Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and their Friends, McAuliffe - B

                                              This is the history of Paris' recovery from the devastation of the Franco-Prussian War (1870), when the city was bombarded by the Germans, and then wrecked by the anarchy of the Commune and its violent suppression. Napoleon III had fled to England, the Empire was over, and the French were burdened with a 5 million franc indemnity to the Germans, who continued their occupation until they were paid in 1874. Although the Republic was established, there was still a battle royal between the forces of liberty and progress and the monarchist reaction led by the church and the military.  Building the Sacre Coeur on Montmarte was a victory for the right. It was built on the grounds where the Commune had begun. However, in the 1879 elections, the Republicans succeeded, reinstated 'La Marseillaise' as the national anthem, and moved the government from Versailles to Paris.  They secularized hospitals and schools, banished religious from the classrooms and dissolved the Jesuits. A year later, July 14 was reinstated as a national holiday and the Communards were granted amnesty. The forces of liberty, equality and fraternity had momentarily triumphed.                                                                                                                                  
                                             The 1880's  saw the construction of two of the most famous edifices in modern history. Liberty Enlightening the World was built in the middle of the city and presented to the US Ambassador in 1884. Lady Liberty was disassembled, packed and shipped off to New York, where she would be dedicated on Nov.1, 1886, while a million people cheered the fireworks celebration.  And in anticipation of the centenary of the Revolution, Eiffel constructed his iconic tower on the Champs de Mars.
                                             The last decade of the century was dominated by the scandal surrounding the bankruptcy of the Panama Canal Company. The de Lesseps were sentenced to jail and Eiffel's reputation was completely besmirched. The political fallout cost Clemenceau his seat in the Chamber of Deputies. Next followed the Dreyfus affair that sent the innocent Jewish artillery officer to Devil's Island. The rift between the right and the left in French society was deep and each side continued their virulent, bitter campaign against the other. That the wrong man was convicted in a bout of anti-Semitic misbehavior is and has long been beyond refute. The men who finally turned the affair around, and are the heroes of the story, are Emile Zola and Georges Clemenceau. Zola wrote the pamphlet that summed up the complex case and the army's duplicity and Clemenceau came up with the title that resounds through history - 'J'accuse'. Three hundred thousand copies of what was an open letter to the government were distributed in Paris.  Immediately, Zola was prosecuted for libeling the army and convicted. Later in the year, the officer who had forged the letter behind the entire affair confessed and committed suicide. Notwithstanding that, Dreyfus, after his appeal succeeded, was convicted a second time. The army continued to manufacture evidence and the church supported them. Dreyfus was pardoned after over four years on Devils Island.  The book closes with the Impressionists finally receiving their due, Dreyfus and Zola honored, and Clemenceau headed for higher office.
                                             I found this book while looking for 'Twilight of the Belle Epoque', which my brother recommended. So, thanks for a twofer. What is interesting about this book for me is information on the physical transformation of  the city, the blossoming of the artistic and musical culture of the day, and the intense conflict between the left and the right. To characterize the conflict as intense does not do it justice.  Zola's 'J'accuse' led to violent outbursts, riots and the murder of Jews in the countryside.There was a real possibility of an army coup. The country could've been torn apart. It seems a wonder that the 3rd Republic survived. My knowledge of French history is limited and this has been an eye opener.

Black Widow, Silva - B -

                                               Eerily, Allon's antagonist here is ISIS and an imaginary operations chief nicknamed Saladin. Although Gabriel is one day removed from taking over the Office, he is called back into the field when the French request his help in avenging an attack in Paris. His op is based on recruiting a French-Israeli doctor, who  speaks perfect Arabic, as an undercover infiltrator. She is trained by Allon and his team and placed in a clinic in a banlieue in Paris, where an ISIS recruiter signs her up.  On an excursion to Syria, she is called in to save Saladin's life after he is caught in an air attack. She is then recruited and sent to Washington, DC to be part of an attack intended to incur American wrath. ISIS pretty much blows up half of Washington, the Israelis get out of town after exacting a degree of revenge and finally, finally, Gabriel is ensconced in the top job at King Saul Boulevard.
                                               Through sixteen books, the chronicler  of the mythical Allon takes appropriately pro-Israeli positions,\ that I've always been comfortable with.  In this one, though, he articulates some very strong anti-Administration opinions, trashes the Iranian nuclear deal, belittles our foreign policy in general and wishes we were back in the Middle East with boots on the ground. I found it a bit unsettling.

I'm Traveling Alone, Bjork - B +

                                                Thanks to Wendell Erwin for this one. It's a fast-paced Norwegian mystery with most of the usual Nordic noir characters. There is a serial killer taunting the police, a religious cult, a police woman so over the edge that she takes this case on in lieu of doing herself in, a worn-out under-appreciated supervisor, a newbie tech magician and the usual boss who makes it harder to solve the case. The killer is very, very good at disguises and technology. She also has a deeply felt personal grudge against one of the key policewoman. The book has a dramatic tension-filled end and is, quite simply, a fun read.

The Revenant, Funke - B +

                                                This is one of those infrequent novels with a sub-title: A Novel Of Revenge. Before Hugh Glass tries to find his tormentor, John Fitzgerald, he must first recover from the bear attack. The bear tore him apart and it's pretty hard to believe anyone could survive. In a historical note at the end of  the book, Funke points out that this is essentially a true story; that Glass was badly mauled and left to die by his two colleagues. The first half of the book is the story of his crawl/walk back to a fort on the Grand River.  Although remarkably adept as an outdoorsman, it is a band of Sioux, impressed with his scars and wounds, that helps him back to a small outpost, where he is re-armed, clothed and supplied for his journey to find Fitzgerald and Bridger. When Glass catches up with his old outfit, he decides to let Bridger off the hook because of his age. He is sent to Ft. Atkinson in Nebraska to deliver a message to the fur company in St. Louis. He is the only survivor of a band of four who lose their horses to Indians and whose buffalo boats capsize in rapids. He finds Fitgerald has enlisted in the army and Glass' accusations of theft and abandonment necessitate a court martial. A modest measure of justice is extracted and Glass moves on. The historical note states that Hugh Glass was killed by Indians at the junction of the Yellowstone and Big Horn rivers a decade later. This book is one helluva short, fun read.

Spain In Our Hearts: Americans In The Spanish Civil War, Hochschild - B +

                                                The author states that this is not a history of the war or an account of the involvement of the approximately 2,800 Americans who fought for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Rather, it is the story of a handful of those men. Almost all were communists at a time when that ideology was still a beacon of hope.
                                                In February, 1936, the Popular Front, a coalition of liberals, Socialists and Communists won an election in Spain, a country where 2% of the population owned 2/3rds of the land. The Army's right-wing leaders quickly formulated plans for a coup, but were faced with a significant challenge. Most of the Army was stationed in Morocco and there was no way to transport the men to Spain, because the navy refused to participate. To the rescue of Gen. Francisco Franco came Hitler and Goebbels. Germany provided air transport. With a viciousness that shocked the world, the Nationalists quickly took over about one-third of the nation. The Republic was rebuffed by the western democracies when it tried to purchase arms and turned to the USSR. There were reigns of terror on both sides that saw some of the most vicious, brutal slaughters imaginable. Volunteers poured in from around the world to help the Republicans.  The prototypical American volunteer was "a New Yorker, a communist, an immigrant or the son of an immigrant, a trade unionist and a member of a group that has almost vanished from the US today, a working-class Jew."  The amateur Republicans held off the Nationalists into 1937, by which time both sides were overwhelmed by their backers. Thousands of German and Italians fought with Franco. The Germans provided meaningful air support and weapons, including the 88mm artillery pieces that would later dominate WW2.  The Soviets started purging and eliminating those on the Republican side who didn't fit their Stalinist ideological standards. The war continued through 1937 with the Nationalists prevailing. They held most of the country's industrial and agricultural wealth in the west and north. The Republicans held Madrid and Barcelona, but the noose was tightening. Although each side received material support from its allies,  Franco received more, and at the end of the day, Franco had a trained army fighting a band of militias. In March, 1938, Franco's penultimate push began and the Republicans were routed. They fled behind the Ebro River and flooded into Barcelona. In July, the Republicans took the offensive for the final time. The Battle of the Ebro raged for months.  As the west appeased Hitler, neither Britain nor France were willing to sell arms to the Republicans.  Stalin lost interest and withdrew most of the Soviets in Spain.  In October, the government withdrew the internationalists and thus the last 2,500 volunteers left Spain. Only a few hundred American were left.  Franco launched his final push and by March 1939, the civil war was over.  Franco executed tens of thousands and imprisoned hundreds of thousands. Franco's dictatorship lasted another 36 years. In 1996, the Spanish Parliament granted citizenship to all living members of the International Brigades.                                                        
                                                 A history that tells the tale of fascists allied with the Roman Catholic Church on one side and Reds on the other is wearying. On the Republican side though, we do have the international volunteers, and although badly served by their Communist leaders, they and the newsmen and women who followed them and told their story to the world are some of the finest, bravest people of character one comes across in any history. Some, like Ernest Hemingway and a young George Orwell, an English foot soldier, are well-known. Most, like Bob Merriman, an American officer, and Lois Orr and Milly Bennett, young writers, are footnotes to history. They all went to Spain to participate in what they believed was the first opportunity to stand-up to Fascism. I have learned a great deal about an important 20th-century event that heretofore I knew virtually nothing about.

