The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, And Deception On The Eve of World War I, Brunt- B+

                       Rudolf Diesel's "engine was the most disruptive technology in history." When he went missing on a Channel crossing in Sept. 1913, there were various theories about his death. One was suicide, and another was that his enemies had arranged his demise. He was a genius and an idealist who hoped that his small and efficient engine would change the world - and it did. This is his story.

                       His family was Bavarian, but he was born in Paris on March 18, 1858. His innate curiosity was evident at an early age, when he spent his free time at a technical museum sketching all of its exhibits. War in 1870 saw the Diesel's flee to London because of the anti-German feelings spreading throughout Paris. The family sent Rudolf to Augsburg when a relative offered to board him so that he could attend school in Germany. Thanks to a few businesses centered there, the ancient city was "a hotbed for rising engineering talent." In 1875, he graduated from the Augsburg Polytechnic School with the highest grades in the school's history. He was awarded a scholarship to attend university in Munich. He studied thermodynamics and became "obsessed with engine inefficiency." Once again, he graduated with the highest grades ever.

                   He went to work for a German firm in Paris, where he met and married Louise Flasch, a German governess. Although he was working in refrigeration, he continued to be focused on building a small efficient engine that would provide opportunities in rural areas away from the big cities and their massive industrial plants. Rudolf, Louise, and their three children moved to Berlin 1890. He resigned from his job and received a patent in 1892 for the 'Process for Producing Motive Power From the Combustion of Fuels.' "What Diesel theorized was a frightening threat to the established modes of power of the day and the engineers who designed them." Rudolf obtained the support he needed to build his engine from Heinrich Buz and Friedrich Krupp, two of Germany's leading industrialists. The engine, which used compressed air instead of a flame for ignition, was revealed to the world in Feb. 1897. It was now up to the industrial world to decide the engine's uses. It soon became apparent that it would replace the steam engine as the leading propulsion mechanism in the world. Augustus Busch paid Diesel one million marks for the rights to manufacture and distribute the engine in America and Canada. The Nobel Family created a venture with Rudolf to encompass the  Russian market. He was now a wealthy man. The technology spread around the world quickly and was highly desired because it did not involve burning petroleum.  However, the "internationally networked approach of scientists that Diesel envisioned soon gave way to the proprietary, militaristic approach of independent and militaristic nations." 

                Rudolf returned to the laboratory to work with his licensees to make certain that the engine was commercially viable. He triumphed at the 1900 Paris World Fair with an 80 hp engine that ran on peanut oil, was extremely quiet and gave off virtually no emissions. Rudolf's success was a threat to the burgeoning petroleum industry in America, where the internal combustion engine was growing in popularity. At home, Wilhelm II concluded that a submarine was the best strategic weapon to compete with Britain, and that a Diesel engine was the only way to power an undersea boat. "A frenzy of development work began to advance the military application of the engine." In Augsburg, Maschinenfabrik (M.A.N.) was leading the world in engines for submarines and would build almost 600 during the Great War. They were so superior to everyone else's so that the US Navy took another twenty years to match their engines. A Danish firm built the 'Selandia,' a substantial commercial vehicle, without steam and only Diesel engines that so impressed the First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill, that he began the conversion of the Royal Navy's engines. 

             As Germany and Britain continued their manic arms race, Diesel went about his business traveling the world and working on the adoption of his engine. The year 1913 saw not only its adoption for maritime use, but also the conversion of America's railroads to Diesel engines and the first tests of the motor in an automobile. Rudolf Diesel could not have been more successful. On the night of Sept. 29, he boarded the SS Dresden to sail from Ghent to England. The next morning, a neatly folded coat and a hat were found on the deck. Rudolf was gone. The first posited theory was that his fall was accidental. Suicide was not seriously considered because he was healthy and happy. More sinister theories arose suggesting both that agents of the Kaiser or the petroleum industry disposed of him.

