The Battle, Rambaud - B+

                          This novel is the first in a trilogy. It won the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Academie Francaise. It depicts Napoleon's first loss in Europe in 1809 at the Battle of Essling.

                          Vienna lies on the southwestern side of the Danube, while Essling is across the river to the east. Napoleon entered Vienna unopposed on May 13th. The soldiers of the Archduke Charles were on the east side of the river. Napoleon ordered the construction of two bridges to cross the Danube. The first, to a mid-river island, was completed in four days, and the shorter, second one, in a day. French troops immediately occupied the towns of Essling and Aspern, entrenched and awaited the Austrian attack. On the first day of battle, the Austrians sent boats filled with stones down the Danube and  were able to break up the pontoon bridge, thus taking away France's ability to reinforce the eastern bank of the river. With only 30,000 men on the battlefield, their backs to the river, and outnumbered 3:1, the French position was precarious. Austrian artillery opened up, and that was followed by five cavalry charges. The Austrians had their way the first day. Throughout the night, the French surgeons walked among the injured, marking lines with chalk on arms and legs to guide their assistants in performing amputations. For those too far gone, a chalk mark on their foreheads meant they should be allowed to die in peace. Late that night, the bridge was patched together and reinforcement crossed over. At 3 AM, the Austrians opened fire with their artillery, and an hour later attacked the French lines.

                         When the fog lifted, the French attacked and overran the first lines they met. Upriver, the Austrians floated a burning three story mill into the river and it again broke the bridge into two pieces. Once again unable to reinforce his soldiers, Napoleon ordered them to regroup in the defensive positions they had held the night before.  As the day wore on, both sides began to run out of ammunition as the casualties mounted all around. The day petered out and darkness fell. Each army sent out parties to find weapons and armor among the 40,000 dead. At midnight, Napoleon ordered a retreat. After the survivors reached the island, the bridge would be completely destroyed and the army would re-enter Vienna. Marshall Massena was the last Frenchman to leave the left bank behind. As two-thirds of the dead were Austrian, the Archduke did not pursue. Napoleon and his army recovered in Vienna. A little over a month later, he had his revenge on the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram.

                         This novel was written a quarter-of-a-century ago. However, it is based upon the copious notes that Balzac collected in the two decades immediately after the battle. He told a great many people of his intentions to write about Essling but he never did.  The author has done as excellent a job as any I have read depicting the utter randomness of the slaughter, the horror of the 19th century battlefield, and the absolutely crazed atmosphere of the hospital tents where the surgeons allotted twenty seconds for each amputation.

The Fleur de Sel Murders, Bannalec - B

                       The most charming aspect of this series is the immersion in all things Breton, and the wonderful stories that set this Atlantic province off from the rest of France. This story features evil doings in the White Land, the place where Breton sea salt is collected and harvested. The pools go back over a thousand years and the tools that the paludiers use are from the 12th century.  The marshes are regulated and overseen by two different entities working to assure the safety of the salt and the adherence to the ancient ways. When shots ring out, Commissaire Dupin begins to investigate and he uncovers a plot to generate microbes that can stave off green algae. If truth be told, the plot line of the crime and its investigation is not nearly as well done as the earlier novels. On the other hand, if one is interested in thousand year old methods of salt cultivation, this is the place to be.

The Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, And The Making Of Modern Media, Hartman - B

                       "By the end of the nineteenth century,  the North Pole had replaced the Northwest Passage as the Holy Grail of Arctic exploring." The field had been abandoned  by governments, and was left to entrepreneurial explorers, often backed by newspapers. The NY Times backed Robert Peary, and the NY Herald, Frederick Cook.

