The Last Platoon, West - A*

          This fabulous novel is set in the last days of our war in Afghanistan. The WH is trying to tamp down Talib activities in Helmand Province and put a dent in the poppy/opium trade. It's harvest time and an Iranian with millions is buying up the valuable poppies.  There's conflict among the locals as some are fighting with the Americans while others are negotiating with them. Diego Cruz, an enlisted man promoted to captain, with extensive combat experience, is sent over by an old superior to embellish his promotion opportunities and to lead a platoon providing security to the fire base that is central to the efforts in Helmand. Cruz's presence unnerves the colonel at the base who happens to be a political officer with no combat time under his belt. The mission is complicated by the presence of three CIA men who are there to interdict the opium trade and, at the direction of the president, capture the drug lord known as the Persian. The Marines find a vast store of heroin in a cave under a mosque, torch it and capture the drug lord. The following night, however, under cover of a sandstorm, the Taliban counter. Suicide bombers make it inside the wire. The concussed political colonel relives Cruz, who ignores him and goes out to re-seal the barbed wire perimeter. With nine dead, no amount of ass-covering by the colonel can save him from being relieved. Cruz lands on his feet with a job offer from the CIA. As for the mission, it was all part of a cynical play by the WH to to have Helmand be declared a neutral province in a deal with the Taliban. The author is a Marine combat vet with a tour as a civilian high up in the DOD, lending credence to both the combat and the politics. This is a delight and I thank Linda Meir for the recommendation.

        Perhaps, the most amazing takeaway here is the extensive use of technology on today's battlefield. Not only are there drones everywhere providing spot-on visual  intelligence, but our people have the ability to listen in on any local Afghani cellphone conversations. Wearing headphones, everyone in the squad can talk to everyone else. Most of the men follow the terrain around them with iPads capable of identifying friend and foe, and of course, the US can always call in fire support from nearby and high in the sky. 

King Richard: Nixon and Watergate: An American Tragedy, Dobbs - B+

         This is a limited re-telling of the Watergate story, focusing on the early days of Nixon's second term, Jan. 20 - July 17. It hones in on the inner workings of the WH as each individual slowly realizes what a mess he has gotten himself into, and that there is no way out. As Kissinger put the finishing touches on the peace deal with N. Vietnam, the Watergate burglars were being pressured by trial Judge John Sirica to state who they had taken their orders from.  Sirica sent Liddy and Magruder to DC jail to await sentencing. Howard Hunt insisted on money from John Dean before he went to jail, prompting the White House Counsel to tell the president that Dean, Mitchell, Magruder, Haldeman and Ehrlichman had all committed crimes and that there was a "cancer" on the presidency. In late March, the first cracks in the dam appeared when McCord's sentencing was deferred because he indicated a willingness to cooperate with Judge Sirica. Nixon and Haldeman decided that Magruder and Mitchell were expendable. Dean was concerned that he was too. Dean retained counsel and began to bargain for immunity. In mid-April, Hunt "told all" and Magruder struck a plea bargain deal. With information piling up, the DOJ briefed the AG, who told Nixon he needed to get rid of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. At this point in mid-April, Nixon struck upon a theory he would try to foist upon the world and the WH press corps: that he just learned about all of this and now was the chief investigator. He and Haldeman listened to the tape of Dean's "cancer" meeting to try to establish that the president did not approve of buying off Hunt, when the eventual release of the tapes showed that he actually did. Nixon eventually asked Haldeman and Ehrlichman to resign, and he announced their departure on national tv. Dean was unable to reach a deal with the prosecutors, but was entitled to "use immunity" for anything he testified to before the Senate Select Committee. On June 25th, John Dean began to testify, mesmerized the nation, and dug the administration's grave before the Watergate Committee. A month later, Alexander Butterfield disclosed the existence of the taping system. Nixon decided to not destroy them because the tapes would exonerate him. "The story of Richard Nixon's fall is neither a Greek tragedy nor a Shakespearean tragedy but a uniquely American drama that we continue to live with today. It is a story without an end because it is the story of us all."

         Most Watergate histories are top-down, and this one is the opposite. This is not a big picture of what happened, when and how it all unravelled, but rather an inside the coverup look at everything falling apart. There is an extensive recounting of who said what to whom in the WH that highlights the completely delusional thinking that went on in Nixon's world.

