American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bird and Sherwin - B+, Inc.

                   "Oppenheimer gave us atomic fire. But then, when he tried to control it, when he sought to make us aware of it's terrible dangers, the powers-that-be, like Zeus, rose up in anger to punish him." This superb two decade old biography of the Father of the Atomic bomb won the Pulitzer Prize.  

                   He was born in 1904 to a family of German immigrants striving to be American. Ethnically and culturally Jewish, they sought a secular humanistic identity. He was clearly gifted and interested in books and science, with de minimus social involvement with boys his own age. He received a progressive education at the Ethical Culture School and attended Harvard in 1922. He graduated summa cum laude in chemistry. when he went to Cambridge, he was so disappointed in experimental physics that he considered suicide. After he snapped out of it, he turned to theoretical physics. When invited to study at Georgia Augusta University in Gottingen, Germany where the foundation of "post-Newtonian physics" was being laid, he readily accepted. He fit in, loved it, thrived, and received his doctorate after nine months. Upon his return to America, he took up teaching positions at Berkeley, where he quickly established it as the place to be in the world of theoretical physics. One of the things that made Oppie intriguing to students, friends and colleagues was the breadth of his interests. Beyond physics, he could discuss the latest in French poetry, was thoroughly knowledgeable about Sanskrit, and familiar with a great many topics in between. He spoke multiple languages fluently, was wealthy and generous, charming and handsome.  

              In 1936, he fell in love with 22 year old Jean Tatlock, a brilliant, attractive med student, who was also a dues paying member of the Communist Party. They would remain friends and occasional lovers until her death in 1944. He joined a teacher's union, befriended a professor who also was a communist, and supported the Republican side in Spain's civil war. Oppenheimer contributed to the Republicans, and the man who handled his gifts was a communist.  He joined a number of organizations that were later characterized as communist fronts. Frank, his younger brother, married a firebrand member of the CP and joined up himself.  Oppenheimer opposed his brothers involvement and swore that he never was a communist. "The FBI would never resolve the question of whether Robert was a CP member - which is to say there was scant evidence he was." Nonetheless, they had a 7,000 page file on him.  In 1940, he married Kitty Harrison, a woman whose late husband died a communist hero in Spain, and she also was a former member of the CP.

                 When America entered the war and the administration began examining the possibility of a uranium bomb, it was evident to many that Oppie's brilliance would be needed.  In May of 1942, he was appointed to head fast neutron research at Berkeley.  Many thought he should supervise the entire project, but the Army would not issue him a security clearance. General Leslie Groves, the man in charge of the Manhattan Project, met with Oppenheimer in the fall.  Groves wanted him as director and brought him on board. 

                 Having read Richard Rhodes' book on the Manhattan Project and finding myself worn down by the incredible detail of these authors, I'm moving on to his post-war problems.

                 Oppenheimer was a national hero, feted on the covers of Time and Life and hailed as the father of the atomic bomb. He was hopeful that the UN could control the technology and proscribe an arms race. He took up the position of director of the Institute For Advanced Studies at Princeton. He held the position until 1966. He joined the Atomic Energy Commission when it was created in 1947 and advocated for arms control. He opposed the development of the H-bomb and he left the commission when his term expired . He was an exponent of disarmament, wished that the US and the USSR could de-escalate, and preached openness and candor about our nuclear weapon programs. His opposition to the H-bomb attracted the enmity of many in the establishment. 

                "By the autumn of 1953, Washington was a city in the grip of a witch-hunt."Oppenheimer had been under the scrutiny of the FBI for over a decade. They had illegally wiretapped him as early as his time in Berkeley and continued through his residency in Princeton. An important member of the AEC, who held a grudge against Oppenheimer, suspended his security clearance when he was again accused of being a communist.  Ike ordered an inquiry, even though he realized the charges might be "scurrilous." The AEC went after Oppenheimer with a vengeance, although there was absolutely nothing new in the latest FBI report. Indeed, the only new item the AEC articulated was Oppenheimer's opposition to the H-bomb. The hearing, a full-blown kangaroo court, took place in the spring of 1954. Many scientists and military men testified to his fitness and loyalty, but Edmund Teller, the father of the H-bomb stated that he did not trust Oppenheimer. The findings upheld the revocation of his clearance because he was a security risk.  

