Continental Reckoning: The American West In The Age Of Expansion, West - B

              "Between February 19, 1846, and July 4, 1888, the United States acquired more than 1.2 million square miles of land."  The three events that expanded our nation were the annexation of Texas, settlement of the Oregon issue with Great Britain, and the US victory in the Mexican War. The acquisition of all this territory  placed great stress on the compromises made between the Northeast and Southeast over slavery. 

             The first event in the making of the West and the ensuing national transformation was the discovery of gold in California. The population and economy exploded, and thenceforth "the region would be the most culturally and ethnically mixed part of the nation." The region's isolation, population growth, and gold created wealth led to a booming, diversified, and quickly mature economy. One observer said it was as if "the lights went on all at once." Throughout the country, Indians were starved, slaughtered, and evicted from their homes. In the fortyyears after the finding of gold, 90% of the indigenous peoples were eliminated in California.  

            An important question was if, and how,  the western half of the continent would come under the suzerainty of Washington. Surveys in the 1850's were the first steps in establishing what lay between California and the settled eastern half of America. Of prime import was agreeing on a route for the first transcontinental railroad. The Southerners, hoping to spread slavery west, were pining for a southern route through Texas and the New Mexico Territory.

           "The emerging West's fluidity, its sheer up-for grabness, brought a near fatal continental disharmony." "Bleeding Kansas was as clear an instance as we would have of how the emerging West could interact with the East to shift the nation's course, in the case of making national calamity more likely." The territory of Kansas adopted two constitutions - one endorsing slavery and one outlawing it. Violence ensued, and the federal government backed the slaveholders, although there were only a few hundred slaves in the state. Kansas would only join the union after the southerners seceded. The western aspect of Kansas's struggles was about the confiscation of land given to the Indians in order to accommodate railway interests. Indians lost approximately one-fourth of the lands of the entire state.

           The war saw a  profound expansion of federal power through laws establishing land grant universities, 160 acre homesteads and the Pacific railway. The West was further organized by the admission of new states and  territories. The government's concern about the safety of travelers going west led to ongoing confrontations and more death for the Indians of the Plains. As the war closed, the government had to implement policies integrating the freed slaves, resolving the status of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese in California, and continuing to incorporate the Hispano's who became American by treaty. The plan for the hundreds of thousands of Plains Indians was to make them Christian herdsmen or farmers.

         Binding the West to the rest of the country became a priority. The two most important tools in the process were the railroads and the telegraph. With governmental financial support, the first transcontinental telegraph was completed in late 1861. Eight years later, the country would be linked by a railway system stretching from coast to coast. Roads spread to every corner of the West carrying freight and passengers. "More land in the nation was pulled into connection with other places...than in the previous two and a half centuries." Railways and roads led to extensive exploration and mapping. Ethnologists and linguists studied the indigenous people of the plains with the goal of "occupying native homelands and commanding their resources" and "fitting Indian peoples properly within the nation with as little disruption and conflict as possible."

          The number of non-Indians on the plains grew from 179,000 to three and a half million. The Americans who poured into the West were a diversified group, creating cities and towns with the highest percentages of foreign born in the US. The majority, about 60%, were men. "The West can be imagined as a college of masculine subculture at work seizing and transforming the land." Women and children would eventually follow as the land was settled.

        "Farmers, ranchers, and miners did not intend to cut the legs from under Native Economies, but they were doing exactly that." Cattle ranching is a "prime illustration of how the West was being sewn into a larger national and global framework." Cattle were amassed in the southwest, but needed in the northeast. Thus began the cattle drives north to railheads, and the physical transformation of the region.  "Ranching imposed both and economic an cultural order on the national homeland." The grasslands where the Indians grazed their horses and where the bison roamed were consumed by cattle and later fenced-in. Farming also took away more grasslands. The foundation of Indian life on the plains was gone.

        Washington believed it imperative to make the Indians farmers. Many tribes tried, but failed, because the prairies where they lived were not susceptible to long term agrarian success. Drought, fires, and most often locusts and grasshoppers defeated them at every turn. The reservation system led to the once mighty freemen of the Plains living on handouts from the US government. In the end, it was not the US Cavalry that removed the Plains Indians from their homes. It was financially driven civilians seeking wealth in mining, stability in farming, and a market for cattle.