        

Trespasser, Doiron - B+

   This is the second book in the Mike Bowditch series. The Maine Game Warden is called out late at night, near the and of a 12 hour shift, for a car/deer collision.  He finds the car, but there's no driver and the deer is gone. He has an idea which local lowlife may have taken the deer, but for the life of him he can't sort out where the driver went. A state trooper comes by and tells Mike to go home. It's now a police matter and he has it in hand. When it turns out that the driver is found murdered, Mike blames himself and goes off the reservation seeking to find out what happened. Like all police procedural series, this one has its quirks and idiosyncrasies. Here, it is that Mike is a bit smarter than many around him, and likes to charge ahead and cross a lot of lines. Hopefully, as the series progresses, every police officer in Maine isn't mad at him. 

A Game Of Fear, Todd - B

                 Rutledge is off to the Essex coast in the spring of 1921. A woman sees a murder outside her window, but there is no body. She is a member of the landed gentry and her suspicions need to be addressed. No one believes her, but Rutledge does his duty. He soon determines that what she saw was a performance to scare her, so someone could access her house. Not long after Ian's arrival in Walcher, a war widow is found murdered on the nearby closed airbase. Clearly, there is someone very bad nearby and Ian goes to work to solve the case. This is a fine addition to the long running series. There is a superb blending of the present and all of the overwhelming anxieties and sadness from the war. To top it off, Ian's promoted to DCI. I compliment the authors for only advancing the tale 2+ years in Ian's time over two and a half decades.

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather, Seal - B

     "Based on one of the bestselling novels of all time, it revitalized Hollywood, saved Paramount Pictures, announced the arrival of Francis Ford Coppola..., minted a new generation of movie stars, made its writer, director, and producer rich, and sparked a war between two of America's mightiest powers: the sharks of Hollywood and the soldiers of the Mob." 

      Watching Joseph Valachi testify before Congress in 1963, "a dead-broke writer" living on Long Island decided to write a novel about the Mob. Mario Puzo had grown up in Hell's Kitchen, where his Sicilian-born mother managed her seven children in the rough and tumble neighborhood in the Depression. Paramount gave him an advance after seeing the first 100 pages, and when completed, the novel was a sensational success. Fame and fortune followed for its author. The novel was so realistic that people in the Mafia could not believe that it was based on research, and that Puzo had never met a real mobster.  He was hired to write the screenplay and moved to Hollywood. Francis Ford Coppola, a director more interested in art than big studio productions, and with a few flops to his name was to be director. Coppola worked closely with Puzo on completely redoing the screenplay to hew closer to the novel, and away from the studio's suggested approach. Coppola had a vision for the film and had settled on who he wanted for every principal role. He won each and every casting battle with the studio. But the battle over Pacino as Michael was the one he almost lost. Evans hated the fact that Pacino was short and stated over and over again that he would not get the role. Evans wanted Redford, O'Neal, Hoffman, Nicklaus, anyone but Al. Coppola persisted, and was almost fired before Evans finally gave in.

    The Italian American Civil Rights League and a real life crime figure threatened to stop the production but they ultimately relented Shooting started in NY in the spring of 1971. The film was "shot in 120 New York area locations over 67 days." Clearly, Francis Ford Coppola is the genius who made this magnificent film as great as it is, and for him, the entire process was the most difficult time of his life. There was no fun or satisfaction in the filming. He, his pregnant wife and two children were living in his brother-in-law's two bedroom apartment in Manhattan for the simple reason that Francis was broke. Every day he waited for Evans, who had sent Jack Ballard to be his eyes and ears on the set, to fire him.  Ballard second guessed every move Coppola made. Pacino too was very uncomfortable in a key role working with such well known actors. The dailies they were seeing at Paramount involved a Brando they couldn't quite hear. There were people working on the film calling for Coppola to be fired, so Francis fired six of them. But when Evans saw the restaurant scene when Michael kills Sollozzo and McCluskey, everything changed. The scene saved Coppola's and Pacino's jobs. 

     Nonetheless, the tension and constant oversight of Ballard who fought every expenditure, meant that stress and anxiety were the handmaidens of  the filming of The Godfather. Post-production and editing began: Evans in Hollywood and Coppola in San Francisco. Both men claimed the credit for making the movie the masterpiece it was. Evans, though, did have the clout to convince the studio to allow it to run almost three hours. The next battleground was the music. Evans hired Henry Mancini; Francis wanted Nino Rota. Once again, Coppola prevailed.

