The Republic For Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction And The Gilded Age, 1865-1896, White - B+

                                              This lengthy tome is the latest book in the Oxford History of the United States.  The series was planned in the 1950's by C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter. The first book was published in 1982. This is the ninth of twelve planned. They have not been in any particular order and two of the remaining three are about the colonial and revolutionary eras. Of those published to date, one has been about foreign policy, one about the Civil War and the rest cover epochs spanning 16 to 33 years. Three volumes received Pulitzers, one a Parkman and one a Bancroft.
                                              "How the United States at the end of the nineteenth century turned out to be so different from the country that Lincoln conjured and Republicans confidently set out to create is the subject of this book." The martyred Lincoln was returned to the Midwest and it is the Midwest that dominates this era. Its people and mores are central to the story of the balance of the century. The guiding premise of the midwesterners was that free men working on their own behalf could build a home and raise a family steeped in the values of Lincoln and  Springfield, Illinois.
                                               Reconstruction stumbled out of the block because there was no plan per se, there was great uncertainty about what powers the federal government had after the war ended, and the new president was a border state Democrat. The South had been defeated, but the vast majority of  southerners did not accept that outcome. The Black Codes passed in 1865 practically re-enslaved the freedmen. For many in the north, the passage of the 13th Amendment freeing the slaves was in and of itself the achievement of their goals. The markets would resolve all else. When Congress  returned to Washington in December 1865, the Radical Republicans had different plans. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment followed, but to no avail. On the ground in the south, violence against the former slaves continued unabated. The impeachment of Andrew Johnson was the climactic battle between the Republicans and the southerners. By the time Grant was elected, most of the seceding states were back in the union. Reconstruction had achieved its legal goals, but not its practical ones. The blacks were now in a coercive labor system where they were tied to the land by contract. The 15th Amendment soon followed, but voting in the south was hope and not a reality for the freedman.
                                               The author calls the conquest of the west the Greater Reconstruction. To facilitate the remaking of the west, the government authorized the transcontinental railroads, funded them by giving the various railroads 125 million acres of land, offered land and education to any settler who moved west and ordered the army to move the Indians out of the way. To a great extent, the west was conquered with the values of the midwest as a guide. But the path was torturous, as the Indians did not cooperate and the arid land west of the 100th parallel could not sustain the population density of the eastern half of the country. Massive ranches and farms took the place of smallholders and huge mining companies produced an overabundance of minerals for an economy that did not need all that was produced.  Once again, ideals did not come to fruition.
                                               In the first Grant administration, "free labor seemed to be working as intended, producing widespread prosperity and republican homes." Small factories as well as larger ones propelled the economy forward. However, there were chinks in the armor. The Republican desire to project their values of Protestantism, home and free labor ran afoul of the masses of immigrants pouring into the urban east. Many were Catholic and sold their labor by the hour. Wage labor was anathema to the Republican ideal, as was the eight-hour day and laborers "cooperating for mutual protection." Then came the Panic of 1873, which had as many international moving parts and unintended consequences as did our recent Great Recession. It featured countless closed businesses and banks, massive unemployment, foreclosures, the bankruptcy of most of the railroads, the first ever closure of the NYSE, and a depression that lasted five-and-a-half years.  The Panic introduced a deflation that would haunt farmers for the balance of the century. "This was not the anticipated outcome of the triumph of free labor and contract freedom." The nation approached the centennial both divided and financially weaker that it had been before the war.
                                               Rutherford B. Hayes succeeded Grant by promising the southerners on a special Electoral Commission that he would not enforce Reconstruction, thus breaking an apparent tie in the Electoral College. The Great Strike of 1877 started that summer on the Pennsylvania R.R. A feeder line's president declared a 10% dividend the same day he cut workers' wages 10%. The strike spread throughout Maryland and Pennsylvania, led to violence and destruction of company property and was met by all of the powers the railroads and the states could muster. Private militias were called out and the strikers fired upon. When this led to a general strike in Chicago, Hayes ordered in federal troops. Capital triumphed. The following decade elected Garfield and then Cleveland, the first Democrat in thirty years.  The south remained walled-off economically, virtually free of immigrants, as the north and west grew. The political waters were muddied by issues of religious reforms, extreme anti-Chinese policies in California, public education, paper v metallic-based currency, negro emigration, tariff policy, endemic public corruption and civil service reform. The overcrowding of cities led to a decline in the health of the population. Life expectancy and adult height declined between the war and the end of the century. Air pollution joined dysentery, tuberculosis and malaria as the curses of urban America. Concurrently, the same cities were building skyscrapers, piping in clean water and electrifying transportation.
                                               On May Day in 1886, a nationwide general strike far exceeded  that of a decade earlier. "More than 600,000 American workers walked out of shops, factories and work sites." It was led by the Knights of Labor, a combination labor union and benevolent association that included anarchist laborers on the left and the Society of Locomotive Engineers on the right. At issue were both wages and work rules. Safety improvements were paramount in an industrial society that killed thousands per year. Chicago became the center of what is known as the Great Upheaval. Anarchists helped organize the rally that led to The Haymarket Riot, which frightened so many that the labor movement began to split. Reformers took to trying to sway the major political parties, but did so inconclusively. Whether it be tariff reform, public v Catholic education, temperance, women's suffrage, the status of immigrants, the power of the railroads or the many issues in the test between capital and labor, there were simply too many conflicts within America society to find common ground. Both parties floundered.
                                               In the west, the government intervened aggressively and continually to correct mistakes previously made. "Nowhere was this truer than in the cattle industry." It was a heavily subsidized corporate industry that failed disastrously. It was financed from the UK, provided free land to graze upon by the US and shipped east in federal and state subsidized railroads. After a brutal winter that killed much of the herds in the northern plains, the federal government pulled the plug and tried to focus on smaller ranchers. For the American Indian, the closing of the frontier meant the end of their life on the plains and any hope for the future. Reduced to a handful of reservations on which they could barely scratch out a subsistence living, their last attempt at fighting back ended at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, ironically, at the hands of the 7th Cavalry.
                                               The 1890's were not a preamble to the 'American Century', but rather a seemingly endless morass of insoluble problems. It saw an America that "doubted both the country's ability to absorb immigrants and whether the new immigrants were absorbable."  The country on the whole had not yet absorbed and accepted its Germans and Irish.  Italians from the southern half of the peninsula and Jews from Russia horrified the natives. Throughout the south, lynchings were up and the Jim Crow laws were enacted. Women were seeking rights, particularly the right to vote. Although the Columbian Exposition showed off Chicago and America in a bright light, the Panic of 1893 followed. Once again, the US imported a credit crisis from Europe, leading to railroad and bank failures and  another depression. Labor troubles, strikes and boycotts followed. The US government which had failed for decades to protect the blacks in the south, never hesitated to protect the interests of the railroads, steel mills and manufacturers of the north and midwest. "The century was closing with a mad and seemingly destructive rush." The last election contested by a Civil War veteran was won by McKinley in 1896. It was a triumph of Republican activist government over Democratic minimalism and cast the die for the next thirty-six years.
                                               Lincoln could not have envisioned his country three decades after his death. He and his memory were iconic. However, the land of small town Protestantism featuring free labor and the primacy of the individual home was no long center stage. Jane Addams wondered what he would think about the immigrants crowding around her Hull House in downtown Chicago as she looked at his statue in Lincoln Park. She wrote that he had secured "democratic government, associated as it is with all the mistakes and shortcomings of the common people, still remains the most valued contribution America has made to the moral if of the world."
                                              I've taken away a clearer understanding of the issues that dominated the especially , how and why that Springfield ideal clashed with the reality of those immigrants who stayed in the northern cities. The author's focus on this theme  has helped me understand how the battle between those with economic power and the unskilled laborers they needed to implement the industrial revolution would continue for generations.

The Killing:Uncommon Denominator, Dionne - B

                                           The author is an accomplished crime writer who has apparently acquired the characters from  the AMC series 'The Killing' and has written a prequel. Holder and Linden are not yet partners when Holden catches a case that involves two dead brothers, both of whom are brilliant and just discovered they have a rare almost always fatal kidney disorder. Tie in a half-brother stalking them, a whole lot of meth heads, cookers and tweakers, and you have a fun quick read.

Shadow Man, Drew - B

                                              This is a thoughtful police procedural focused on child molestation. A young man, abused and kept in a cellar for six years, grows up to be a serial killer. A high school coach abuses and messes up the lives of his young athletes, one of whom grows up to be the local detective. The most interesting aspect though is that it is set in Orange County, California in the mid-eighties, just as the final touches of civilization are being built. The detective is a third-generation local with memories of his father and he riding horses down to the beach until the PCH was built twenty years earlier.

