Plumbers were looking into Chappaquiddick, and the White House tried to counter everything he did or said. At the same time, Joan began to drink more and more. She had never been comfortable as a Kennedy, was troubled by Ted's incessant womanizing, and after Chappaquidick succumbed to alcoholism, the disease that ruined her mother's life. With his re-election on his mind and forever fearful of the Kennedys, Nixon went down the path that would cost him the presidency in 1974. He authorized dirty tricks, the use of federal agencies to find mud and specifically targeted Larry O'Brien, DNC chair, because he was a Kennedy man. "To get Ted Kennedy. That became Richard Nixon's political mission..." He mused about IRS investigations, wiretapping, and had spies trailing Ted around. And perhaps the White House had reason to fear Ted. In the year before the election, he traveled the country eviscerating Nixon's polices. Nixon, of course, won re-election and in so doing, put the final nail in the heart of the old Democratic coalition, with the blue collar vote now firmly in the Republican column.
Nixon told Haldeman that the second term would be "awesome power with no discipline" because he wouldn't have to run again. Ted determined to fight Nixon on every front. Knowing that Nixon's men were thugs, Ted had his Administrative Practices Sub-committee begin the investigation of the Watergate burglary before Mike Mansfield set up the Select Committee under Sam Ervin. A special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, was appointed to investigate Watergate under a remit that Ted structured. Nixon's paranoia was so extreme that he believed Ted was manipulating the burglars, who were now pleading guilty and implicating their superiors. When Cox was fired, Ted led the charge against the administrations actions. In the midst of the Watergate crisis, the Kennedy family faced a major crisis when Ted, Jr. had to have a leg amputated because of cancer. Ted took his son to almost all of his treatments, often staying overnight on a hospital cot. The experience took Ted away from Washington quite a lot that winter and further enforced his commitment to health care as a necessity for all Americans. Ironically, Nixon so needed a distraction from Watergate that he authorized discussions on national healthcare between his administration and Ted Kennedy. They actually came close before Nixon's August resignation. Ted co-sponsored the first law authorizing public funding of elections and worked to expand the FOIA. When the democrats swept the mid-terms, the party and Ted seemed revitalized and poised for the future.
Both Gerald Ford and Ted Kennedy began to think about the 1976 election in an America that had shifted to the right in the last few years. The question Ted did not have an answer to was whether he could overcome Chappaquidick. He still was spending a considerable amount of time with Ted Jr. who was undergoing experimental treatment in Boston. He also faced a very troubling series of events in Boston. The Boston Irish were vehemently opposed to busing, something that Ted had supported in the Senate. On two different occasions in 1975, Boston crowds cursed and insulted him and threw bricks and bottles at their own Senator. Announcing that his primary responsibility was his family, Ted stated publicly that he would not run. In many ways, this is a very grim assessment of all things Kennedy, with special and unyielding criticism of Joe and Rose, as not being the creators of an American dynasty, but rather the enablers of an American tragedy. They are presented as uncaring, indifferent and only interested in the appearance of it all. Joe's life was an obsessive fight back against Protestant dismissiveness of the Irish. Joe, Jr is criticized for wasting his life in order to compete with Jack's military record. And, Jack, in turn is depicted as lazy and diffident; Bobby, too strict and moralistic. The author, however, appears to have great respect for Ted as someone who overcame difficult odds and unimaginable personal pain to commit his life to helping the underprivileged and who did it very well. This is a long book at 732 pages of text and, for any student of the period, is a rehashing of the era. That said, as a reasonably attentive person who has read a great deal about the Kennedy's, I admit to having know very little about Ted. Thus, for me, this has been a constructive and rewarding effort.
The Plot, Korelitz - B
Jake, a novelist, has a stunning debut, but hits a wall for years thereafter. While teaching in a summer writers' program, he hears of a plot line a student is working on and realizes that the young man has a sure fire hit in the making. A few years later, he learns the student has died and the novel was never published. He adopts the story line and upon completion of the book, is on top of the world again. Until he starts receiving texts and emails accusing him of stealing the story. Clearly, someone in his former student's life knows, and who that person is leads to one heck of a plot twist, turn on a dime, fantastic finale.