                       The world of America's newspapers was about scooping the competition, and there was none better than the New York Herald. It was the premier paper in the US, if not the world, because its owners, Robert G. Bennett and his namesake son, were willing to spend any amount for a story and were the first to make extensive use of the telegraph and trans-Atlantic cable. They beat their competition on Custer's Last Stand by four days. The Herald sent James Stanley to Africa to find Dr. Livingstone, and began backing Arctic exploration in the 1870s. In September of 1909 when Dr. Frederick Cook wired from the Shetlands his claim of North Pole achievement, he did so with a 2,000 word article for the Herald. A week later, the Times received a telegram about reaching the Pole from Navy Capt. Robert Peary who was in Labrador.

                      Cook was the more accomplished and experienced of the two. He had been the physician on a Belgian expedition that wintered in Antarctica. Peary's efforts in the north of Greenland and on the ice had cost him most of toes. Peary, though, was well connected and the Peary Arctic Club built him an icebreaker that helped him achieve a farthest north in 1906. The following summer, Cook sailed north. Peary was delayed until 1908. An important member of Peary's Club had died and he looked all over New York for alternative funding. The Times paid for exclusive reporting rights.

                     As Cook did not return to civilization with any of the instruments he took north, nor any documentation, his claim was met with skepticism. He told the world he would provide his proof in the book he intended to write. Among those who stated he did not believe Cook was Peary. Thus began an unending controversy. And as it turned out, Peary had no compelling proof either.  As the bickering and mudslinging wore on, public opinion leaned toward Cook. The National Geographic Society conducted a perfunctory review of Peary's records and awarded him its Gold Medal. The University of Copenhagen rejected Cook's purported proofs out of hand. For all intents and purposes, Cook was an international pariah. The US Congress reviewed the work of the NGS on Peary and concluded it was "perfunctory and hasty," and that its examiners were "prejudiced in his favor." Peary's claims were now as suspect as Cook's. Two decades later, Roald Amundsen, conqueror of the South Pole, flew over the North Pole in a plane and most experts agree he was the first to 90 north. In the end, the conclusion has become that Cook never really tried, and Peary did not get all that close to the Pole.

The Helsinki Affair, Pitoniak - B

                      A walk in at Rome's CIA section of the embassy speaks to the number two, Amanda Cole. He tells her that a US senator will be assassinated in Cairo, and she believes him. Her boss, however, does not. When an 83 year old Sen. Vogel has a stroke in Cairo's heat, she is promoted and the station chief is sent to the hinterlands. Soon she is running her Russian agent, and looking into a very complex matter that the senator was working on. He was working with a different Russian, who had shared with him the Russian president's attempts to influence financial markets in the west. Things get really complicated when it appears that Amanda's dad may have helped the Russians thirty years before. A bit too plot twisty for me.

Alias Emma, Glass - B+

                      Emma Makepace is a junior officer with MI6, whose boss asks her to speak to a young physician in London. Michael's parents were former Soviet defectors, and now decades after the fact, Russian hit men are fanning out all over Europe killing their friends and colleagues who worked in the nuclear program years ago. A revenge inspired series of killings leads to Michael's parents being taken into protective custody. Michael refuses, and the hope is that he may listen to a younger person. Emma approaches him and he does refuse, but changes his mind when Russian agents make an appearance at his place of work. Emma and Michael must get to MI6 HQ's, but are completely stymied by the fact that Russians have hijacked London's ubiquitous CCTV system. They cannot go a block without being seen. Off they go through back alleys, hidden mews, on a canal, underground where the Fleet River still flows, and onto the Thames in a stolen inflatable. Russians are at every corner, but Emma gets Michael to safety. Excellent thriller hijinks.

