A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens - A*

                   "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It was the fall of 1775. Mr. Jarvis Lorry of Tellson's Bank advises young Lucie Manette that he is off to Paris to see one of the firm's clients—her father, long assumed dead for eighteen years. Lucie and Lorry arrive at the Defarge wine shop in Paris, where Ernest escorts them to a garret on the fifth floor. There, they find an old man making shoes. Monsieur Manette has just been released from the Bastille. Within an hour, the three are in a carriage headed for London. Five years later, the same trio sits in court, watching the treason trial of Charles Darnay, accused of helping the French aid the Americans in their war with Britain. Upon his acquittal—due to mistaken identity—Lucie rushes to him. With the trial behind them, the doctor’s and Lucie’s lives return to normal.

                       In Paris, Monsieur the Marquis St. Evremonde’s carriage charges through the streets, scattering the poor before crushing a young boy in front of Defarge’s shop. The Marquis disdainfully tosses a few coins to the grieving father, then is stunned when they come flying back at him. Madame Defarge stares coldly at the aristocrat as he drives away. Unbeknownst to him, a man from the crowd clings to the underside of his carriage. Later that evening, the Marquis’s nephew, Charles Darnay, joins him for dinner. He pleads with his uncle to abandon his cruel ways, noting how the family name is now despised. The Marquis replies, “Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.” Charles renounces the title, the property, and France. At sunrise, the Marquis is found dead, a knife in his chest with a note: “Drive him fast to his tomb, Jacques.” The assassin is quickly captured and executed.

                      Darnay settles into life as a French tutor in London and asks Manette for Lucie’s hand in marriage. The young couple is soon wed with Dr. Manette’s joyful blessing. The years pass. They are blessed with a daughter, but lose a son.

                     The summer of 1789 brings revolution to Paris. Among those storming the Bastille is Manette’s former servant, Defarge. Leading the women in acts of ferocity is Madame Defarge. Vengeance floods the streets, and the nation burns in agony for years. Over time, many aristocrats lose their homes and fortunes, fleeing to London. At Tellson’s, a packet arrives addressed to the Marquis St. Evremonde. Lorry makes inquiries, but no one claims the name. Darnay admits his identity and reads the letter at home. It is from Gabelle, the man entrusted with his estate. Darnay had instructed him to collect no rents and to aid the peasants when possible, but Gabelle has been imprisoned for helping an emigrant aristocrat. Darnay resolves to go to Paris.

                 On his return to France, Darnay learns that, as an emigrant and aristocrat, he has been condemned to death. He is taken to La Force prison and placed in solitary confinement. Manette and Lucie rush to Paris. As a former prisoner of the Bastille, Manette is hailed as a revolutionary hero. With Defarge’s help, he is allowed to write to Darnay. Manette soon gains favor with the Tribunal and secures Charles’s transfer to the general prison population. For fifteen months, Lucie and her daughter wait while Manette insists he can save Charles. Finally, he receives word: Darnay will be tried the next day at the Conciergerie. At the trial, two witnesses—Citizen Gabelle and Dr. Manette himself—sway the jury. Charles is declared free.

                  That night, however, he is re-arrested on the accusation of Madame Defarge. Before the Tribunal, Ernest Defarge testifies. He reveals that, on the day the Bastille fell, he entered Manette’s old cell and discovered a letter hidden behind a stone in the wall. Written around 1767, the letter recounts the Evremonde family’s crimes of rape, murder, and oppression in Beauvais. For these sins, the court condemns Charles Darnay to death.

                  As his execution nears, Sydney Carton enters Darnay’s cell. He has bribed the jailers and devised a daring plan. Carton, a dissolute lawyer who once helped free Darnay from the treason charge in 1775, has long loved Lucie in silence. Though wasted by drink and regret, he admires all the Manettes stand for. Because of his striking resemblance to Darnay, he offers to exchange places. By the time Carton approaches La Guillotine, the family is already safe. “It is a far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far better rest that I go to than any I have ever known.”

              

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, LeCarre - A*

           Just over fifty years old, Tinker is one of Le Carre's finest, and likely his most famous. There is a fabulous film with Gary Oldman as Smiley, but more importantly, there is Sir Alec Guinness as Smiley in one of the greatest mini-series ever. The author is the man behind significant additions to the language of spying to wit: mole, lamplighter, honey trap, watcher, juju man and baby sitter. The Oxford English Dictionary approached him to ask if he originated the word mole to describe an embedded traitor. 

          Retired unceremoniously after an operation blows up in Czechoslovakia, George Smiley is aimlessly drifting when a higher-up at Whitehall gets in touch. The Foreign Office believes there is a mole at the top of the Circus and asks George to come back, and find the traitor. In addition to the mess in Czecho, an agent in the field provided very compelling material to the Circus that could lead to the mole, but someone in London told Moscow Centre. 

         George, with Peter Guillam as his primary aide, goes to work. As Peter is still at the Circus, he checks the logbook for the night of the Czech operation that led to the capture of Jim Prideaux, and sees that it was excised with a razor blade. Clearly, someone pretty high up fiddled with the logs. As George digs in, he focuses on Operation Witchcraft, an agent run by Percy Alleline, the new C, whose secret agent has everyone in Whitehall salivating about his product. George spots some inconsistencies  in the material, leading him to believe it might be right out of Karla's playbook.  He contacts another agent fired after he and C were sacked, and sits down with him.  The other fella had heard from a Czech that the Soviets were preparing the day before Prideaux was wounded and captured by clearing the area in the woods where Jim was going to meet the escaping Brigadier General. Percy Alleline fired the agent who had heard the story for overreacting to a rumor.  At this point, the only question is who is the traitor.

       When George finally meets with Prideaux, Jim tells him that Control said it was either Tinker - Percy Alleline, Tailor - Bill Haydon,  Soldier - Roy Bland, Poorman - Toby Esterhase, or Beggarman - George Smiley. Prideaux details in depth his capture, months of interrogation, brief chat with Karla, and return to the UK. The Service pensions him off without an explanation and not much of a good-bye. 

        Peter lures Toby to a meet at a safehouse, where to Toby's surprise, George sets out his theory about how Operation Witchcraft has been handled. It is an unparalleled lecture on spycraft - utterly brilliant. Toby provides George with the address of the safehouse where the Russian providing the Witchcraft material, Alexi Polykov, meets his handler, and George has the signal sent to Polykov for a meet. As George sits in the basement, he listens to Polykov and the mole, Bill Haydon, his oldest friend, who is extremely close to Jim Prideaux and Peter Guillam, and occasionally Ann Smiley's lover, chatting upstairs having drinks. Guillam is outside with Oliver Lacon, top Foreign Officer executive. It is over. Haydon is taken away by the Inquisitors. Polykov is detained for a while, notwithstanding his diplomatic passport, Alleline is put on leave and George is put at the top. George is called to Sarratt to chat with Bill. One night, someone evades security and Bill is found with his neck broken. George does not venture to guess.

       I do not think I read this fifty years ago, but believe I did about twenty years ago. Most of my fondness for this tale rests on Alec Guiness's remarkable George Smiley. I recently watched the movie a second time and find myself putting faces to names here. I intend to watch the mini-series again in the Fall.  I did not see the point of the endless references to Ann's infidelity, until I did some research.  Karla had told Haydon to pursue Ann and the affair is intended to show George's humanity and one weakness. I read this very slowly in order to appreciate it's detail and complexity. Much of LeCarre's genius lies in the tradecraft. But I just have to quote George coming to grips with retirement. "Out of date these days, but who wasn't? Out of date but loyal to his own time. There is nothing dishonorable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation." Gotta love that line.

       

        

August 1914, Solzhenitsyn - A*

            When the war began, Russia's 2nd Army was headquartered in Ostrolenka about 75 miles northeast of Warsaw. The commander was fifty-five year old General-of-the Cavalry Alexander Samsonov. The woefully unprepared, untrained, and ill-supplied army had entered East Prussia on August 6th.* Constantly conflicting orders from above, and a total lack of knowledge about the whereabouts of the Germans complicated the army's readiness. Raw troops were given equipment and sent off to the front with no training. No unit knew where it was or who was on its flanks. Notwithstanding the size of the army, all of its regulations, and the fact that there had been major reforms after its defeat by the Japanese a decade earlier, it remained a 19th century antiquity with extremely limited rail support, and a de minimis amount of artillery. Russian men marched continuously while Germans were shuttled to and from the front by an extensive railway system.  Indeed, by the time of first contact with the Germans, the Russians  had already lost a quarter of their effectives. Samsonov was under pressure from the Northwestern Army Group commander, Yakov Zhilinsky, to stay close to the 1st Army on his right, while he sensed that the Germans were grouping on his left and he should alter his advance accordingly.

          Because the commander of the German forces had failed at Gumbinnen in his attack on the 1st Army, Berlin relieved him, placed Hindenburg in charge and reinforced the army in the east. When the new commander arrived, he was handed reports about the disposition and intentions of both Russian armies. Communications between Group HQ and both armies were in the open, uncoded, and easy to intercept. The Germans positioned their forces to attack Samsonov from the north and the south, a classic pincer movement. On the morning of the 14th, the German artillery opened up. When the infantry attacked, the Russians held firm and did not waver. Nonetheless, the order came to withdraw.  The Germans pursued and attacked along the entire front of the 2nd Army. On the 15th Samsonov, once the Attaman of the Don Cossacks, rode to the front to ascertain the status of the battle, and spent the day turning around fleeing troops. After five days of fighting, the commander was overwhelmed by an impending sense of doom. "On the morning of August 16, the Second Army was a unified formation, by that evening it was a disorganized, uncontrollable rabble." They were fleeing the impending encirclement. For Samsonov "the knowledge that he had served his sovereign  and country so lamentably was a terrible, painful burden for him to bear." On the night of the 17th, Samsonov walked into the woods, sat down, and committed suicide. The Germans found his body and repatriated it through the Red Cross.