            The author believes that Rudolf was working with, and cooperated with, a British ruse. He deplored Prussian militarism and did not approve of the Kaiser's ambitions. Before he left home, he gifted scientific materials to a museum, and showed his son where all of his important papers were. The family quickly accepted the suicide theory. That he was working in Canada became the story for a while, until the British press stopped writing about him. The author suggests that the government suppressed the newspapers. In Canada, there was a secretive effort at the local Vickers plant that led to the successful construction of Britain's first submarines. Vickers also obtained a number of patents that were markedly more sophisticated than the skill level of its engineering department.

            This is a very good book and one worth reading, if only to better appreciate how extraordinary the man's engine was, and still is. As for Churchill spiriting him off to Canada, I'm not overwhelmed. Some of the evidence is interesting. But, it is hard to believe that one of the most famous men in the world could disappear into a shipyard in Canada without a word of it appearing for over a century.

                

Sacred Foundations: The Religious And Medieval Roots Of The European State, Gryzmala-Busse - B, Inc.

                       The Roman Catholic Church "was a transformative force" in Europe a thousand years ago. It freed itself from monarchs, "transformed the European legal order,"  and created new political concepts. The premise of this book is that "the church heavily influenced European state formation," and that the states that emerged emulated the church. The power of the church stemmed from its vast wealth as the largest landowner on the continent. The church had mastered the collection of taxes and was a vast, efficient bureaucracy with the best educated people in Europe on its staff. The church anointed emperors, was omnipresent in everyone's daily life, and controlled access to eternal salvation. This thesis conflicts with the traditional bellicist approach, which believes that the driving force behind state formation was the need to wage war. 

                     This is an extremely academic history and one that has totally befuddled me. I understand how the interaction between the states that centralized, France and England in particular, and Rome, could lead to their adoption of papal governance systems, which in turn helped them develop. On the other hand, much of the book focuses on the endless conflict between the church and the Holy Roman Empire, and the papacy's attempts to destabilize the empire. The empire, as the secular government of northern Italy, was in constant conflict with the church, its southern neighbor and ruler of the Papal States. The church, after winning from the empire the right of the College of Cardinals to elect the Pope and the Pope's right to appoint bishops and collect taxes, encouraged the clerics in the HRE to be active politically leading to a system where the church and state did not diverge. Both Italy and Germany didn't centralize until the 19th century, affording the papacy the chance to assert temporal power in central Italy. Reconciling the premise of the book with the outcomes in England, France, and Germany is beyond my abilities.

                    

The Paper Man, O'Callahan - B

                       In 1930's Vienna, Mattias Sindelar is such an extraordinary footballer that he is called 'The Paper Man'  because he shreds the opposition. He is a man about town, star of his local club team and the country's national side. He meets and falls head over heels in love with the much younger Rebekah Schein,  She eventually leaves her home in the country and moves to the capital to be near him. On the day of the Anschluss, Mattias disrespects the German football authorities after playing with and beating the national team in a friendly. He is now being watched by the Gestapo. He convinces Bekah to leave for Ireland, where she has family in Cork. He makes each and every arrangement through his innumerable contacts for her to escape through Switzerland, France, and London on the way to Ireland. She gives birth to a son, Jack, a few months after arriving, never tells Jack about his father, and dies while the boy is still a youngster. In the early 1980's, a box of his mother's possessions is handed to him when the extended family members sell the house where they took in Bekah, and where Jack was raised. His father-in-law reads all the correspondence to him and tells him of the unlikely love story and that his father was one of the most famous athletes in Europe. They travel to Vienna and meet with one of Mattias' oldest and dearest friends. He gives Jack two pictures, one of his parents blissfully enjoying each other before the world fell apart. The second is a picture of a month old baby with the notation "my boy" on the back. A touching tale.

The Devil Aspect, Russell - C

                     This is a lengthy novel set in Czechoslovakia in the mid-1930's. There are two parallel stories throughout. The primary focus is on Dr. Viktor Kosarek, a Prague psychiatrist who goes to work at a mysterious castle in the almost-medieval countryside. The castle is home to the Devil's Six, the country's worst murderers, and Kosarek attempts to plumb the depths of their psychoses using experimental drugs. Back in Prague, Det. Lukas Smolak pursues a serial killer, believed to be emulating Jack the Ripper. The police call him Leather Apron because his brutal work is reminiscent of a butcher, and butcher's wear leather aprons.  The stories merge in the end when Kosarek is determined to be the murderer in a plot twist that feels like a cheap trick, rather than a stroke of genius. I guess I failed to see the use of the words gothic and horror in some of the descriptions.