               He returned to Princeton, where his phone continued to be tapped, and six full time FBI men were assigned to surveil him. "Many Americans began to regard Oppenheimer as a scientist-martyr, a victim of the era's McCarthyite excesses." His management of the Institute was a resounding success, and although he refrained from discussing strategic issues, he remained the darling of the world's intellectual elites. He soon was, once again, an international celebrity. When JFK became president, Robert was invited to a gala at the White House. Kennedy decided to give him the Fermi medal, an honorific that came with an attached tax-free $50,000 grant. It was a public rehabilitation. Kennedy, while a senator, had ended the public career of the AEC executive who had gone after Oppenheimer.  On December 2, 1963, President Johnson, with Jackie Kennedy in attendance, gave Oppenheimer the medal. A few years later,  he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and died at sixty-two in early 1967.  

Murder On Brittany Shores, Bannalec - B+

                    Inspector Dupin's coffee is disturbed one morning with the news that there are three bodies on a small uninhabited island, part of a fishing/sailing/diving mecca on a small archipelago off the Breton coast. He and his team set off by boat and helicopter. To all appearances, three men were caught in a storm and drowned. About the time Dupin learns that they were drugged, thus making this a case of pre-meditated, cold blooded murder, he learns that two of the men are wealthy friends of his insufferable boss. Each man had innumerable enemies and were in the same bar the night they died. They could have been poisoned by dozens of folks. In the end, the motive was revenge, and the killer found. This is the second in the series, and so far both books excel at describing Brittany, and making it seem to be an almost magical locale. Superb and enchanting stories.

Beirut Station, Vidich - B+

                       This is the sixth novel by the former CIA agent, and perhaps the best of his so far.  All of the books are set in the past, and this one is in Lebanon in 2006 just before Condi Rice's visit to broker a peace between Israel and Hezbollah. Analise is a Lebanese-American CIA operative working undercover as a UN refugee counselor. Her task is to befriend a young boy who she tutors in order to track the activities of the boy's grandfather, Quassem. The grandfather is a highly placed Hezbollah fighter who has the blood of a great many Jews on his hands, and both the CIA and the Mossad are working to ambush him. He is extremely careful, and the focus of those in  pursuit is to find the correct place to set an IED to end Quassem's career. This story expertly outlines the tensions of Analise's position: she is a woman in a man's world, she is part of a culture in which women are less than equal, she is without diplomatic cover and on her own if things go south, and she is constantly juggling her story to avoid the inquiring minds around her. Indeed, this may be one of the best I've ever read exploring an individual's inner tensions. The superb plan is never implemented because Analise finds herself in a position to eliminate Quassem before he kills her. Although the blast puts her in the hospital, she does get her man. She then turns to the fact that she believes the Mossad killed her boss, the station chief in Beirut. That job proves to be a bit more complex.

Song of the Lion, Hillerman - B

                      Bernie Manuelito is at Shiprock HS for an important basketball game when she hears an explosion outside. One is dead. The car that the bomb was in is owned by a famous Navajo lawyer who is the mediator for the important matter of a possible tribal/outside developer project on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Emotions are running high and Jim Chee is assigned to protect the mediator throughout the public hearing process. What is the connection between the mediator, the dead man, and an attempt to injure the mediator's son. These are the challenges the police face. Manuelito solicits help from retired Lt. Leaphorn. I fear that the author cannot touch her late Dad. 

Resurrection Walk, Connelly - B+

                      A resurrection walk is when a prisoner is freed after it's determined he/she did not commit the crime. It's a defense lawyer's dream and the focus of this,  the sixth Lincoln Lawyer novel featuring Harry's half-brother Mickey Haller. Harry is working for Mickey as a driver and an investigator on possible freedom initiative cases. They surface one where a woman was sent to jail for shooting her ex, a sheriff's department deputy. It turns out that the cop was crooked, the fix was in with the prosecuting DA, and the defense lawyer was threatened with his life if he didn't go along. Clearly, there was a miscarriage of justice. However, proving that in the face of the government's intransigence, obstruction and narrow minds proves to be a challenge. Kudos to the author who never misses a beat. 

