Cairo 1921: Ten Days That Made The Middle East, Faught - B

                  The Conference, called by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, was to address issues left unresolved at Paris. It created two new states, Iraq and Jordan, and established Mandate Palestine. The purpose was to remake the Middle East after the tumultuous war that had ended the Ottoman Empire. Its intent was to establish independent states after a period of trusteeship under the League of Nations.

                 On October 3rd, 1918, in newly emancipated Damascus, Gen. Allenby told Prince Faisal and his British military advisor, Col. T. E. Lawrence, that independence was not imminent. There would be a French supervisory role in Syria. Unbeknownst to all but a few, France and Britain had previously allocated their interests for a post-war settlement without regard for Arab independence. Complicating matters further, Britain had made assurances to the Zionists. The Paris Peace Conference and the San Remo Conference a year later solidified European supervision of the Middle East. The ongoing European mandates were very unpopular in the Levant.

                   Churchill took over the Colonial Office in February, 1921. He brought on T.E. Lawrence as a special advisor. Their plan was to put Faisal on the throne in Iraq, and his brother Abdullah, in Transjordan. Churchill, Lawrence, and staff headed to Cairo for the conference, which opened on March 12. "Churchill, Lawrence and the rest of the Middle East Department worked hard to ensure...this conference would be both brief in duration and focused on producing tangible results." The first order of business was Iraq. Discussion of the few alternatives to Faisal were considered before the endorsement of Faisal as king. Both Churchill and  Lawrence wanted to see an independent Kurdistan, as they feared the Arabs would either ignore or suppress the Kurds. However, the majority conclusion was to keep the Kurds in Iraq. Churchill believed Abdullah as king of Transjordan was a necessity to establish a completely Arab state to the east of a Palestine he hoped could be balanced between Jew and Arab. A substantial subsidy for Ibn Saud was agreed to in order to keep him away from the new states to his north. On the 23rd, the principals departed for Jerusalem. Churchill spent days in Jerusalem discussing with Abdullah the need for him to support peace with the French in Syria, and to not allow Transjordan to become a base for anti-Jewish activity. To the Jews and Arabs of the Holy Land, he stressed the importance of working together to create a modern Palestine.

                  The following year was a "watershed" in the implementation of the Cairo Conference. The UK and Iraq signed the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. Abdullah settled in in Amman where he would rule for over three decades. However, in Palestine, the situation deteriorated. The Arabs protested vigorously about more Jews immigrating to the area.  Ultimately, the solutions set up in Cairo did not succeed. In Palestine neither the Jews nor the Arabs were willing to cooperate and share. Indeed, one scholar has said "Palestine was the greatest failure in the whole history of British imperial rule." In the dozen years before his death, Faisal was unable to break down Iraq's "traditional tribal society." Only in Jordan did the Cairo solution survive and succeed. Indeed today, Abdullah's great-grandson sits on the throne of the Middle East's only continual monarchy. It was granted complete independence from the UK in 1946.

              "Today, a hundred years later, it is hard to avoid concluding that the multivalent failure of the Cairo Conference's geopolitical prescriptions of the post-war Middle East may well have been a grand opportunity missed, the dire implications of which remain with us still."

The Lawless Land, Morison + Morrison - B+

                     This intriguing novel is set in 14th century England and France, pits a good man, a knight and veteran of England's wars in France, against a corrupt Parisian cardinal and a scheming English earl. The world is still quaking and recovering from the Black Death, known then as the Great Mortality. Sir Gerard Fox rescues a young woman, Willa,  fleeing Earl Tonbridge and in possession of a document that Tonbridge has promised Cardinal Molyneux, who believes the document will give him the opportunity to achieve the Papacy in Avignon. Fox thwarts them and he and Willa, a ladies maid to the late Lady Isabel, create an intriguing team, one we will meet again. Because my favorite teacher in college, was a Medieval scholar, I've always liked the histories and the occasional novels that have crossed my path. This novel is especially well done because the brother in this brother and sister pairing is a specialist in page turning thrillers. His sister, in their first joint effort, is a Medieval specialist.

Blood Sugar, Rothchild - B+

                    Ruby sits in a Miami police station while a detective quizzes her about her husband Jason's death.  She is a successful psychologist with an undergraduate Yale degree, and a PhD. She is bemused about the fact that she has killed three people, but not the one she is being questioned about. The detective and an aggressive district attorney tie her into her priors and build a circumstantial case before the grand jury. This is a fun, fast, and very enjoyable read.