The Sum Of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class, Currid-Hacklett - B-

                                             The starting point of this economic/sociological assessment is Thorstein Veblen's 1899 book 'The Theory of the Leisure Class', which introduced the concept of conspicuous consumption and which the author states is one of the most important economic books ever written. The most famous example of said conspicuousness is the use of a silver spoon, when a mass-produced steel one looked just as good and performed the same function for a fraction of the price. That conspicuous consumers were of the upper class almost goes without saying. Fast forward through a century of mass production and the expansion of the consumer goods society to the creation of a new dynamic - where a meritocracy is focused on knowledge and culture, and is "less clearly defined by economic position."
                                             "A shared set of cultural practices and social norms" defines the aspirational class. They buy electric cars, organic food and breastfeed their young. On the road to proving the case re the aspirer's, the author turns to 'inconspicuous consumption' and defines it as 'the source of the new class divide." The inconspicuous consumers focus on investing in their children through extensive pre-natal care, breastfeeding, nannies, private education and lessons of all kinds. They eat kale and quinoa salads, while quoting Paul Krugman's op-ed pieces in the Times. They stream on Netflix and Hulu most likely in a culturally rich urban neighborhood.
                                              I understand that one does not need to be wealthy to care for your young, read the New Yorker or prefer kale slaw, but almost everything the author characterizes as inconspicuous requires money. It may not be flashy consumption, but I do not see the differences between today's indulgence and the aforementioned silver spoon. A $75,000 per person National Geographic tour of the Galapagos and Antarctica is hardly a vacation for 99.9% of this country. The author's case is not made in my book. I believe the preferred argument is that the now highly-educated have joined the wealthy of the past to do things differently than the masses. It also seems as if she is discussing the divide between blue and red sate America, without ever mentioning politics.

The Midnight Line, Child - B +

                                              The fall trifecta - Grisham, Connelly and Child. This is the latest Reacher and, like our protagonist, things are slowing down a bit. Jack no middle name has to be pushing 60. That didn't stop him early in this book from taking on seven bikers, but the truth is the pace, tension, frenetic motion, etc. has slackened. Somewhere in Wisconsin, Reacher comes across a West Point Class of 2005 ring in a pawn shop. It's very small and he concludes that any gal who got through the academy in the four years after 9/11 had to be as tough as nails and in trouble to let the ring go. He follows the trail to S.D., then to Wyoming, and he eventually pairs up with a former FBI agent working as a private investigator. Eventually the investigator's client, the drop-dead gorgeous twin of the missing army officer, joins the team. They find the sister, who on her fifth combat tour had an IED blow up in her face and, needless to say, is no longer gorgeous. She's also addicted to pain meds and living very far off the grid in Wyoming. The DEA is hot on the trail of the dealers and the network doing business in the area. Reacher leads the way in wrapping up the group dealing drugs and helps the officer get back to getting some help for her injuries.
                                             Child seldom deals with sensitive topics and here he combines the trauma of a wounded combat vet with the opioid crisis. It feels like a new direction for Reacher. The book is dedicated to the almost two million Americans who have received Purple Hearts.

Rogue Heroes: The History Of The SAS, Macintyre - B+

                                              Britain's Special Air Service was the first special ops force put into combat by a major conventional military. The concept, conceived in Cairo, was predicated on getting behind German lines on the desert side and from there, launching raids on airbases and supply depots. Desirable recruits would be self-reliant individualists, not biddable yes-men. Indeed, the organization specialized in eccentrics. In late 1941, they launched their first mission. They parachuted into the night in the middle of almost hurricane conditions. It was a total failure, as over half of the men were lost. On their next mission, driven to their objectives by the Long Range Desert Group, they met with spectacular success, as they destroyed planes and airfields hundreds of miles behind Rommel's front line. They continued in the new year and launched successful mission after mission.  The western half of the Sahara where the war was fought stretched 1200 miles from Tunisia to the Nile and a thousand miles south of the Mediterranean. The Afrika Korps and the 8th Army seldom ranged far from the coast. There was ample room to travel, strike anywhere, and then slip away. Over the course of 1942, their tactics evolved from surreptitiously sticking explosives by hand on planes to blasting their way onto airbases driving Jeeps with three fighter plane guns bolted on. On one of their raids, a British Army reporter went along. After Randolph Churchill told his dad about the SAS, the PM asked to meet their commander . After a dinner in Cairo, Winston quoted Byron, "He was the mildest mannered man / That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." Churchill later called Maj. David Sterling the Scarlet Pimpernel,  and wholeheartedly supported the SAS. The SAS finished the desert war in fine form and with the respect of the once skeptical army establishment.
                                              The SAS next saw action in Sicily and on the Italian mainland. Their assignments were more of a commando nature, such as attacking artillery batteries before an invasion, and were not to the liking of the men, who had grown accustomed to night raids. Also, they were now facing Hitler's order that commandos were to be shot upon capture and not treated as POW's. They fought in France behind enemy lines with the Resistance and with the SOE (Special Operations Executive), Churchill's spies and infiltrators.  They crossed the Rhine in March of 1945 and fought on  German soil. They helped take a submarine base, liberated Bergen-Belsen and were part of the occupation of Norway, where 300,000 Wehrmacht troops had to be processed. Their war was over. The SAS was officially disbanded in September.
                                             This is superb book, but it lost some of its sparkle after Africa. The European story lacks the verve of their time in the desert. One delightful aspect of this book, though, is that the raiding stories were the basis of quite a few English movies.

Another Life Another Time, Persson - B-

                                             Leif Persson is considered the godfather of Nordic noir and an excellent writer. This is a book from about fifteen years ago that deals with a crime with a political backdrop. A murder in the early nineties is investigated and no suspect is found. The cold case is looked into in conjunction with Sweden's law that placed a twenty-five year statute of limitations on all crimes, even murder. It appears as if the victim was one of the four Swedes who helped the Badder-Meinhoff Gang's 1975 attack on the German Embassy in Stockholm. Three of the four suspected of assisting the terrorists are dead. Is it possible the fourth is an official  about to be appointed to the highest level of government? Is there a tie-in to the Stasi files released and sold in the early-nineties? This is an ok read, but certainly not worth the efforts of anyone who sees these comments.

Two Kinds Of Truth, Connelly - B+

                                              Michael Connelly is still writing superb Harry Bosch novels and his latest just came out. Bosch works a case in his new place of employment, the San Fernando PD, and is called back into one of his first cases on the LAPD twenty-nine years ago. The new case is rather timely, as it details the ins and outs of the opioid/oxycontin game as played for profit by a gang of Russians in the California desert. The LA case is an attempt by a sleazy lawyer to open up a death row case by faking evidence and calling Harrys integrity into question. Needless to say, the Russians and the lawyer are brought to justice.

A Rift In The Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam Memorial , Reston - B

                                              At the end of the Vietnam War, America had no memorial to its victories in two World Wars, to FDR or to the Korean War. A young Vietnam veteran, Jan Scruggs, who had written a few op-ed pieces in the Washington Post, took up the cause, and amazingly, it gained traction. Funds were raised and an architectural competition was sponsored by the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Fund. The design was required to promote reconciliation, list the names of all who had died and be non-political. A Yale professor required his students to submit a design as part of a class project. A distinguished panel of architects reviewed 1421 proposals and unanimously selected a black granite memorial submitted by Maya Lin, a Yale undergraduate. The architects of America were enthusiastic about the design, but many others were not. It did not properly honor the dead. It was a "black gash of shame and sorrow." And many organizations would have to give their blessing and money before it would be built. Eventually, after the matter went as high as the White House, a compromise was reached. Frederick Hart's representational sculpture of three soldiers offset Lin's wall.  The Veteran's Day 1982 dedication drew 150,000 people, of which 15,000 were Vietnam veteran's. The most famous image of the day shows a man with long blonde hair leaning on the wall and crying. Today, it is considered a masterpiece that has fulfilled the the requirement to promote reconciliation.  It is a moving and almost sacred place. The fighting and arguing decades ago seems totally inappropriate. From my only visit, the granite wall and the statute of the three soldiers seems as if they were meant to be together.

The Rooster Bar, Grisham - B

                                             There are few things in life more fun than reading a new John Grisham novel. He tends to slay dragons, and here he has the for-profit education business in his sights. Three students at Foggy Bottom Law School, a diploma mill of no repute, walk away from their third year of school, repudiate hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt apiece, change their identities and start practicing law in DC. After all, in the criminal courts and, in particular, the DUI section, no one expects you went to Georgetown or asks to see your license. The cash-only business starts out well enough, but it is soon apparent that they can't run the scam indefinitely. Simultaneously, they uncover a web of misleading ownership behind the law school and others like it. They manage to leak information to assist a class-action lawsuit and to piggy-back their going-out-of-business bogus law firm into the big payday. Like many Grisham protagonists, they wind up on a beach sipping pina coladas. This is not his best effort, but it is still is a one-day read. There is a very interesting takeaway, and that is the 2006 Congressional give-away to for profit schools. There are no caps on what can be charged or lent for graduate schools, leading to hundreds of thousands of people who were taken in, and billions of dollars of loss to the Treasury. It's a classic privatization of profit and socialization of loss.