The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working Class Revolution, Kuhn - B+

                      "May 1970 was a tumultuous month in a tumultuous era. After Cambodia and Kent State, the anti-war movement revived and radicalized..." This is the story of "a city,  a mayor, a president's people, and an era when the nation diverged - living different cultures, different wars, different economies, until the American experience became so fragmented that the singular became an anachronism."

                      The NYPD and student protestors had clashed in 1968 at Grand Central Terminal and Columbia University.  There was an inherent tension between the blue collar cops, most from conservative Catholic backgrounds, and the upper middle class students. It was Brooklyn v. Scarsdale. The 1960's were a trying time in NY as the city lost hundreds of thousands of  manufacturing jobs and faced a massive middle class flight to the suburbs. Indeed, nationally there was a concern about the middle class feeling overwhelmed and unappreciated. The nascent cultural dichotomy was exacerbated by the war. The majority of those who fought, and those who died, were poor or middle class, while the sons of the elite received college deferments.  And the man that the average New Yorker felt epitomized those elites the most was the mayor, John Lindsay. The city's trade unions by the 1960's were like medieval guilds with limited access because the unions reserved most spots for the families of its members. The Nixon administration targeted construction as an industry that needed to be opened up to minorities. The trades knew that between the government and the soon to be finished construction of the WTC, their world would be changing for the worse. 

                  When Nixon invaded Cambodia in May, all hell broke loose in America. ROTC buildings around the country were bombed and half of the colleges closed. On the 4th, four students were killed by the National Guard at Kent State. Anti-war protesters marched all around Manhattan, particularly at City Hall and Wall Street. The mayor showed his sympathy by lowering the flag at City Hall, and supporting  the demonstrators.  On the 7th, workers scuffled with students downtown. Word on the street was that they were gonna bust heads the next day. A little before noon on the next day at Federal Plaza, a group of 400 workers approached a demonstration, and were kept away by a line of police. As the students chanted "fuck you and Nixon too," the police were overwhelmed as hardhats carrying an American flag crashed into the protestors. The hardhats were upset by the disrespect for the flag that many of them had fought for. A melee ensued with hardhats beating up protestors as the police stood by. The riot spread north and east as hardhats continued to extract their revenge on the "commies." They headed north to City Hall and chanted for the flag to be raised from half-staff. Feeling threatened, the deputy mayor raised the flag, and the workers sang the national anthem and 'God Bless America.' The mayhem moved across the park to Pace College, where students were taunting the hardhats. The rioters beat longhairs in front of the school, eventually broke down the doors and entered the building, where they destroyed property before the police removed them. When a different Lindsay deputy lowered the flag back to half-mast, the crowd surged back to City Hall. The flag went back up. By mid-afternoon, the unrest dissipated and the riot was over.

                 Over a hundred protestors were injured, half a dozen seriously. The mayor promised repercussions for the police inaction, but let the matter go. The FBI did not investigate, and the ACLU class action against the city in federal court failed. Twelve days later on the 20th, 150,000 flag waving union members rallied at City Hall. The press called it Worker's Woodstock and the White House noticed. These were Nixon people. Within a week, Nixon hosted two dozen labor leaders at the WH. A massive Honor America Day highlighted July 4th with over 250,000 on the Mall in Washington. The Silent Majority was adding a new constituency: the blue collar Democrat. 

               "Most Americans soured on the war but not their nation or its flag. They could not conceive of  detaching those colors from the soldiers who died beneath the nation's banner. " Two years later, Nixon won the votes of 60% of white union members. "Between JFK and McGovern, nearly all of Nixon's electoral gains were with blue-collar whites." They were now Republicans. Excellent book and another great recommendation from my brother, Bill.