City On Fire, Winslow - B+

                  This is an absolutely fabulous novel set in Providence in the late 1980's.       The city is divided, with the Irish running the docks, the longshoreman's union and some loan sharks. The Italians hold the upper hand with the teamsters, construction unions, vending machines, gambling, and prostitution. The Moretti's and the Murphy's have long maintained an easy peace that falls apart when a young Murphy gets involved with a woman who was with one of the Moretti's.  The odds are against the Irish, who are now led by Danny Ryan, son-in-law to the fading John Murphy. Danny decides the only way to compete is to offer the Blacks what the Moretti's have, and Danny partners with Marvin Jones against Peter Moretti. The Italians hit the Blacks, and then set up the Irish with the FBI. Danny manages to get away with his dad and two-year-old son. This is apparently the first in a trilogy. As the author wrote the magnificent Cartel Trilogy, I'm certain we have much to look forward to. Once again, thanks to Wendell Erwin.

The Earth Is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation, Gardner - B+

             When Sitting Bull was born in 1831, the Lakota* Sioux were already trading with the white man, exchanging buffalo hides for weapons and other goods. His father and his father's younger brother were the most important influences for him growing up in the Bad Bow band of the Hunkpapa Lakotas. "Bravery, generosity, endurance and wisdom" were the most critical virtues taught to the young men of the tribe. He excelled with the bow and arrow, and horseback riding, and engaged in his first fight as a teenager. A little to the west and a decade younger, Crazy Horse was being raised as an Oglala Lakota. Like all boys in the tribe, he learned how to ride and fight. He captured his first scalps at sixteen.

          "By this time, the various Lakota tribes were the lords of the northern plains..." They imposed their will from the Yellowstone River in the north to the North Platte in the south, "with the sacred Black Hills the beating heart at the center of their domain." The Lakota had traded with French trappers for goods and weapons, but tensions mounted in the 1840's when Americans began their wagon trains to the west coast. In the two decades before the Civil War, the Plains Indians continued to fight amongst themselves and increasingly, in tit-for-tat raids, with settlers and soldiers. The early 1860's saw the discovery of gold in Colorado, and soon thereafter in Montana. Conflict quickly followed. In 1864, twenty-four hundred Bluecoats decimated a campsite with over a thousand Lakota and Cheyenne tipis at Killdeer Mountain, and Sitting Bull saw for the first time the incredibly effective artillery of the US Army.  

        A major blow was struck against the US Army in December 1866 by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. They set, and sprung, a trap on the work party constructing Ft.  Kearny. Eighty-one soldiers died in the fight. The following year, the army withdrew from three forts in the Wyoming and  Montana territories and left the Indians in peace, under the terms of a treaty signed at Ft. Laramie. Neither Sitting Bull, now recognized as the leader of the Sioux nation, nor Crazy Horse 'touched the pen' of the treaty, under which the Sioux purportedly agreed to live on a reservation. In the early years of the next decade, planning for the Northern Pacific R.R. began threatening the Sioux heartland. Over the course of constant skirmishing over the railroad, the Sioux had their first contact with Long Hair, George Custer, in 1873.

         The ongoing resistance to the incursion of the whites was led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who were able to gather approximately 2,000 warriors, mostly Sioux, but also Cheyenne and Arapaho, to their side.  "The warriors who followed the two leaders and their fellow anti-treaty chiefs were arguably the best horseback fighters in the world." In the summer of 1874, Long Hair led an expedition to map the Black Hills. Soon the news flashed around the country that there was gold in them thar hills. The miners came and the army followed. The United States had decided that it was time for all Indians to be sent to reservations. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse needed to be corralled. In June of 1876, the Indians coalesced around the Little Big Horn, while the Long Knives made a number of forays nearby. Custer had about 600 men in the 7th Cavalry on June 25th. He saw a large Indian encampment about a dozen miles away and divided his forces in three. A Crow scout begged him to not split his forces, and when Custer dismissed him, the scout prepared to die. Custer advanced towards the tipis in the distance with 200 men. He soon found himself surrounded and his entire command was killed. When the Indians sang of the day, the name Crazy Horse was the most honored.

       The US response was to expropriate the Black Hills, and make an enhanced effort to either exterminate the Indians or settle them on a reservation without weapons or horses. The army pushed and attacked the Indians throughout the winter, causing many to surrender. Winters were always hard on the Plains, but more and more difficult every year with fewer buffalo to hunt. Tired of the endless fighting, Sitting Bull took his people to Canada. Crazy Horse declined the invitation to go north, but was fighting on with fewer and fewer warriors. On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse surrendered at the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska. Over the summer, he said little and slowly unnerved the army and those who had already surrendered. The army was afraid he would leave and the Indians feared he would make trouble. Told he was going to a meeting with a general, Crazy Horse fought back when he realized he was being led to a jail, and was bayonetted by a Bluecoat. He died on Sept. 5th.