The Novel Of The Century: The Extraordinary Adventure Of Les Miserables, Bellos - B +

                                              I believe 'Les Miserables'  qualifies as one of, if not the greatest novel of the 19th century, if not of all time. It was published in 1862 approximately seventeen years after Hugo began it in the mid-forties. He was, at that time, the world renowned author of ' Notre-Dame de Paris', a member of the Academy Francaise, and an appointed peer of the realm. After the continental revolutions of 1848, he was elected to the National Assembly. A few years later, when Louis-Napoleon failed to garner the votes to extend his presidency and effectuated a coup-d-etat, Hugo had to leave the country. During a debate, he had referred to Louis as le petit Napoleon and his uncle as le grand Napoleon, thus forever earning Louis' enmity. He fled to Belgium and then to England and settled in Guernsey. As hard as it is to believe, France's great novel was completed on a Channel Island. On the second to last day of 1860, he began to finish the book he had left untouched for a dozen years. He began Part IV with the two days on the barricades in June of 1832, because in June of 1848 he had spent two days on the barricades, not as a revolutionary, but as a supporter of the established order horrified at the excesses of the sans-culottes. It took but six months to take the existing draft, a third of the length of the final novel, and turn it into the finished masterpiece.
                                             In a world prior to copyright laws, he sold to a Belgium firm the right to publish the book in French for 12 years for 300,000 francs. Converted into gold, it was a $3m sale and the richest in history. The manuscript was sold sight unseen. The logistics of publication involving Hugo and his team handwriting, correcting, and re-writing a massive book on an island four sailing days from the printer boggles my 21st century mind. The struggles and complex procedures are incomprehensible. Released over the course of the second quarter of 1862 in five parts, and immediately translated into a handful of approved languages, it sold 100,000 copies virtually overnight. Theatrical productions soon followed and the first film version appeared in 1897. Overall, there have been at least sixty-five screen versions in dozens of languages. As for Victor Hugo, he had vowed never to return to France while Louis-Napoleon was on the throne, and he did not. When the Second Empire fell, he returned immediately. When he was interred in the Pantheon in 1885, two million Parisians turned out.
                                            This book is a delightful romp through 19th century French culture, economics, history, politics, law, banking, manufacturing, society, religion and much much more, written by a professor of French with a fine-tuned appreciation and love of the novel, its author and France itself. "The moral compass of 'Les Miserables' thus spreads far beyond...the world in which it is set.  The novel achieves the extraordinary feat of being....a portrait of a time and place...a theatrical page turner.......and an easily understood demonstration of generous moral principles..."
                                          It has been approximately a quarter-of-a-century since I read 'Les Miserables'. It is not, at almost 1500 pages, something I would ever revisit. I remember it vividly, as Hugo could obviously tell a story and whoever translated it did a superb job. To this day, the lengthy (over 30 pages if my memory is correct) description of the Battle of Waterloo at the beginning of Part II is as vivid a telling of the famous battle that anyone could ever wish to read. The book, the many movies, the musical - what a tale of love, conscience and devotion.

A Single Spy, Christie - B

                                              Seldom does a WWII spy novel start on the Azerbaijan-Iranian border in 1936 and feature as its protagonist a seventeen-year-old Russian orphan. Alexsi Smirnov has escaped from a state orphanage and has developed some serious fighting and thieving skills,working with the Shahskavan smugglers deep in the south of the USSR. He is so good that he comes to the attention of the NKVD and is sent to Moscow for  a brief recruitment and training.  Because he had lived for a while with a German family and is unusually good with languages, he is set up as a sleeper agent with a German official, who believes he is a long-lost nephew. He of course winds up in the Abwehr, sees the plans for Barbarossa, and twice transmits information about the invasion. He is not believed either time. He is then assigned to Tehran, back to Berlin and to Tehran for a second time. The novel stumbles at the end when he is involved in trying to stop an oft-rumored attempt to assassinate Churchill at the Tehran Conference.  This is a very creative book and one that effectively points out the perfidious nature of Stalin's regime.

American Revolutions, Taylor - Incomplete

                                              The sub-title of this book, which I obviously did not finish, is 'A Continental History, 1750-1804'. The book was highly acclaimed, the author has previously won a Pulitzer, and currently holds the Thomas Jefferson Chair in History at The University of Virginia. The introduction says that the book will expand on the traditional narrative of the 13 colonies revolting and bring in the role of the trans-Appalachian territories and the British, French and Spanish Empires. There are some fabulous takeaways, but just not enough to spend what was beginning to look like a month on the book. The colonies were increasingly becoming more and more important to the UK. The percentage of GDP attributed to America rose from 4% in 1700 to 40% on the eve of the revolution. Because the colonial governors were weak in comparison the the Crown and there certainly was no House of Lords, the colonies were much more 'democratic' than home. The British victory in the Seven Years War was attributed to not just naval and military strengths, but the ability to borrow money because of the establishment of the Bank of England. Those funds required repayment. Since the colonies were taxed at a rate of about 1/25th of the homeland, Parliament, the King and most in the UK felt the Americans needed to pay more. Fissures also arose over the trans-Appalchians because the colonists wanted the Indian's land and the UK desperately wanted peace with the Indians. The Sugar, Tea and Stamp taxes were the first direct taxes* imposed on the colonies and the source of tremendous resentment.
I think this is a really good book for those with a keen interest and a bit more patience than I have.

*Direct taxes, as opposed to excise duties, were so unpopular in America that our Constitution proscribed them. An Amendment was necessary to implement the Income Tax in 1913.

The Marsh King's Daughter, Dionne - B+

                                              This is a frightful page-turner, unlike anything I remember reading in a long time. The novel is narrated in the first person by a 27-year-old woman, Helena, who is the only child of an Indian who kidnapped a fourteen-year-old in the mid-1990's and held her, and her soon-born daughter, hostage in the marshes of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for over a decade.  The story opens with the news that the Marsh King has escaped from prison, and Helena  realizes he will be after her and her family. Half of the story is flashbacks to her upbringing as a skilled huntress, tracker and survivalist. They truly lived off the grid and Helena was ten before she even saw or heard another human being. The details of the skills needed to live in the marsh must have required a lot of research by the author or a bountifully creative mind. It is the details of Helena's childhood that make this a fascinating read. It is her skills as a tracker on her father's trail that generate the excitement. Summer may be over, but this is the ultimate beach-read.

High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist And The Making Of An American Classic, Frankel - B +

                                                Frank Cooper was born to prosperous English parents in Montana and had the unusual experience of being an outdoorsman and westerner who attended prep school in England and college at Grinnell in Iowa. When he was 23, he moved to LA, got a job in the movies because he could ride a horse and was soon getting roles with his new name, Gary Cooper. Within a decade, he was Paramount's biggest male star, a rich man and the archetypical American hero. By the beginning of WW2, he was, perhaps, the biggest star Hollywood would ever see. Irving Berlin revised the words to 'Puttin On The Ritz' to fit Coop into the lyrics. While doing a USO tour during the war, he was asked on the first night to repeat the Luckiest Man Alive speech from 'Pride Of The Yankees', which he did, and then reprised on every other night of the tour.
                                              The man who would write the screenplay for Coop's second Oscar-winnning role (the first was 'Sergeant York')  was a Chicagoan, Carl Foreman, the ambitious son of Russian Jewish immigrants and already leaning communist when he arrived in Hollywood in the late thirties. Foreman met Stanley Kramer during the war and joined Kramer's fledgling independent movie company when he returned to LA. Later, the director Fred Zinnemann, part of the Viennese diaspora in Hollywood, also joined Kramer's company.
                                               In 1947, the HUAC came to town, focused on exploring the industry's left-leaning tendencies.  Red-baiting anti-semitism was at the core the committee's soul. Its leaders believed "that large parts of the New Deal had been a communist plot and that the federal government was riddled with reds." At public hearings later in the year, the committee castigated the Hollywood Ten, seven of whom were writers and all known members of the Party. In response, the industry, which was under severe economic stress as the post-war era movie viewing habits declined significantly, began firing and blacklisting its people.
                                              Foreman conceived of the plot for 'High Noon' as a parable about "the climate of fear that took hold in Hollywood."  He finished the script, and he and Kramer set out to cast it. Coop, by then over 50 and desperate for a decent role, signed on for $100,000, significantly below his usual $250,000. That left Kramer and Foreman with $35,000 for everybody else. They had to sign most of the actors to a one week schedule on a thirty-two day shoot. Twenty-year-old Grace Kelley came for $750 per week.  Foreman received a HUAC subpoena while they were filming. His testimony did not lead to an indictment, but he was blacklisted and fired by Kramer. With a rare solid financial settlement, he decamped for England. The score added by Dimitri Tiomkin is considered a key element to the movie's success, on par with the screenplay, the direction by Zinnemann and Cooper's understated brilliant portrayal of Sheriff Will Kane. Released in  August of 1952, it was an immediate success and was nominated for seven Oscars. The politics of the era prevented all but Cooper and Tiomkin from winning. Indeed, the American Legion lobbied against all the nominees.
                                             Carl Foreman was the exception to the rule amongst the blacklisted because he succeeded in England, where he prospered for twenty years. He wrote, produced, accumulated wealth and enjoyed his time overseas. His two most successful films were 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' and 'The Guns Of Navarone'.  He returned to Hollywood in the seventies to close out his career. Gary Cooper continued to work throughout his fifties, but never again reached the heights of his early years in Hollywood. He died at sixty of prostate cancer.
                                             The movie, of course, lives on. In 1989, a graphic designer for Solidarity in Poland published an image of Sheriff Will Kane with a ballot in his right hand and a a Solidarity badge on his vest. The message said:  High Noon 4 June 1989.  The film has been screened at the White House more than any other. Bill Clinton watched it twenty times.
                                             This book is mostly a telling of the blacklist story and the trials and tribulations of Carl Foreman . 'High Noon' is merely the background. Nonetheless, it's been a good read, and my fascinating takeaway is Coop reciting the Luckiest Man Alive speech in the Pacific while on that USO tour. Also, I've never been much of a fan of John Wayne. I didn't think much of his acting and didn't like his enthusiastic support of the Vietnam War. I learned here that he was an active supporter of HUAC and its all but semi-official affiliate, The Motion Picture Alliance.  The McCarthy era was an unpleasant time in America, one best left in the rear view mirror.