The North Water, McGuire - B +

                                               One of the very favorable reviews of this novel suggests the author's style is a cross between Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy - pretty heady stuff. The story is of a cursed mid-19th century English whaling voyage to the Arctic. The two primary antagonists are a disgraced opium-addicted surgeon, Sumner, and a murderous beast, Drax. The ship is intended to be scuttled in an insurance fraud and everything goes wrong after they lose the ship. Some open water whale-boating brings a dozen men to a Canadian island on Baffin Bay as the summer winds down. Drax escapes by murdering two Yaks and taking their sleigh. Sumner survives when some natives find him and bring him south to a mission. Both men make it back to England, where they face off for the last time.

The Butcher Bird, Sykes - B -

                                               In the second book, Oswald is again up against ignorance and fear as the locals think a bird carried off and killed an infant.  He also struggles with the fact that the King has passed a law forbidding the payment of wages higher than before the Plague, while his people are agitated, leaving for elsewhere, and believe they should be paid more for doing more work. A family intrigue takes him off to London, where the plot thickens and complicates matters back in Somershill. In the end, he and his sister, Clemence, settle into a peaceable accommodation and he concludes that he will violate the King's writ, and pay his people the wages needed to keep them.

Plague Land, Sykes - B

                                              This is a delightful little historical novel set in 14th century England in the aftermath of the Plague. Young Oswald deLacy returns from a Benedictine Abbey to take up responsibilities as Lord of Somershill upon the death of his father and two older brothers. He is met by two gruesome murders which the dim-witted priest of the community attributes to the devil manifested as a creature with a dogs head and an uncertain body. Furthermore, his older sister up and marries a neighboring lord of devious character.  The wheels of fortune turn in Oswald's favor as he secures his inheritance, discovers the shocking truth about his own paternity and establishes his role in the village.  This is probably a better mystery than it is historical fiction, but nonetheless, it is a pleasant diversion.

And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades In The Middle East, Engel - B +

                                               The author is the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News and he tells the story of his two-decade career that began in the mid-1990's in Cairo for the 'Middle Eastern Times'. He is unsparing in his criticism of American policy. Before he begins though, he points out in the prologue that Dante assigned both  Mohammed and Ali, the Shia patriarch, to the eighth circle of hell as "sowers of religious divisiveness." Engel's as tough as Dante.
                                                He reviews the basics, including the infamous post-WW1 European division of the Ottoman Empire that has been universally decried for a century. He arrived on the scene in time to see the big men of the Cold War era (Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Ben Ali of Algeria, Gadafi and Assad) crumble under the weight of "their own poor management and the actions and inactions of two two-term US administrations: Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The combined impact of Bush's aggressive interventionism and Obama's timidity and inconsistency completely destroyed the status quo." He suggests that although we aren't responsible for the Middle East's woes, our actions and missteps unleashed the madness of the Iraq war, the Syrian bloodbath, Libya's anarchy and ISIS.
                                               Engel cites the Egyptian fundamentalist mid-90's attacks on tourists as the first steps toward the abyss. They were followed by Al-Quaeda bombing the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.  Hatred of the west was and continues to be a core tenet of the Islamist fundamentalists. He labels the extremists as Salafi and Wahabi jihadists. The jihadis who fought the Soviet infidels in Afghanistan were prosecuted and imprisoned upon their return home, and in Egypt, were often executed. They eventually became an army of exiles. In 2000, Engel's focus shifted to Israel, when he signed on with Agence France-Presse (AFP) as their Palestinian correspondent.  He feels that the Second Intifada was caused by Ariel Sharon who casually and provocatively walked through the Arab section of the Dome of the Rock/Wailing Wall complex.  Thus ended any possibility of the peace process succeeding. He was in Jerusalem on Sept. 11th and entered Iraq as a freelancer in early March, 2003.  ABC took him on when he was the only American reporter left in Bagdad and he witnessed "shock and awe" and its consequences. He refers to the Bush administration plans in Iraq as a "fantasy garden of democracy that he (Bush) wanted to plant in the Middle East."  Engel somehow spent years in Bagdad as it descended into total chaos, was moved to Beirut to become a  bureau chief for NBC, and eventually, to NYC.  The Arab Spring, Tahrir Square, the collapse of Libya, the endless Syrian civil war and ISIS followed.  From the author's perspective, the region is doomed to decades more of violence and failed states.
                                               I've always enjoyed books by journalists. After all, they usually write very well. This is both a personal memoir, as well as a brief history. He provides some interesting insights and has delivered a solid narrative.

Our Game, Le Carre - B

                                               This is a Le Carre from over twenty-years ago that I apparently missed.  Kindle offered it up, as I had purchased 'Night Manager', and this was next in line. It also is a novel where the author was fashioning his post-Cold War style.  Our protagonist is Tim Cranmer, a 47 year old whom the Office has sent off into retirement, as the services of the cold warriors were no longer required.  He's called back to London to discuss a few things when his protege and double agent, Larry Pettifer has gone missing, along with his former Soviet handler, Checheyev, and about $37m pounds.  Larry's also taken Tim's youthful love interest with him and some uninformed  police officials are trying to tag Tim with responsibility for participating in the scam. When the Office also suggests Tim is in on it, he packs up a .38 and his 'retirement' passport' and takes off after Larry. Larry's handler was actually Ingush and the money's been diverted to the Caucuses in the hope of throwing off the Moscow yoke. Tim and Checheyev go deep into the the mountains.  Larry has been martyred and Tim joins the cause. It is not LeCarre's greatest effort, but no one in the suspense business has ever written as well as him and thus, it's always a pleasure.

The Killing of Bobbi Lomax, Moriarity - C

                                               This debut novel received all sorts of accolades last year. Needless to say, it didn't work for me. The story is about a forger who sets up an elaborate plan to the deceive the Faith, a western state Mormon-like fanatical religion. He attempts to expose a false founding document, but is captured by the police after he uses a bombing to cover his tracks.

China 1945: Mao's Revolution and America's Fateful Choice, Bernstein - B +

                                               As the eight-year Sino-Japanese War entered its final year, there was hope in Washington that Chiang Kai-Shek could unify the country and somehow come to common cause with the Chinese Communist Party. Both Chiang and Mao Zedong had assiduously avoided using their troops in the fight against Japan, because both knew they would need them for the inevitable civil war that would follow. The country was in disastrous condition, described as a place of "medieval destitution" upon which war and famine inflicted approximately 25 million deaths. That a civil war was coming and that the communists would win was obvious to the State Department's 'China Hands', the young men born in-country to missionary parents and not tainted with Washington's delusional faith in Chiang.  In 1943, John Davies wrote, "The Communists are in China to stay. And China's destiny is not Chiang's but theirs."  As has so often been the case in US foreign policy, we had hopes and expectations that were incompatible with the culture of the foreign country and certainly, with the facts on the ground.
                                             In late 1944, FDR's newly appointed Ambassador to China, Gen. Pat Hurley, met with both Mao and Chiang in an attempt to establish a coalition government. In three thousand years, China had never had a peaceful power struggle and the concept of power-sharing was totally foreign to both parties.  Hurley was a Republican politician, lacking in international experience and incapable of listening to the State Dept. staff, the vast majority of whom recommended that we come to some accommodation with Mao.  Eventually, Hurley gutted the staff in China and with FDR's backing went all in for Chiang-Kai-Shek. The end of the war meant that "the United States and the Communists would no longer have a common enemy, and its disappearance would strip away the incentive to cooperate, leaving behind many reasons for each to see the other a mortal foe."
                                              In August of 1945, Chiang appeared to have the upper hand. He controlled the central government and had 39 American-equipped divisions. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria (Japan's puppet state Manchuko) changed the strategic balance. A Red Army was now in China. The 1.5 million Soviet troops in Manchuria slowly confiscated the Japanese assets for reparations, prohibited both American and central government access and began supporting the CCP. Better led, better organized, highly motivated and  supported by Stalin, the CCP began to prevail. The US options were to withdraw, support Chiang, or intervene. We chose to continue to support Chiang, and after Hurley quit in a mercurial outburst, sent in George Marshall as Ambassador. His task was to avoid a Chinese civil war. In January 1946, he engineered a cease fire between the two sides. It quickly fell apart. Chiang's hard-right colleagues could never accept power sharing with the CCP.  Both Stalin and Mao continued to lie, deceive and mislead the US about their intentions, which were to establish a Soviet-style dictatorship in China. Although it would take three more years, China was lost. "There was no doubt that, whoever lost it, China's emergence as a communist country closely allied to the Soviet Union and aiding revolutionary movements elsewhere in Asia was a tremendous defeat for the US."
                                                 The basic premise of  this book is that any accommodation with Mao would have been better than the outright enmity that led to Korea and Vietnam. It seems to me that accommodation would have been awfully difficult in 1945, and immediately thereafter. The lines were being drawn between the Communist bloc and the rest of the world. The China lobby in the US, led by Henry Luce of Time Magazine, was staunchly in the camp of the national government. On the other hand, continually backing Chiang and then spending decades trying to justify that support caused immeasurable damage to this country.  It led to McCarthyism, Red scares, FBI abuse, the need to not 'lose' Vietnam - all for a man who Joe Stillwell called 'Peanut' and who was, in the end, an incapable failure. The author's conclusion is that the US did not lose China. Stalin and Mao won it and there is nothing we could have done to alter the course of history. Notwithstanding the B +, this book is an arduous tough read.
                                           