The Cold, Cold Ground, McKinty - B+

                       This absolutely fabulous novel is set in Belfast in 1981. Det. Sgt. Sean Duffy is a rare bird on the RUC: he has a graduate degree in psychology and is Catholic.  His squad catches what appears to be a straight forward case. A serial killer is killing gay men, leaving notes, and provoking Duffy. The team is pleased to work on a matter that doesn't involve the Troubles until it learns that the first victim was high up in the IRA;  indeed he was in charge of internal security. Duffy speaks to various members of the IRA, follows up in the gay community, and extracts information from some of the Ulster paramilitary units. But after coming up empty, he is relieved of the case. He won't let it go, and faces MI-5 and a rogue group of Ulster assassins before matters are resolved. This a a very well done police procedural, but the real value is how in depth and insightful it is on the Troubles, when Belfast was wracked by killings, bombings, fires, strikes, explosions, and virtual outright urban warfare, all driven by centuries-old sectarian hatred. An excellent read.

Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame And The Fight For A New World 1848-1849, Clark - B

                       "In 1848, parallel political tumults broke out cross the entire continent, from Switzerland and Portugal to Wallachia and Moldovia, from Norway, Denmark and Sweden to Palermo and the Ionian Islands. This was the only truly European revolution that there has ever been."

                        The tumult of revolution was occasioned by poverty. As societies industrialized and cities became more crowded, the living conditions of the urban poor deteriorated into a hell on earth. Demographic growth helped contribute to "massive impoverishment." "An overview of Europe in the decades before the 1848 revolutions reveals a panorama of social conflicts driven by competition over every conceivable resource in a world marked by scarcity and low rates of productivity growth." A painful "international commercial-industrial crisis" followed. Food shortages led to starvation, death, and food riots. The social order was fraying.

                      "Early-to mid-nineteenth-century nationalism was above all a feeling, rather than a set of principles or arguments." A hostility to foreign rule was the common theme of nationalism. It also implied a kind of popular sovereignty as nations resided in peoples not dynasties. Europe had seen a "cascading of political upheaval" in 1830. The glorious French overthrow of its government in 1830 was followed by unrest and upheavals in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Poland. "Europe would spend the next eighteen years digesting the implications of 1830." What became known as the July Revolution inspired thoughts of republicanism, and enhanced freedoms in France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Hungary. As the decade of the 1840's progressed, aggressive demands for more rights were made upon the rulers of France, Italy, and Germany.

                     The first light of revolution came in January in Palermo, Sicily. Within weeks, the Bourbon king promised a constitution. In Paris, in late February, government suppression of an assembly sent people into the streets, and up went the barricades.  Violence exploded and the man in the street quickly overran the soldiers of the regime. The French authorities could not contain an outbreak much broader and deeper than 1830. Louis Philippe, France's elected monarch, abdicated and fled. A month later, "simultaneous detonations" spread through the continent. In Vienna and Buda-Pest, demands for reform of the monarchy were made. Chancellor Metternich resigned and fled to London. "The revolution was a denunciation of certain policies and ministers, not the monarchy as such." The emperor announced that delegations from around the empire would convene and create a constitution. When a squad of soldiers attacked demonstrators in Berlin, the outrage spread through all classes of the city. The king announced the "abolition of censorship and the introduction of a constitutional system" for Prussia. The Milanese expelled their Austrian masters. In the Netherlands, the king conceded constitutional reforms before any demands were even made. There were no organized planners, nor was any one group in charge. "The revolutionaries of 1848 were not the executors of a plan, but improvisors for whom the present was an exposed frontier."