Earning The Rockies*: How Geography Shapes America's Role In The World, Kaplan - B-

                                               Robert Kaplan is a fascinating author who analyzes geopolitical issues and foreign affairs through the lens of geography. I have read his books on the Balkans, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea,and a handful of his magazine articles. I have gained a better understanding of world affairs because of his writing. Much of his work is a a travelogue because he thoroughly researches what he writes about. The subject of this work is a cross-country trip from Stockbridge, Massachusetts to San Diego. To some extent, this is an homage to his dad, a WW2 vet, Queens-based truck driver in Brooklyn, who was way smarter than that job description implies. His father took his family on innumerable car outings to places of historical interest. This trip, by a man now in his mid-sixties, is characterized as "a landscape meditation about America's place in the world."  That said, he keeps his meditations close to the vest and hardly makes a noteworthy observation about the entire three-week drive, other than the standard statements about how our continental temperate climate with innumerable navigable rivers and two oceans has contributed to our good fortune. Upon arrival in San Diego, home of the Pacific fleet, he discusses our role in the world. Fated to lead by our geography and institutions, we saved the world from Fascism and Bolshevism and must continue to act as a counterweight to Russia and China, the dominant forces on the Eurasian landmass. Interestingly, of the century-long upheaval in the post-imperial Islamic world, he observes that there is little we can do. And to my immense satisfaction, he cites George Kennan, who he refers to as believing that the security of the US is less endangered by its adversaries than it is by the illusions of its leaders and elites. He closes suggesting that successful empires have been cautious, restrained and strategically patient.

*"Earning the Rockies" was a phrase in a juvenile travel article that Kaplan read on a trip as a boy and stems from the statement that driving through the great interior was a dues to pay before you saw the Rockies.

Stolen Beauty, Albanese - B +

                                               Most of this intriguing novel is set in Vienna in the glorious 'fin de siecle' early years of the twentieth century and the horrifying late 1930's. The principal characters are Adele Bauer-Bloch and her niece, Maria Bauer Altmann. Adele is forever known to history as the young woman who modeled for Klimt's 'Lady In Gold'. Maria escaped from Austria after the Anschluss, later in life pursued the recovery of her aunt's picture and was portrayed in the 2015 film 'Woman In Gold'. Adele's story is fascinating. She was an early proponent of women's rights and the force behind her husband's famed art collection. Her story is a short course in modern art that had me researching something every few pages. Maria's story covers more familiar ground for any student of Nazi oppression and the run-up to WWII.  After the war, Adele's husband, Ferdinand, died in Switzerland after he implored his niece to save the portrait for the family. It was a task that she took up half-a-century later when a young lawyer, Randy Schoenburg, brought to her attention a change in Austrian law.  Schoenburg was part of the Austrian Jewish diaspora in California and led the way for the recovery of the painting by Maria when she was eighty-seven. The painting was sold at auction for $135 million to Ronald Lauder who placed in the Neue Museum in NYC.

The Girl Who Takes An Eye For An Eye, Lagercrantz - B

                                               This is the fifth book in the Lisbeth Salander series and the second by this author, the official successor to Stieg Larsson. It continues the story of Lisbeth, ties together pieces from previous novels  and, presumably, leaves open all sorts of future possibilities. The focus is on both Lisbeth and Blomquist uncovering a diabolical experiment involving twins. Decades earlier, a Swedish social/medical  entity separated twins at birth in an effort to study the consequences of varied child-rearing circumstances. Those who managed the experiments work diligently to hide their history and protect each other. Tie in plot lines involving unassimilated Muslim immigrants and a particularly vicious criminal and you wind up with an enjoyable, but clearly not great, addition to the series.

A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron - The Forgotten Heroes of World War II, Cloud and Olson - A*

                                              This is the history of those Poles who were able to escape after Germany's occupation and continue the fight.  Poland had developed a sophisticated aeronautical training program and the young country had a wealth of capable pilots. Outmanned and outgunned, they made a show of it during the brief conquest of their homeland. Tens of thousands escaped, many through Romania, and would fight for the Allies. Some fought in France, and then escaped to Britain. They were welcomed by Churchill, but were skeptically assessed by the RAF, which was painfully unaware of their skills. The Battle of Britain, perhaps the most famous aerial conflict ever, began on August 8, 1940. Very quickly, it was apparent the Poles could fly and fight, and thus were allowed to fly as members of the Polish Air Force, albeit under RAF command and in RAF uniforms with Polish insignia. There were two all-Polish squads: the Poznan and the Kosciuszko. The Kosciuszko Squadron's first action was on August 18 and all seven of the Hurricanes that sighted Germans had a confirmed kill. Shooting planes down at the rate of 40 per week, the Poles were soon heroes of the realm, recognized by the public and the chain-of-command all the way up to the King. They were more successful than their British counterparts because they were older, had more total flying hours, had fought in Poland and France, had learned to fly without radio or radar and thus were more instinctive and used to scanning the skies visually. On the climactic day of the Battle of Britain, September 15, fully 20% of the RAF pilots in the air were Poles. The Kosciuszko Squadron shot down 126 planes during the six-week battle, twice as many as any RAF squadron. The British high command, as well as later historians, agree that the Battle could not have been won without the Poles.
                                               The second half of the book veers away from the squadron and attempts to discuss Poland's plight in the war. Both signators to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact wreaked unspeakable horrors upon the Poles. Both countries simply killed anyone perceived to be a  threat to their dictatorship. Throughout the war, the Poles continued to fight and to fight very well. Indeed, they were the preferred escort for all of the bombers. However, after Yalta, they realized they had fought in vain.  The country was occupied by the Red Army, which wasn't leaving anytime soon. When the UN met for the first time in April 1945, "Poland - the first country to resist Hitler; the only country to fight the Nazis from the first day to the last; the one country defeated by Germany that neither surrendered nor collaborated - was not on the list of invitees." A year later, the British government told the thousands of Poles who had fought for Great Britain that they were being demobilized and should return to Poland. Most refused, and many were eventually resettled in the UK. They had to move on from the stress of combat in a foreign land.  Few survived until Poland was free. One who did was Witold Urbanowicz, who had suffered through a series of inconsequential jobs raising his children in Queens, NY. The 'ace' of the Polish Air Force returned to Warsaw, where he was mobbed as a national hero and made a general.
                                               This fabulous book was written with a deep admiration of the Poles, that I now fully subscribe to. I'm truly impressed. The  Poles were from a country that had existed for only two decades, after 120 years of Partition. They fought bravely and effectively, forgotten by their allies. In 1984, when the world celebrated the 40th anniversary of D-Day, Poland,  whose men were cited for their courage that day, was not invited. Sadly for them, their families and countrymen, the German occupation would be succeeded by a forty-five year Soviet one. Freedom for the Poles has been scarce.

A Legacy of Spies, LeCarre - B +

                                               I believe I first read "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold' in the Reader's Digest abridged version five-and-a-half decades ago. I was in high school and now I have the inestimable pleasure of reading about Bill Haydon, Toby Esterhause, Percy Alleline, Roy Bland, Oliver Laycon, George Smiley and Control while the latest iteration of the Circus grills an eighty-year-old Peter Guillam about what went wrong in Operation Windfall in the early sixties. LeCarre is back and better than ever at eighty-five.
                                              The premise is that heirs of Alec Leamas and Liz Gold, both dead on the Berlin Wall in 'Spy', have come after the British government for compensation for the deaths of their parents. They have unearthed some Stasi files and feel that Smiley and Guillam negligently allowed their parents to die decades earlier. Peter uses all of his skills to dodge, weave and generally avoid the inquiries of his inquisitors, lawyers named Bunny, Tabitha and Laura. The lawyers inform Peter that they have found a London safe-house founded by Smiley and somehow, still funded by Treasury, and in it, all the lost Windfall files. Going through the files is a step back in time to the Cold War and the tradecraft of an earlier era. LeCarre ties this history into some of his more famous Smiley books by having Leamas obsessed with the possibility of a mole at the top of the Circus, which of course was the underlying theme of the great Smiley trilogy he wrote in the 70's. Peter concludes the whole process is nonsense, slips off and finds Jim Prideaux, who tells him how to find Smiley. George is highly offended and defends their and the Circus's role in fighting the Cold War, although he ruefully acknowledges that the spies didn't really effect the outcome. I suspect his is LeCarre's epitaph on the events of that era. As always, his books are complex and brilliantly written.
                                           

The Exception, Judd - B-

                                               This novel has achieved enough critical acclaim and attention to be made into the proverbial 'major motion picture'. The setting is Wilhelm II's mansion in Holland in the spring of 1941 as he continues his over two-decade-long exile and hopes for an invitation to return to Berlin as the restored monarch. He receives as an overnight guest Heinrich Himmler, whom Wilhelm concludes is one of "the shirted gangsters". Although Wilhelm was virulently anti-semitic, he apparently was appalled by Kristallnacht.
                                               'Willy' was in many ways a tragic figure, in completely over his head as Kaiser, and clearly one of those who led Europe into a conflagration it is still recovering from. The fascinating insight here is his total lack of intellectual consistency. He alights on topics, exposes beliefs and moves on in different directions simultaneously. He was a lightweight and like his cousin 'Nicky', a glaring example of the failure of hereditary monarchical systems.

Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, Sims - C +

                                           The young Scottish-born physician modeled his famed detective on a medical school professor, Joseph Bell, who tried to deduce facts and information about patients from their appearances, the condition of their hands, shoes and clothing. Doyle was well-educated and, as a boy, had totally immersed himself in books and literature of all kinds.  Indeed, at one point, the library in Edinburgh advised his mother that he would be limited to two books per day. He was a dreamer who loved the idea of travel and during medical school, shipped out on a whaler one summer. He graduated in 1881 and took a tour as a physician on a boat to Africa before opening a practice in Portsmouth. He practiced during the day and wrote at night. He was able to sell a short story here and there.  Eventually, he was becoming successful and even appeared in American publications.  He decided that he had to write a full-length book.  He did not invent the genre of the detective novel. Poe, with a character he used three times, Auguste Dupin, preceded him by forty years. In the late winter and early spring of 1886, he penned 'A Study In Scarlet' narrated by Dr. John Watson and featuring one of the most famous characters in literature. He based the name of his star creation on a London detective, Inspector Thomas Sherlock and the American physician and poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Sherlock Holmes was born. The book met with some critical success and he followed up with 'The Sign of Four'. He also wrote a few historical novels that were published on both sides of the Atlantic. He engaged an agent who obtained a contract for him to write six Holmes short stories. Fame and fortune soon followed and he put his medical practice behind him. He moved to London, publicly acknowledged his debt to Dr. Bell, and became one of the most successful writers in English history. This book has some interesting information, but I spent the time reading it wondering how you could make the story of Arthur and Sherlock so bloody boring.

The Divided City, McCallin - B

                                               Reinhardt is back in Berlin in 1947 and assigned to his old job as a detective at Kripo. He unearths a serial killer tracking down men from a particular Luftwaffe fighter squadron group.  Back and forth across the divided city, he works the issue and bumps up against all of the Allied powers and various Germans pursuing different agendas. Somehow, he overcomes the odds, finds his man but loses him to the tumult of post-war Berlin.
                                               Novels like this appeal to me because they shed light on topics of history I've not come across. Here, for instance, the author goes into great detail on the contretemps among the occupying forces on just about anything they can argue about. Similarly, there were veterans willing to move on and those hoping for some sort of restoration. Veterans of both world wars lost their pensions and their families lost any survivor benefits.  Returnees from the east were shunned because they all seemed so haunted by Soviet captivity. Perhaps the most intriguing bit of information is  that there was no glare or reflection in post-war Berlin. There was virtually no glass intact in any building.
                                               Even though I've enjoyed these three novels this summer, I really wouldn't recommend them. As I said above and in the two earlier comments, there's a ton of historical background information that I find fascinating.  But the books are too long and the plotting too convoluted.
         

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam, Bowden - C +

                                               Hue was the former imperial capital, and the third largest city in Vietnam.  This book is a history of the Battle of Hue during the Tet offensive in early 1968. Gen. William Westmoreland had visited Washington in November, 1967 and had assured his President, the press and the nation that victory was at hand. Indeed, the invitation to the New Year's Eve party at the Saigon Embassy said "Come see the light at the end of the tunnel." As we all know, the Tet offensive was the beginning of the end of America's commitment to see the war through.
                                              The Northern Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Vietcong (VC) prepared extensively for  Tet. In some instances, it took four months of marching to put men into position for the offensive. A US officer later called it a "logistical miracle." They sought and obtained help from the general populace. As naive and optimistic as Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) was, the party leadership in Hanoi was equally so. Their premise was that the cousins in the south would overwhelmingly welcome and join them when the north's soldiers appeared in their streets. They did not. Although some in MACV and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) noticed increased infiltration and suspected something was up, no one had ever considered possible what was about to happen. At 2:30 A.M. on January 31, all hell broke loose from one end of South Vietnam to the other. Eighty-thousand NVA and VC attacked one hundred targets. In Hue, 10,000 soldiers poured into the city. With the exception of the MACV compound in the south of Hue, the city was entirely overrun by dawn. Throughout the day, US Marines tried to move out of the compound and head north into the city. They were flung back with heavy casualties. Up the chain of command, there was disbelief at the size of the incursion. Only in Hue had the enemy come with such a substantial force. MACV and in particular, Westmoreland had expected an attack at Khe Sanh and for days refused to give credit to the depth of the attack at Hue. Indeed, as late as Feb. 2, Westmoreland was telling the White House there were no more than 600 enemy troops in the city. The marines slowly  pushed the enemy back a block at a time. A week into the battle, the US barely had a threshold in the city. An Army base north of the city sent troops to join the fray. The marines targeted the Triangle on the south side of the Huong River and the army, The Citadel on the north side. As the US slowly recovered the city, they discovered innumerable victims of  the National Liberation Front (NLF) atrocities. The popular uprising never took place and the 'liberators' purged their civilian opponents. It took three weeks of heavy fighting until to the city finally was back in American and South Vietnamese hands.
                                                After the victory, Gen. Westmoreland declared that matters were more serious and requested another 120,000 men. Doubts in Washington grew and most consider February 27th as the beginning of the long end of American involvement in Vietnam. In a Special Report, Walter Cronkite spent half-an-hour contradicting Westmoreland and concluded we were "mired in stalemate". Westmoreland was relieved of his command in June. The consensus of history is that his failure to acknowledge that the enemy had occupied the city led to undermanned efforts to take it back and in turn, unnecessarily heavy casualties.
                                               This book is a highly acclaimed bestseller. The author uses the technique of telling a historical narrative through personal vignettes. It is an effective and popular technique. In my opinion, it is taken way too far here. The personal details outweigh the narrative to the point that you frequently lose track of the overarching story.  I suspect the upcoming Ken Burns/PBS special on Vietnam will be significantly more enlightening

The Old Man, Perry - B-

                                               This is the second book I've read by this author and it's hard to characterize the genre. He seems to specialize in people on the run. In 'Butchers Boy', the protagonist was a hit-man, who spent a lot of time in hiding and trying to avoid getting hit himself. Here, the lead character is a former Army special-ops agent who has been in hiding for 30 years because a Libyan warlord, with friends in the US, has been after him. They catch up to him and he leads them on a trans-America wild goose chase and finally, ends the whole process by returning to Libya and assassinating the warlord. This is a classic summer beach-read.

The Shape of Water, Camilleri - B

                                               This almost 20 year-old novel is the first in a series set in Sicily and featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano, a man beleaguered, trying to bring justice to a locale inherently opposed to transparency, and the rule of law. A local notable is found dead in his car in a notorious lovers lane, with his pants around his ankles, and the autopsy shows his heart virtually exploded. Everyone hopes for a quick conclusion, but the fact that a lady of ill-repute casually walked away from the scene after assisting in the heart attack raises concerns for Montalbano.

The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission To Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb, Bascomb - B

                                               As WWII approached, scientists around the world were developing theories about fission and fusion, leading all probable combatants to start thinking about atomic weapons. One of the possible facilitators of an atomic reaction was water with an extra hydrogen atom - heavy water. Heavy water was an offshoot of hydro-electric power generation and the only place in the world where it was created was in central Norway at Vermork. After Germany's April, 1940 occupation of Norway, the Germans demanded an increase in heavy water deliveries to Berlin. For many Norwegians, resistance meant escape to Britain and training for a return home. In the UK, the decision was made to pre-empt the Germans by depriving them of heavy water and sabotaging Vermork. An SOE-trained Norwegian team parachuted into their occupied homeland in Oct. 1942. Their role was to prepare the way for two teams of British sappers who came in on two gliders (towed from Scotland) a month later. Both gliders crashed, although on one, most of the men survived. The sappers were captured by the Germans and executed. The Germans ascertained that Vermork was a target and significantly increased security. The next attempt was a Norwegian team that parachuted into their home country in February. The nine man demolition team wore British uniforms, travelled through a massive winter storm and climbed an almost vertical 600 hundred foot cliff face to access Vermork. They entered the plant, blew up the heavy water section, and knocked the facility off line for a year. Miraculously, and again through another brutal winter storm, they escaped, and were able to travel over 200 miles to neutral Sweden. As well as Operation Gunnerside had done, the Germans had the plant up and running by August, 1943. The Allies decided to target the facility for a bombing run and lied to the Norwegians about their intentions. One-hundred and seventy-six bombers from the 8th Air Force headed for Vermork on Nov. 16,1943 and pounded the plant, but for all of the devastation, the heavy-water facilities were untouched. The Germans decided to dismantle the heavy-water facilities and move them to Germany. On February 20, 1944 a train left Vermork and headed to Mael, where the cars would be loaded onto a ferry. At the deepest part of Lake Tinn, a pre-placed bomb sank the ferry and all of its railcars. Germany would never obtain the materials necessary to build an atomic weapon.