Michener's South Pacific: From Battlefront to Bestseller to Broadway, May - B

                                              Inspired after listening to the 2008 cast album recently, I decided to tackle the book and found I couldn't get very far. Although it won a Pulitzer in 1947, it couldn't hold my attention. So, I then turned to this brief history and have found it quite enjoyable.  Michener was in his early 30's, willing to leave his NYC textbook editor's job, when he joined the Navy and was made an officer. He was assigned to what was basically a dead-end backwater job on the island Espiritu Santo, miles from the action. It was there he met a French planter, Ratard, his Vietnamese lady-in-charge, Bloody Mary, and the coast watcher on whom he based a character, the Remittance Man.  Michener also travelled around the South Pacific and was appalled by the racial bigotry that was part and parcel of the American mindset in the theater. It became an integral theme in the book, which he decided to write in 1944. He finished it in early 1945, submitted it successfully to MacMillan, where he went back to work in early 1946. The novel was moderately successful when it was published in 1947. Two wondrous and surprising events followed. Rodgers and Hammerstein bought the rights to make a musical, and the book won the Pulitzer. It premiered at the Majestic Theater on April 7, 1949. It was, and continues to be, a rousing success beloved and known around the world. The musical adaptation also won a Pulitzer, thus making 'Tales' the only work so decorated. Almost a decade later, the movie followed. Michener continued on, writing Hawaii at age fifty, and living to the age of 90. This is a fun little read. Perhaps, I should try to finish 'Tales of the South Pacific.'

A Hero of France, Furst - B

                                               This is the latest in Furst's on going stories about the inter-war and recently, the early war years. He is a master of plotting, suspense and historical background. Our main character in the spring of 1941 is Mathieu, the nom de guerre of a man running the escape routes for downed pilots from occupied France to Vichy and  Spain. These 'passeurs' were considered the forerunner of the French Resistance. Mathieu's success draws the attention of the British, who offer funds in exchange for an occasional extra job. After June 22, the communists leap feet first into resistance activities. The Germans import a detective from Hamburg in their attempt to find the 'rat line'.  Fortunately for the good guys, Mathieu and his team escape the clutches of the police  and move on to the next job. Furst points out that at this point in 1941, the occupation of Paris took a harsher turn. The Gestapo and SS took over from the local gendarmes. I prefer the pre-war books, simply because they delve into the details of a time glossed over in the history books.

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust, Beer - B-

                                               This is the extraordinary history of Edith Hahn, a secular Jew who grew up in Vienna and was one exam away from her Doctorate in Law in 1938 when Austria's Nazi anti-Semitism roared onto the stage. She was dismissed from school and spent the next two years in a downward spiral, losing her possessions, her home and her freedom. She spent almost all of 1941 on an asparagus farm in Germany working as a slave laborer, and was then sent to a paper factory. In mid-1942, she was sent back to Vienna for transport to Poland. On the train, she took off her yellow star and, with the help of friends in Vienna, obtained Christian identification papers. She travelled to Munich and obtained a position with the Red Cross. A high-level businessman, exempt from the draft because he had lost vision in one eye, fell in love with her and proposed. He laughed when she told him she was Jewish, and they moved in together in 1943. They married late that year and in April, 1944, she gave birth to a daughter.  Her husband Werner was drafted late in 1944, promoted and sent east where he was captured by the Soviets and sent to Siberia. At wars end, she came out as Jewish and was made a a judge in the nascent legal system. Werner came home, but divorced her. Realizing the Soviets were as bad as the Nazi's, Edith escaped to England in late 1948. She remarried, lived a long life and wrote this book in the late-90's. She died a decade later.

Black Dragon River: A Journey Down the Amur River At The Borderlands Of Empires, Ziegler - B

                                                For reasons uncertain, I am fascinated by histories focused on geography, and in particular, ones about rivers. So the story of the world's 9th longest river, the only one in Siberia that drains to the Pacific and most importantly, forms the border between Russia and China, caught my attention. The Onon, in northeast Mongolia, is the tributary that is generally considered the head of the river. It is the land that eight hundred years ago gave the world Genghis Khan. The river flows north into Russia, where it is home to six of the world's fifteen species of crane.  About 300 miles east of Lake Baikal is Chita, home to the Buryats and the only Buddhist community in Russia. The next major town down the Onon is Nerchinsk, where Nicholas I banished the Decembrists after their pathetic attempt at revolt in 1825, and also where in 1689, Russia and China, as equals, negotiated their shared border. As the river extends east, the author explores the many and different tales of those who came to colonize a wilderness beyond our comprehension. Along the river, the Trans-Siberian Railway was built in the 1890's. Blogoveshchensk is where the last of the tributaries join and form the Amur.  There is also now in Siberia, from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok, dedicated by Vladimir Putin upon its completion in 2005, a paved road, a bona-fide macadam two lane highway. At Kabarovsk, further east, in 1969, the border clashes between the two communist behemoths took place.  Hundreds of miles north, after the last turn, the river finishes with a whimper, a shallow estuary, blessed only by the vast kaluga that spawn there. It also is the site of some heavy fighting between the Japanese and the locals during the allied interventions at the end of  WWI.
                                                    By definition, a book like this is sort of an indirect history. The stories it tells are limited to what transpired along its banks. Throughout Siberia, the story is pretty much the same. The Russians came seeking fur, and like we Americans, they overwhelmed the indigenous peoples. They struggled mightily with an extraordinarily difficult land, frozen, thick with flies and endless stretches of steppe and water lands.  It is hard to process that Siberia is itself larger than all of Europe, including Russian Europe. It is 4,000 miles from one end to the other. There were conflicts with the Chinese and later, the Japanese. Siberia was populated with prisons and filled with the Gulag of the mid-twentieth century. The author also spends a considerable time on the uniqueness of Russian history, culture and traditions. Russia is different from the west because it is not of the west, having undergone an extensive occupation by the Mongols, who featured an autocracy that, the author suggests seems to suit the Russians well.  He closes with no particular insight or conclusion. Just the observation, that other than to plunder Siberia's resources, Russia today looks west and not both ways, as the two-headed eagle standard of the Empire implied.