Simon the Fiddler, Jiles - B

                     Simon Boudlin, 23 year old fiddler extraordinaire, is drafted into the Confederate Army deep in the heart of Texas in the spring of 1865. After a very brief exchange of fire with some Yankees, the Confederates surrender, and Simon is the lead musician at that night's festivities. He sees Doris Dillon, an 18 year old woman indentured to the Union Army's colonel, and falls immediately in love. She heads to San Antonio, and he and a few other musicians go to Galveston. They scrape out a living until year's end, when they move to Houston. Things pick up and they start to make money, and Simon begins to save as his goal is to purchase some land in Texas. He also manages to open a line of communication to Doris. After playing a wedding in Corpus Christi, he heads for San Antonio. He again finds work, and contacts Doris. However, meeting Doris is a fraught enterprise, as Col. Webb is the locale's senior officer, martial law is the law of the land, and Simon has no discharge papers from the Confederates since he had simply walked away. Simon purchases land 400 miles north on the Red River, and begins to dream and plan an idyllic future with Doris. He and Doris plan a getaway from the mean, lying and thieving Colonel and his family. Doris and Simon marry after Webb has him arrested on trumped up charges. They manage, barely, to head into the future on their own. This is the fourth book I've read by this author. She is very, very good, although I'm not sure how many books involving walking around post-war Texas are necessary.

Saying It Loud: 1966 - The Year Black Power Challenged The Civil Rights Movement, Whitaker - B+

                      "After a decade of watching the Civil Rights saga play out in the South, a restless generation of Northern Black youth would demand their turn in the spotlight. Before the year 1966 was over, the story would alter the lives of a cast of young men and women, almost all under the age of thirty, who in turn would change the course of Black - and American - history."

                       Sammy Younge, a student at The Tuskegee Institute, and son of local Black elites, began working for the civil rights movement in 1965 as a student organizer. He met, and was mentored by, Stokely Carmichael, the New Yorker who worked for the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On January 3rd, 1966, Younge spent the day registering Blacks to vote. Later that night, he left a party to go out and buy some mayonnaise and cigarettes. The owner of a service station shot him after he asked to use the restroom and fill up his car. His murder shook a lot of younger Blacks who were losing patience with Martin Luther King Jr's.  philosophies of integration and nonviolence. John Lewis, the SNCC chair, issued a statement on Younge's murder and the continuing deaths of Black Americans in the Vietnam War. In Atlanta, newly elected state ep. and former SNCC press liaison, Julian Bond, was expelled from the legislature, before being sworn in, for supporting Lewis and opposing the war and the draft. January also saw Martin Luther King, Jr. move into a slum apartment in Chicago, and Huey Newton and Bobby Seale get together in Oakland to begin to sort out how to approach all of the injustice they faced. In Lowndes County, Alabama, Carmichael worked on a project that he and Younge had begun. He organized a Black party to counter Wallace's control of the Democratic Party. Under state law, parties had to select an animal image to help their illiterate voters make a selection. Carmichael selected a black panther. Over 2,000 Blacks were enrolled to vote, and in the May primaries, Blacks voted in the county for the first time since Reconstruction. A month later, the SNCC rewarded Carmichael by electing him chairman. On a march through Mississippi initiated by James Meredith and featuring Dr. King and Carmichael, Stokely took the advice of a SNCC staffer, Willie Ricks, and made a dramatic night time speech. Instead of demanding 'freedom now,' he shouted out that "what we want now isBlack Power." Within a week, the phrase appeared in hundreds of newspapers and in the national magazines. The Meredith March continued and successfully registered over 4,000 new voters. However, extreme official hostility led to a tear gassing, the further radicalization of Carmichael, and some rejection of King's middle of the road approach to civil rights. The 25 year old Stokely embarked on a two month tour of the country and his friends and colleagues began calling him 'Stokely Starmichael.' By the end of the summer, the national press was focused on just what the catchphrase meant and what its impact on the movement was. In Chicago, Dr. King's northern crusade was faced with violence from white ethnics and the police leading him to make a deal with Mayor Daley. Many viewed it as a 'sellout.' As the summer wound down, Newsweek reported an in depth poll that showed whites were less enthusiastic about civil rights than they had been, and that Blacks were less and less patient. Carmichael became further radicalized when jailed for eight days in Atlanta as the SNCC tried to rein in his more over the top statements.  In October, he went to Berkeley after an invitation from the SDS to speak, and a telegram from candidate Ronald Reagan asking him to not come and "stir strong emotions." He spoke against the war without any emotions being stirred. Reagan won his election, as did many law and order Republicans in a clear backlash against civil rights. In Oakland, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton started wearing berets and wrote up the Ten Point Program, the founding document of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Early the following year, they were joined by Eldridge Cleaver. In December, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of seating Julian Bond, and in an upstate NY conference, the SNCC dismissed all of its white staffers.  In December, the first Kwanza was celebrated in Los Angeles.