         On the evening of the 19th, the commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, advised the Tsar of an "unfortunate reverse." The duke, arguably, held little responsibility for the outcome as he was brand new to the position, and had no input on the war plans. In an immediate post-mortem, Zhilinsky blamed everything on Samsonov, but the duke silently concluded that Zhilinsky was equally, if not more so, to blame. He then asked a young colonel who he had sent on a week long tour of the front to offer an assessment. Col. Vorotyntsev pointed out that Samsonov had sent Zhilinsky a report insisting that the offensive plans he was tasked with were geographically impossible to implement and that his army, only one month into mobilization, required another month of ecpeerience. As they bickered, the Grand Duke received a telegram and proudly announced the defeat of the Austrians at Lvov.

          "Who can undertake to name the decisive battle in a war that lasted four years and strained the nation's morale to the breaking point? It can be claimed that it was the first defeat which set the tone for the whole course of the war for Russia: having begun the first battle with incomplete forces, the Russians never subsequently managed to muster enough men in time for an engagement. Unable to discard bad habits acquired at the start, they went on throwing untrained troops into action, thrusting them into the line in a series of convulsive attempts to regain lost ground. From the very first, our spirits were damped and our self assurance never regained."

             This novel is a blistering damnation of the command structure of the entire Tsarist army. It is also considered one of the finest of the 20th century. Fifty years after my first reading, I concur. I am almost speechless about the very smooth flow of page after page^, and overwhelmed by the author's insights into life, politics, war, bravery, and incompetence. Pure genius. Perhaps his greatest skill is his ability to totally immerse the reader in the first month of the war in East Prussia. You literally are in and around the Masurian Lakes, and fully feel the deperation of the Russian soldiers.

                Since this is a novel, one of the areas the author explores is the inner thoughts of Samsonov, which he obviously imagines. But it is barely fiction as it is filled with first class history. Half a century ago, I read One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, FirstCircle, the three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago, and this. I have always deeply admired Solzhenitsyn for his skills and his courage. I do not see myself tackling the two successor books in the trilogy as both are over 1,000 pages.

*Solzhenitsyn uses the pre-revolutionary calendar in use at that time in Russia. It was thirteen days in arrears.

^The translation is exceptional.

The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston 1777-1780, Atkinson - A*

                This magnificent history continues in France in the winter of 1777. The king and government were more than willing to forward endless amounts of contraband to the Americans, as any revenge against the British was exhilarating. In the capital, Franklin lied, prevaricated, and hustled for any and all help for liberty, egalite and fraternite in the colonies. In Bordeaux, Lafayette and the Bavarian, de Kalb, were plotting to escape to America. The marquis, only nineteen and one of the richest men in France, left against his king's and family's wishes. Only his wife approved.

               By July 1, the British army of 8,000 men had travelled 400 miles from Quebec to just north of Ft. Ticonderoga, the first objective of Gen. John Burgoyne's plan that would be followed by Ft. Edward, and Albany. Gen. Arthur St. Clair opposed with 2,000 men. Within days of the first shot, the Americans retreated. By the end of the month, the British were at Ft. Edward.  It had taken three weeks to go 23 miles. Supply shortages and the rugged frontier were slowing Burgoyne down.  

               To the south in New York City, Gen. William Howe worried about the breadth of his responsibilities and the length of his 3,000 mile supply line. He decided to break the stalemate by sailing to Philadelphia, leaving Gen. Henry Clinton behind to defend the city, ignoring the propitious advance that Burgoyne was making. Clinton argued endlessly for an advance north to support Burgoyne. On the 23rd of July, 280 Royal Navy vessels set sail. Howe opted for the long route to the Chesapeake, rather than the Delaware River. Washington had no inkling of where the British were headed. In late August he found out, and marched the army south through Philadelphia and on to Wilmington.

               In upstate New York, "the Canada Army remained fifty miles north of Albany, struggling in this hostile land to build up sufficient strength for a final lunge down the Hudson." Burgoyne was suffering from a serious lack of supplies.  A sally to the east ended in a rout at Bennington. Relief from the west was beaten back at Ft. Stanwix.

              After a month at sea, the British landed on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Washington's nineteen thousand men dug in at Brandywine Creek. Led by Gen. Charles Cornwallis, the British left outflanked the Americans. By dusk on Sept. 11, the Americans were in retreat. A British officer observed that Washington "beats us in running and nothing else." Two weeks later, the British entered the capital city. Twelve thousand Philadelphians had abandoned the city. Twice as many remained. Two weeks later, Washington attacked Cornwallis at Germantown. The Americans prevailed until they lost touch with their flanks in the dense and rocky forest.  

          In New York, Burgoyne wrote that he never anticipated "such a tract of country and hosts of foes without any cooperation" from Howe. After Burgoyne crossed on a temporary bridge which he then destroyed, a German general said "the Hudson has become the Rubicon." Burgoyne was approaching an army twice his, meticulously prepared by Gen. Horatio Gates, Gen. Benedict Arnold, and Col. Thaddeus Kosciusko. The lines were manned by experienced fighters, and skilled frontiersmen.  On Sept. 19, Burgoyne attacked. The battle was engaged at Freeman's Farm and fought all afternoon, on an 800 by 400 yard wheat field that changed hands six times. At day's end, the British held the farm. The British casualties were 566 men, the Americans a bit more than half that. It was a stalemate. On Oct. 3rd, Clinton sent forces north from Manhattan to assist Burgoyne. His men were stopped just south of Kingston. On Oct. 7, Burgoyne attacked at Bemus Heights on the American left. The day was soon lost. For the Americans, Benedict Arnold had carried the day as he had done the previous month.  Soon, the British were in full retreat. On Oct.17, they surrendered. America was triumphant and exultant. 

          As the year closed, many British officers were despairing of the fight in a continent where two key cities, Boston and Charleston, were separated by a thousand miles of hostile territory. It had taken the Royal Navy two months from the time the army reached Philadelphia to fight through multiple naval and ground acts of guerrilla warfare to join the army in the capital. Washington was just north in Valley Forge with 19,000 soldiers. Gen. Howe requested he be allowed to retire.

      In London, George III felt "rebellion posed the threat of mortal disorder" and "demonstrated intolerable contempt for a sovereign Parliament, as well as the sovereign himself." He could not fathom that the UK had prevailed against superior forces in the Seven Years War but could not vanquish such a minuscule opponent. Many ministers feared that the bad news from America would embolden France and Spain. Opposition in the Commons was rising.

      In Paris, the French were concerned about a British-American collusion leading to an attack on the French Caribbean possessions. The news of Saratoga reached Franklin on the 4th of December. Within two days, the king approved negotiations, and a month later, France recognized the new nation and the US had an ally.  At Valley Forge, the Continental Army survived a winter of desertions and a frightening lack of supplies. The news from France led to an explosion of national joy. When Gen. Clinton arrived in Philadelphia to replace Gen. Howe, he received orders from London to return the army to New York and prepare to fight the French and Spanish. He began a march through New Jersey. The Continentals harassed his rear and flanks until June 28th when the armies met at Monmouth Court House. The battle was a draw, and the British continued their march to New York. Washington headed to White Plains. After three years of war, Britain held New York City, and Narragansett Bay. 

      The French arrived in July, and at the end of the month  attacked Newport, which Clinton had recently reinforced. Ten British ships were scuttled, as the French entered the harbor. The ground attack consisted of French and American troops. When the British fleet appeared outside the harbor, the French withdrew to engage them at sea.  The fleets were scattered by such a fierce storm that both flagships were dismasted. When the French retired to Boston without returning to the fight in Newport, American morale suffered, and the British rallied. Fearing the return of the Royal Navy, the Americans withdrew. The British retained Newport. As the year drew to a close, the British sent forces south to the Caribbean, and to Savannah. They captured the Georgia capital in late December.

       The Spanish joined the French in the war against Britain in the Spring of 1778. In less than a year, the British had gone from "battling a noxious insurrection on the end of the earth to fighting a world war against two formidable adversaries." In New York, Clinton worried about being blamed for the loss of the war and complained endlessly to London about its failure to properly supply both materials and men. The year's strategy began in Hampton Roads, Virginia. A flotilla of twenty-eight ships and 2,500 men sailed from New York in May. The British plundered the area around Hampton Roads Bay for ten days essentially unopposed.   Clinton and Washington skirmished in the lower reaches of the Hudson River.  