                                                 

Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg And The Secret History Of The Vietnam War, Sheinkin - A

                                              The title comes from Kissinger's characterization of Ellsberg as "the most dangerous man in America."  Ironically, the Harvard grad, hard-core cold warrior and former Marine lt. went to work in a very high staff position at the Pentagon on the day of the Gulf of Tonkin attacks. Within days the 33-year-old knew McNamara had lied to Congress and the President to the American public. A year later, with the war escalating significantly, Ellsberg was sent on a 6-week tour of Vietnam.  He  later went back for two years  as part of the Saigon Embassy staff. His knowledge and understanding of what was going on on the ground was extensive. He became more and more disillusioned as he watched Genl. Westmoreland and LBJ keep up the rhetoric, while completely ignoring the truth. He went to work at the Rand Corporation, a think tank with an extensive consulting relationship with the Pentagon.  He had maintained his top-secret classification and asked Mort Halperin, Kissinger's deputy, if he could read the 'Pentagon Papers'.  It was a project on crisis decision making, Ellsberg's academic specialty, initiated by MacNamara when Mac began to despair of our efforts in Vietnam.  Ellsberg had actually worked on the project during his last tour in Washington.  As he read through them in 1969, he later recalled "What  I had in my safe at Rand was seven thousand pages of documentary evidence of lying, by four presidents and their administrations over twenty-three years." There were only fifteen copies. He began clandestinely photocopying number 16. Unable to get either Senator Fullbright or McGovern to hold hearings on the Papers, he brought the story to Neil Sheehan of the NYTimes.  One weekend while Ellsberg and his wife were away, Sheehan and his wife entered the Ellsberg apartment, removed, copied and replaced Ellsberg's copy. The Times had their own copy and the commitment from the top to publish the "story of the century".   The articles began on Sunday, June 13, 1971. When the Nixon administration obtained an injunction against the Times, Ellsberg gave a copy to the Washington Post. The Post was enjoined after one day of publication. Eventually, 17 newspapers received parts of and published the Pentagon Papers, while the matter went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court heard the case on June 26th; Ellsberg surrendered on the 28th, the same day Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska began reading from the Papers in the Senate and placed them in the Congressional Record. That same day, in a 6-3 decision the Court supported the newspapers. Hugo Black wrote, "In revealing the workings of the government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely what the Founders hoped and trusted they would do." When Ellsworth went to trial in January, 1973,  Watergate was unravelling and the burglary of his psychiatrist's office came to light. Then John Ehrlichman offered the presiding judge the top job at the FBI. In May, a motion to dismiss was granted and Ellsberg was free.  He is one of the few principals of the era still alive today.                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                  In  July of 1971, I was at 22, unwillingly and  because of my low draft number, in a six week R.O.T.C. training camp at Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA.  I saw one of the officers painfully hunched over newspaper reports of the decision. We had a 3 day leave and I went back to NYC for a weekend. Reading about the falsehoods, misconceptions and deceits on our road to war, confirming the futility of it all was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. I've long been a fan of Ellsberg and an admirer of the Times and the Post. This well-written book had me at page one.

The New Tsar: The Rise And Reign Of Vladimir Putin, Myers - B -

                                             Apparatchik is a word that was frequently used  during the Soviet era. It implied a nameless, faceless non-entity with a meaningless job somewhere in the vast bureaucracy. And it safely and accurately described a 37-year-old KGB Lt. Col. in Dresden when the Berlin Wall fell.  He had been an indifferent student, and then, at best, an adequate administrator in the system that unravelled in the Gorbachev era. He was known as a somewhat ascetic teetotaler with a fondness for the martial arts. His life was completely unremarkable.
                                             Anatoly Sobchak, the man who would become the first elected mayor of St. Petersburg, was looking to add to his staff someone with a familiarity with the old system and thought that a younger KGB man might fit his needs. Thus began Putin's political career in 1990. He was on vacation during the 1991 putsch, during which Sobchak shined and returned in time to bask in his boss's success. Putin was unhappy with the demise of the USSR, but somehow had landed on his feet in the new Russian Federation. For the next five years, he was Sobchak's right hand man and because of his fluent German, the Deputy Mayor tasked with liaising with foreign investors. He gained invaluable experience and made a vast number of contacts. Economic and political turmoil riled Russia in the 90's, leading to Sobchak's loss at he polls and a volatile presidential election in 1996. In the aftermath of Yeltsin's victory, jobs were up for grabs in Moscow and the minister in charge of the Kremlin's vast wealth reached out to Putin. Within months, he was transferred to a position investigating corruption in the management of the government's affairs, and a year later was  promoted by Yeltsin to a high-ranking political position.  Putin was hard working, discreet, honest, competent and loyal. In 1998, Yeltsin, fearful that the KGB's successor, the FSB,  was looking at him and his family, rewarded Putin with the top job there.  The Russian Federation in the late 1990's was in a state of chronic crisis. None of the people or institutions were equipped to handle the freedom that the end of the USSR had created. Yeltsin was so ill that he would go for months without coming to the Kremlin and, after the abuse of the oligarchs, the inflation, the default on the nation's debt and the near collapse of the state, he was bereft of political capital. It's somewhat ironic that he was impeached by the Duma at the same point in time that Bill Clinton was by the House. Nonetheless, he was obsessed by who was to succeed him and, since everyone considered the PM the one who was next in line, he fired and appointed PMs constantly. Worried about his fate when he would be out of office, Yeltsin rewarded the loyal Vladimir Putin with the position in August 1999, ten months before the next election. Putin prosecuted the 2nd war in Chechnya with a new vigor that caught the attention of the public. On the last day of 1999, Yeltsin resigned. Vladimir Putin was President of Russia.
                                           Putin consolidated power, was elected convincingly, and began to focus on his primary mission - restoring some sense of stability to the nation. He also sought some sort of accommodation with the US. He had hoped that the events of Sept. 11 would lead to  an alignment against terrorists. He was facing an Islamic revolt in the south. He supported US efforts in Afghanistan and stopped complaining about NATO. In return, George Bush gave him a heads up when the US withdrew from the ABM pact.  After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Putin came full circle in opposition to the US. He turned vehemently anti-American after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. At home, the war in Chechnya ground on to no avail and fostered terrorist activity across the nation. Hundreds died in different terrorist events, including bombings of buildings, public transit facilities, a theater, a soccer stadium, an elementary school, and two planes blown out of the sky by suicide bombers.  It was Afghanistan all over again, only closer to home and with domestic terrorism thrown in. The increase in the price of oil greatly enhanced the financial status of Russia and allowed Putin to crack down on dissent in the media, to eliminate western NGO's, and enhance the old Soviet-style police state. By 2005, it began to look as if the old days were back. He told the world that the dissolution of the USSR was "the greatest  geopolitical catastrophe of the century".  Proud of the past, refusing to disavow Stalin, this ideological son of the Great Patriotic War was seeking to define a new nationalism.  With the confiscation of Yukos, he began to turn back some of the abuses that led to the dispersion of Russia's wealth into the hands of the oligarchs. He became known as the CEO of Kremlin, Inc.  And, as his second term continued, he doubled down on his animosity and contempt for US policy and George W. Bush. At a Davos presentation in 2007, he stunned the world with the depth of his feelings.  As his second term wound down, he selected Dmitri Medvedev as his successor, divorced his wife of almost thirty years, had the good fortune to be designated the next Prime Minister, and was suspected by the CIA and some well-informed Russians to be worth $40B.
                                             As PM, Putin was still in charge and very focused on the Sochi Olympics. He continued to manage the economy. Medvedev had hoped for better but as 2012 approached, Putin announced he would return as President (now a six-year term) and Medvedev would assume leadership of the United Russia party and then the Premiership. Opposition to this power grab was fierce and the Duma elections, which came first, were generally conceded to be fraudulent, a mockery of the concept. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Moscow to protest. Nonetheless,  he was easily re-elected after presenting himself as Russia's protector of all things evil from the west, particularly the US. He cracked down on any and all dissent, was ferocious in response to Obama's attempt to reset, welcomed Edward Snowden, and basked in the glow of hosting an Olympiad. Olympic triumphs were immediately outweighed by the convulsions in Ukraine, in his mind attributable to the underhanded actions of the EU and the US. His response  was to reverse Khruschev's transfer of the Crimea to Ukraine by annexing the peninsula. He followed with an invasion of eastern Ukraine. The west responded with very severe sanctions.  The sanctions and the collapse in the price of oil hammered the Russian economy.  The book closes in 2014 with Putin indisputably atop a nationalistic, totalitarian Russia, hating the west and according to Angela Merkel, no longer in touch with reality.
                                             I've struggled with certain aspects of this book. For quite some time I've  despised the Soviet bending of history, defilement of the truth and the Alice In Wonderland views articulated by their lying leaders. That Putin eventually fell into the same style of governing makes for disquieting reading, and a fear for the future. I also am very disappointed in the fact after fact presentation style of this book. I realize that biographers who muse over motivations and intentions can sometimes stray from the telling of a story. But, to never offer a single sentence or thought about something is being too descriptive for me.  In the end, the style and the utterly  demoralizing tale have worn me out.