                    In 1967, the FBI ratcheted up its efforts against Black nationalism and virtually declared war on anyone they feared may become "messiah" in the Black community. They particularly focused on the Panthers. The Black Power movement needed a charismatic leader to take it forward, and it never found one.  Stokely Carmichael, the person Hoover feared could be the messiah was targeted by the Bureau and left the country in 1968. This is a truly superb book.

Old God's Time, Barry - B+

                    Recently retired as a detective for the Dublin Garda and long a widower missing his wife June, Tom Kettle sits quietly in a rental overlooking the swirling seas off Ireland's east coast sometime in the 1990's. He looks back on a life that has been filled with unimaginable pain and suffering. His former colleague and boss, Jack Fleming, shows up and asks for his help. A few days later, Tom takes the train into Dublin and heads for the precinct where he used to work. They've asked him back because they are reopening a cold case he worked on years ago involving the murder of a  pernicious rapist priest. Both Tom and his wife had been orphans, raised in the prison-like institutions run with a mean spirit by Ireland's iteration of the Catholic Church. Tom had been abused and raped by brothers; June abused by nuns, and raped by a priest for six years. Somehow, they had survived, had a loving and successful marriage, and raised two children. The priest who had raped June was the victim of the long ago murder. The priest's colleague suggests that Kettle may have been there that day in a desperate attempt to halt the justice that is headed his way for his own contemptible sins. Tom gladly submits to a DNA test that is negative.

                  This book was long listed for the Booker, an award that the author has previously won. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes. "Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." William Yeats.

Dead of Night , Scarrow - B

                      In the second in this series, we find Inspector Schenke trying to stick to the letter of the law in his investigations for the Berlin police as Germany descends into war and the law seems to be becoming the whim of the Nazi Party. He investigates the disappearance of disabled children who are under the care of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses. He finds out bits and pieces of what we now know was the extreme eugenics program known as Aktion T4, whereby the Reich murdered the racial undesirables. Schenke is man of character and pursues the matter as far as he can before he is called off by Reinhold Heydrich himself. 

Song Be, Adams - B

                      This novel, by a 1967 West Point grad, is subtitled 'A Legacy of Vietnam' and is based on true events. It is the story of Lt. Richard Foxworth, a Forward Observer who is wounded in combat and recuperates first  at Walter Reed, and then at Rollingwood Sanitarium. Although he continues to rehabilitate his leg, he is at Rollingwood because of a recurring nightmare from the day he was injured. The doctors and nurses slowly help him recover his memory of that day and help him face the reality that his leg will never be the same. His Army career  is over. This is a powerful and explicit tale of dealing with PTSD and, in this instance, of making a recovery. The depictions of the battle at Song Be are also truly excellent. Thanks to my good friend, Mike Connell, for introducing me to the author years ago, and for sending me a copy of the book. 

The Last Ships From Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and The Race To Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I, Ujifusa - B

                     "Between 1881 and 1914, over ten million people crossed the Atlantic from Europe to America. Over 2.5 Million of them were Jews." Russia was forcing people out, and America's door was open. Three men, Albert Ballin, Jacob Schiff, and J.P. Morgan helped make this exodus a reality.