      The English Channel saw a series of naval battles in August and September. The French had spent a fortune upgrading their navy and had thousands of men ready to invade England.  Nothing  came of their efforts. In the Caribbean, the French defeated the British Fleet at the Battle of Grenada, thus decimating much of Britain's sugar exports. The French money, men, and large naval presence in North America had made it impossible for Britain to recapture America.  Clinton abandoned Newport. Believing their success in Savannah could be replicated in Charleston, Clinton opted for a southern strategy.  The north was suffering its harshest winter in living memory when Clinton, with half of his army, sailed to Charleston arriving in February. They landed on the 9th, twenty-five miles south of Charleston. By the end of March, Britain had surrounded and blockaded Charleston. In early May, the garrison surrendered. The southern half of the US was unprotected. The United States suffered a significant strategic defeat in the war's fifth year. Clinton thought he had won the war. Much of Britain's elites never understood that the vast majority ofAmerican subjects of the Crown wanted the independence they demanded. Nor did they appear to understand that endlessly pillaging, marauding, and burning many US coastal enclaves endeared then to no one. Clinton left Charleston and 9,000 men under Cornwallis' command to march north in 1780. In London, George III could not see any advantage to letting the Americans go free. He believed most of his subjects were loyal. In his winter quarters, Washington received Lafayette, who had just returned from Versailles. France would not just send ships, but 6,000 soldiers as well. They would be placed under Washington's command.

     The author is probably my favorite historian and I do hope it doesn't take six years to publish the next book. I am beginning to finally appreciate that, although in American history teachings this war is portrayed as a dynamic victory over the empire, it really was much more like the post-WWII era when in the colonies of the European nations fought guerrilla wars of independence. 

 

   

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Higginbotham - A*

                As the Apollo program was winding down, NASA turned its thoughts to a vehicle that could leave the earth and return in- tact. "This would require a true spacefaring vessel, and such a vehicle remained the stuff of science fiction." A plane that could withstand the forces of liftoff, survive the "cold soak" of space,  reenter the atmosphere at 2700 degrees Fahrenheit and have  engines that could work both in the atmosphere and in outer space was seemingly impossible. Nonetheless, a plane was designed by NASA and began production at four different contractors.  NASA selected thirty-five new astronauts for the program and dropped the prior requirement that each candidate have extensive flying experience. TFNG's (the thirty-five new guys) included men of color and women for the first time. Columbia took its maiden flight on April 12, 1981 with two NASA veterans, John Young and Bob Crippen, at the controls. It exceeded all expectations and an exultant nation reveled in its success. 

              When the solid fuel rockets were recovered from the Atlantic, engineers were surprised to see that the O rings were charred after a two minute ignition. The massive 150 foot rockets weighed over a million tons and had to be manufactured in four parts before final assembly at Cape Canaveral. The O rings were part of the mechanism that sealed the parts together. NASA and the contractors' engineers believed they had solved the issue after the maiden flight, and there were no problems on ensuing shuttle liftoffs.  However in early 1984, Morton Thiokol engineers discovered another O ring erosion in two different places. The professional conclusion a month later was that future erosion was not a threat to the viability of the engine.  In January, 1985 after a once in a century freezing cold in Florida, the O rings failed to compress quickly enough and suffered significant charring. Senior executives at Huntsville and at Thiokol began to believe that sooner or later, there would be a catastrophic failure. 

             Flight STS 51-L scheduled for January, 1986 included two passengers, Christa McAuliffe, a social studies teacher from New Hampshire who would give lessons from space, and Greg Jarvis, an engineer from Hughes Aircraft selected to launch a Hughes satellite. The rest of the crew were NASA veterans; Ron McNair, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, and Dick Scobee had all flown previously. Only astronaut Mike Smith was a first timer. The crew and thousands of family, friends, and spectators descended on the Cape.  Cold weather scrubbed the launch for Sunday, the 25th, and the 26th. When Thiokol's engineers learned how cold it was, they alerted the Cape to the risks and offered a 14 man unanimous recommendation to not launch. The temperature at launch was forecasted to be 24 degrees colder than any previous launch and the O rings would lose all flexibility, be rigid, and would not hold their seal. NASA vigorously pushed back and the Thiokol men relented. Challenger would launch at 9:38 A.M. on the 28th.

           The early arrivers at the launchpad on Tuesday were shocked by the amount of ice everywhere. Florida was experiencing its second January in a row of a once in a century freeze. The crew entered the shuttle and the door was closed at 9:07.  When the Rockwell exec in California saw the ice, he told Florida that the manufacturer of the spacecraft could not assure the safety of the orbiter. NASA moved forward as another hold would disrupt the launch schedule for the year. As the countdown proceeded, the man at Thiokol in Utah who had pushed the hardest to stop the launch refused to watch on tv. At 11:39, the Challenger lifted off. Seventy-two seconds into the flight, the Challenger exploded.

           Within days, those who studied the film knew it was the O rings, and in Washington, it was decided that there would be a Presidential Commission to investigate the tragedy. Within a week, a Thiokol executive pointed out that the people from NASA were prevaricating about what happened. The commission, chaired by former AG Bill Rogers, concluded that many NASA people were lying and that their decision making process was "clearly flawed." The insistence to fly when the Thiokol people were opposed was the linchpin of their negligence. The final report was "damning." Those at NASA who lied and misled were quietly retired or shunted aside. The whistleblowers who told the truth at Thiokol became personae non gratae. In a famous appendix to the Rogers Report, a noted Caltech scientist said, "For a successful technology, science must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." Four families accepted the governments compensation, and three received awards after lengthy litigation. When Columbia failed in 2003, the report concluded that "many lessons of the Challenger disaster had gone unheeded." This very sad story is an indictment of any entity that insists on persevering through dissonant information because of the overriding expectations of accomplishing the mission. A truly great book.

            

The Vietnam War: A Military History, Wawro - A*

             "What motivated the United States to go to war and stay there was a fear of appearing weak." Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon did not want to lose a war, or be castigated as Truman was for losing China.

              Both Eisenhower and Kennedy provided South Vietnam with a minimal amount of support. LBJ inherited Kennedy's hawkish advisors, and declared he wouldn't lose Vietnam. "The State Department report of February 1964 spelled out the reality that would dog the war effort in Vietnam: it was unwinnable under all conceivable scenarios." Lyndon Johnson wanted to focus on domestic issues, and had no desire to expand the war.  He felt he could not invade North Vietnam without drawing in China and the USSR. So, variations of a limited war were the only options on the table. The reserves would not be called up, taxes would not be raised, and costs would be contained. There was no plan to win, just the hope to bring Hanoi to the negotiating table. Less than a year after his election as the peace candidate, LBJ had committed almost 200,000 men to Vietnam. The US built a hundred airbases, a dozen ports, and enough infrastructure to support a million man army.  The approach was  'search and destroy,' and to travel by airmobile helicopters. The more effort and men the US put into Vietnam, the greater the number the north sent south. In 1965 alone, the north quadrupled their men in the south. The US escalated and had almost 500,000 men there in late 1966. The year 1967 saw costs rise to $22B and 300,000 men drafted. Westmoreland requested an increase to 700,000 men so he could invade N. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and told Washington he couldn't win the war until 1972. After a year or so of accomplishing virtually nothing in the Central Highlands, Westmoreland moved the war south to the Mekong Delta, a swampy, wet agricultural region where American "mobility and firepower" would never be the game changers MACV hoped for.  Nonetheless, the Politburo in the north began to worry about America's perseverance, wealth and obstinacy and concluded a dramatic move was necessary. They decided on an all or nothing/go for broke effort in Vietnam's major population centers. In late 1967, they lured American forces away from the cities into sparsely populated areas. The NY Times surmised the war might be a stalemate, and Life magazine declared it "no longer worth winning." The goal of the Tet Offensive was not to beat the Americans, but to break the spirit of the American public. The first attacks were at Pleiku in the Central Highlands, and the US effectively and immediately countered afflicting a high volume of casualties on the enemy. In DaNang and in the Mekong, where there were fewer Americans, the ARVN refused to fight and ran from the NVA and VC. In the area around Saigon, the VC breached the wall at the US Embassy and almost overran MACV headquarters, sending Westmoreland into a bunker for a possible last stand. The US counterattacks in the Saigon area killed 8,500 attackers, thwarting the communist hope for a spontaneous uprising. To the north, the battle in Hue went on for three weeks when 6,000 NVA regulars overran the city. They killed thousands of local civilian supporters of  Saigon.  The Marines and ARVN, who fought well in Hue, eventually recovered the city. The north had suffered serious losses and Westmoreland wanted more men to expand the war. However, the sight of the Embassy in Saigon being breached convinced Americans that the North had prevailed in Tet. The physical and psychological devastation in the south shook the regime.  On February 27th, Walter Cronkite said there was no reason "to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds." He concluded that the best we could hope for was stalemate, and LBJ said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the  country." He was correct. The year 1968 saw the nation conclude the war was a mistake. One of the Wise Men, Dean Acheson who LBJ occasionally gathered for advice, told him: "We can no longer accomplish what we set out to do in the time we have left and the time has come to disengage." In March, LBJ sacked Westmoreland and announced he would not run for re-election. May saw the north initiate a mini-Tet that rocked Saigon, and killed more Americans than any other month of the war. The American aerial response left another 155,000 homeless in the capital. Johnson's attention turned to negotiations and by the fall, the US and North Vietnam were close to a deal. However, a backdoor approach to the south by Nixon and Kissinger scuttled the opportunity to end the war in 1968. Twenty-eight thousand more Americans would die before 1973.