         This book is the winner of this year's Bancroft Prize. Academic histories have their ups and downs, and chapters about locusts, mining camps, the economics of farming, and the legalities of mining claims can be wearying. But the big picture perspectives about how the West drove so many national issues, about the absorption of the lands taken from Mexico, and the physical reordering of half of the United States  are intriguing and fascinating. 

         

Kantinka, Graver - B+

         This extraordinary novel, which is based on a true story, is about the Cohen family. It begins in Constantinople in the opening years of the twentieth century. Rebecca is the middle child and our storyteller. The family is prosperous and happy, but the war brings changes. In post-war Istanbul, the new Turkish state no longer wants the Jews, most of whose families have lived in the city for over four centuries.  The Cohen's go to Barcelona. Rebecca's skill as a dressmaker allows her to get a job, but she has to feign being Christian with the name Maria. She soon saves up enough to quit and start selling her own wares. She marries Luis, who she later learns suffers from being gassed in the war and cannot read or write. With exception of bed, Luis is pretty useless and seldom home. Rebecca returns to her parents' home with two sons and soon learns that Luis is dead. She hears from her sister in New York who suggests Rebecca meet Sam Levy, widower of a girl who had been Rebecca's best friend in Constantinople. She meets him in Havana, marries him and moves to Astoria, NY. Sam's daughter, Luna,  is severely disabled and cared for full-time by Sam's mother. While waiting for her sons to arrive from Spain and her new baby to be born, Rebecca tackles the issues surrounding Luna and teaches her to use a potty, engage her legs to start walking, and convinces her she has a purpose in life. The family moves to Cambria Heights, a small community in southeastern Queens, where they purchase a home and Sam opens a candy store. They work hard, raise their children and look forward to their first grandchild. This book has been positively reviewed, has received awards, and is the first book among the thousands I have read over sixty-five years to feature the corner of Queens where I grew up. 

The Road To Murder, Trincheri - B

             This is a pleasant police procedural set in Tuscany and featuring Nico Doyle. He is a retired NYPD detective who returned his wife's ashes to her hometown and decided to stay. He has a new girlfriend, a job as a sous chef and most importantly, is an unofficial assistant to the local police department. When a wealthy woman, estranged from her children and about to sell the family estate to an international hotelier, is found murdered, Nico is called in to help. Lots of food, cooking, and detective work.

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., And The Origins Of America's Invasion of Iraq, Coll - B+

                  Saddam was a principal in the 1968 coup that brought the Baath Party to power. A decade later, he was president. His goal was to modernize every aspect of the country and create a nuclear capability. In 1980, he attacked his Shiite neighbor Iran because of their religious differences and his belief that the new revolutionary government was weak. "The Iran-Iraq War was a fiasco of command incompetence and martyr's blood that would claim about one million casualties over the next eight years." Fearing a fundamentalist victory, the Reagan administration authorized CIA assistance to Iraq. 

                 Throughout the 1980's, Saddam encouraged the creation of a nuclear weapons capability under the supervision of Jafar Dhia, a western educated scientist. Saddam and Jafar decided on a uranium enrichment program modeled on the Manhattan Project. Saddam  feared that the US was helping Iran in order to prolong a war between two US enemies. The disclosure of the US's use of Israel as conveyor of American arms to Iran in the Iran-Contra affair convinced Saddam that the US, Israel, and Iran were in league against him.  

                The regime then turned on the Kurds, razing villages, gassing indiscriminately, and killing as many as 182,000. The Reagan administration continued its support of Saddam. The summer of 1988 finally saw the end of the war that had cost Iraq a fortune in blood and treasure, all without any positive results. The fall of the Berlin Wall heightened Saddam's anxieties about the US, but the Bush administration assured him of its support. Saddam felt that he had protected the Gulf states from Iran and expected that they should forgive his debts in recognition of his service to the Arab nations. Kuwait's refusal incensed him. He invaded in late July, 1991. 

                  The invasion drew immediate international condemnation. The US began to plan for war. President Bush superbly managed a vast allied effort with the approval of the US congress and the American people. The initial US onslaught was aerial and a complete success, destroying the Iraqi air forces,  ground forces, and infrastructure. The Iraqis retreated from Kuwait as the coalition ground forces attacked. It was an unmitigated slaughter. After a hundred hour war, the US declared Kuwait liberated and the war won.  In Iraq, a rebellion broke out that was particularly threatening in the southern Shia communities. The Republican Guards responded with barbaric brutality. The US chose to not intervene, although it was hoping the rebellion would topple Hussein. The US imposed economic sanctions until there was a full disclosure of the regime's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The Iraqi's destroyed most of their WMD, but failed to document it and were later unable to prove it to inspectors.  UN inspectors confirmed that they had been working on a nuclear bomb.