Woodrow Wilson, Auchincloss - B

                                                This is a brief bio in the Penguin Lives series. Wilson came to office after an academic career, and only two years as Governor of New Jersey. He told one of the politicians who handed him the career in N.J: "Remember that God ordained that I should be the next President of the United States." His progressive policy views led to a Tariff Act, the establishment of the Federal Reserve and the creation of a progressive income tax. When war came to Europe in August, 1914, Wilson assiduously and sincerely pursued a policy of neutrality. Many of America's immigrant communities were opposed to the war. The Germans wanted no part of a fight against their homeland, the Irish had no desire to assist Great Britain and the Jews were adamantly opposed to allying with the Tsar. "But above all there was a widespread feeling that the war was not our war and we should stay out of it..." Wilson believed that he, and he alone, could suggest or impose peace upon the warring parties; that he had the insight to end the horror. America somehow was above the fray. In April 1915, he said "There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right."  In 1917, the reinstatement of unrestricted submarine warfare led to a US declaration of war. Although a proponent of peace, Wilson was an effective war President. His Fourteen Points and his plans for peace were so admired that Harold Nicholson, British diplomat and scholar, said "Had the Treaty of Paris been drafted solely by the American experts, it would have been one of the wisest as well as the most scientific document ever devised." Wilson went to Paris against just about everyone's advice and without a Republican of standing. As the Republicans won the mid-terms in 1918 and Henry Cabot Lodge was now Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, this is considered one of his biggest mistakes. In Paris, he was so focused on the League of Nations that he let Lloyd-George and Clemenceau run roughshod on all of his principles. He also suffered what medical historians believe was his third minor stroke. The battle lines were drawn over the League and Article 10 of the Treaty, which could require the US to take military action if the League mandated it.  Lodge saw it as an imposition on our sovereignty.  In September of 1919, Wilson fell ill on his nationwide trip to sell the Treaty, and in October suffered a major stroke. For the last year-and-a-half of his presidency, he was an invalid and his wife controlled all access to him. Lodge offered an adjustment to the Treaty,requiring Congressional approval for the US to take up arms. Britain and France agreed, but not Wilson.  The Treaty failed and Wilson died three years after leaving office. His wife asked Lodge not to attend the funeral.

The Pale House, McCallin - B-

                                               In the second novel in this series, we find Reinhard back  in Sarajevo, but two years later. It's April 1945 and the Third Reich is on the verge of collapse. The focus of his investigation is an atrocity involving the murder of ten men, believed to have been assigned to a penal battalion. No one seems to rally care as death, destruction and imminent defeat surround the  Germans. The Ustase know there is no retreat for them and they are even more volatile and violent than they had been previously. Gregor ascertains that the Ustase have been killing Germans and assuming German identities, in an attempt to escape from Yugoslavia.  Once again, the phenomenal detail of the background fascinates

Safe, Gattis - B -

                                               The author is an Angeleno with an ear for the street and the writer of some fascinating material about folks getting by on the bottom of the ladder. Here, we meet Ghost, a safecracker dying of cancer in his 30's, and Glasses, a double agent trying to survive between his gang and the DEA. Ghost does jobs for the DEA,  manages to skim from them, and is using the money to help others, sort of a Robin Hood of the ghetto. Glasses made a hit in the stock market with some settlement money from an LAPD beating and is hoping to get the hell out of town. Both are fundamentally good men and it is inevitable that their paths will cross. They do. One survives.

Bill Clinton, Tomasky - B

                                               This biography is one of those fabulous essay-length books of about 150 pages. I read it because there was so much I missed in the nineties, while working rather hard, and because I thought it might help me better understand our current political divisions, which seem to stem from that era*. Clearly, a new-age draft avoider with a propensity to chase skirts riled the hard right. The right's standard bearer was the loathsome hypocrite Speaker Newt Gingrich. They clashed throughout Clinton's term with the President winning round one: the conflict over the 1994 government shutdown. Although the 1996 Republican reform of welfare was anathema to Clinton's advisers, his signature propelled him to an easy victory over Bob Dole. Clinton's second term appeared to be on track for greatness as the economy was totally booming and the deficit, Republican topic number one for decades, was headed toward elimination.  Then, in early 1998 with Kenneth Starr breathing down his neck after four years of fishing, the President advised Monica Lewinsky to lie in an affidavit about their relationship and the result was the second impeachment trial of an American president. The effort failed in February, 1999. In his last two years in office, Clinton attempted to broker peace in the Middle East and ultimately, added his name to the long list of those who have failed in that effort. He successfully added vast amounts of land and ocean to federally protected status.
                                              The author, who is described as someone whose work leans left, states that historians have been generally favorable to Clinton's years in office. He cites the economy and the deficit elimination, and I suspect that over the long course, Bill Clinton will be highly regarded because of those numbers and his do-no-harm foreign policy. The author chides him for remaining in the public eye and for the sometimes questionable activities of his Foundation. As for me, I did not find any particular insight into the political clashes, and also note that there was only an incomplete mentioning of the eastward expansion of NATO, which some characterize as a very serious mistake and one which the Clinton administration undertook without much thought or assessment.


*In 2016's best-seller,'White Trash', the author suggests that one of the reasons Clinton was attacked so venomously by the right was that he was white trash and far from the traditional establishment. Somehow, Georgetown, Oxford and Yale sound pretty establishment to me. Gingrich's background as the only child of an apparent teenage shotgun marriage, and then, growing up on army bases, is equally trashy, and he led the charge.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon , Grann - B

                                              This book tells the story of, and the much later search for, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, considered the last of the great explorers of Victorian England. He was the 'David Livingstone of the Amazon' and a recipient in 1916 of a Royal Geographical Society Founder's Gold Medal. He vanished in the Amazon in 1925 at the age of 57. His objective was the lost City of Z, the famed El Dorado, the search for which had been claiming the lives of Europeans for centuries.  In the 1920's, the Amazon basin remained a vast, unknown wilderness capable of punishing and killing all who entered. Fawcett embarked with his 21-year-old son Jack and Jack's best friend, Raleigh Rimell. They sent five months of dispatches back and then were never heard from again.
Fawcett's Amazon career had begun in 1906 when the RGS sent him on a mapping expedition that involved descending from the Bolivian Andes to the floor of the jungle and transversing it for almost a year. He had an amazing genetic makeup that kept him healthy in one of the the planet's most inhospitable environments. It was as if he prospered in the jungle, where he went year after year. He was widely acclaimed and known throughout the world. He spent most of the Great War in the trenches as an artillery officer and was back in the Amazon in 1920. Financing a second post-war expedition required assistance from American journalists, financiers and philanthropists. On April 20, 1925, the three-man party departed Cuiaba, Brazil. It is now generally accepted that Indians killed the them soon thereafter.
                                             The author's 2005 pursuit of the Fawcett trail was the most recent but not the first. Fawcett's disappearance was front page news, and over the years, an estimated one hundred people have died trying to find his trail. Much of what had been the deepest jungle 80 years before has been cleared and is now part of civilization, very remote, but reachable by a four-wheel drive truck. Grann went to Xingu National Park, where he heard the local oral tradition of the death of the three men. He also met a University of Florida archaeologist who found and showed him the foundation of the lost City of Z.
                                             This book has been a best-seller, and a major motion picture based on this book was released to critical acclaim last year. I'd rate the book as very well-written and a fine summer, beach non-fiction read.

The Late Show, Connelly - B +

                                                Connelly's latest has been met with universal acclaim. The author is one of, if not the most successful writer of crime fiction in America. He's been selling books for the last quarter  century. His Harry Bosch series has become an institution and there have been three seasons of 'Bosch' on Amazon Prime. Bosch's half-brother, Mickey Haller, was featured in 'The Lincoln Lawyer', a best-seller made into a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey. Prior to that, Clint Eastwood starred in and directed Connelly's 'Blood Work'.
                                               To his credit, the author has taken a major leap here in his creation of a new character. Sgt. Renee Ballard has the misfortune of working the 11pm to 7am late show. She was banished after filing a sexual harassment complaint against her lieutenant. She latches onto two cases and, ala Harry Bosch, cuts corners left and right. One  case involves a badly beaten transvestite and the other the murder of a policeman.  She works both of them and pushes up against a particularly vicious man and the institutional indifference/hostility of the department and its supporters. Since I know a few folks will read this, I'll leave it at that. Ballard could be a fun new LAPD platform for Connelly. This is a must-read.