     Both the NY and Hollywood premiers were met with stunned silence. Coppola was so discouraged that he accepted an offer to write a screenplay and flew to Paris to work on it.  The film was a phenomenal success. "It broke Gone With The Wind's record in a week and a half." It was soon grossing a million dollars a day. Oscars followed, and for those with points, Coppola, Puzo, and the producer Al Ruddy, vast wealth came too. As for Coppola and Evans, they continued to hate each other and hurled insults back and forth. For Godfather II, Coppola had it written in his contract that Evans would have nothing to do with the film. Evans went to his grave believing it was his film.

      The first half of this book dealing with Puzo and his struggles is much better than the second half covering the actual production, perhaps because so much has been written over the years. Obviously, the major takeaway is Coppola was brilliant and patient, while Evans comes off as evil incarnate.

  

    

Smoke and Ashes, Mukherjee- B

               The setting is Calcutta at Christmastime in 1921. The entire city is on edge as a visit from the Prince of Wales is days away and the Congress Party is protesting.  Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee are investigating a series of brutal murders tied to a test conducted by the army and the military is  keeping them away from the facts. The murderer is a Gurkha soldier who is AWOL and who is possibly targeting the Prince as well.  Sam and Surrender-not (his British imposed nickname) investigate the murders, liaise with the leaders of the Congress Party, and make all the correct calls to protect the Prince. There actually was a massive protest when Edward visited Calcutta, but the threat to his life is fictional. This is the third in the series and it continues to excel at addressing the tensions between the occupiers and the occupied. Sergeant Banerjee, as a servant of the Raj, is in a particularly difficult position, experiencing the racism of the British and the disapproval of his own people. Sam Wyndham's opium addiction is explained as a result of the morphine he received as treatment for his combat injuries. The novel closes with Sam headed off to rehab. 

The Anomaly, Le Tellier - B

           This highly-acclaimed French novel is an international bestseller and winner of the Goncourt Prize. An Air France Paris to JFK flight takes off, experiences severe turbulence over Nova Scotia and lands at Macguire AFB in NJ - 106 days after it has taken off. Th original flight faced the same turbulence, landed on time and all 243 people on board have moved on with their lives. Unsure of what it all means, the US releases everyone and offers the late arrivals a chance to enter witness protection and establish a new life. As a third Air France 006 approaches the US mainland a few months later, the US blows it out of the sky. The Times reviewer posed a question or two: "Is it science fiction dressed up as philosophy? Metaphysics disguised as a high-concept thriller?" I for one have no idea.

Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages, Jones - B

          This history begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and finishes with the Protestant Reformation. "By the end of the fifth century A.D., the Roman Empire in the west no longer existed." With its expiration, the west inherited traditions of slavery and Christianity, an infrastructure of roads and aqueducts, the Latin language, and a legal system. "It [Rome] was the foundation on which everything in the Middle Ages was built." The western empire had been lost to barbarians from the east. The Huns were forced to cross the Volga and enter Europe because of a 4th century 'megadrought' on the steppe. The Huns compelled the Goths, Alans, Suevi, Burgundians, and Vandals to move further west. Over the course of a century, the various barbarians, and the kingdoms they established, replaced the the greatest empire history has ever known. The century after the fall of Rome saw a rebirth in Constantinople. The Emperor Justinian led the way with a law codification that"set a gold standard for constitutional reform in the Middle Ages." He built the Hagia Sophia and recaptured North Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths.  The empire was frequently at war with Persia, but it would be Arabia from which a monumental challenge arose in the 7th century. Syria, Palestine and Egypt quickly fell to the Muslims, thus severing from the empire lands it had ruled for seven centuries. All of North Africa and Spain followed. The Arabs even twice threatened Constantinople itself. When their efforts at conquering the imperial city failed, they turned east and went as far as Pakistan. When it was decreed that the Arab language must be used by all in government, a cohesiveness was brought to the vast empire that stretched from Spain to the Asian sub-continent.