      On July 19, 1881, the residents of Ft. Buford in the Dakota Territory witnessed the surrender of Sitting Bull and the remains of the Hunkpapa. They were transferred to the  Standing Rock Reservation and joined thousands of other Lakotas. He was the best-known Indian in the world, someone everyone wanted to see, and was soon part of Buffalo Bill Cody's show. The antipathy of Agent McLaughlin in charge of Standing Rock limited Sitting Bull's travels, and he endlessly complained to Washington about the chief. In late 1889, the Lakota were told by a wise man that if they performed the Ghost Dance the world would return to the past when they were free. Sitting Bull supported his people and McLaughlin did not. The Ghost Dancing terrified the whites at the reservation and as far away as Chicago. Newspapers were touting the dancing as a precursor to rebellion. HQ decided that the chief needed to be arrested and deported to a prison in Florida. On the morning of Dec. 15, 1890, Indian police awoke the chief in his lodge at Standing Rock. One of Sitting Bull's followers shot a policeman and in the ensuing melee, the chief was shot dead.

    "It shouldn't be forgotten that the immigrant people, Euro-Americans, who displaced the Plains Indians always held themselves up as 'civilized', as vastly superior to the Lakota and other native tribes. And yet there was nothing civilized about the way the US government, its Indian agents, and its citizens lied to and stole from the Lakotas. There was nothing civilized in the way the US Army attacked Indian villages, killing and maiming women and children. There was nothing civilized in the deaths of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull."

    In 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills were wrongfully taken from the Lakotas. They were awarded $100M which they refused. Today, the award plus interest is $2B. By refusing the money, they feel that they are honoring their ancestors. This is an excellent and powerful book. No matter how many times we read this sad history, it still shocks and embarrasses us. 

*The Lakota Sioux were the western branch of the tribe. They had moved from their Minnesota homeland in the early 19th century. 

Winter Work, Fesperman - B+

             This is one of the finest Cold War novels written since the Wall came down. The setting is Berlin in early 1990, a few months afterwards. Emil Grimm, a Stasi colonel, finds a colleague outside his dacha with a bullet in his head.  Knowing that the deceased was working on getting in touch with the Americans, Emil decides that he should follow through and seek a deal with the CIA. However, the KGB has other ideas. Emil's approach to the CIA succeeds and soon he is negotiating with them. The Soviets kill, and torture while trying to stop Emil from handing over valuable information. This book is based on true events and does a superb job of conveying the time, place, and anxieties that were a hallmark of the era.

Even The Darkest Night, Cercas - B

                   Melchior Marin is a police detective in rural Spain.  He is the son of a Barcelona prostitute and is in jail while a minor for his work with a Columbian cartel. While in prison, he reads Les Miserables and decides to turn his life around. He becomes a policeman and gains notoriety and fame for shooting Islamist terrorists in downtown Barcelona. His superiors decide he needs to be out of the public eye, and they transfer him to the country. He marries and becomes the father of a little girl. When a horrific triple murder is committed in town, he can't let it go, even though the case is closed because absolutely no suspects can be found. He stumbles upon one fact that helps him solve the case. This book has received high acclaim in Spain, undoubtedly because so much of what goes on in this town and this story ties into events that unfolded during the Spanish Civil War. This is the first in a new series.

Cuba: An American History, Ferrer - B+, Inc.

               "More than a history of Cuba, then, this book is also a history of Cuba in relation to the United States, a history of sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive, always uneven relationship between the two countries." 

                Columbus was the first European to visit the 750 mile long island. The initial Spanish settlement was two decades later.  A harsh occupation and the introduction of European diseases led to the death of 95% of Cuba's population. After the Spanish announcement that all trans-Atlantic sailings carrying the plundered wealth of Latin America to Spain must have no less than 10 ships, there was a revival on Cuba. As the Gulf Stream began just off the coast, the hamlet of Havana was the last port of call for the treasure ships. The Crown built forts to protect the harbor and safeguard the city. Slowly, the population was replaced by African slaves. By the eighteenth century, Havana was the third largest city in the Western Hemisphere.  It became "the inviolate symbol of Spain's sovereignty in the west." In 1762, it fell to the British after a seven week siege. The British occupation was brief but quite significant. At that time, sugar was becoming an internationally traded commodity and the source of vast wealth in the British West Indies. Two-thirds of the 11 million African slaves brought to the New World were sugar workers. The British imported slaves and expanded the sugar industry in Cuba. "The island's reliance on sugar as the basis of its economy would expand significantly in the decades after British rule: indeed, it would endure for more than two centuries."  They doubled down on sugar and imported 270,000 Africans between 1790 and 1820. It was soon the largest exporter of sugar in the world. 