The Fall Line: America's Rise To The Ski Racing Summit, Vinton - B +

                                                This is a fabulous, exciting book about the  two greatest American skiers: Bode Miller and Lindsay Vonn.  It details the twelve months that ended with the Vancouver Olympics in 2010.  Both had failed at Torino, Miller through apparent indifference and Vonn because of a crash.  Miller's ambivalence about the Olympics stemmed from his inner philosophies. He thought America's obsession was fueled by tv and inherently simplistic. A skiers merit was weighed over a World Cup season, not on one day every fourth year.
Miller was pretty much written-off for Vancouver. Lindsay, though, was the apple of NBC's eye. Both had transformed America's place in the ski world. Vonn was bigger and faster than almost all of the women and skied recklessly without any regard for injury. She piled up World Cup victories. Miller was even more reckless, a sort of self-taught unorthodox skiing savant. They had both won World Cup Overall titles. The American men's team had sunk so low in the period between the Mahre's and Miller that there were years when we didn't get a single point on the World Cup circuit. Points are rewarded on a sliding scale from first to 30th and there are up to five events almost weekly from late October until March. The World Cup events preceding the Olympics were viewed as a tune up and for Lindsay Vonn, the 2009-10 tour was a rousing success. She nabbed victory after victory. Bode had left the circuit the previous March and no one knew if he would return. The two previous seasons he had not competed as a member of the US Ski team, but on his own. In September, after everyone else in the business had spent months preparing their equipment and their bodies, an overweight Bode got in touch with the US Ski team and asked back in. His progress was slow and he missed most of December with a sprained ankle. The Vancouver Olympics were the US Ski teams finest performance ever. They won 21 medals, including the Women's Downhill for Vonn and three for Bode including gold in the Combined. Afterwards, he'd learned that there small fractures in the 'sprained'  ankle.
                                                The author closes with a brief summary of the ensuing years, which for Bode included the death of his brother, a marriage and a second child, many injuries and his sixth Olympic medal in 2014. For, Vonn there has been divorce, an affair with Tiger, innumerable injuries, but so many World Cup wins that she now leads the all-time women's list.  Unfortunately, both Vancouver and Sochi were weather-challenged, and Vinton points out that the next two Winter Olympics are also at altitudes where global warming could easily lead to a cancellation of the Alpine events. Thanks to my brother, Bill, for recommending this book.

The Nightingale, Hannah - B +

                                               This is an excellent novel of the French Resistance recommended to me by Mike Connell. It is told through the eyes of two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac.  Vianne is older, has a daughter and a husband who is a POW.  She teaches in the village and occupies a home her family has owned for generations, while her eighteen-year-old sister is a firebrand filled with anger. The Germans assign a polite, gentlemanly captain to billet at their home and Vianne complies. Isabelle treats him with disdain.  While Vianne copes, Isabelle is off to Paris on fake paperwork and quickly is hip-deep in serious resistance activity.  She remembers her mother's friend in the foothills of the Pyrenees and soon is leading an escape route from Paris to Spain for downed Allied pilots.  She is also very pleased to learn that her dad is not a collaborator but a legendary forger. Vianne works with and convinces the local orphanage to take in fourteen Jewish children.  Vianne, her husband and two children survive the war and remember.
                                               Once again, a novel fulfills the role of filling in the blanks. No matter how many histories one has read, only in a well-done novel or in a movie can you get a feel for being in a column fleeing Paris, what it is like to have a stranger living in your home, the daily privations of rationing, the pain of starvation, waiting endlessly for word from your husband, traveling without the proper papers, watching a Jewish friend be sent away, losing a child and a sister and remembering it all - for as long as you live.

Travelers, Pavone - B +

                                               In this, his third book, Chris Pavone continues to prove that he is a very capable writer of diverse 21st century thrillers. Here, Will Rhodes is a writer for 'Travelers', a sort of Conde Nast Travel magazine that is at the top of the publishing pyramid, or at least appears to be. His wife just went freelance after spending ten years there.  He's recruited (more like entrapped) to work for the CIA. Well, maybe it's not the CIA - but then again, who's who. This book is very good and full of plot twists and turns that keep you guessing and turning the pages. I will say though, not knowing who's who so deep into the book is unnerving. Since Marcella edits this blog and will read this book, I'll leave it at that.

Midnight Sun, Nesbo - B

                                            This is a bit of an odd effort on the part of Jo Nesbo, author of the ten book series featuring Harry Hole, Oslo detective and alcoholic. It's his fourth non-Harry novel and is set in the far Arctic north of the country, approximately 750 miles from Oslo, about 40 years ago.  A failed hit-man is on the run from his boss who has sent a posse all the way up to the Arctic circle. Nesbo explores the culture, people and religion of the community and helps the hit man find a new life. A pleasant, but not terribly engrossing tale.

Mission Failure: America And The World In The Post-Cold War Era, Mandelbaum - B +

                                               The end of the Cold War coincided with America's victory in the first Iraqi War. Thereafter, America chose to stay involved internationally and the form of our involvement, projecting our military strength around the world, remained the same. The problem is that the content of our foreign policy changed dramatically. "The main focus of American foreign policy shifted from war to governance.." America went from containment to transformation and failed on every front.
                                               The author takes to task the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. He faults Clinton for introducing human rights considerations into our China policy and for expanding NATO into eastern Europe, thus assuring the ongoing enmity of both China and Russia to the US. It should also be noted that he quotes George Kennan in the lead into the chapter, "..expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era." One of the lessons of the two world wars was that conciliatory policies toward the vanquished succeeded, whereas animosity did not. NATO expansion totally turned Russia away from the west, lost the advantage of winning the Cold War, and was one of  "the greatest blunders in the history of American foreign policy." Next, Clinton intervened in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, "places that had no significance for global peace and American well-being." Projecting American values was now a policy. In each instance,  our mission of transforming these places for the better failed.
                                                The Bush administration's response to Sept 11 was the declaration of war on terror, an attack on  Islamic extremism.  The first response in Afghanistan was successful, as Al-Qaeda was crushed in weeks and with very little effort. The Taliban were vanquished and the country returned to peace, and almost, prosperity.  However, the government we established in Afghanistan was not competent, and in 2005, a Taliban insurrection began. Assisted by Pakistan, the Taliban were quite effective against the corrupt Karzai regime.  Obama campaigned on the basis of Afghanistan being the 'good war' and doubled the number of American troops. Soon thereafter, while approving of a counter-intelligence plan, he also put an end-date on the operation. In essence, his policy was a head feint. He said one thing and did another. He didn't believe in nation-building in Afghanistan and was comfortable walking away.  Our longest military engagement accomplished virtually nothing after its initial success in scattering Al-Qaeda.
                                                 The Bush invasion of Iraq, however misbegotten, was successful in removing the Hussein regime. Anarchy quickly followed and a America, without an occupation plan, watched helplessly. An eight-year attempt at nation-building totally failed. America, under a timetable set up by the Bush administration, departed in 2010 only to return in Obama's second term when ISIS almost overran the country.  Thirteen years after the senseless invasion, neither Iraq nor America are better off for the effort.
                                                 The quarter-century of post- Cold War major power tranquility ended in 2014, when both Russia and China returned to their traditional roles in the world. And that is where we now stand. A key take-away here is the obvious, i.e., no matter how well intentioned, the US cannot do the impossible. It can't build nations out of tribal Rubik's cubes of hate and religious intolerance. It cannot make peace in the Middle East by making the Arabs accept Israel.  It cannot make Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, China, Iran, Russia or North Korea into Denmark. They are not enlightened, educated, tolerant societies with a foundation ready to adopt what we perceive to be good ideas. He suggests that the best we can do is to try and cultivate, not impose, western values. All in all, railing against our messianic over-reaching foreign policies is music to my ears. His most assertive statement though, is that the expansion of NATO was and will be the most significant mistake we have made in a very, very long time.  That is something I need to absorb and consider and am not sure I agree. Not expanding NATO  would have been based on the hope that the Russians would be less intransigent than they historically have been, that they would have been cooperative team players in the global world. Would a petro-state with a centuries long tradition of aggression and autocracy made that adjustment? I tend to think not.

The Verdict, Stone - B +

                                               This novel is best described as a London-based Scott Turow-like legal thriller.  The interesting plot point is that the narrator, Terry Flynt, is the clerk on the defense team for the fabled Vernon James, his once best friend and the man who, twenty years earlier, had ruined his life. Add in a crooked lead partner at the law firm, two girls in a green dress, faulty memories, liars, killers and a bunch of dodgy characters, and you have a pretty fun read.

No Shred Of Evidence, Todd - B

                                   This is the 18th book in this series about Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard.  The series is one of the best expositions I've read of the depth of despair that cloaked England in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. This time, there are five young woman under the microscope. Their world was shattered as brothers, friends, fiancees and husbands failed to return. In their 20's, they had long lonely lives to look forward to. One theme that struck me here was a focus on the English class system. There are two gentlemen, certainly not aristocrats, but more like landed gentry, who treat Rutledge with the utmost disdain. There is also some class resentment from the poor that I haven't sensed before.  The actual crime story is a bit weak, but all in all, this remains a wonderful series. 

The Waters of Eternal Youth, Leon - B +

                                               As this is the 25th book in the series and the 4th post on the blog, there isn't much more to say. Guido remains the perfect gentleman, family man, Venetian and Commissario.