        The 8th century in Europe saw an impressive consolidation of lands on both sides of the Rhine by Charlemagne and a concurrent assault by the Vikings from the north. On Christmas day in 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor. His empire extended from the Baltic to Tuscany and from Bavaria to the French coast.  The empire didn't last and was carved up by his heirs in the middle of the 9th century. At the same time, the Vikings descended on Europe conquering and wreaking havoc. They eventually settled down and established important political entities throughout northern Europe, and of particular import, the Danelaw in England, and Normandy in France. The 10th century saw a significant rise in the wealth and power of the monastic system, led by the rise of the Cluny monastery. William of Aquitaine endowed Cluny, and its abbots became international leaders in the golden age of monasticism. Cluny itself was the largest church in Christendom. The monasteries became "centers of literacy, education, hospitality, medical treatment, elderly social care, and spiritual counseling..." A Cluniac monk was elected Pope Urban II. 

           In the late 10th century, Otto, a German king, defended against a Magyar attack by utilizing heavy cavalry, horsemen fully armored and very capable of defeating the plains horsemen who had been threatening Europe for centuries.  "For the next two centuries, powerful, mounted warriors dominated battlefields, while also beginning to burnish their status in society at large." Knights became the epitome of chivalry, "which would inform art, literature, and high culture long beyond the end of the Middle Ages." In the late 11th century, the besieged Byzantines asked for help from their western brothers, a request that led to the Crusades. Pope Urban II urged a crusade to release the Holy Land from Islam's oppression. Anyone who died while crusading was assured a remission of sins and immediate entry to heaven. Spilling vast amounts of Muslim, Jewish and Christian blood, the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099. The crusader states in the Levant would survive for two hundred years. The first challenge came from a Kurdish warrior and leader, Saladin, who reconquered the Holy land in 1187. Europe responded with another crusade. Frederick Barbarossa, King Philip II of France and Richard the Lionheart of England all took part. They recovered Acre and the ports on the coast, but not Jerusalem. A new pope, Innocent III, directed the crusading spirit inward, inspiring troops to advance the reconquest of Spain, to conquer and convert the pagans in the north of Europe, and to wage war against heretics, particularly the Cathars in southern France. In 1291, the last crusaders left the Holy Land. "Crusading - a bastard hybrid of religion and violence, adopted as a vehicle for papal ambition but eventually allowed to run as it pleased, where it pleased, and against whom it pleased, was one of the Middle Ages' most successful and enduring poisonous ideas."

            The 13th century would see Europe threatened from the east by an extraordinary and powerful force - the Mongols, who would conquer Eurasia from Korea to Hungary.  As violent and brutal as they were, they rebooted trade between Asia and the west, enhanced the transfer of technologies, knowledge and people, established an efficient postal service and implemented a rule of law. Arguably, their achievements would not be surpassed for centuries. 

            The 13th and 14th centuries saw a commercial revolution that changed way the world traded.  Money and goods were flying around the world. Power was now in the hands of merchants and bankers; kings and emperors had to give way. In Italy, the city states of Venice, Padua, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa dominated the finances and politics of Italy and the Mediterranean. At the same time, there was a vast increase in the numbers of books published as scholarly pursuits took hold. Works of antiquity were translated and universities grew. The expansion of learning led to some of the first challenges to the established church by men such as Jan Hus and John Wycliffe. It was also an era of major construction projects.  "The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a golden age of monumental architecture in the west, in which some of the most iconic buildings in world history were erected." These structures sent "spires and towers soaring toward the heavens, telling interwoven stories of wealth, power, piety, and dominion." The progress Europe was making toward the future was shattered in the 14th century by famine and plague. The Little Ice Age contributed to a famine from 1315-1321. Twenty-five years later, the Black Death tore through Europe, killing an estimated half of the population. "The first economic consequence of the pandemic was to wreak havoc on prices and wages." Riots and revolts followed, the most famous of which was the Peasants' Revolt in England. The populist uprisings were suppressed, but did lead to the loosening of feudalism's ties.

            First in northern Italy, and later throughout Europe, the cultural movement known as the Renaissance began. There was an increased interest in the glories of Greece and Rome, and  rapid technological advances in painting, sculpture, construction and education. It was "the culmination of a long road back to civilization".  The art of Leonardo, the sculpture of Michelangelo and the dome of Brunelleschi highlight the extraordinary leaps made in this era. 