                "The US acquisition of Florida from Spain in 1821 fed speculation about US designs on Cuba." Cuba was America's  second largest trading partner. It was an economy based upon slavery, and many of its elites hoped for a US annexation. Knowing that the British had their eyes on Cuba, the US announced the Monroe Doctrine, proscribing European colonization in the hemisphere. With Great Britain out of the picture, the two slavery based economies continued to prosper together.  Although the Atlantic slave trade was illegal, innumerable slavers, often American, kept up the business of capturing Africans and bringing them to Cuba right up to the Civil War.  During the US Civil War, Spain recognized the CSA as a belligerent and welcomed Confederate ships in Cuba's ports. Appomattox ended the dream of an American Cuba. 

                The first Cuban War of Independence began in 1868 when an aristocratic planter freed his slaves and declared the end of Spanish rule. It took Madrid a decade to quell the rebellion. In 1880, slavery was abolished in Cuba. A decade later, Jose Marti founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in NYC. In 1895, he declared independence, returned to the eastern portion of the island to participate in the fighting and was soon dead. The fighting spread to all of Cuba. Years of violence proved inconclusive. In 1898, the US stationed a warship, the USS Maine, in Havana harbor to help protect American interests in Cuba. Wealthy Cubans were now looking to the US to protect them as Spain was losing it grip on the colony, and the US was seriously considering intervention due to a lack of faith in the revolutionaries. In February, the Maine blew up killing over 260 sailors. Two months later, the US declared war. The war was over in four months, with the US experiencing 400 battlefield deaths. The US occupied the island, raised the Stars and Stripes, and ignored the locals, particularly the dark-skinned ones, who had been fighting the Spanish for decades.  It would be four years before the US turned over the reins of government to the Cubans. Even then, the US retained the legal right to intervene in Cuba's domestic and foreign affairs. Soon, the majority of land, and certainly the important sugar plantations, were owned by Americans. Unrest among the veterans of the wars of liberation led to another three year US occupation beginning in 1906.

             This is a superbly written Pulitzer winner, but I just can't keep my nose to the grindstone.

               

              

The Undiscovered Country, McQuade - B+

                  This is an excellent and fascinating novel set in County Mayo, Ireland in 1920. The Irish are fighting for their independence, and in the western part of the country, two young men from the IRA are assigned to be local policeman. Mike is a former law student and Eamon, a combat vet of the Great War. They have no particular qualifying skills when they discover the body of a 10 year old boy in a river. They suspect he was murdered, and the autopsy confirms their suspicions. They quickly conclude that the murderer was one of the five men in town owning automobiles. The likeliest candidates are a priest and their boss. They make what they believe is the right decision and administer an extra-judicial disposition of the case. The fun of this novel is the insights the two young men have about war, independence, religion and their society in general. Their back and forth is delightful. 

The Lioness, Bohjalian - B

      Katie Barstow, A-list actress, takes her new husband, her best friend and her husband, her brother and his wife, and a few other Hollywood types on a safari in Kenya and Tanganyika in 1964. All's well until one morning men arrive, shoot up the safari staff and drive the Americans away in two different vehicles. They are Russians, andwill hold them for ransom.  One escape attempt is successful, although one of the captured Americans dies as does one of the Russians. The two survivors head off into the savannah, but are attacked by hyenas the next morning. Carmen, Katie's friend survives and is rescued. The five in the larger party are also successful in attacking the Russians, but only Katie and her brother Billy survive. A fun read with interesting background on Hollywood and the Cold War in Africa, at the time the continent was throwing off the shackles of colonialism. But the biggest takeaway is that Africa is one scary place, where death is just around the corner.

Portrait of a Unknown Woman, Silva - B

                 Gabriel Allon is, at long last, retired from King Saul Blvd. Someone else can now run the Mossad. He is living in Venice, where Chiara is managing a restoration business that Gabriel will eventually work for.  When his long-time English friend, Julian Isherwood asks for assistance because someone from the murky world of forgeries is trying to kill him, Gabriel is off to help. The plan is to infiltrate the underworld by offering for sale four Italian Old Masters paintings - all painted by Gabriel within the last month. A painting is offered to a New York hedge fund specializing in art. The fund, the first of its type and very successful, is a bit of a Ponzi scheme based on first-class forgeries. The bait is taken, an article appears within hours in Vanity Fair, the FBI pursues and the evildoer is soon murdered by one he betrayed. And Gabriel figures out who the forger that the hedge fund relied on is, and persuades him to retire. Very good as always - but lacking the edginess of the past books with prominent national security themes.