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Wachsmann - B

                                               KL stands for 'Konzentrationslager' and this is their history. "Terror stood at the center of the Third Reich, and no other institution embodied Nazi terror more fully than the KL." The first incarcerations were of politicals, primarily communists.  Intitially, the camps were impromptu and set up on any  available site. Dachau, the only camp to operate from 1933-1945 was established on the grounds of a deserted munitions plant.  It was at Dachau that Himmler and his SS took over and began their campaign to run the entire KL system. A year later, the purge of Rohm and the SA was determinative in the eventual ascension of the SS. "It helped to clear the way for a permanent system of lawless imprisonment in the SS concentration camps." Soon Himmler was supervising the KL, run by Eicke and the Gestapo, run by Heydrich. The state prison system remained separate, but all policing power was now in Himmler's hands. Recruitment and training of the guards became systematized, as did the physical layouts of the camps and the uniforms of the prisoners. The KL's of the late thirties featured the imprisonment of hardened criminals, asocials, unemployables, the dim-witted, homosexuals, gypsies and religious opponents of the regime, necessitating an expansion of the number of camps. Only after Kristallnacht in Nov. 1938 did Jews arrive in the camps in meaningful numbers and as the sworn enemies of the Reich, they were met with ferocity and brutality. On the eve of the war, the combined headcount at Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck, Sachsenhausen, Mathausen and Flossenburg was just over 21,000. The existence, staffing and philosophy of the camps may have foreshadowed what was to come. But, it was not a certainty.
                                                War brought foreigners into the system and led to construction of new facilities beyond the borders of the Reich. The first new camp, in Upper Silesia, was at Auschwitz, where one million would eventually die. Around the system, casual, unofficial and extra-judicial murder quickly became the norm. Prisoners could be murdered without anyone asking questions. And murdered they were, particularly Poles and Jews. The pace picked up so much that the SS camps built their own crematoria. "The transition from mass death to systemic mass extermination did not take place until spring and summer 1941, when Nazi leaders took the next steps on the road to genocide in the KL." The killing of the weak and disabled had begun before the war and accelerated in 1941, the same year that saw the SS Einsatzgruppen dispatching hundreds of thousands of Jews as the army rolled into the  USSR and began the starvation of Soviet prisoners that eventually led to millions of deaths. It was Soviet commissars who were the first victims of the Zyklon-B experiments at Auschwitz. "Systemic mass killing turned to genocide in 1942 as the Holocaust entered the KL."
                                                  Beginning at the camps at Belzec*, Sobibor*, Treblinka* and Birkenau, the Jews, who were held in ghettos throughout Poland, were led to the gas chambers. It was at Auschwitz, though, that the Holocaust reached it peak. "The Nazis murdered almost one million Jews here, more than in any other single place. And, only in Auschwitz did they systematically kill Jews from all across the continent, deported to their deaths from Hungary, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Italy, and Norway."  Auschwitz resonates throughout history because there were survivors who told of their experience.  At Treblinka, there were only three known survivors. The difference is that Auschwitz was also a work camp, where Himmler housed tens of thousands in a vain attempt to build an economic empire on the backs of the downtrodden. Death is what we associate with the camps, but they equally excelled in forced slave labor. Throughout the Reich and right up to the end, prisoners worked in inhuman conditions, often until their death.  And right up to the end, the KL camps were packed. There were over 700,000 prisoners in January 1945. It is believed 40% died during the death throes of the Reich. Outright murder, starvation, typhus, and an endless litany of diseases and cold were the contributors. Soviet, British and American soldiers liberated the survivors.
                                                "The memories of the camps was far more torturous for the survivors, than for the perpetrators,who often settled into quiet lives and forgot about the KL..." Survivors were never free of the memories and carried them to their graves. To have been a victim of and an observer of such a vast genocide was not something one could move on from. Many were irretrievably broken. Many of the KL perpetrators, particularly the commandants and senior staff, were found, tried and executed by the Allies. The majority of evildoers escaped what can only be characterized as erratic revenge, retribution or justice.
                                                 A reunified Germany has acknowledged its past with memorials to the murdered dead around the country. Wachsmann chooses to close the book where it began - at Dachau. Today there is a museum, and the roll call square is just behind the entry gate with an arch with the words Arbeit Macht Frei.
                                                                                                                                                       
                                                  This book is very well written and is as thorough an examination of the KL's as I can imagine. It is, however, very hard slogging. The topic is debilitating and simply wore me out, as is obvious by the almost two weeks it took to complete. And to be frank, I started skimming early and skipped a few chapters. It is not for the faint of heart.


*These three camps were not part of the KL, nor were they operated by the SS. They were under the jurisdiction of the General Government, Poland and staffed by the Reich's Chancellery in Berlin.
                                             

Razzle Dazzle: The Battle For Broadway, Riedel- B

                                             This book is a charming review of the NY theater during the 20th century. The story is dominated by the Shuberts, three bright, aggressive brothers from Syracuse, NY, who came to dominate live theater, not only in NY, but around the country.  By the time of the Depression,  they owned almost all of NY's theaters and dozens elsewhere. They lost their organization to a bank, but were able to buy it back at auction. The Shuberts were on top of the world throughout the 'Golden Age' of Broadway in the 50's and 60's. When the last of the three brothers died in 1962, he left the organization to the Shubert Foundation. Broadway went into a deep dive a decade later under the onslaught of rock 'n' roll, the departure of the middle-class for the suburbs, the city's legendary decline and the mismanagement of a hard-drinking Shubert nephew.
                                               The two attorneys for the family ousted the nephew, withstood a politically-motivated onslaught from Louie Lefkowitz and backed the show that began the turnaround for Broadway. 'A Chorus Line' began its 15-year run in the spring of 1975. The blockbuster era had begun. By the end of the decade, attendance was back to late-60's levels. 'Cats' brought to Broadway the era of the global spectacle".  In the '90's and in the new century, Broadway boomed with 'LeMiz', ''Phantom', 'Mama Mia' and the Disney productions 'Beauty and the Beast'  and 'Lion King', reasserting itself as one of the city's most important industries. Various public and civic organizations achieved the impossible - they helped clean up  Times Square. Broadway contributes 11% of the city's economic output. The Shuberts are still a force. This has been a fun read. But, this is an industry with more mean-spirited, egomaniacal, despotic, womanizing, back-stabbing SOB's than any I know of.  "Naughty, bawdy 42nd Street"

The Cartel, Winslow - B +

                                               In this sequel, Adan Barrera gets himself transferred to a Mexican prison, from which he escapes, thus prompting Art Keller to come in out of the cold and re-join the DEA. Game on.  Adan slowly re-establishes control of the drug business in Mexico. The key is the 'plazas', the cities with access to the north. They are Tijuana, Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros. Controlling the flow of coke, heroin and marijuana requires teamwork and in order to succeed, Adan establishes an 'alliance of blood' - only people from Sinoala, his home province. The Federal government, though, has actually re-organized and significantly improved its anti-drug efforts and they have help from Keller.  Adan faces some stiff competition, especially in the eastern part of Mexico, and eventually goes to war with the Zetas.  Around and around the wars go, an endless cycle of deceit, treachery, torture  and murder. It ends dramatically in a jungle in Guatemala. Keller walks away the winner; but, there is no prize, or even peace of mind. These two books have been a fun read and on a topic I've never come across. Interestingly, they also offer perspective that I've never considered. That is, that the problems that we associate with Colombia, Mexico and other centers of the drug world would not exist were it not for America's appetite for drugs.

I, Claudius, Graves - B +

                                               The sub title of this remarkable eighty -year -old novel is 'From The Autobiography Of Tiberius Claudius Born 10 BC Murdered And Deified AD 54'.  This classic is best-known today as the source of a famous BBC production starring Derek Jacobi as Claudius. It appeared on Masterpiece in America.  Claudius starts his tale well before his birth and recites the inside story of the reign of Caesar Augustus, husband of his grandmother, Livia. I'm certain that in the annals of literature there have been persons more evil than Livia. However, none come immediately to mind. She poisons, she destroys  families and marriages, she manipulates the Emperor and when her grandson  arrives on the scene, she mistreats him as well. On and on throughout the reign of Augustus, she plays with all causing the banishment of the worthy and the promotion of the evil. Although she despises Claudius, he manages to stay in the royal family's good graces by hiding his intelligence and emphasizing his physical disabilities and stammer. Upon the death of Augustus, Claudius' uncle, Tiberius succeeded to all of Augustus'  powers.  Tiberius combined personal debauchery with a governing style that allowed his mother Livia to continue to run the affairs of state.  Late in Tiberius' reign, Livia invited Claudius to dinner and told him that the young and evil Caligula would succeed because Tiberius suffered from the same weakness Augustus had - he wanted to be succeeded by someone so lacking in skill, that everyone would remember his greatness. Caligula's succession  was generally praised and there was hope that the tyranny of Tiberius would be replaced by a return to good government. and for a few months all was well. Then Caligula advised Claudius that that he, Caligula, was now a god, and Claudius hoped for a restoration of the Republic, as everyone would realize Caligula was mad. Unfortunately, in the topsy turvy world of Rome, Caligula's delusion was accepted and he pushed the outer limits on debauchery and treachery to the point that his name became synonymous with extreme evil. He murdered at will, stole wives and banished children, he bankrupted the state and stole from his subjects.  Finally and thankfully, the guards assassinated him and declared Claudius Emperor.