                      The revolutionaries now faced the challenge of establishing institutions to actually govern, and to do so in a democratic manner. "Across Europe, the journeys from upheaval and conflict to the quasi-stabilization of a post insurrectionary order reveal an extraordinary diversity of forms." The provisional governments that were established were "fragile." Parliaments were formed, and constitutions drafted. Emancipation in one form or another came to slaves in the colonies, women, the Roma and the Jews. "The outbreak of revolution in 1848 brought euphoria and a sense of widening horizons to Jewish communities." However, these newly found freedoms and rights would prove to be short lived. In the aftermath of the upheavals, "everything was up for grabs" and the outcomes were vastly different from country to country. France established the Second Republic, the 39 states of the German Confederation pursued freedoms of the press and assembly, but mostly just talked and debated national unification. Throughout the lands of the Habsburg there was pandemonium that could be the only result in an empire with dozens and dozens of peoples, languages, and local traditions. Hungary freed the serfs and realized independence by establishing a Diet with a light "personal" commitment to the emperor. In Galicia, the Ukrainian language was officially recognized,  Romania set up a provisional government, Denmark established a less autocratic constitutional monarchy, Sicily overthrew the Bourbons, and in northern Italy, the various city-states declared their independence from Vienna.

                    The counter-revolution that followed was "an arc as expansive and encompassing as the revolutions themselves." The first monarchy to be restored was in Naples and Palermo, where the forces of the Bourbons began to roll back the revolutionaries in May, 1848. The king abolished the institutions of independence and began to punish the rebels. Ferdinand II's retributions inspired autocrats throughout Europe. In June, the Austrian Empire struck back in Prague and bombarded the city. Austrian armed forces under Radetzky fought throughout Italy and defeated the various Italian armies, which fought bravely but were not coherently organized to the degree necessary to take on the established forces. The court in Vienna then struck at rebels in Hungary and in the Balkans. In Paris, a rightward drift in the parliament eventually led to the election of Louis Napoleon, who was known to be holding monarchist dreams. "In Berlin too, the energy of the revolution was dissipating fast." The Hohenzollern king conceded that the government was of the king and the people, but otherwise hammered home the monarchy's control. Although the revolution was being extinguished everywhere, it successfully came to the fore in Rome. The Papal State, in existence for 1100 years, saw Pope Pius IX flee because of his connection to the Austrians, guarantors of his temporal power. The ultimate force of the counter-revolution was the army of the Tsar. Russia invaded Romania and most importantly, restored imperial order in Hungary. In the end, "the transnational revolutionary networks never mustered a power capable of fending off the threat posed by the counter-revolutionary international."

                    The various restorations led to the punishment and repression of the revolutionaries and thousands were exiled. However, there was not a return to the status quo ante. There were now parliaments throughout the continent, and even in Austria, where Franz Joseph rescinded the constitution, he acknowledged "principles of equality for all citizens." There was a new moderation set by a "post-revolutionary rapprochement." Countries allowed for increased trade and encouraged economic liberalization in the pursuit of growth. France's railways entered a "golden age." The cities of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, sites of barricades and fighting, all modernized through the construction of roads, sewers, parks, and systems for the delivery of clean water. The walls that defended Vienna were torn down and the famous Ringstrasse was built. "The panorama of administrative change after 1848 suggests revolution has had a homogenizing, or Europeanizing, impact." "For generations, the question of whether these revolutions succeeded or failed" has haunted historians. What they were is "deeply consequential." Institutions and everyday life changed for the better, although universal suffrage was still decades away, and the continent would be rent by nationalism and war in the 20th century. This tome is over 700 pages of densely detailed academic history. I picked it up because the author wrote a brilliant book about the origins of the World War I a decade ago (Sleepwalkers, a 2013 blogpost). This, however, saw me peruse, skip and scan a vast amount of material.

                

Hot Springs Drive, Hunter - C

                      Jackie is a mother of four boys, exhausted, and eating to get through the day. She and her next door neighbor, Theresa, are best friends and they join a weight loss club together. Both lose the desired weight, but it is Jackie who had the furthest to go, and it is Jackie who feels totally empowered with her new, sleeker body. She begins having sex with Theresa's husband, Adam, in just about any place they can find, and in as many positions as they can dream up. When Theresa finds them, Jackie rushes home worrying about the future of her family, but everything goes to hell when her oldest kills Theresa. The families scatter and remember, and remember.