         When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, trade with the east became more complicated and rulers in Portugal and Spain were motivated to seek alternative routes. This led to the historic world-changing discovery of the Americas and the European exploration of Asia. In 1522, Magellan's circumnavigation was completed, global empires were being created, and the Middle Ages were coming to a close. In 1455, Gutenberg published his Bible. "Mechanized printing changed western culture in the fifteenth century as fundamentally and profoundly as the creation of the smartphone changed it at the turn of the twenty-first." The availability of the printed word and the increasing exchanges of information throughout Europe led to the last act of this story - the Protestant Reformation. Ironically, the first item Gutenberg printed was a Papal Indulgence, the 15th century financial/confessional abuse that led the list of concerns about the church articulated by Martin Luther. The printed version afforded the church immeasurably more sales opportunities than was the case for those written by hand. The sale of indulgences transitioned from a service to scandal under Pope Sixtus IV in the 1470's. Luther's Ninety-Five Theses were published in 1517. His ideas spread completely throughout Europe in a year. "By the 1530's, the western world was no longer medieval." England withdrew from the Catholic church. Protestants and Catholics were fighting in France and Germany. An imperial army had sacked Rome in 1527. "The rise of the printed word, encounters with the New World, the collapse and fracture of the church militant, the demographic rearrangements caused by waves of the Black death, the humanistic and artistic revolutions of the Renaissance - all these things and more recast the shape and the feel of the west, in ways that contemporaries explicitly recognized, even as the process was taking place."

           

Into The Forest: A Holocaust Story Of Survival, Triumph, And Love, Frankel - B-

                     In September,1933, Miriam Dworetsky and Morris Rabinowitz were married in Vilna, Poland.  The couple moved to Zhetel, a town of 5,000, 80% of whom were Jews. Daughters Rochel and Tania arrived in 1935 and 1937 respectively. When the war began, Zhetel was occupied by the Soviets. Life went from bad to worse two years later when the Germans came. The Wehrmacht passed through, and then the SS and the Einsatzgruppen arrived. Some of the early roundups that summer missed the extended Rabinowitz family. However, most of Miriam's family was killed in December. In February of 1942, the Jews of Zhetel were moved into a ghetto. A few months later, the liquidation of the ghetto began. Before it was finished that August, the Rabinowitz's fled to the woods hoping to join the partizans. "The Bialowieza Forest was an ancient place...one of the earth's last remaining primeval woodlands." Soon, there were 800 Jews hiding in the woods. When winter began, the Germans stopped hunting and decided to let the weather do their work for them. The following year, Morris spun his group off from the larger one and hid deeper in the forest. The summer of 1943 saw 65,000 German troops attack the forest. Somehow, Morris' evaded the SS and survived. The following summer saw the arrival of the Red Army, and the departure of the Germans. The Rabinowitz's had beaten the odds - the family was alive and intact. Only 200 of Zhetel's Jews made it. Morris took his family to Lublin and began to plan an escape to Palestine. In 1946, they boarded a train for Austria and walked into Italy. The UN's DP camps provided the Jews with housing, food and a return to some sort of normalcy.  The opportunity arose to go to America and the Rabinowitz's took it. They settled in Hartford, where they prospered.  Rochel, now known as Ruth, fell in love and married Phillip Lazowski. Life had come full circle: a dozen years earlier, Miriam had let a young Phillip join her and the girls as the family survived the first selektion in Zhetel. Tania married a few years later. Morris and Miriam died in the early 1980's. Their life was a testament to love.

The Temple House Vanishing, Donohue - C+

              This is a coming of age story set in an all-girls boarding school in Ireland in the early 1990's. Louisa is a new scholarship student who comes under the spell of the handsome young art teacher, Mr. Lavelle, and one of his proteges, Victoria. The disappearance of Mr. Lavelle and Louisa twenty-five years earlier is being investigated by a journalist. Everyone thinks they ran away. The police think he killed her. Neither are correct. 

Five Decembers, Kestrel - B

                 Joe McGrady is a Honolulu PD detective who catches a gruesome double homicide a few weeks before Pearl Harbor. The murder of a young American man and a Japanese woman is front page news. Joe flies to Hong Kong following his prime suspect and is captured and taken to Tokyo when the war breaks out. A Japanese diplomat, Takahashi, rescues him from a harsh imprisonment. The young woman in Hawaii was Takahashi's niece, so he hides and protects Joe for the duration of the war in the hope that Joe will catch the killer after the fighting. Joe survives and catches up to his prey in Hong Kong. This is perhaps one of the most preposterous plot lines I've ever seen.