Concorde, Glancey - B

                                              I have taken over 3,000 plane rides; I don't have a bucket list. I have a few regrets and one is the fact that I never flew one of the  20 Concordes that once graced our skies. The idea of supersonic commercial passenger transport was conceived in London on Guy Fawkes Day in 1956. Considering that a decade after the war, the UK had just ended food rationing, the idea was quite ambitious. The technological and development challenges were such that the French were enlisted as partners.  "The key to Concorde's success, indeed its very existence, was the design of its wing. This proved to be the greatest compromise in its design, a brilliant trade-off between low-speed lift and  high-speed flight...But ultimately, Concorde's Anglo-French design team turned each and every necessary compromise into an opportunity to shape a supersonic airliner that performed exceptionally well in almost all circumstances." On Dec. 11, 1967,  Concorde 001 rolled off the line. A decade of trials, assessments and 'noise' challenges followed. NY's Port Authority wouldn't allow the plane at JFK and it took a Supreme Court case to set aside that objection. Although the plane flew all around the world, it was the trans-Atlantic flights between London and Paris to JFK and back  that became the consistent bread and butter route for the Concorde. It turned out to be a safe, predictable plane that was a joy to fly.  On average, both BA and Air France had about 20 elite flight crews over the 26 years the plane flew. The cockpit and flight deck were old-fashioned analog and would have been familiar to a WW2 aviator.  Meals and libations were of the highest quality; because the flights were short, there was no entertainment. The Concorde was a target of environmentalists throughout its life because of the sonic boom and its vast consumption of fuel. Its perfect safety record was marred by a fatal crash just after a Paris take-off in 2000. The cause had been debris on the ground and the plane was re-certified in Nov, 2001. The post-9/11 swoon in the economy and the rising costs and availability of replacement parts led to its retirement in 2003. "Concorde, at heart the most poetic of machines, was not destined to fly into this era of Airbuses and prosaic flight." There are three exhibited in America: in Seattle, in the Smithsonian Annex in Virginia, and in Manhattan with the Intrepid.

The Power Of The Dog, Winslow - B +

                                               Thanks to Wendell Erwin for this recommendation. This novel is a powerful, page-turning read about the drug cartels, featuring DEA Agent Art Keller, a man of talent and character, a Hell's Kitchen crew trying to sneak crack onto the streets of NY, multiple Mexican families in the business and the hypocrisy and corruption of both the US and Mexican governments. The story starts in the 1970's when Tio Barrera tricks Art into helping Tio eliminate his competition,  simultaneously advancing Art's career. Ten years later, Art brilliantly traps Tio, but loses out when Tio kidnaps and kills Art's partner, scares Art's  family back to America and embarrasses Art to his employers. Even when Art next catches up to Tio, he learns that Tio is protected by either the CIA/DOD/DOJ/State Dept./DEA/NSC, or all of them, because the global war on drugs is a Rubik's cube and an Alice in Wonderland cacophony of confusion, misdirection and deceit that somehow supports the drug trade as part of fighting communism. That however, does not stop Art in his Ahab-like pursuit of Tio and everyone else involved in the torture and murder of Ernie Hidalgo. On and on the pursuit goes, with never-ending over-the-top violence and betrayal.  After Tio is gone, Keller continues his pursuit of Tio's nephews, Adan and Raul. As the book heads to its conclusion in the late 1990's, only Adan is left and Keller is still after him. The US has put a $2m bonus on Adan's head and he has responded with a $2.1m on Art's. Round and round the story goes until a  3 A.M. meet in  a San Diego park ends in gunshots and a modicum of justice.
                                             

The Conquering Tide: The War In The Pacific Islands, 1942-1944, Toll - A*

                                               This is the second volume of Toll's planned trilogy on the war in the Pacific.  The first volume finished at Midway in June, 1942. The US was looking for a place to start the rollback of the Japanese conquests.  Washington chose the furthest of the Solomon Islands, a place few Americans had ever heard of - Guadalcanal.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                               On the morning of August 7, US Marines waded ashore, unopposed. The US was taking the offensive for the first time in the war. A major problem existed in the minds of the Navy, Marine and Army commanders on site - the Yanks weren't ready, were not adequately supplied and had been rushed into the invasion by Admiral Ernest King. Within a week, the Marines had more or less finished 'Henderson Field' and 31 airplanes landed to provide air cover for the expected Japanese attacks. The Japanese sent a major carrier task force south from Truk and the third carrier battle of the war ensued. In the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the US prevailed. The tentative hold that the Marines had at the 'Canal' was safe until the next attempt to unseat them.  Matters escalated as the Japanese attacked daily from the air and slowly built up their troops on the ground.  The Americans were reinforced in Sept. by both air and ground forces. A month later, the Japanese made their biggest push of the campaign, sending 2 battleships to bombard the airfield. October and November saw almost daily major naval engagements. Because the US planes from Henderson Field could protect the seaward approaches during the day, the Japanese brought troop and supply ships in at night.  Destroyers and cruisers accompanied them to shell the US position.  Even though the Americans won the naval battles north of the Canal, the Japanese managed to achieve numerical superiority. By mid-November, they had 30,000 troops on the ground. However, the Imperial navy could not supply their needs and slowly they wasted away to starvation, malaria and beri-beri. In early February,  the Japanese were able to evacuate about 10,000 men. The Battle of Guadalcanal* was over.
                                               The next objective was the large Japanese naval base at Rabaul, New Britain. Halsey would head north up the Solomon's; MacArthur  would head up the north coast of New Guinea.  Neither responded affirmatively to King's suggestion that they bypass Rabaul completely. It took from February, 1943 to February, 1944 for the two forces to advance past Rabaul and occupy the Admiralties.  Once they had decimated and eliminated Rabaul as a naval air base,  Halsey and MacArthur concurred and bypassed the 100,000 man garrison, letting it sit there unengaged and totally forlorn. By the end of 1943, it was obvious the war in the Pacific was won. The Japanese aviators who had conquered the region were almost all dead and the replacements were not nearly as skilled. Her navy had lost all but a few of its carriers. As Yamamoto had predicted before the war, Japan could not engage in a war of attrition with the larger US. The only question was how long it would take and how many lives would it cost.
                                               Submarines played an integral part in the success of the US Navy. After tossing the rulebook out and taking a more aggressive stance, they sunk more of Japan's naval and merchant shipping than the carriers and the surface fleet.  However, they were thwarted by defective torpedoes, a problem that the Ordnance Dept. in Washington refused to address. Toll quotes the leading historian of the sub service stating, "The torpedo scandal of the US submarine force in WWII was one of the worst in any kind of warfare."  By the last two years of the war, the torpedo problem was resolved and the submariners swept the seas of all merchant shipping. The home islands were isolated. The price in men and material was heavy - a 22% fatality rate was the highest of any American  endeavor in the war.
                                               For the Navy, victory over Japan was not supposed to be a charge north from the Solomons or New Guinea.  Every war game for the last forty years had planned on a cross-Pacific attack that captured the Marshals, Gilbert's, and further west, the Mariana's. In 1943, Nimitz began to plan for that which every Navy officer had trained.  In an operation called Galvanic, 116 combatant ships sailed west headed for Tarawa#, the Marines first contested landing in a series whose names resound through history. The Marines were slaughtered on the first day on Tarawa.  Day 2 "was the proudest and most terrible day in the history of the Marine Corps." By the third day, 4,000 Japanese were dead, at a cost of 1,000 Marines. The US would learn and do better the next time.  Kwajalein  and Eniwetok fell in early 1944. The Japanese positions in the central Pacific no longer existed. The Gilbert's and Marshals were now forward American bases.
                                              In Tokyo, the strategy (hope) was to bring about a 'decisive fleet battle' in the western Pacific and deliver the coup de grace with the country's two leviathans, the battleships Yamoto and Mushashi. US strategists weighed  MacArthur's demands to return to the Philippines as opposed to pursuing Nimitz's central Pacific approach. The decision was made to let both proceed, but it became clear that taking the Mariana's would allow the new B-29 to raid the home islands. Taking Guam, Saipan and Tinian would allow the US to punish the Japanese and close out the war.  Chester Nimitz had the inside track.  While the Marines battled on Guam, most of the combat ships in the fleet sailed west into the Philippine Sea. Japan's First Mobile Fleet sailed out to meet them. "On any terms other than direct  comparison with the resources of the Fifth Fleet, the Japanese fleet was an awesome force. It was the largest concentration of carrier air power the Imperial Navy had ever amassed." The June 19, 1944 Battle of the Philippine Sea has become known as the 'Mariana's Turkey Shoot'.  Japan lost 293 planes to an American tally of  25. The next day the Americans further pursued and demolished what was left of the air power of the Japanese Fleet. They fled north having lost over 400 planes and three carriers.  Back in the Mariana's, first Saipan and then Guam and Tinian fell.  The Japanese fought to the last man^. Saipan was also the first time the US had fought in the Pacific on an island with civilians present. Convinced that they would be tortured and eaten by the Americans, many of the civilians threw themselves off the cliffs of the island.  The victories in the Mariana's and the seas to the west were very significant and laid the ground for the recapture of the Philippines and the assault on the home islands. Guam became Pearl Harbor west. Eventually, over 200,000 men were stationed there. Even Nimitz moved CINCPAC HQ to Guam.  They were still 1,000 miles from Tokyo with a great deal yet to accomplish. I suspect none of them dreamed it would all be over in a little more than year.
                                              Throughout this book, Toll sets forth a lot of statistics. The only campaign where we were shorthanded was  Guadalcanal.  Thereafter, the numbers were compelling. We always had more ships, planes, ammunition, men and supplies.  During the sail to the Mariana's, a fighter pilot, while observing the fleet in motion, wrote, "I looked down on this power and wondered what kind of fools the Japanese were. They had made one of the greatest miscalculations of all time and boy, were they going to pay for it."  By the end of the war, the US had 119 aircraft carriers in the Pacific. We had four when the war began. I was surprised to read throughout the book of Hirohito's involvement. Toll depicts him as very, very involved with all aspects of naval strategy, receiving reports and making demands upon his government. This is a long, long way from the naive marine biologist who is depicted so often as uninvolved and distracted. Another theme throughout this book is inter-service rivalries and even rivalry between the Navy's brown and black-shoe officers.  The brown-shoe officers were they aviators; the black were the old guard battleship officers.  In addition, the Marine Corps felt that neither set of  Admirals understood them.  The submariners felt misunderstood. The man who calmed the waters, quieted the tensions and resolved the problems was Nimitz, who clearly is depicted as the Pacific iteration of Ike.
                                               Needless to say, I think it's great book. As the son of an Army sergeant, who  I believe saw action in the Marshall's, Gilbert's, Mariana's and Okinowa, and as someone who grew up in the 50's where the 'sneak attack on Pearl Harbor' was a frequent reference, I guess I've always considered the Pacific personal.  I suspect I will always find the successes of the 'Greatest Generation' inspiring.