The Kind Worth Saving, Swanson - D

                       Wearying, burdensome, and confusing are the thoughts I have about this criminal procedural/thriller. Joan and Lily are very bad girls.

The Times: How The Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism, Nagournery - B +

                        This is the story of the world's greatest newspaper over the four decades from 1976 to 2016. It successfully navigated and thrived through the transformation of journalism from the time of print advertising to the digital era, and still remains the 'paper of record.'

                       The Times of the mid-1970's was run by Abe Rosenthal; Bronx raised, CCNY educated, and totally committed to the highest standard of objective journalism. He loved the Times and worked to maintain its position as the nation's premier newspaper. He and the publisher, Punch Sulzberger, changed the paper by  increasing its features on the arts and entertainment and adding more photographs. Metropolitan coverage expanded to the suburbs as people fled the city amidst its financial crisis. Sections on science, lifestyle, culture, the weekend, and entertainment were added. For all of the Times' success, Rosenthal was a bully overseeing a paranoid, unhappy newsroom. He was right of center, fearful of left-leaning politics and abhorred homosexuality. His last great contribution came on the day the Challenger exploded in 1986. He cleared the front page, allocated ten pages of the paper to the story and declared that the banner headline would be simple and to the point: 'The Shuttle Explodes.' The Challenger coverage won a Pulitzer. His mandatory retirement was sixteen months away. Rosenthal's personal life was spiraling out of control and he did not like Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., who would be replacing his dad as publisher. Punch Sulzberger relieved Rosenthal and replaced him with Max Frankel, whom he tasked with improving the paper, making it a happier place, and preparing the Times to begin using color. That said, the paper was immeasurably stronger than it had been when Rosenthal took over in 1969.

                    Frankel had arrived in the US at the age of 10 when his parents fled Poland and the Nazis. He graduated from Columbia and worked at the Times his entire career. He immediately succeeded in making the newsroom a more relaxed place. One of the most important decisions he faced was the selection of a Washington bureau chief, a job he once had. Many felt that the 200 miles between NY and DC felt like 1,000 as there was a constant rivalry and in NY, they could never get over being beaten by the Post on Watergate. He appointed Craig Whitney to oversee the 65 person staff. That Whitney was the wrong man for the job became apparent in his first year, and Whitney was soon replaced by Howell Raines. In 1992, forty year old Arthur, Jr. replaced his dad as publisher of the Times. He was the fifth member of the family to hold the position. Sulzberger's first major decision was to move Raines to NY to head up the editorial page. And most importantly, he announced that he was 'platform agnostic' as the Times moved into the era of the digitization of the news. The man who succeeded Frankel as executive editor in 1994 was Joseph Lelyveld.  

               Under Lelyveld, the company began its transition to the internet. The decade also saw the Times come to grips with the changing focus of news throughout the country. It resisted reporting on rumors about Bill Clinton's extra-marital escapades until Kenneth Starr began his pursuit of the scandal with Monica Lewinsky. The Times worked diligently to uphold its traditional standards and struggled with confirming its sources at a time when news reporting was becoming instantaneous. Lelyveld would later complain that "Rosenthal had the Pentagon Papers" and he "got the semen stained dress." That said, the Starr Report and the impeachment were the most important stories during his tenure. As the decade. came to a close, the integration of the website and the newsroom continued to be a colossal, generational  struggle. 