The Man From Berlin, McCallin - B

                                               This is the first novel in a series that has three so far. It's very similar to Phillip Kerr's books in that it is also focused on a Kripo detective in field gray, working his way through WW2.  This book does a much better job setting the scene and exploring the military issues and the cultural clashes in an occupied country. The setting is Sarajevo, where the Nazis share duties with the Croatian Ustase, an organization capable of making the SS look like boy scouts. The author is extraordinarily well-informed and this is a classic historical novel filled with edifying detail. The principal, Gregor Reinhardt, is a WWI combat veteran estranged from a Hitler Youth son who has apparently been lost at Stalingrad. This is an all around excellent effort. But, like so many others, it is simply too long. I do not think there's enough here to merit 433 pages.

The Weapons Wizards: How Israel Became A High-Tech Military Superpower, Katz and Bohbot - B

                                               The authors are journalists who cover the military and have served in the IDF. They believe it is the country's universal military service, non-hierarchical institutions, and education systems, along with its constant existential threats that have led to Israel becoming a world-wide leader in military technology and now, a leading exporter of the same.
                                                Israel's first major step into military know-how was a business that repaired airplanes in the first decade of the state's existence. In the late 60's, Israeli engineers used toy American hobby planes to provide observations of the enemy over the horizon, and  they have since created the finest drones in the world. They were the first to develop UAV's, and America's activities piggy-backed on the Israelis. Today, Israeli equipment constitutes 60% of worldwide drone sales. As they are often the first western state to face battlefield threats, the Israelis must be the first to adapt. In the late 1990's, they were attacked with the most recent Soviet/Russian anti-tank weapon and now have created cutting-edge  defensive and offensive systems for their tanks. Similarly, with satellites, rockets, A.I. and stuxnet, the highly motivated Israelis lead the way. The informality sounds almost pre-industrial, but it works.
                                              Today, Israel no longer faces a frontline state with a traditional military. Rather. its challenges are asymmetric and its opponents, Hamas and Hezbollah are non-state actors. Future wars will be a collage featuring traditional, terror and guerrilla tactics. The authors are certain they will be ready. I suspect they are correct.

House Of Spies, Silva - B +

                                            There are many reasons to love this series, but I've concluded that the cornerstone of it is Gabriel's commitment to his family, his people, their state and their history.  At long last, he is ensconced in the corner office at King Saul Blvd.  ISIS is the threat and the man in charge uses the nom de guerre of Saladin. Gabriel orchestrates a combined op using American, British, French and Israeli assets. Needless to say, all's well that ends well.  Gabriel spends most of the novel in the field and not at all acting like the Chief. Perhaps more than in any of his other books, Silva pulls off a tale with an incredibly current set of Middle East circumstances as background. It feels as if it was written yesterday. Also more so than usual, Gabriel's team feels like family. This is the seventeenth book in the  series. I hope there are many more as it is as vibrant, relevant, and as much fun as it has ever been.

The Shores of Tripoli: Lieutenant Putnam and the Barbary Pirates, Haley - B+

                                               I can't say enough about this fabulous historical novel. The author is an acclaimed historian who has turned to creating a naval series that is off to a fine start. Bliven Putnam, his intended, Clarity Marsh, and his bunkmate Sam Bandy are the only fictional characters. Everyone else in the infant navy are actual men who sailed and fought in America's first overseas adventure. The story is well-told and focuses on the history, as opposed to the Patrick O'Brian novels which emphasized the nautical aspects of the large and powerful sailing ships of the era. There is a second book about the War of 1812 coming soon and I am looking forward to it.

Testimony, Turow - Inc.

                                            Chicago's own, practicing lawyer and creator of many Chicago-like Kindle County stories travels very far afield here. Bill Ten Boom leaves his Kindle County law practice, moves to the I.C.C. in the Hague, and investigates a war crime committed against Roma in Bosnia in 2004.
                                           At about the half-way point, I gave up. I'm not certain if it's the book or my inability to move from domestic legal matters to Europe. The Times reviewer did say it "lacks the tautness of Turow's earlier thrillers, and one senses, a midlife author attempting, like his midlife character, to find meaning...." It did not work for me. And I might add that, unlike the latest from John Grisham, and Daniel Silva, it's nowhere on the best-seller lists.

HHhH, Binet - B

                                               The title of this very hard to characterize novel means 'Himmler's brain is called Heydrich'. In German, it was 'Himmlers Hirn heist Heydrich'. There are many books about the May 1942 assassination of the man called the 'Hangman' and the 'Blond Beast'. Operation Anthropoid was initiated in London by the Czech government-in-exile, led by President Benes. The Czechs felt that they had to do something and they pulled off arguably the most successful act of resistance of the war. Teams were parachuted into Czechoslovakia. They were assisted by the Prague Resistance and three men, Sergeants Josef Valcik, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik  achieved immortality, fame and an early death that spring. Unfortunately, thousands upon thousands died as retribution for their actions.                
                                                This book is a free-flowing story about the French author's interest in WW2, his fascination with the assassination of the Protektor,  a ramble through the life of Heydrich and the Third Reich, and the story of the action in Prague. There is a wealth of information provided here, but the format and approach are too unorthodox for me. Notwithstanding my observations, the book was highly acclaimed. This topic has garnered significant attention on film and this iteration of the tale is no exception. 'The Man With An Iron Heart' has already been released in Europe and will be in America shortly.

Anatomy Of A Song, Myers - B-

                                               This book is an oral history of 45 songs that shaped R and B and Rock 'n' Roll over the course of  40 years.  The songs selected are, in the opinion of the author, a subjective collection of milestones in music history. The first is 1952's  'Lawdy Miss Clawdy'  by Lloyd Price and the last is 1991's 'Losing My Religion' by R.E.M.  As most of the technical aspects of rock are beyond me, I'll just point out some of the more interesting tidbits unearthed here: the Isley Brothers singing 'Shout' has some amazing dance moves for 1959; 'Please Mr. Postman by the Marveletttes was Motown's first number one;  Grace Slick wrote 'White Rabbit' on an $80 fire red piano; the only Stones songs here are 'Street Fighting Man' and 'Moonlight Mile'; Elvis's 'Suspicious Minds' in 1969 was his first number one in seven years; 'Walk This Way' was inspired by Marty Feldman in 'Young Frankenstein'; Debbie Harry was absolutely stunning; and much to my surprise, I actually liked 'Losing My Religion."
                                            This has been an enjoyable romp through music history. I'm not sure the author was thorough enough about what made these songs milestones, and I still can't get comprehend no Beatles, Paul Simon, Beach Boys or Bob Dylan. I'm sorry, but 'Rock The Boat' by the Hues Corporation and 'London Calling' by the Clash just do not seem that important to me. One of the really enjoyable aspects of reading this has been watching the videos on You Tube. And no matter how old the song - there's a video on You Tube

The White Van, Hoffman - B

                                                This novel is a highly acclaimed debut from a few years ago by a man who had been an investigator for the San Francisco Public Defender's Office. Needless to say, it is filled with tangible, believable characters from the underworld. The plot involves a drug-addled young woman recruited by the Russian mob to assist in a bank robbery, a pair of less than honest cops, and mistakes made all around. It's a classic one-day beach read. Good fun.

War Against War: The American Fight For Peace 1914 - 1918, Kazin - B

                                                This book tells the story of those Americans, from all walks of life, from all parties and from all around the country, who opposed American participation in the Great War. They were internationalists and idealists, but not isolationists. Once war was declared, the government unleashed all of its power to silence and punish them. The winning of the war led to the losing of the peace. Our participation changed our role in the world. By making the world safe for democracy we created a military-industrial complex and an FBI-supervised surveillance state.
                                                When war began, Wilson declared our neutrality but the administration could not stop American business from trading with Europe, and because of the Royal Navy's blockade, that meant trading with the Allies. J.P. Morgan became Great Britain's purchasing agent. After America concluded that war was good for business, the question became whether we should arm ourselves.  In opposition stood the Women's Peace Party, a powerful, well-organized entity consisting primarily of the women who were the backbone of the suffragette movement. After the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, those clamoring for preparations, if not an immediate declaration, began the drumroll. Former President Roosevelt called Wilson "a coward and a weakling" who catered to "all the hyphenated Americans." Although there were east coast Democrats and Republicans anxious to arm, the majority of the country was opposed and they prevailed into 1916.  Wilson ran for re-election as a foe of intervention. The following January, he offered the world his idealistic vision to end the war with his 'Peace Without Victory' speech. The German response was to announce the re-inititiation of unrestricted submarine warfare. In March, three American merchantmen were sunk by submarines and on April 6, 1917, the US declared war on Germany.
                                              The administration initiated a significant propaganda effort "to drive home the absolute justice of America's cause, the absolute selflessness of America's aims" and passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Nonetheless, and more so than with any of America's other contentious wars (Mexican, Vietnam, Iraq), the peace movement endured through the early hullabaloo. On Flag Day, Wilson "all but equated opposition to the war with treason."  But opposition was staunch and "a higher percentage of men successfully resisted conscription than during the Vietnam War." By 1918, the peace movement was on it's knees thanks to the Sedition Act.  Eugene Debs, the four-time Socialist nominee for president was sentenced to ten years in jail for saying "the working class had never yet had a voice in declaring war" but were taught it was their duty "to have (themselves) slaughtered." America tipped the balance on the battlefield and Armistice came on Nov. 11, 1918.
                                             Two decades after the war, a Gallup poll found that 70% of Americans considered it a mistake for us to have participated in the Great War. The author clearly agrees that the US intervention was a mistake on every level. He surmises that the bloodshed would have led to a stalemate. There would have been no punitive peace, no reparations, no stab-in-the back theories, no Hitler and no fifty million deaths in the next war. That is a heady conclusion to come to. But, it is almost inescapable.  I have seen WW1 referred to as the catastrophe that begat all of the great catastrophes of the century. The war's conclusion which we midwifed was followed by a peace process where our President ineptly argued for his idealistic vision and the realpolitik's of George and Clemencau disastrously triumphed.
                                            This book is not an easy read, but it is truly enlightening. The depth, breadth and heartfelt sincerity and commitment to peace that so many people felt is truly impressive. I personally prefer an America that is not so comfortable projecting it's power.