*Time and again throughout the sections on the Canal, the author references Richard Tregaskis of the International News Service and his 1943 classic 'Guadalcanal Diary'.  Over 55 years later, I can still see the book in my local Queens Borough Public Library.  It had a hard green cover and gold lettering.
#Tarawa, along with Marianas, Iwo Jima and Okinowa are memorialized on the facade of the Navy Marine Corps Stadium at Annapolis.
^A sergeant, Soichi Yokoi, held out in the woods of Guam until 1972.

The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945, Stargardt - B +

                                               "This book is about how the German people experienced and sustained the war." The author, a 54-year-old professor at Oxford, attempts to find a middle ground between the Germans as perpetrators and the Germans as victims. His goal is to learn how the Germans were capable of fighting until the Armageddon had totally destroyed their country. This book has been well reviewed and acclaimed.
                                             "When the war broke out in September, 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany."  "The fear that the disasters of the First World War were about to be repeated was palpable." Food rationing was immediately imposed, as well as limits on leather, shoes and all items of clothing. The expectation was that it would be a short war. The first winter saw a coal shortage. Juvenile delinquency, sexual promiscuity and venereal disease spiked.  The Nazi killing machine began at home. Conscientious objectors, many of whom were Jehovah's Witnesses, were sent to the guillotine. Young and old in psychiatry asylums were eliminated. Thousands were killed, and their deaths were withheld from family and the general public. Surprisingly, one group that feared the outbreak of war was spared. No action was taken against the Reich's remaining Jews, because presumably  Hitler still hoped for a settlement with the western powers.
                                                 The amazingly quick victory in the west transformed the public's view of the war. The result of the first World War had been stunningly reversed. The 'blood enemy' had been defeated and occupied. However, the immediate RAF bombings of German cities was a significant shock to the system. Shelters were constructed and in the course of the next twelve months, 619,000 children were evacuated to rural safety. The home front was buoyed by all of the goods the soldiers were allowed to carry and ship home. The Netherlands, Denmark and in particular, France, were the source of a phenomenal amount of consumer goods that headed home.
                                                  The initiation of Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 saw a massive increase in anti-Soviet propaganda. The Germans were now fighting against barbarians, Asiatics and of course, Jews.  Both the Catholic and Protestant hierarchies were pleased to be fighting godless communism. The war in the east proceeded with a ferocity unimaginable in enlightened Europe.  And here the author establishes one of his major points. There was no ignorance on the home front about what was happening to the Jews and communists. Numerous letters home are quoted at length spelling out the magnitude of the holocaust in the east.  Amidst the carnage in the first year of the war, the Germans allowed 2 million Soviet POWs to die of starvation. When the advance on Moscow was pushed back, the men of the Wehrmacht  began to write home of their losses and the difficulty of fighting without the proper equipment. The regime realized the crisis of faith it was facing and organized a major civic effort to support the boys. Two million volunteers organized the shipping to the front of 67 million items, ranging from boots to furs to food.
                                                  "At the beginning of 1942, most of Europe's Jews were still alive; by the end of the year, most of them were not. The killing of the Jews began in the east, and there principally it stayed..." A vast amount of information, letters, and photographs of the unfolding holocaust were sent home, where Jews were forced to wear yellow stars on their outer clothing. Hitler used the word exterminate four times in 1942, and Jewish goods and apartments were offered at public auction by the SS, after the most of Germany's Jews were sent east. The elimination of the Jews was justified by the fact that they had started the war.
                                                   April of 1942 saw the most shocking and demoralizing event up  to that point - further cuts in civilian rations. Reductions in food and coal demoralized the nation and brought back fear of the 'turnip winter' of 1916-17. Black market activity increased. Feeding the populace, whether at home, or at the front became an increasing challenge.  Ten months later, defeat at Stalingrad further demoralized the Reich. The leadership told the people that the 6th Army fought to the last man. When word leaked out that almost 100,000 had been captured, the families at home entered an endless purgatory that would last another decade.*
                                                     In 1943, the RAF rained hell upon western and northern Germany. The Rhineland, in particular the the Ruhr Valley, was pounded. Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin were relentlessly attacked. Goebbels again preached it was because of the Jews that they were being terrorized and tried to focus the nation on the fact that it was a war to the death with Bolshevism and Jewry. When the Katyn massacre was discovered, he warned that this is what would happen to Germans if the Jews won. For the first time in the war, the public began to hear and to use the phrase 'final solution'. Many people began to believe the ferocity of the Allied air attacks were retribution for what Germany did to the Jews.  The author addresses the issue of why strategic bombing effectively ran Italy out of the war, but not Germany. The answer is that German society was equipped to fight back and to help those displaced and injured. Germany recruited thousands of teenagers (including a future Foreign Minister and Pope) to effectively man the anti-aircraft guns. There was an active civil defense effort with bunkers and warnings. Of the 6 million displaced civilians, 80% were settled with the help of Nazi social agencies.
                                                     As the Allies approached from the east and the west, the people rallied around the Fuhrer, particularly after the attempt on his life. All men from 16-60 were called upon to help and thousands of women contributed to the defense of the Reich. The leadership wanted to avoid at all costs a repeat of the 1918 'stab in the back' and the revolution that followed. The people still believed the propaganda that the war could end well for Germany. And most importantly, they were now defending the homeland and in particular, were defending it from the eastern horde. They fought to the bitter end. When Goebbels and Hitler committed suicide, the people turned on them and began the process of laying it all at the feet of their dictators. Germans shared a collective guilt for their defeat and for what they had done to the Jews. Very quickly though, the war, although not forgotten, was no longer spoken of. The German people suffered from death, starvation , and homelessness. The immediate post-war years were harder than the war itself for the majority of the population. By the time the successor states were set up in 1949, "a sense of victimhood came to overshadow any sense of shared responsibility for the suffering of Germany's victims." "It was clear that most Germans thought they had fought a war of national defense."
                                                    This is not an easy book to read. It is 571 pages long, not a narrative but a series  of quotes from letters and diaries. That said, it is unique in that it focuses on the German civilian experience and I've learned a great deal, as it covers material I have not seen before.




*Approximately 5,000 men came home in the mid-50's.