The Lie Maker, Barclay - B

                      The lies that are made are by Jack Givens, an out of work writer happy to be hired by the Witness Protection Program to spin out backgrounds for people going into hiding. He thinks it only right that he tell his employer that his dad had been put in witsec about thirty years ago. His boss tells him that his dad is on the run,  likely because bad guys are after him, and the government needs to get him back into a safe place. The coincidences pile up because the woman who hired him is after his dad too. This is a pretty good tale spun by one of the authors who cranks out thrillers year after year. 

Drowning, Newman - B

                      This is a classic page turner, one of those novels that you can't put down and rush ahead breathlessly. Will, a designer in the oil platform business, is on a plane that ditches in the waters between Molakai and Maui minutes after taking off. The Airbus stays afloat for quite some time and most get into the water. Will, his ten year old daughter, and about a dozen stay on the plane as fire driven by the fuel oil consumes virtually everyone who made it off. He insists on the two open doors being closed because of the possibility of the fire reaching the interior of the plane. All is well and good until the plane sinks to 175 feet and nestles to a stop. The ensuing rescue is totally nerve wracking and exhilarating.

Chenneville, Jiles - A*

                    In the fall of 1865, Lt. John Chenneville comes to in an army hospital in Virginia, where he has been in a coma for seven months. He ha suffered a head injury during an explosion outside of Petersburg. He slowly begins the process of remembering who he is, and how to live.  He returns home to his family's large farm north of St. Louis and is told that his sister and her family were murdered in the spring, during a troubled time in the south of the state. His sister had married a paroled Confederate officer, whose presence in town had offended a Union man. John will pursue the killer, but first must recover his mental acuity, ride a horse again, and shoot a rifle.  He spends a year recovering and putting the farm back together. In November of the following year, he rides south. The only lead he has is a name - Dodd, who has left Missouri and headed to Texas when he hears someone was looking for him and. Chenneville rides into Indian Territory, loses his horse in a snowstorm and walks to a Western Union station where he receives help. He continues and picks up occasional bits of information about Dodd. A cautious man by nature and now out looking for revenge, he steers clear of company and conversation as much as he can. He crosses the Red River into Texas and learns he s two days behind Dodd, who had killed again.  He rides deeper into Texas and is surprised to learn that federal marshals are looking for him, thinking he, and not Dodd, killed the Western Union telegrapher. Chenneville is laid up in Marshall with a fever and then heads to Galveston, where he hopes to find Dodd before he can get on a boat and disappear. On the way to Galveston, he catches up with the outfit Dodd was in during the war and learns he's in San Antonio.  On the way to San Antonio, Chenneville meets up with the Marshall who is pursuing him.

Germany 1923: Hyperinflation, Hitler's Putsch, And Democracy In Crisis, Ullrich - B

                      Nineteen twenty three was postwar Germany's annus horribilis, the year in which just about everything that could go wrong did. Yet somehow the fledgling democracy survived.

                     "On January 11, French and Belgian troops marched into the industrial Ruhr Valley," because  the Germans weren't keeping up with the reparations owed the Allies. The occupation met with universal outrage. Successful German passive resistance led to the arrest of business leaders, including the chief executives of Thyssen and Krupp. In March, thirteen Krupp employees were killed by French soldiers. Soon, German acts of sabotage thwarted shipments to France. The Allies, the German government, management and labor continued to posture and negotiate into the summer, at which point the government's cost of supporting the people of the Ruhr Valley began to accelerate inflation. The government fell in August. Currency devaluation and inflation meant that everything cost a million marks or more. By the middle of 1923, the mark slid from 5000 to the dollar at the beginning of the year to over a million. By November, the exchange rate was 830 billion marks to a dollar. The continuing loss of value was devastating at all levels of society. A lost war followed by revolution and national poverty led many to lose faith in the country. 