The Last Templar's Last Secret, Walker - B +

                                               Chef de Police Bruno Courreges continues as the Perigord's* gourmand and exemplary community policeman in Walker's latest novel set in the south of France. The author is an accomplished historian now residing in the region and writing police procedurals that double as cook books. He mixes history, both ancient and modern in weaving his superb tales, that also shed a tremendous amount of light on modern day France. This series is an absolute delight.

*This blog's editor, Marcella, is bemused by the fact that region is famous for its truffles and I am a truffle and mushroomphobe.

Where The Water Goes: Life And Death Along The Colorado River, Owens - B-

                                                Because a book about a river probably can't be written without traveling the length of the river, river books are always part travelogue, part episodic history and part geography lesson. The over-arching story is the same one told in 'Cadillac Dessert', the mid-eighties masterpiece that introduced me* to the water crisis in the West. The 1922 Colorado River Compact between seven states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and California) very reasonably allocated the river's water based on the rainfall, snowpack and river flow of the era. The problem was and still is that the early-20th century was later found to have been the wettest patch in hundreds of years.  There simply is not enough water to fulfill the agreed-upon allocations of the seven states, not to mention Mexico or the 10 Indian tribes that have reservations in the river basin.
                                                Just about everyone agrees that the current system of allocating water is so flawed that it will collapse upon itself in the future. The Bureau of Reclamation believes that by 2060 the annual shortage will be 3 million acre feet.  "Both the upper and lower basin are too busy grabbing what water they can instead of seeking a sustainable relationship with that water." The author has no solution, but suggests the federal government is the likely decision-maker, and that agriculture's 80% usage of the river's water is the place to start looking.
                                                Some of the fun facts unearthed herein are: the flow of the Colorado over a year is equal to two weeks of the Mississippi's; the single largest user of the river's water is the Imperial Valley of California, which receives 2.85 inches of rain per year; Colorado has 20,000 abandoned subsurface flooded mines, and the Indians could probably overturn the whole compact because they weren't privy to it and their water rights precede everyone else's.

*My Colorado house is on the western slope and is supplied with water from the Eagle River, a Colorado tributary.

Defectors, Kanon - B +

                                               In 1961, more than a decade after his brother Frank's defection, Simon Weeks goes to Moscow to edit Frank's memoir about his life as a KGB spy while serving in the OSS during WW2 and in the CIA in the early days of the Cold War. The assignment appears to be simple enough: spend a week with his brother and fine-tune a likely bestseller. However, Frank throws him a curve with a request to pass a message back to the CIA. He'd like to defect back to the US. But, Simon is actually working for the CIA. Does Frank really wish to leave or perhaps, is he trying to entrap a senior CIA man? There are plots within plots, which is why Le Carre was mentioned in a review or two. It's always good to go back to an old-fashioned Cold War thriller.

Camino Island, Grisham - B +

                                               John Grisham always guarantees a fun read and does so here in a non-legal tale of chicanery and greed. This novel is about a writer turned teacher, asked to work for an insurance investigation firm, and a book-seller turned fence of stolen goods, whom she is suppose to spy on. The opening chapter setting forth the theft of five F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts from Princeton is superb.  The book  drags a bit but finishes on a high note.

Anatomy Of Terror: From The Death Of bin Laden To The Rise Of The Islamic State, Soufan - C +

                                               By the time of bin Laden's death in 2011, al- Qaeda had been transformed from a "close knit, intensely hierarchical battalion into something like an umbrella organization, with a central staff overseeing a number of more or less autonomous franchises across the Muslim world".
                                               The young men who have been and continue to be the foot-soldiers of these franchises come from societies totally bereft of hope and possibilities. The average Arab has six years of education, never reads a book, and as many as 100 million of them are illiterate. "The striking absence of educational and economic opportunity, compounded by the lack of political accountability and a hopelessly distorted sense of history, has made Arab countries fertile ground for extremists."
                                                The successor to  bin-Laden was an Egyptian physician, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Pakistani Taliban, AQAP and AQIM all swore immediate fealty to Zawahiri. The Arab Spring followed and it was surmised in many quarters that the unfolding of democracy would lead to freedom and the end of terrorist organizations. Instead, the Arab Spring was quickly reversed and al-Qaeda affiliates prospered in Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Syria. ISIS was supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey as a proxy against the Iranian supported Syrian government. Most of the soldiers of ISIS were Sunnis from Saddam's army. Ironically, many of the leaders of ISIS planned for the future while in US imprisonment at Camp Bucca. "By June 15, 2014, ISIS controlled most of Iraq's Sunni-majority provinces and ruled over a population of up to eight million luckless souls." The Caliphate had been established and with it, the imposition of medieval Sharia law. However, within two years, a combination of Russian, Iranian and Syrian military action had reduced its territory to about half its initial size. Today, it is being pounded by the US and its allies. Although ISIS cannot hold onto its territory, its philosophies and successes have fostered attacks around the world, and thirty-four militant groups from the Philippines to Algeria have sworn fealty. Al-Qaeda has forsworn ISIS and condemned its methods of extreme violence.
                                               Today, al-Qaeda is planning a comeback and touting the leadership qualities of bin-Laden's son Hamza. It is playing a long game and will survive long after the failure of ISIS. The author, a Lebanese- born Muslim and former FBI agent, fears they will continue to attack the West, its institutions and people.  The way to counter the breeders of terror is information and education. "The Taliban knows that the biggest long-term threat to its existence is neither planes nor tanks but teachers and books."                                                                                                      
                                               This has been a trying book. I understand that one cannot start in the middle of a story, but the author does not move to the post-bin-Laden era until page 199 of 304. And even then, he bounces all over the place. Nonetheless, I have learned a great deal here and have come to a depressing conclusion. Regardless of the source of blame or responsibility for the mess that is today's Middle East-the collapse of the Ottomans-the Sykes-Picot Agreement-Arab nationalism-Arab dictators-petro-states-the Cold War-the state of Israel-Black September- ignorance-poverty-totalitarianism-Salafism-Wahabism-bin-Laden-our invasion of Iraq-our botched occupation of Iraq- the meddling of Iran-Shia v. Sunni sectarianism,  this Rubik's cube of violence, hatred and revenge will be with us all for a very long time.

America The Ingenious: How A Nation Of Dreamers, Immigrants, And Tinkerers Changed The World, Baker - B-

                                               The author is a very successful historical novelist. Here, he turns his attention to American ingenuity and sets out dozens of examples of the things this nation's people have accomplished. He credits our system of democracy and  unfettered immigration for much of our history, and the rule of law for allowing this burgeoning of practicality and genius to prosper.
                                               The tidbits I truly enjoyed are: the Conestoga wagon was the size of modern SUV; the Hudson River rail tunnels move with the tides; the roadbed of the Golden Gate Bridge can sway 28 feet in each direction; and whaling was the 5th largest US industry in the 1850's. There are dozens of other interesting and diverse topics here in this paean to Yankee ingenuity.

The Dying Detective, Persson - B+

                                               The author is a psychological profiler, a professor at Sweden's National Police Board and is considered the country's foremost expert on crime.  He is also a helluva writer, winner of numerous awards and his works are now being translated into English.
                                                Lars Johansson has been retired from the police force, where he was the Chief, for over three years when he is felled by a stroke. A physician in the hospital provides him with a lead that puts him back in the saddle as solves a 25-year-old murder as a civilian, but one who pulls in quite a few favors. At the center of the story is Sweden's 2010 law that proscribed murder prosecutions for crimes more than 25 years old. In essence, the traditional rule that there is no statute of limitations for murder has been changed in Sweden. This is a really good novel.