             The man who ran on his secret plan to end the war acceded to the presidency on Jan. 20, 1969. There was no plan. Nixon and Kissinger decided to hit the north harder, turn the tide and end America's discontent with failure. He began the bombing of Cambodia, increased the use of napalm in South Vietnam, and resumed B-52 raids. He also began to withdraw American forces, and replaced them with Vietnamese. The negotiations in Paris were going nowhere, escalation had no impact on the north's determination to pursue independence, protests in America were erupting, and in late 1969, the cover up of My Lai was exposed. Chinese and Soviet support now assured that the communists were well supplied with modern weapons. At year's end, the troops met Bob Hope's Christmas show with Black power salutes, middle fingers, and a cascade of boos. MP's had to hustle Hope away. In the new year 1970, the administration set its sights on Cambodia the source of supplies for the southern half of South Vietnam's communist troops. Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia a week after reporting the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 men. The announcement led to widespread and virulent opposition at home all for an event that Nixon was advised would fail. It did. It led to the failure of the Cambodian government. Congress withdrew the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and attempted to suspend funding. By the end of 1970, the combat readiness and morale of the grunts was "rotting" away as drugs, alcohol, and a complete disregard for their being in country mounted. At home, the Calley trial was the only consequence of an investigation that found that dozens of officers, including West Point graduates, had either participated in atrocities or covered them up.  Before the Senate, Lt. John Kerry stated: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam...To die for a mistake." The last major effort in the war was that spring and was an ARVN attack into Laos intended to halt incursions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It failed because of the inability of the southerners to fight, and led to 2,000 American deaths as 726 of the 750 helicopters used were either shot down or shot up. Nixon announced that "Vietnamization was a success." Seventy percent of Americans believed he was lying. Over the winter of 1971-72, the North sent thousands more men south and even moved MIG airbases close to the DMZ in the hope of taking Saigon by May 19, Ho's birthday. The NVA launched its spring offensive in March. Once again, the ARVN were humiliated. Nixon retaliated by bombing the north for the first time in four years. American airpower ended the spring offensive. Under pressure from the Chinese and the Soviets, the North indicated a willingness to come to terms in Paris with Nixon. The agreement was signed in January, 1973, allowing the remaining 25,000 Americans and the 591 POW's to leave. It was essentially the same deal Nixon had undercut four years earlier. The North was resupplied and slowly recovered from the heavy bombing of 1972. The end for the South came when Saigon fell in April, 1975. 

              The war "was a luxury that only a phenomenally rich great power like the United States could afford." Three presidents escalated because they could and they did not want to appear soft. Jack Kennedy had toured Indochina as a senator and said that no war could be won against an enemy that "was nowhere and everywhere." War games early in the Johnson administration indicated a chance of victory if we bombed the ports and cities of the north and caused a vast amount of casualties. LBJ opted instead to slowly escalate in the hope the north would negotiate. Militarily, the US was unprepared and incapable of taking on the pure guerrilla war tactics of the VC, and the quasi-guerilla war tactics of the NVA. There were no set piece conflicts where we could prevail.  The ethos of why we fought continued even afterwards. When Saigon fell, Ronald Reagan compared Nixon, Kissinger, and Ford to Neville Chamberlain.

              This book is extraordinary because it does not focus on what every book I have read focused on, the politics and the lies. Just about everything in the last half a century emphasized the deceits about the domino theory, the deception about Tonkin, the delusional light at the end of the tunnel speeches, and the unknown and illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia that came cascading into full view with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. This story is about the endless deceptions bordering on, if not actually treason by Westmoreland throughout his tour at MACV. He and his staff constantly manipulated the numbers and lied about their meaning. Search and destroy never really succeeded, so they made up the numbers. They covered up My Lai and reveled in bombing campaigns that ended in innumerable homeless refugees. The ARVN could do nothing right, but they were a 'success.' It was a decade of deceit, delusion and contempt for the truth, the South Vietnamese, and our young men. The author highlights over and over again Nixon's actually treasonous interference in 1968.  Often mentioned here was LBJ's fear of Chinese intervention. As all of the participants lived through the Chinese crossing the Yalu River in Korea, that is somewhat understandable. I wish the author had addressed whether this was a real threat. After all, China was going through famine and the Cultural Revolution, and was almost 500 miles from the DMZ. Critics have suggested that this will be 'the' book on this war.

            

              

Postscript: I've included the three most iconic photographs that appeared in color in US magazines during the war because the author emphasizes the import of the middle one in swaying American opinion during Tet.

                               

                                                     

The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis And The Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked The World, Macintyre - A*

             "The underlying forces that produced the crisis in London more than forty years ago still agonize and destabilize our world. Britain had never before faced an international hostage-taking incident on this scale, and the siege changed forever the way terrorism was perceived, and dealt with."

              At a little after 11 in the morning on April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen entered the Iranian Embassy in Kensington, and quickly gathered up the twenty six people in the building. The police were there in minutes and the gunmen handed them a statement. They were Iranian Arab opponents of the new theocracy, who had been helped, financed and trained by Iraq, and demanded the release of 91 prisoners held by the secret police in Iran. Police, paramilitaries, firemen, medical professionals and special forces, all from different security entities, soon surrounded the building. There was limited contact between Salim, the nom de guerre of the leader, Ibrahim Towfiq, and the police hostage negotiators over the course of the day before the embassy settled in for the night. On the second day, anxieties rose as the deadline of noon for Iran to release the prisoners approached. Salim kept extending the deadline while changing his demands, and eventually asked for twenty five hamburgers and released two hostages. At day's end, little had changed and the SAS was deployed for immediate action if necessary. The third day saw the hostages and the gunmen becoming more friendly and beginning to care for each other's well-being. As the days wore on, Salim was exhausted and frustrated by the British media's failure to publish his demands and political statements. Late on the fourth day, the authorities allowed the BBC to release Salim's demands leading to a joyous celebration among the hostages and the gunmen. The release of two more hostages led to the delivery of a celebratory meal. The fifth day saw no movement or change and the authorities decided that they would enter the embassy on the sixth day.

            At 12:55 pm on May 5th, the gunmen killed an Iranian hostage who was a member of the Revolutionary Guards. Six hours later, the SAS was ordered to take the embassy. At 7:23, with the tv cameras rolling, explosives blew the skylight on the roof and the commandos entered the building. Tear gas grenades smashed through the windows and the gunmen began shooting at the hostages. Salim was the first killed when he pointed a submachine gun at the commandos. Four more terrorists fell in the melee. The youngest hostage taker was the only one captured alive. Only one hostage died. It was over in eleven minutes. 

           The British people were terribly proud and patriotic and the new PM, Margaret Thatcher, was ascendant. John Le Carre proclaimed it a triumph. The SAS was praised around the world, and was used extensively two years later in the Falklands. Saddam Hussein continued his war against Iran in an eight year grind that killed a million men. The young Fowzi Nejad was tried and sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 2008. This is a truly superb book by an excellent writer, and has been totally fascinating - because I had no idea this had happened.

A Death In Cornwall, Silva - A*

                  This is the 24th in the Gabriel Allon series, and the 14th to appear on this blog. By my estimate, Gabriel is well into his seventies and thankfully, is retired from the Mossad. He lives in Venice and restores Old Masters. He is called to Cornwall by an old friend who is investigating the murder, presumably by a serial killer, of an Oxford professor. Both the detective and Gabriel conclude that the serial killer angle is a misdirection. The professor, an expert on wartime art provenance, was likely killed because of her investigation of the past of a Picasso in a Geneva gallery. The painting was owned by a Parisian Jew who perished in Auschwitz. When the grandson of the owner falls down the stairs in Montmartre, their suspicions are confirmed.

                 Gabriel decides he must recover the Picasso for the family and help solve the murder. An intricate plan follows. He will have a wealthy friend swap six of her late father's collection for the Picasso. As Gabriel will paint the six pictures, it is also necessary to hire an established art consultant and a provenance specialist. All goes well until the day of the transfer, when the killer murder the Geneva dealer and steal the Picasso. Now, Gabriel must follow, find and dispose of the killer. His trek takes him to Paris, Cannes, Marseilles, Corsica, and Monte Carlo.

               He ascertains that the killer is the head of security for a corrupt British law firm in Monaco and he hatches a plan to out the law firm while catching the killer. Along the way, he uncovers an amazing amount of corruption at the top of the Tory Party in Britain. Gabriel's team's investigation and the information they uncover leads to the downfall of a British government, the return of the Picasso, and the death of the killer. Another excellent book in one of the four series I've been following for decades. Gabriel Allon though, upon reflection, surpasses my other favorites, Ian Rutledge, Jack Reacher and even Harry Bosch. Thus, the grade is in the nature of a lifetime achievement award.

Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia, Eisenberg - A*

            This Bancroft Prize winning history "takes as its subject the Nixon administration's conduct of the war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and the resulting diplomacy with the Soviet Union and China." It reverses the familiar belief that the war was shaped by Cold War considerations, which impacted his three predecessors, but not Nixon. If the best and the brightest in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed intellectually, in the Nixon administration, failure was a matter of selective, wishful thinking.