                     Ballin was born in Hamburg in 1857. As a child, he helped his father with his struggling migrant ticketing business, which he took over at the age of 17 after his father's death. He allied with the Carr Line to begin sending passengers to the New World. As emigration from Germany and Great Britain slowed, it grew dramatically from Russia. Czar Alexander III rejected the liberalism of his assassinated father, and began to harass all of the empire's minorities, particularly its Jews. The pogroms that began in 1881 were "ferocious and terrifying." America was the preferred destination, and Ballin would figure out how to transport Russia's Jews to the New World. In America, a successful Wall Street banker, Jakob Schiff, was committed to Judaism and the plight of those in Russia. He organized the city's charities and contributed his wealth to pave the way in America for the millions who would need help assimilating. Meanwhile, the Hamburg-American Line (HAPAG) was in need of  a rejuvenation and it turned to the upstart Jewish entrepreneur. "As the new manager of HAPAG's passenger division, the young Albert Ballin had engineered an improbable backdoor takeover of one of Hamburg's most prestigious companies." He upgraded the fleet and soon Hamburg was flooded with thousands of impoverished Jews seeking to escape. A cholera epidemic caused Ballin to alter his business model. He partnered with North German Lloyd (NDL) in Bremen, and assumed responsibility for processing immigrants at the border with Russia and quarantining them from the general Hamburg population. However, the increasing tides of immigration were stoking nativist policies in America.

                    Boston Brahmin Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge began the fight to bar entry to the US. The Immigration Restriction League was founded in Boston and targeted Jews and Italians. Congress passed a literacy test bill, but Grover Cleveland vetoed it. In New York, Schiff worked tirelessly to bridge the gap between Midtown's German Jews and the Russians on the Lower East Side. He coerced, organized and managed a massive volume of charitable giving. In 1903, Congress passed, and Teddy Roosevelt signed, the Anarchist Exclusion Act. At the same time, JP Morgan began to think about arranging for control of the North Atlantic's shipping lines. He put together a deal whereby he purchased the White Star Line from its English owner, and made an affiliation deal with Ballin. Both entities would ratchet up the volume of immigration.

                    The changing politics of Russia also increased the number of refugees seeking to depart Russia. The 1903 Kishinev pogrom ramped up demand, as did the Russo-Japanese War. Russia blamed its failure at war on the Jews, thus accelerating their departure. More and more of the empire's Jews poured into America, where nativist sentiment was becoming mainstream. An even greater threat to the transatlantic trade was the possibility of war in Europe. Ballin continued to build ships for the trade, ironically launching the world's largest passenger ship in June, 1914. War ended the migration from Europe, left over half a million Jews in "refugee limbo,"destroyed HAPAG and eventually, Albert Ballin.  Ballin committed suicide the day the Kaiser abdicated. Jacob Schiff died in 1920 and did not live to see the  law strictly limiting immigration to Northern Europeans.  This is an interesting and compelling story, but one that doesn't seem to merit 325 pages. It felt like the telling of a much broader story, with a lot of background on peripheral themes added in order to lengthen the story.

Edge of the Grave, Morrison - B+

                     This superb novel is the first of two featuring Jimmy Dreghorn, a detective on the Glasgow PD in the early 1930's. It provides a deep and insightful look into a city torn by religious rivalries, haunted by poverty, and struggling from the consequences of the Depression. Jimmy is asked to take over the case of a murdered bon vivant, brother-in-law to the man who was Jimmy's captain on the Western Front for the entirety of their four years in the trenches. The plot is quite complex involves high-level corruption in the Corporation, the name of the informal powers that be who run the city. There is gang violence, mostly along religious lines and in the pursuit of illegalities and ill gotten gains. The murderer and blackmailer turns out to be someone Jimmy knows very well.

The Plinko Bounce, Clark - B

                      Andy Hughes has used his William and Mary law degree for seventeen years as a public defender in southern Virginia. He's tired, fed up with the miscreants he's been defending and in need of a break. He resigns, but agrees to finish a murder case he's been assigned. Because of a mistake in the reading of the Miranda warning to his client, he has the confession bounced. He knows his client is guilty but has to do his job and provide the best defense he can. At trial, Andy misdirects the jury toward the adultery of the decedent's husband and his meth-addicted murdering client goes free. When the client threatens Andy's family, he has to solve matters extrajudicially.