Poacher's Son, Doiron - B
This is the first book in the series mentioned last month involving Mike Bowditch, Maine game warden. A shooting that kills a Maine cop and a representative of a forestry company has the authorities in the north woods searching high and low. The primary suspect is Mike's dad, a nasty piece of work, but someone who knows his way around the great outdoors. Mike is in complete denial and helps the police try to convince his father to surrender. His dad can't be found, but eventually shows up at Mike's door. Any 600+ page book that goes so fast you that you can't believe it qualifies as a full tilt page-turner.
The Statement, Moore - B
This 30-year old novel is set in France in the late 1980's. Pierre Brossard, seventy, is still on the run after 40 years in hiding, and with two death sentences on his record. He was part of the police in the south of the country who persecuted Vichy's Jews and sent them off to their death. He is hidden by the church, and moves from one monastery to another. Like the previously mentioned Journal recommendation, this novel too is very introspective. It has many of the usual thriller highlights, but is really a long conversation that Brossard has with himself about Vichy standing up for all things French, and Gaullism being nothing more than political correctness in the face of communism. Similarly, the churchmen who take him in discuss the need to preserve the morals of the past, the France of the WWI era before the socialists dominated the government. For Brossard, killing Jews simply seemed to be the right thing to do, and for the churchmen, protecting Brossard is their opportunity to ignore modernity. Unfortunately for Brossard, his long term protector in the national police hierarchy has decided he's expendable and too much of a risk.
1.13.2022
The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China, Kaufman - B+
This is a history of two Jewish families who dominated Chinese business for decades, the Sasoons and Kadoories, who were lost in the fog of China's erasure of its history from the century of 'humiliation.' Shanghai, once a great world city, is the locus of this story. In the 1930's, the city was the fourth largest in the world. "Together the Sasoons and the Kadoories helped shape a city that made them billionaires - and inspired and enabled a generation of Chinese businessmen to be successful capitalists and entrepreneurs." The two families were also able to protect 18,000 European Jews who fled there during WWII.
The Sasoons were Baghdad's richest merchants, the family that had led the Jewish dominance of the city's trades for almost a millennium. However in 1829, trouble with the Turks forced David Sasoon to move to Bombay. The British Empire was expanding, and the free market capitalism and its foundation on the rule of law made India the perfect place for Sasoon to reestablish his prominence. "David became a bridge between the traditional trading practices of the Middle East and the new global system developing under the British Empire." Within a decade of his arrival, he was one of the richest men in India. He created Sasoon schools to teach young men how to work in his businesses, and then provided jobs, and later pensions. The British invasion of China afforded the family an entree into the booming opium business, and the second of his eight sons, Elias, was sent to Shanghai to develop that trade. He was wildly successful. When the Second Opium War made the drug legal, the Sassoon businesses controlled 70% of the opium going into China.
A distant Baghdadi cousin, Elly Kadoorie, went to work for the family in China for a very brief time before striking out on his own. He had no capital to speak of, but became a stock broker in Hong Kong and a long term investor in a great many businesses. His success was founded on the burgeoning rubber business and the connections provided by his London born wife, Laura. His two sons, Lawrence and Horace, were educated in proper English boarding schools and joined him in Shanghai. While China struggled after the 1911 revolution to find leadership and a steady footing, the city boomed. The British ran the International Settlement and it became the Paris of the Orient, the most fascinating and cosmopolitan city in the inter-war era. A visiting Douglas Fairbanks said it was the most "interesting and progressive" city in the world.
David Sasoon's sons preferred to spend money and enjoy their wealth in England. It took a grandson, Victor, to reestablish their place in Asia. In the 1920's, he feared the rising independence movement in India, liquidated the family's businesses there and turned to Shanghai. He built the nine-story Sasoon House, a combined office building and luxury hotel. He maintained a close relationship with the Nationalist government and was soon one of the richest men in the world. As the city boomed, there were clouds on the horizon. Anyone looking into inequality could not help but be concerned about the communists. And Japan menaced.