           In March 1968, Nixon said "I pledge to you that new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific." With talks in Paris progressing just before the election, Nixon contacted the South Vietnamese to assure them he would get them a better deal if they didn't accept LBJ's proposal. Johnson and Dirksen agreed that what Nixon had done was "treasonous," but they could do nothing because LBJ had obtained the information illegally. Nixon came into office knowing that the strength of the anti-war movement would be important in the mid-terms, and that protecting himself politically was his number one concern. Mel Laird, Defense Secretary, began withdrawing troops and labelling his action 'Vietnamization.' This notwithstanding the fact that the administration had conclusively concluded that the ARVN could not stand on its own two feet. Kissinger was concerned that Vietnamization would ease pressure on the North to settle, and the Pentagon opposed any troop reductions. There was no obvious path to a satisfactory strategic conclusion. Annoyed at the North for rocket attacks on the DMZ, Nixon authorized bombing in neutral Cambodia. The peace and anti-draft movements picked up steam in the face of the fact that Nixon seemed to be escalating the war*. On October 15, two million Americans participated in the Vietnam War Moratorium. Nixon made the best speech of his life on November 3rd rallying the 'peace with honor' believers, and successfully halting tv coverage of the second Moratorium on Nov. 15-16. 

          The new year saw the administration significantly ratchet up the existing policy of bombing Laos because the Ho Chi Minh Trail veered into the country. Massive use of B-52's killed thousands and depopulated the Plain of Jars, home to a million Laotians. Because the NVA and the NLF used Cambodia as a sanctuary, the JCS and the president initiated an invasion at the end of April. Kissinger told the Senate majority leader that Cambodia had requested military help. This was a complete fabrication. He and the president continued to lie to the press, the public, Congress, and the Cabinet. American and SVN ground forces, aided by US air support, entered Cambodia, and after a lengthy halt, the USAF resumed bombing Hanoi. Around the country, college campuses exploded in outrage. At Kent State, four students were murdered by the National Guard. Higher education in the US shut down. In Cambodia, the combination of excessive bombing and atrocities by the ARVN began a destabilization of the country that would lead to a deadly civil war. Nixon declared the operation a success, although the North Vietnamese had moved away from the border and controlled 40% of the country. Throughout the year, both Nixon and Kissinger worked back channel approaches to Dobrynin and Gromyko hoping for Soviet help in negotiating with Hanoi. None was forthcoming. Nixon frequently contrasted our clean cut boys over there against the long hair bums at home. The year 1970 saw the soldiers in Vietnam smoking weed, growing their hair, wearing non-uniform clothes, refusing to fight, and occasionally 'fragging' overzealous officers. At home, the Vietnam Veterans Against the  War publicized the atrocities of murdering civilians, calling in artillery to destroy villages as a game, raping indiscriminately, burning hooches, dousing people with white phosphorous to watch them burn, and throwing prisoners out of helicopters.  

        The year 1971 would see one of the largest operations of the war. Lam Son 719 was the South Vietnamese lead incursion into Laos. It went well for a bit, but the NVA stopped the southerners after two weeks. Soon the NVA was pounding the ARVN troops and at least 30 American planes had been shot down. Airlifted into their objective 26 miles into Laos, the ARVN was momentarily triumphant until Prime Minister Thieu pulled them out after three days. It was a rout categorized by the Pentagon as "an evacuation proceeding according to plan." "Lam Son 719 would prove to be the turning point in the American war, signaling the end of the administration's optimism." Nixon and Kissinger had deluded themselves into thinking the ARVN could cover the American drawdown of troops. Two years into his presidency, Nixon's strategy was in tatters.

         In spring the Vietnam Veterans Against the War arrived in Washington, along with Gold Star Mothers and WWII veterans. Navy Lt. John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and eloquently damned the war and those who lied to America about it. The Mothers returned their son's medals, and awards. A WWII veteran played taps for his son, and hundreds of veterans threw their medals over a fence in front of the capitol. Nixon's ratings plummeted. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators followed the next month. In June, The New York Times began publishing the top secret Pentagon Papers, proving to the world that the Johnson administration had consistently lied about the rationale for the war and what was actually happening in Asia. The war was so unpopular that Congress was regularly getting closer to voting to shut it down. 

           Nixon and Kissinger were hoping for some foreign policy breakthrough to shift America's focus away from Vietnam. That summer, Zhou invited Kissinger to China, and he visited in June and October. An agreement was made to invite Nixon to China, but there was no help offered on changing Hanoi's negotiating positions. The possibility of reducing tensions with the Soviets was also explored, and a USSR summit was also planned for 1972. Two summits, an election, and a North Vietnamese escalation appeared to be the agenda for 1972.

           Nixon went to Beijing in February, met with Mao and Zhou, was seen exchanging toasts in the Great hall, and accomplished "a public relations windfall exceeding all expectations." When asked why we were still in Vietnam if 'containing' China was no longer a strategic imperative, the president said that we could not look weak.

           "It would be another month before thousands of North Vietnamese troops began pouring into the  south." The ARVN again failed to fight. "Nixon was beside himself. After so many years of careful planning and billions of dollars, how could this be happening? He had always ignored the naysayers, domestic and foreign, who had argued that pacifying  South Vietnam was a doomed project because the local insurgents and their North Vietnamese allies would never give up no matter how intense the American firepower." Hoping he could get the Soviets to rein in the North, Nixon ordered the saturation bombing of Haiphong and Hanoi. The NYT said "The United States is the most  dangerous and destructive power in the world. Only a fool or a madman could believe that more bombing will bring peace." After a few weeks, MACV was concerned that the South would fall, as the South's soldiers deserted en masse. Nixon's response was to increase bombing the North. In May, he spent a week in Moscow reveling in his role as an international statesman.  By every measure, the Moscow summit was a success but there was no Soviet help forthcoming in Vietnam. 

            Fortunately for the White House, the NVA invasion of the South had stalled, and there were only 39,000 American non-combatants left in country. Finally, both China and the USSR urged the North to be more flexible in their negotiations with the US. Both sides dropped their most intransigent positions. The US would leave, our prisoners would be returned and there would be a cease-fire in place. For the North, they accepted the fact that they could defeat the South later. But without the consent of the Thieu government, the deal faltered. When the North insisted the US stick to the understanding, the US resumed B-52 raids in the north. Virtually the entire world expressed their outrage with comparisons to Nazi atrocities and Allied bombing excesses of WWII being made. The Chineses strongly encouraged the North to work out a settlement. The US and North Vietnam came to an accord at the end of January, 1973. "Although reluctant to admit it...for Nixon and Kissinger, the Paris Peace Agreement was never about peace. It was about getting US prisoners home, withdrawing the troops, and establishing interim processes that could persuade domestic adversaries that their pursuit of the war...had yielded something positive." For America, the war in Vietnam was finally over. Needless to say, a magnificent book.

        

         

*Nixon's first year in office saw the death of five young men from my parish: Mickey McGovern, John Dixon, Kenny Cummings, Gerry Paulsen, and Doug Brustman.

Dances With Wolves, Blake - A*

                     In the spring of 1863, Lt. John Dunbar's act of bravery so impresses his commanding officer that he is offered whatever assignment he desires.  He asks to be sent to the western frontier. Within a month, he is on his way to re-supply Ft. Sedgewick on the plains east of the Rockies in what will someday be Colorado. Upon his arrival, he finds the garrison gone. He decides to settle in, and realizes there is a Comanche camp a handful of miles to the west. He sees Kicking Bird, and after a few tentative sightings, they slowly build up a friendship, and learn to communicate by sign language. The Comanche are waiting for the buffalo and when they arrive, Dunbar joins in the hunt. He kills a buffalo, participates in the celebration and begins to feel a kinship with the Indians that he never felt in the army. As the summer passes, he spends more and more time with the Comanche and only occasionally returns to Sedgewick. Because the Indians had seen him with a wolf that followed him around the army post, they bestow on him the Comanche name Dances With Wolves. They also have Stands With A Fist, a white woman they had saved from a Pawnee raiding party when she was seven, act as an interpreter for him. He learns the Comanche language, participates in the scouting and hunting with the warriors, and slowly falls in love with Stands With A Fist. He offers to join a raiding party going to Pawnee land, but his request is denied. While the party is away, the Comanche learn that a raiding party is heading toward them. With the best warriors away, this is a very troublesome turn of events. Dances With Wolves returns to Sedgewick to recover a buried cache of rifles. He leads the defense of the village, and is heralded as a hero by all. Upon return of the war party, Kicking Bird consents to the marriage of Dances With Wolves and Standing with A Fist. On the day the Comanche were heading south for a winter camp, Dances With Wolves goes to Sedgewick to retrieve his journal and erase all evidence of John Dunbar. The fort is swarming with soldiers, his horse is shot out from under him, and he is in jail before he knows it.  The next day, the commanding officer sends him east in chains. By noon, he is rescued and three soldiers are dead.  He returns home to winter camp. The next summer is the finest the Comanche would experience. But they know that storms from the east are headed their way. A truly great novel.

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.

A Symphony of Secrets, Slocumb - A*

                      Dr. Bern Hendricks, a U.Va. musicologist, is asked to come to the Delaney Foundation offices in NY. The foundation was founded in the 1930's by America's greatest classical composer, Frederic Delaney. The foundation has found the famous missing Red Symphony, which Delaney had lost in the 20's. As Hendricks and a friend, Eboni Washington, a gifted computer specialist, pore over the notes that accompany the symphony as they try to prepare it for publication, they notice a few scribbles that attract their attention. Delaney was famous for indecipherable doodles that were interspersed with his writings. The letters J-o-R do not fit into anything that Bern has ever seen in decades of working on Delaney material. Bern and Eboni do some digging and ascertain that almost a century ago Delaney shared the same address as a Josephine Reed, a Black woman who had come to NY from the deep South.