                 Bill Clinton inherited America's 'half-war' with its daily tensions around the US no-fly zone in northern Iraq.  It "was a Bush hangover he wished to avoid." The 1990's ground on with the same repeating themes: the CIA unable to penetrate or topple the regime, Saddam enriching himself and his allies despite the painful sanctions, Saddam baiting and annoying Washington, and the no-fly zone requiring constant US military activity.  "Saddam Hussein was becoming the new Fidel Castro, entrenched in power and feeding off America's ineffectual enmity." Pressure began to build on the US to reduce the sanctions as death and disease wreaked havoc on the Iraqi people. The UN believed that by 1997 all of Iraq's WMD and long-range missiles had been discovered and dismantled. A year later, Saddam banished all inspections. The US began bombing, and the Republicans clamored for Saddam's overthrow.  In office, the new Bush administration made no change in Iraq policy.

               On September 12th 2001, Saddam blamed the US for provoking the attack on itself. The Bush administration knew that al-Qaeda was responsible, but believed that Iraq was also involved. In early 2002, Bush made his 'axis of evil' speech by which time half of the country believed Iraq had been involved in 9/11. By the summer, the US acknowledged to the British that it would go to war with Saddam in 2003. Bush spoke at the UN and and stated that we "know" Iraq has WMD's. Tony Blair published a dossier affirming that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons, and had acquired uranium from Africa. The momentum was building. The US Congress authorized war against Iraq. Saddam let the UN inspectors back in and they found nothing. The problem was that many people thought Iraq was lying. Bush later remembered concluding that Saddam wouldn't subject himself to war if he didn't have WMD. In February of 2003, Colin Powell spoke at the UN asserting that Iraq had WMD based on "invented, misinterpreted, and exaggerated intelligence." On March 7, UN inspectors repudiated all of America's positions on Iraq's weapons. Nonetheless, George W. Bush and Tony Blair went to war on March 17th.

                    Bush had "careered toward an unnecessary war that he and his war cabinet marketed through exaggerations of available evidence and unabashed fearmongering, persuaded as they were by instinct and flawed intelligence that Saddam's continuation in power posed an unacceptable threat." The invasion was a success; the occupation was a debacle.

                   The author is a great researcher and writer. His two multi-award winning books on Afghanistan were extraordinary. As Saddam spent a decade and a half on the front pages, this seems just a bit less interesting.

                

Spook Street, Herron - B+

                  In the fourth in the Slough House series, personnel changes are in the air. Catherine has resigned, although Lamb has been sitting on the paperwork. There are two new horses. River is off to France in an attempt to find out why someone tried to kill his grandfather David, an MI5 legend who is losing it. Both River and Lamb worry that the service may be trying to dispatch the old man. Concurrently, MI-5 figures out that the man who committed an act of domestic terrorism had an old MI-5 passport that stemmed from the days when River's granddad was running the show and made a few deals with some folks in France. The mysterious people in France strike against the Slow Horses by taking away River at gunpoint. And amazingly, they send a shooter to Slough House where David is being hidden. Two folks are hit, including one of the horses before the killer is shot. The best so far in my book - well told, insightful, and remarkably witty.

Gun Street Girl, McKinty - B+

                  This, the fourth in the series, is the best by far. Duffy's team is working on a series of garden variety murders, the solution of which looks too obvious and unlikely. They dig deeper and stumble upon a caper involving the theft of missiles from a Belfast manufacturer. An American Marine lieutenant colonel is somehow involved, but he manages to get away. As is often the case, Duffy suffers a remarkable sequence of injuries including a beating at the hands of the Yanks. This is his last case with the RUC since he's accepted a position with MI-5. Unfortunately, a helicopter crash ends his new job offer and it's back to the Carrickfergus office, the ultimate RUC dead end.  Once again, brilliant story-telling, perfect pacing, and unending insights into the Troubles.

The Dredge, Flaherty - B

               About thirty years ago, brothers Caleb and Ambrose confronted the local bully who had just shot their dog with an arrow. In moments, the shooter Ray is dead and under the winter ice of Gibbs Pond. Caleb, a long time Honolulu realtor gets a call from his brother. Ambrose stayed in their hometown and now someone is going to dredge the pond. This novel is an intriguing dive into guilt, fear of the past, and the damage that living with it all can wreak.