               Sulzberger appointed Howell Raines to the top position after Raines assured him he would promote a Black man to managing editor and, he would focus on the necessary digital transformation. His first day on the job was Sept. 5, 2001. The Times tackled 9/11 with its usual thoroughness and commitment to excellence, placing sixty six stories in the next day's paper. The Times coverage of Sept. 11 won six Pulitzers. The Times had met the challenge, but Raines was pushing too hard, particularly on the Washington Bureau. The entire organization became unsettled, as Raines and the DC Bureau Chief, Jill Abramson, battled. Raines brought in two reporters to the Washington Bureau who he tasked with delving into the cascading drumbeats of war against Iraq. One was a hard charging reporter with extensive mideast experience, Judith Miller. Another reporter who Raines was enthused about was Jayson Blair, a young Black man from the DC area. Managing editor Gerald  Boyd, the Black man that Raines put in place because of the publisher's concerns about the paper being lily white, also backed the young man. Blair was required to quit for making up stories all over the country when in fact he never left his Brooklyn apartment. An internal investigation lead to a four page story in the Sunday paper acknowledging significant institutional failures. After a town hall with 600 Times professionals was a disaster, the bottom fell out, and both Raines and Boyd were given their walking papers. 

              Bill Keller was the man selected to take over. Another problem from the Raines era was the work of his protege, Judith Miller. She had reported on the Bush administration's rush to war in a generally supportive fashion. Investigations by the news staff and the new Ombudsman concluded that the Times had been "duped" and certainly had not exercised its usual editorial rigor. After Miller went to jail to protect a source who was on Cheney's staff and, who she misled her superiors about, her long career was over. The Great Recession forced the Times to do something it had never done: it laid off newsroom staff. Newspaper circulations and ad revenues began dropping at the turn of the century. The Times folded the Metropolitan section into the paper, cut its dividend and reduced pay across the board. "The Times website was a glimmer of good news in the swirl of plummeting revenues, declining readership, and layoffs that engulfed the newspaper as it struggled through the 2008 recession and the reordering of the business." The debate began about whether they could implement a paywall. The Times merged the print and digital newsrooms in 2010 and began to charge for a digital subscription the following year. 

               In 2011, Jill Abramson was appointed executive editor. Her task was more difficult than her predecessors'. The job had once been exclusively about the newspaper, but now it encompassed the Times website and ongoing coordination with the business side. She would later say that she hated the job from day one and constantly was in conflict with the executive trying to make the NYT a successful digital business. She was fired less than three years in and replaced by Dean Baquet, the managing editor. Baquet fully embraced the challenges of merging the print and digital sides of the Times. The Times was transformed. By the end of 2016, it would have almost two million digital subscribers. AG Sulzberger succeeded his dad as publisher in 2018. Two years later, the digital subscriptions topped 6.5 million and the print paper dropped to 374,000. 

              I have revered this paper for sixty years. It was my introduction to the world outside of blue-collar southeastern Queens. I consider it one of the most important influences in my life. I'm very happy that it has survived, and a few years ago I purchased a gift subscription for my granddaughter.

The Lost Wife, Moore - B

                       Sarah is left at an orphanage by her mother.  She grows up, and marries a violent man who she leaves in the dead of night. She travels to Minnesota in the year 1855. It is a time of desperation and crushing poverty on the frontier. She marries a physician, has two children and is living happily in the Dakota Territory where her husband takes care of the Sioux. She befriends many of the women who later protect her after she and her two children are taken captive during an uprising in 1862. Many, many whites along the frontier are murdered, and the US Army is in pursuit as the Indians travel north and west. Eventually, Sarah and her children are freed by the cavalry. The Indian warrior who had protected her and the children by claiming her as his wife is sentenced to death. He had never touched her, had acted honorably and she trys to plead his case, but fails. Because she had been close to the Indians, white society shuns her, as does her husband, who has survived the uprising. This novel is based on the true story of a white woman kidnapped for six weeks by the Sioux in 1862. She too attracted society's disdain for her empathy for the Indians.

Rock With Wings, Hillerman - C

                        Sergeant Chee is sent to relieve an ill colleague in a far corner of the reservation where a Hollywood studio is filming a horror picture in the desert. He discovers a grave and embarks on finding out if it's real or for the film. He stumbles into a murder and money laundering, all of which he happily passes off to the FBI.  Back at Ship Rock, Bernadette stops the car of a man acting suspiciously, and later finds out that he is in the witness protection program, and working for someone selling solar panels on the rez. Wonderful to get back to the Navajo Tribal Police, but as I mentioned previously, this author is not in her dad's league.