                     Jo Reed and Freddy Delaney had met in a Harlem jazz club in 1918. As the only white player in a group, Delaney was about to get kicked out for sloppy playing until the remarkably talented Reed began to instruct him on the piano. Soon she was living in his apartment and they worked together to embellish a song that Josephine had written. Freddy sold it, under his name, to a Tin Pan Alley publisher. Soon, Jo's music and his lyrics were selling so well that he set up his own shop to enter the publishing business. As Fred become more obsessed with success, Josephine withdrew into her own world as this new go-go era was not to her liking. The two began to drift apart.

                    Bern and Eboni travel to Reed's hometown and come away with a century old trunk filled with Delaney doodles. They realize that the doodles are not Delaney's, they are Reed's. It slowly dawns on them that Reed was, at a minimum, a co-creator of all of the early work attributed to Delaney.  Both Bern and Eboni decide to continue to make inquiries, and not to advise the foundation. The foundation eventually figures out what they are up to and calls in their heaviest firepower. Lawyers threaten draconian enforcement of the NDA's and the board assures Bern they'll destroy his career if he publicizes Josephine Reed's role. That said, they do not fire him and he continues to work on Red. He realizes that it wasn't just Delaney's show tunes that Reed had composed, it was also his masterpiece symphonies, including Red. Delaney was a fraud, his reputation unjustified, and the foundation could be exposed to major losses and lawsuits. Taking advantage of an uneducated woman of color was never acceptable. Eboni and Bern research the board members and the remaining Delaneys and come up with enough dirt to compel a sit down. In the end, justice is done. Josephine's heirs are compensated, and the appropriate credit is given to her. Just an awesome novel.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, Grann - A*

                      In 1740, in the midst of a war with Spain, England sent 5 ships around the Horn to plunder Spanish galleons in pursuit of silver.  The HMS Wager was a converted East Indiaman and packed with 250 men, twice its normal complement. The ship's captain was George Murray, and she "had an unusual number of unwilling and troublesome crewmen..."  After two months and in the mid-Atlantic, the fleet was struck by typhus and 65 members of the squadron were interred at sea. Another 80 were buried at St. Catherine's, Brazil. David Cheap took over as captain when Murray was transferred to replace a captain who had died. The deceased captain  predicted that the expedition "would end in poverty, vermin, famine, death and destruction." To round the Cape, a ship passing through Drake's Passage sails through the strongest currents in the world's oceans.  The winds are ferocious, the seas are shallow, and the waves monstrously high. The area is almost always shrouded in fog. Scurvy struck while they were rounding the Cape.  Two of the ships suffered fifty-percent casualties. Three, including the Wager, lost sails and masts. Eventually, the winds scattered the squadron and the Wager was alone. She sailed north and foundered on the rocks off an island off the South American coast. One-hundred and forty-five men made it ashore, and discovered they were on an island with little food and shelter. They used the remnants of the ship to build shelters, and the wild celery they found cured them of scurvy. But they were quickly running low on provisions and winter was approaching. Discipline and order deteriorated, and Capt. Cheap began to have thieves flogged and abandoned on an off-shore island. Cheap then shot a drunk threatening the peace of the compound. The ship's carpenter began to lengthen, widen, and rebuild the ship's longboat, thus leading to a revival of the company's spirits. Soon, though there was a division amongst the men. Cheap wanted to head north and attack the Spanish. A contingent led by the ship's gunner, John Bulkeley, wanted to try for Brazil via the Straits of Magellan. As both sides dithered, the survivors dropped below 100. In October, 1741, 71 men squeezed into 2 boats and left the island, which they had christened Wager. Cheap was one of the 20 men left behind. Two weeks into their sail, the cutter with only one man aboard slipped under the waves. Eleven men asked to be left on a shore they passed and swam away. They were never seen again. Bulkeley and his men entered the Straits of Magellan. Cheap with two boats and 18 men headed for the Chilean coast. After months of trying, they returned to Wager Island. Bulkeley navigated his way through the Straits and turned north in the Atlantic. A total of 29 men stumbled into the town of Rio Grande in southern Brazil eight months after the Wager had sunk. When Bulkeley returned to England, the Admiralty decided to wait and see if Cheap survived before passing judgement on all that had happened. Bulkeley and the ship's carpenter, Cummins, published a journal that was widely read, and garnered them support from the public. Meanwhile off the coast of the Philippines, the only surviving ship of the squadron, the Centurion, chased down a Spanish treasure ship, Our Lady of Covadonga. After 90 minutes of intense battle, the Spaniards struck their flag. As it turned out, the Covadonga was the richest prize England ever took at sea. A year later, Adm. George Anson returned home to the acclaim of the nation. Ordinary seaman received 300 pounds, twenty years of wages. Anson received ninety thousand, the equivalent of 20 million today. Two years later, Cheap arrived in Dover. He was accompanied by a marine lieutenant, and a midshipman, John Byron, second son of a Lord, and grandfather of the famous poet. The three men had been captured and imprisoned by the Spanish. They were paroled in Chile and allowed to go home when hostilities ended between the two countries. The Admiralty called for a court martial and summoned all of the Wager's survivors to appear. Bulkeley and three others were imprisoned. The Admiralty, however, had no desire to air the facts of the Wager's story in public, and simply concluded that no officer was at fault for the ship's foundering. 

                    Capt. Cheap was assigned another command and performed well capturing a Spanish ship loaded with silver. Bulkeley went to America and faded from history.  John Byron was a career navy man who eventually became a Vice-Admiral. Later in life, he wrote a narrative condemning Cheap's leadership. George Anson was for decades the most famous and successful man in the Royal Navy. Wager Island remains a place of desolation battered by waves and wind. A special thanks to David Gutowski for urging me to read this truly excellent book.

Judgement Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America, Kotz - A*

                     "With the passage of the 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. told the president of the United States, 'You have created a Second Emancipation.'" They were indispensable leaders during a tumultuous time. Because of them, all people enjoy the privilege to vote, are able to eat in a public restaurant, use a public restroom, hold a job, and choose where to live. Their partnership was never easy, but it was essential. At the time of JFK's assassination,  progress on civil rights was at a dead end. LBJ and MLK became allies in the making of civil rights a moral issue. Although they later fell out over Vietnam, and each man died unhappy, "they shared a shining moment, a story that Americans would do well to remember."

                      Johnson called King on the 25th, the day of Jack Kennedy's funeral, asked for his support and stated that he'd get the civil rights bill passed. Both men realized that grief over the assassination might provide momentum to advance the legislation. They met in the Oval Office on Dec. 3rd. LBJ dominated the meeting with the details of how he would move the bill forward. King had many enemies throughout the US, but none more focused on destroying him than the Director of the FBI. Hoover despised King, believing he was a communist, and was equally obsessed with MLK's personal moral failures. On Feb. 10, the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed the House by a vote of 290-130. Attention turned to the Senate and the need to marshal votes for cloture. LBJ tasked Hubert Humphrey to manage the bill and swing Everett Dirksen over to support the vote to stop the debate. The challenge was the conservative Republicans from farm states, where there were few people of color. The religious institutions in those states took up the challenge and began to pressure their senators. LBJ hosted 150 leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and spoke to them about the bill. By April, the filibuster stood and the votes were still not there to stop it. Johnson continued his relentless pursuit of his goal by speaking to and making deals with as many Senators as he could. On June 10th, the cloture vote passed. The following week, the bill passed the Senate in a 73-27 vote. It was a pure Lyndon Johnson triumph.

                   The summer of 1964 saw continued violence and no abeyance of racial stressors in America. In Harlem, there were riots after the police killing of a teenager. Mississippi was the center of vicious KKK attacks on Blacks and civil rights workers from the north. The murders of Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman galvanized the nation and displayed the cold blooded brutality of the state's white racists, who indiscriminately killed people and burned homes and churches. The problems in Mississippi carried over to the convention in Atlantic City, where a Black delegation sought to be seated. Fearing a white backlash, LBJ succumbed to Hoover's constant drumbeat that the movement was filled with communists. He had the FBI wiretap anyone who had anything to do with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with the goal of making certain they were not seated. He orchestrated a compromise whereby the MFDP received two votes. In November, LBJ won overwhelmingly and looked forward to working with the largest congressional majority in a generation. 

                That fall, MLK was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The bestowing of this honor on a man Hoover considered a degenerate and communist drove the FBI director over the edge. He shared extensive information about King's extracurricular sexual activities throughout the government and tried to peddle it to major news organizations. When LBJ called King in January of 1965 he told him about the importance of passing a Voting Rights Act. At that point in time, MLK began his crusade for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. King masterfully played his hand in Selma with hundreds, including high school students, arrested, massive amounts of press coverage, attention from celebrities and congressmen, and even an acknowledgement of support from the president. King and his supporters were showing the country why a voting bill was necessary. They advanced their cause with their march in Selma, which ended with police brutality and another shock to the nation. A week later, LBJ made his famous 'We Shall Overcome' speech to Congress fully endorsing dramatic voting rights legislation, and moving  ahead on immigration, poverty, education and health care reform. He signed the landmark voting rights legislation in August. King and Johnson provided "legal equality for all voting age adults, at last fulfilling the promise made to America by the Fifteenth Amendment nearly a century before."