                    Gustav Stresemann became Chancellor and Foreign Minister on August 13th. He renounced passive resistance, implemented currency reform, and achieved agreement with the Allies to revisit Germany's ability to pay reparations. When the communists joined in coalition governments in Saxony and Thuringia, the Reichswehr threatened to intervene because of widespread fear of revolution.  The potential for a communist uprising faded when the Comintern withdrew its support. The right, particularly in Bavaria,  continued to call for the end of the republic and the enthronement of a Bismarck-like messiah. The Munich-based Nazis offered up their chairman, Adolf Hitler, as the man who could save Germany. On Nov. 8th at the Burgerbraukeller, which was packed with the political leaders of the community, Hitler fired a shot into the ceiling and declared "the revolution has come..." Hitler and Ludendorf spoke, the crowd sang the national anthem and the Nazi's arrested all Bavarian office holders present at the hall. The Reichswehr and the local police fired on Nazi marchers the following day and ended the putsch. Hitler was arrested two days later. Dreams of a right wing takeover faded.

                  The issuance of new Rentenmarks in November stabilized prices, and began a slow return to some sense of financial normalcy. In the Ruhr, an agreement was reached to turn over 18% of all coal produced to the French. At the end of November, the government fell and Wilhelm Marx formed a new cabinet. Armed with temporary emergency powers, the new government stabilized the country by increasing taxes, reducing the number of civil servants, and  increasing the length of the workday for hourly employees. Consumer goods appeared in the Christmas markets; the worst seemed to be over.

                  In contrast to the major socio-economic problems the country faced, it prospered culturally, as the world of Weimar saw a growing, sophisticated film industry flourish. In the theater world, Berlin eclipsed Paris and London with forty-nine theaters, half of which seated over a thousand. Architecturally, the Bauhaus movement attracted world-wide acclaim.  

                 The beginning of the new year brought cautious optimism to Germany. The Allies, led by the US, realized that a Germany in chaos was in no one's interest, and worked to resolve the debt problems. The US's Dawes Plan established more reasonable terms for the Germany, leading the way to American investment in the country. The French reluctantly agreed to leave the Ruhr in a year. "The postwar era was over, and the path had been cleared for Germany to rejoin the international community as an equal member." The next five years in Germany were prosperous and successful, but they did not last. Reliance on American finance became an anchor after Wall Street crashed in 1929. Politically, the country could not reach consensus and struggled, with the extremists on the right and left always in counterpoint. In the end, Germany succumbed to Hitler because there was not enough belief in or support for democracy.                 

The Bitter Past, Borgos - B+

                      This novel is a well-done mystery/thriller set in northern Nevada in one of the least populated counties in the US. Just west of Lincoln County was the test range for the US nuclear bomb program in the 1950's. A great many people died as a direct result of the tests and as well as many over the passing decades because of their exposure to carcinogens. A specific test in 1957 is part of the background of our story. The county sheriff, Porter Beck, is a native of the area, a combat vet from Iraq, and who also spent five years in the Army's counter intelligence operation in Moscow. The murder of an elderly FBI retiree leads to an investigation by Beck and a high level female agent from DC. Two FSB agents are in the US tracking down elderly Nevadans who may have been a double agents in the fifties. It's fast paced, fun and has a plot line that gets your attention ( if you can excuse some over the twists and turns at the end).

Reykjavik, Jonason & Jakobsdottir - B

                      This is a mystery that feels a bit contrived, perhaps how a novel written by AI would feel. Likely, it's just the translation. Lara, a fifteen year old girl working as a maid, disappears from an island in Rekjavik harbor and is never found. The investigating officer is told by a superior to let the matter drop after he questions some well connected professionals who may have been involved. Thirty years later, a reporter is looking into the story and is told by a caller that she'll tell him know where Lara is buried. He is soon pushed in front of a bus, and his sister takes up the cause. The sister figures out who the mystery caller is, solves the murder, and writes the article in her and her brother's name.

The Secret, Child & Child, B

                     This novel is one of the handful that flashes back to Jack's career in the Military Police. He's called onto a task force set up in DC that is trying to find out why scientists who worked on a project in India in 1969 keep getting killed. It turns out that the Army/CIA project caused the deaths of over a thousand and the repercussions still reverberate 23 years later. Reacher is of course Reacher: tough, charming, and brilliant. This is the fourth collaboration between the Child brothers, and Lee's finale.  My guess is that the series survives in his brother's hand, but it appears to me as if it won't be a highlight of my Octobers going forward.