Because Shanghai was an open city, no visa was required for entrance, and beginning in 1938, the Jews of Europe began to arrive. They were supported by both families, who funded almost every social service in the Settlement in an effort to feed, clothe and house the refugees. By the time war began in Europe, there were 18,000 Jewish refugees in Shanghai. The Japanese controlled access to the city and brought so much pressure on Victor Sasoon to support them that he left for India in November, 1941. In December, the Japanese occupied Shanghai and interned the British and Americans. Elly Kadoorie died in Shanghai in 1944 at the age of 80. At war's end, Victor paid his employees three years of back wages. Both families began to liquidate their assets as it became apparent that the communists would win. The Kadoories went to Hong Kong and Victor to London and later Nassau, the Bahamas. The PRC confiscated all holdings in Shanghai. The Kaddoories were able to rebuild in Hong Kong because the British retained sovereignty. The brothers were instrumental in re-creating the city and in providing assistance to the thousands fleeing the communists. Although the Red Army threatened the city in the 1960's, the PRC never attacked. By the 1970's, Hong Kong was booming and would have been the 25th largest economy in the world if it were a nation. When China began to modernize under Deng, it approached the Kadoories to help integrate the country into the world's economy. Lawrence became the liaison between China and the west. In conjunction with the Thatcher government, he tried to forestall the takeover in 1997, but could not. He died a few years before the transition as a member of the House of Lords. His son Michael carried on developing business relationships with emerging China. Today, Shanghai too is booming again. This is an absolutely excellent book. Thanks to Ed Lukes for the recommendation.
Forgetfulness, Just - B+
The author was a war correspondent for the Washington Post during Vietnam, and later a successful novelist. He was a contemporary of LeCarre, and although not in that class, he seems, in this fifteen-year old novel, to have reached some of the same cynical conclusions about western, particularly American, imperialism. "The tone of the reports suggested an America exclusive of other nations, a remote empire on a fabulous continent that worshipped a benevolent god and fortified itself in order to remain apart, a garrison state exempt from natural law and under the special protection of a watchful providence." That sentence could have been written by either. The book came up on my radar when the WSJ's quirky Saturday book section included it in a five best spy novels list. Not sure I'd rate it that high, but I certainly recommend it.
The story is mostly about reflection and memories in that world. Thomas was never really in it, but rather spent his entire life painting and moving around, having finally settled down in the French Pyrenees with Florette. They were happily married, he in his mid-60's, and she a decade younger. Their life was quite remote, and far from the modern world. He occasionally had visitors, two childhood friends from Wisconsin, who were in that world as older, but still active, members of the CIA. They were with him one afternoon having a few drinks when Florette went out for a hike, broke her ankle on the mountain, and was found the next day. She had probably frozen to death, but it did look like her last moments were hastened by a quick knife cut. As Thomas dealt with her death, his friends had French authorities find the men who had been with her. The men were Moroccans on their way to Amsterdam to spread terror and death in the name of Allah. The book is uniquely thoughtful and contemplative.
M, King's Bodyguard, Leonard - B+
Chief Inspector Melville is high up in London's Metropolitan Police and is personal advisor to the royal family. This excellent novel is set in the week before Victoria's funeral in 1901. London is inundated with royalty, including the Kaiser, King Leopold of Belgium, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and dozens of others. Unfortunately, anarchists and assassins are also present and on the hunt for royals, with Wilhelm as the prime target. Melville teams up with the Kaiser's man, Gustav Steinhauer, in pursuit of a man named Akushku, perhaps a Russian, but certainly a skilled murderer and plotter. This is a historical novel as good as they get, and actually is based on an exhaustive biography of Melville and Steinhauer's memoirs.
The Corpse Flower, Hancock - B+
This Danish novel justifiably received a number of awards. It is a great read - bordering on a must. A Danish journalist is contacted by a woman wanted for murder, but the woman is so far off the radar that neither Copenhagen police nor Interpol can find her. The killer offers tantalizing bits of information in order to have Heloise reopen the files at the paper, and even draw the investigating officer back into the case. The motive for the murder has nothing to do with the perpetrator's presumed lunacy and leads to a hair raising story involving a dozen of the city's luminaries. Police procedural/ psychological thriller - flat out page turner.
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