                The high point of their achievements quickly passed. A week later, massive race riots tore apart Watts in Los Angeles. King came under increasing pressure to disavow LBJ's actions in Vietnam, and to move beyond his nonviolent, passive resistance tactics. King spent time in Chicago trying to desegregate the north's most segregated city and gave up after a few months. LBJ tried to pass another civil rights act in 1966 and was unable to stop the filibuster. In April of the following year, King made a major speech in opposition to the war in Vietnam. Johnson was livid and would never speak to King again. As 1968 began, both men were fading from their leadership roles in our society. The war was absolutely destroying the president. King was exhausted and uncertain where to turn to advance the cause. At the end of March, LBJ announced he would not run for reelection. Five days later, Martin Luther King was murdered. In the following days, LBJ was able to push through Fair Housing legislation. 

                  Four years later, an ailing  LBJ spoke at a conference in Austin. The final words of his last speech were, "We shall overcome." Decades later, Black Americans live in a better world thanks to all that Lyndon Johnson accomplished. Middle class Blacks are doing well and African-Americans have important positions throughout our society, but they still trail whites in all economic categories. "Johnson's and King's challenges remain to be answered." This is a great book, and I thank my brother Will for the suggestion. For me, the incredibly bigoted J. Edgar Hoover deserves all the disdain and enmity that was felt for him sixty years ago. This book highlights the extraordinary skills MLK used to organize and anticipate issues in a way that materially advanced the cause of civil rights. LBJ, of course, remains perhaps the most tragic figure in our history, a man who accomplished so much, but who fell so far from grace. Lastly, reading again about the mid-sixties led me to wonder if any president or national leader could have successfully navigated such a treacherous time. I think not.

                 

                      

Against The Wind: Edward Kennedy And The Rise Of Conservatism 1976 - 2009, Gabler - A*

                      This is the second volume of the author's masterful biography of the Massachusetts senator. In the first, the theme was Ted's contribution to the causes of liberalism that dominated the 60's. This book, however, is about how the wind shifted in the 70's, "and how Ted Kennedy attempted to defy it, then bent into it, charged into it, even as he realized that the moral moment had passed and the nation's values had changed..." Under Nixon and Reagan, America abandoned "the ideals that had held the liberal consensus together." The Republican Party was now about "the politics of anger and resentment." This story is about the flawed senator's battle to protect liberalism and its political morality. 

                    When Jimmy Carter ran in 1976, both Ted and the liberal establishment showed little enthusiasm for the conservative Georgian. Ted continued to plug away at his senatorial responsibilities with the thoroughness and modesty that had impressed all since his arrival a decade and a half earlier. He was considered the hardest-working senator and everyone agreed that he had the best staff, one fiercely loyal to him. Knowing full well that his presidential prospects had materially dimmed, he focused on becoming a legislative maestro in the style of Lyndon Johnson. He understood the institution as well as anyone, knew how it worked and worked to make it work for him and his causes. He was polite to all, never, ever made enemies and excelled at bringing people into his circle. 

                   Carter's objective was to govern as a moralistic technocrat, not an ideologue. Tip O'Neill observed that he wanted to change everything, but didn't understand anything. He had a meaningful majority in both houses but squandered it by insulting and ignoring the leadership. The first sign of discord with Ted was Carter's apparent indifference to universal health care. As they proceeded to talk and talk, it was apparent to Ted and big labor that Carter would never really pursue healthcare legislation. By the end of 1978, there was a clear break and Carter feared Ted would challenge him in 1980. At year end, Ted achieved a major goal when he became Chair of the Judiciary Committee. He worked very hard to create and pass the Criminal Code Reform Action effort that the Washington Post called "one of the greatest legislative feats of modern times." He then tacked to the right and passed both airline and trucking deregulation laws. Everyone expected Ted to run, particularly in late summer 1979 when Cater's approval ratio dropped to 19%. He felt he had to run to uphold the legacy of his brothers and to protect the liberal wing of the party. He made a lackluster announcement on Nov. 7th that had been preceded by a Roger Mudd interview that was so horrid, it is remembered as having scuttled his campaign before it began. Immediately afterwards, Carter's approval rating skyrocketed as America rallied behind him when the embassy hostages were taken in Tehran. The campaign was rudderless and lacking a message. Ted was a better senator than his brothers, but totally lacked their campaigning abilities. Furthermore, the moral mission of liberalism was not on the minds of a people facing 12% inflation, 8% unemployment, and unheard of interest rates. Carter beat him in Iowa. Ted switched the focus from Carter's leadership to time honored liberal values, but those issues failed to resonate as they once had. Ted won enough primaries to keep going and fight over the platform. Speaking to the Platform Committee, he closed the best speech of his life with "the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." He now was, in the words of Ted Sorenson, "the conscience of the party, the hope of the nation."

                  Reagan convinced "Americans that they had no civic obligations to Americans in distress." Ted's objective was to fight in the minority against the Reagan agenda. He was disillusioned, drinking and newly divorced. He found his footing when he worked the Voting Rights Act extension through the senate with Republican help and no support from the White House.  However, day after day battling the turn to the right was a losing cause. Under Nixon, the Republicans had taken a portion of the Democratic base on the issue of race. Reagan took the Catholics on the issue of abortion. Equally important, fewer and fewer of the old coalition were as poor as they once had been. They were middle class and inclined toward the Republican status quo. With the economy booming in 1984, Reagan was a shoo-in.  Ted visited South Africa and championed an American refutation of apartheid. When apartheid ended, Sen. Lowell Weicker said that Ted more than anyone in the world was responsible for the accomplishment. Ted embraced arms control and acted as a critical go-between for Reagan and the Soviets. When the Dems took back the senate in 1986, he left Judiciary and became chair of the Labor Committee. Realizing the presidency would not be in reach at any point, he recommitted to the Senate. In 1987, the Labor Committee introduced forty-five bills that became law. He passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act over Reagan's veto. That summer, the president nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. In addition to his extreme views, Bork had also fired Kennedy-family friend Archibald Cox in 1973.  Ted came out swinging in what is known as his 'Robert Bork's America' speech, heatedly eviscerating the nominee. He organized a nationwide opposition, personally made thousands of phone calls, and his staff created the 'Book of Bork' with the jurists extreme positions detailed. Ted went after him with a ferocity that surprised his colleagues. In the end, Bork's arrogance at the hearing did him in. In Bush's first year, Ted worked diligently with any and all in Congress who had a connection to the disabled, and passed the A.D.A. which was essentially a civil rights act for forty million disabled Americans. In 1990, he forged the coalition that passed the Ryan White Act. In the first two years of the new administration, his committee passed fifty-four bills. 

                    Nonetheless, the late 80's and early 90's were a difficult time for a man approaching 60. Battling from the minority was wearing. He had a vast set of responsibilities to Bobby's eleven and Jack's two children. His own sons and Bobby's seemed to be in constant trouble. On a daily basis, he was reminded of the loss of his brothers. He dated, but never overcame the loneliness. And, he drank - a lot. After a night of bar-hopping in Palm Beach over Easter in 1991, his nephew William was accused of rape and Ted was investigated for obstruction of justice. The tabloids and the mainstream press crucified him as the man who had turned the Kennedy myth from a "brief shining moment" to a "sordid aftermath." He was mocked on the late night shows and became an object of national derision. The tide began to turn that summer when he started dating Victoria Reggie, a family friend and recently divorced lawyer. Although Ted believed Anita Hill and not Clarence Thomas, he was relatively quiet that fall during the hearings, and was accused by many for letting Thomas on the court because he had been unwilling to fight the way he had against Bork. His marriage to Victoria significantly changed his life for the better. He was now a devoted husband and a superb step-dad.

                 With Bill Clinton in the White House, Ted began to put through many bills that George Bush had vetoed. The press began to report that America's "liberal titan" was back. He was concerned about what he considered Clinton's tepid approach to health care, an approach that ignored the congress. With Finance chair Moynihan opposed, and the bill not presented until 1994, matters did not look promising. As much effort as Ted and Majority Leader Mitchell put into it, it failed.  For the first time in thirty-two years, Ted also faced a Republican opponent who could possibly unseat him. Mitt Romney was charming, good-looking and totally without any personal baggage. Romney had money to spend and he did. Polls in September showed them neck and neck. Ted looked old, overweight and worn out.  He called in an army of old Kennedy hands. Ted's campaign found Romney's weakness and hammered away on it. His company took over a business, laid off people and cut benefits, and they did it to a company that had been in Holyoke for a century. Ted pulverized him in their debate with his knowledge of the Senate and the details of legislating. Ted won by 18 points, but for the rest of the party, 1994 was a disaster. Republicans won both houses and a number of governorships. The new Republican leadership declared war on civility and on the US government. Ted set "the democratic strategy against Gingrich's dismantling of the government." The Republican budget made massive cuts to Medicare and other programs for people in need in favor of benefitting major corporations. Clinton vetoed them, and then when the government was shuttered, the public blamed Gingrich. Ted was the "spine stiffener" in the senate, and Clinton was the "executioner" of the Gingrich revolution. Ted spent the first half of 1996 tying Bob Dole up in knots over a minimum wage bill, which Dole could not support as the Republican nominee. Ted so masterfully "ran the senate" with amendment after amendment that Dole eventually resigned his senate seat. That summer he passed HIPPA and medical savings accounts, and was being praised as one of the greatest senators of the century. Unlike LBJ's powers in the Senate forty years earlier, Ted's power was not muscular, but rather "the soft power of congeniality" and "legislative integrity." He loved the Senate, respected everyone in it, and still worked harder than anyone else. He was generous, considerate, caring and incredibly thoughtful. He had an unparalleled personal decency. "He was the master because his colleagues knew that Ted Kennedy, for all his flaws, or perhaps because of them, really cared about them and about others."

                      The second Clinton administration saw Ted working with Orrin Hatch, a Republican Mormon senator from Utah with whom he had, on the surface, little in common, but who became his great friend and colleague, to pass a bill providing health care to children under six even though both the administration and the Republican leadership were opposed. He worked on the culmination of decades of support for Ireland by collaborating with Bill Clinton and George Mitchell to establish the accords that ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He backed Clinton when his impeachment ordeal began in early 1998. As the matter dragged on, Clinton's approval ratio increased and for the first time since 1822, the party of a second term incumbent picked up seats in the mid-terms. Thus, Newt Gingrich, "the vainglorious opportunist who had always put his ego above his nation's interests" resigned from the House. 

                     Although he seldom agreed with George W. Bush, Ted initially liked him. He worked closely with the administration on No Child Left Behind. But although, "Bush was charming and congenial, he was still a hardcore conservative who was not willing to make major compromises, and his ambitions were seemingly no different from those of Reagan and Gingrich." After 9/11, Ted called the families of each of Massachussetts'  187 victims offering sympathy and more importantly, help. He obtained free legal assistance for them, and obtained a dedicated social worker for each family. Soon, the Bush administration was ginning up their war on terror to include Iraq, a godforsaken country, but not one with a connection to 9/11. Ted became the leading voice trying to stop the madcap rush to war. Bush, Cheney, et. al. wanted war, lied extensively to get it, and began shooting in March, 2003. After Bush pushed his war through and deceived Ted on funding for NCLB, and on details of the bill for Medicare prescription drugs, Ted reluctantly concluded that an institution where one could rely on a man's word was changing for the worse. Ted no longer would go to the White House or talk to the president, whom he now lambasted in public as comparable to Nixon. He raged against George Bush throughout 2003 and 2004, campaigned vigorously for John Kerry, and was crushed when Bush was reelected. He spent a vast amount of time in the new year and in 2006 working with John McCain to pass immigration reform. They passed it in the Senate, but it died in the House. The last years of Bush's presidency saw a collapse of his popularity, and Democratic control of both houses after the mid-terms. Ted was finally able to push through the first increase in the minimum wage since 1994. Ted came close in 2007, but once again immigration reform failed.

                    In January of 2008, Ted, as well as Caroline Kennedy, endorsed Obama over Clinton for the presidency. Both Kennedys thought he had the ability to inspire and compared him to JFK. Ted campaigned for Obama with an enthusiasm not seen on the campaign trail in years. But everything came apart in May when he received a diagnosis of incurable brain cancer. Although surgery was considered a long shot, he had much of the tumor removed in June. The hope was to defer the inevitable. He spoke to the Democratic convention in August. In a crowning "last hurrah" speech he spoke of the passing of the torch to new generation and closed with "the dream lives on." He brought down the house. When Obama won a clear and convincing victory, Ted returned to Washington to work on a lifetime dream - health care. He was not well enough though to go to the senate. On the day of Obama's inauguration, he had another seizure. He came to Washington for his birthday and  received the Profiles In Courage Award at the Kennedy Center. He worked from Hyannis with his staff and the Democratic majority, and felt confident that the ACA would pass. The end came on August 25, 2009.

                   This is an extraordinary and very powerful book about a very human and very special man. At 1041 pages of text, one might suggest it's a tad too long. The two books total 1773 pages, but I believe every one is worth reading. He was as focused and as committed to his beliefs and goals as anyone I have ever read about, and his beliefs have proven, and will continue to prove, that he had the wind and the long arc of history at his back. 

American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, Hochschild - A*

                 This "is a story of how a war supposedly fought to make the world safe for democracy became the the excuse for a war against democracy at home." "The toxic currents of racism, nativism, Red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law have long flowed through American life. Never was this raw underside of our nation's life more revealingly on display than from 1917 to 1921." "Although the government first used the war in Europe to justify the ferocity at home, the repression continued, and in some ways grew worse, in the several years after the fighting ended..." 

                A month after Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, Wilson asked Congress for a Declaration of War. It would be a "war to make the world safe for democracy." 

                 The army set up a bureau to spy on Americans. Anything less than absolute fealty was problematic if not treasonous. Congress passed the inappropriately-named Espionage Act which criminalized opposition to the war. The Postmaster General had the ability to censor newspapers by not allowing them to be mailed. The War Dept. censored books in the country's libraries. The day the Draft Law was signed, federal agents arrested anarchist Emma Goldman for publishing anti-draft leaflets. A trial two weeks later led to a conviction and a two year prison sentence. The militant wing of the labor movement was also targeted. In Arizona, 1156 IWW strikers at a copper mine were put on trains, sent two days away and told not to return. Civil liberties apparently did not exist in war time. A filmmaker went to jail for 3 years for a negative depiction of George III at a time when we were allies of the UK. People were tarred and feathered for not buying war bonds. A famous labor activist in Butte was lynched. In September, agents of the Bureau of Investigation (predecessor to the FBI) raided 48 IWW offices, took away all their files and documents, and arrested 166 men for violating the Espionage Act. Adding fuel to the fire of fear and paranoia, in November the Bolsheviks took over Russia. Conscientious objectors were often treated so badly in prison that many died. Lynching of Blacks in the South accelerated. The year 1918 saw the passage of the Sedition Act, a set of laws strengthening the Espionage Act. In Chicago, a noted businessman found the American Protective League, a vigilante organization that worked with the Bureau of Investigation. Civilians with no legitimate policing power but wearing badges conducted a series of raids seeking out draft evaders.* They checked the draft cards of men in public places and raided Wrigley Field. The Boston Symphony's German born Swiss conductor was imprisoned when someone claimed he was radioing to U-boats in the Atlantic. A trial of 97 Wobblies before Judge Landis saw all convicted on all counts after an hour of jury deliberations. He handed out over 800 years of sentences. The IWW was decimated, and never recovered. The former presidential candidate for the Socialist party, Eugene Debs, was a widely admired man of great integrity. When he said that the people never got a say in war declarations, he too was arrested. At this trial, he said "men are fit for something better than cannon fodder and slavery." He was sentenced to ten years in jail. The fighting finally stopped in November. "At home, the worst was yet to come." 

                   Many hoped that those imprisoned in the year-and-a-half of war would be pardoned. Instead, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the Espionage Act. Raging inflation in the US added 50% to the price of food leading to widespread discontent. Factories ceased arms production and laid off workers. Hundreds of thousands went on strike. The continuing success of the Bolsheviks in Russia generated ongoing Red scares throughout the world. In June 1919, bombs were exploded in multiple east coast cities. One of the bombs was at the house of Attorney General Palmer. The DOJ set up a Radical Division and named J. Edgar Hoover as its head. America engaged in a full-scale Red scare. The government had a free hand deporting non-citizens and it pursued that course vigorously in the fall of 1919. Emma Goldman was one of the first to go. Ironically, the deportation center and holding pens were on Ellis Island. Throughout the winter, the so-called 'Palmer Raids' were led by Hoover, who supervised the arrest of thousands around the country. It is estimated that 10,000 were arrested in what one historian called "the greatest single violation of civil liberties in American history." As Hoover and Palmer hoovered up everyone they could find, they ran into an unexpected surprise. Deportation orders required the signature of the Dept. of Labor, and the leadership of the department fell to a man who was unabashedly progressive.  Lewis Post not only opposed the indiscriminate arrests, he had been a founder of the NAACP. In the six weeks he was interim secretary, he derailed 80% of Palmer and Hoover's planned deportations. Palmer, who was now seeking the Democratic nomination, told the nation that there would be mass assassinations on May Day. When no communist uprising took place, cracks appeared in the Red scare movement. When the Senate attempted to impeach Post, he wittily ran circles around them citing the unconstitutionality of the raids. Soon, jurists and law professors were criticizing Hoover and Palmer for acting like a "mob" by violating people's rights. The Democrats rejected Palmer's extremism, and the Republicans did the same by not nominating Gen. Leonard Wood, a vocal proponent of 'Americanism.'

                 Harding began to release prisoners, and at year end, released Eugene Debs. He went so far as to say that he wished he hadn't voted for the war as senator, and that Debs was right for opposing it. The most impactful consequence of the excesses of the era was the passage in 1924 of the Reed-Johnson Act limiting immigration to the nations of northern Europe through a quota system that cut off people from eastern and southern Europe, Latin America and Asia. For forty years, there was minimal immigration to the US. Adolf Hitler applauded the new law. "The Socialist Party would never recover from the mass mailings...The IWW was similarly shattered." Many states adopted criminal syndicalism laws to restrain organized labor. America returned to right-wing extremism in the early '50's and again in 2017, when a man whose father had been arrested in Queens in 1927 while wearing a KKK white hood, became president. "America's version of democracy is far from perfect, and every generation or two we learn anew just how fragile it can be." It will require "a vigilant respect for civil rights and constitutional safeguards, to save ourselves from ever slipping back into the darkness again."

               

*The First World War had a higher ratio of draft resistance than did Vietnam half-a-century later.