Notwithstanding the standard American texts, "a naval battle fought between the British and the French was largely responsible for the independence of the United States." Washington had worked for years to take advantage of France's assistance to the colonies, but the French fleet never engaged the British. They did so in 1781 in the Battle of the Chesapeake. A year later, Washington wrote "that there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States."
When the French entered the war, they focused their naval forces where Britain's were, and where Britain's American wealth was concentrated - in the Caribbean. In October of 1780, three different hurricanes killed over 22,000 in the tropics and the French concluded that their navy might be safer much further north the following year. By 1780, the war was being fought exclusively in the south and there were two British armies that Washington hoped to trap with the assistance of the French. Lord Cornwallis was in North Carolina and Benedict Arnold was in Virginia. A French fleet defeated the British at the Battle of Cape Henry in March, 1781, but did not capitalize upon their victory by attacking Arnold at Portsmouth. On land, Cornwallis had decided to charge north and seek out the enemy. He boldly burned his wagons and lived off the land to make his force quicker in his pursuit of the soldiers under American Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Greene. Unfortunately for the UK, Cornwallis could not catch the Americans and was lured further and further into the inhospitable American interior. On March 15, the two armies fought an inconclusive battle at Guilford Courthouse where Cornwallis' army was "eviscerated" by the Americans. He retreated to Wilmington and headed north a month later. Regardless of any strategic considerations, he wanted to fight. Soon he was at Petersburg with almost seven thousand men. After five years of war, neither side had an advantage and Washington was concerned about France's commitment to the cause.
Washington was hoping the French would assist him in an attack on NYC. But Adm. de Grasse decided to head for the Chesapeake, where Gen. Clinton had ordered Cornwallis to head for Yorktown. When Washington learned of the location of Cornwallis' army, he realized that the end might be near. He and Rochambeau marched south and were in Philadelphia when he learned that De Grasse had arrived in the Chesapeake with 28 ships and over 3,000 soldiers. On Sept. 5, the French engaged the British and held them off. Unable to relieve Cornwallis by entering the bay, the British returned to NY. Outnumbered and without relief in sight, Cornwallis was also low on provisions. The British killed their horses and dumped the carcasses in the river. The British and German soldiers were packed into a small space and were pounded by the American and French artillery. Infantry began to penetrate Cornwallis' outer lines and he decided to escape across the York River at night. Rain and wind prevented the effort from succeeding and surrender became the only choice. Thus, on Oct. 17, Cornwallis sought terms and surrendered two days later on the 19th. No one knew it at the time, but the war was over. Washington returned to Newburgh and held the army together for a few more years. When the Treaty of Paris was signed, he bid his officers adieu at Fraunces Tavern in New York. He resigned his commission at Annapolis where Congress had assembled and rode home to Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve in 1783.
3.13.2019
November Road, Berney - B
Thanks to Dennis Grindinger for the loan of this hardcover novel. It features Frank Guidry, a small-time New Orleans hood in the local mob. He drops off a car in Dallas a few blocks from the School Depository and realizes on November 22nd that he is in the middle of a very big problem. A few days later, he is told to go to Houston, pick up the Eldorado at a specific place and dump it in the Ship Canal. Afterwards, on his way to his hotel, he realizes just how expendable he is and runs. He heads west on Route 66. On the way to a possible way out in Las Vegas, he runs into a housewife from Oklahoma and her two daughters, also on the run. He falls for Charlotte and starts to believe in a future together. Of course, men like Frank don't have futures, a fact that he eventually accepts. This is a classic fun beach read.
2.12.2019
The Black Ascot, Todd - B -
This is the 21st novel in the Ian Rutledge series and sadly, it is not up to par. Rutledge is tasked with looking into a fatal motorcar accident that had taken place over a decade ago. The cast of characters have all survived the war, some better than others, but all changed. The authors always superbly depict the England of a century ago through the eyes of the battered psyche of the shell-shocked Rutledge. They detail the impact of the war on a society that never comes to grip with the horror that consumed them. Occasionally, they stumble with a weak mystery, and that is the case here. That said, this remains a favorite series.
2.07.2019
Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863 - 1869, Ambrose - B
Only winning the war and freeing the slaves were more important accomplishments for the US than the building of the Central and Union Pacific Railroads. It required so many laborers, 15,000 for both, that only generals from the war were capable of managing such vast numbers. All of the construction materials were hauled in and it was man and animal power that conquered the mountains and distances of the world's first transcontinental railroad. The federal government sponsored the construction and pitted the railroads against each other, rewarding the one that laid the most track.
The young, rambunctious nation wanted to build a railroad across the country and the need was obvious. California could be reached by wagon, horse or on foot from Missouri in six months. A trip around the Cape took longer; a traverse of Panama was quicker, but hardly fast, safe or convenient. The question was a northern, central, or southern route. California took the lead in espousing a central route and its chief engineer, Theodore Judah, planned accordingly. He organized the Central Pacific Railroad of California, raised funds and began to survey how to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains. The former Illinois Central lawyer and 1860 Republican candidate for president ran on a platform enthusiastically backing a transcontinental railroad. In July 1862, Lincoln signed the bill authorizing the Union Pacific Railroad to build from the Missouri west and the Central Pacific to build from Sacramento east. A year later, he determined that the starting point for the Union Pacific would be Omaha. Out west, the first track was laid in in 1864 in Sacramento. The CP was almost completely owned by Leland Stanford, Charlie Crocker, C.P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins (the Big Four). The UP did not lay any track until the war was over and both money and manpower were freed up. The route chosen was west from Omaha north of the Platte through Wyoming and southwest into Utah.* One of the early impediments to progress was the hostility of the plains Indians. The US Army was charged with clearing the way for the surveyors, graders and track layers.
Tackling the granite walls of the Sierra Nevada's was a momentous task requiring more manpower than was available to the CP. Charlie Crocker suggested using the Chinese, notwithstanding the fact that they were universally despised, mistreated, denied every conceivable right and thought too small at 120 pounds and in general, shorter than 5 feet. They were such good workers that seven of the nine thousand CP workers at the end of 1865 were 'coolies'. The hardest work in the mountains, involving grading and tunneling with dynamite was done by the Chinese. Thirteen tunnels blasted by hand were necessary to cross the Sierras. It is generally conceded that the CP could not have been built without the Chinese.
Most of the workers on the UP were veterans, many of them Irish, and they literally charged across Nebraska in 1866. They reached the 100th meridian in October, a distance of 267 miles from Omaha. By year's end, they were at 305 miles and running a passenger service from Omaha to Kearney. Congress adjusted the Railroad Act, allowing monies to flow earlier, and declared a race between the two companies to meet at a point to be determined later. The CP, although still in California, had laid track at over 5,000 feet above sea level.
In 1867, the UP reached Wyoming and once again, the Cheyenne and Sioux were a concern. That May, they raided, killed, stole livestock, ripped up track and even managed to derail a train. Surveyors who wandered far and wide were particularly vulnerable. The railroad continued relentlessly and reached Cheyenne by the end of the year. The UP was now 500 miles from Omaha. While the UP could do a mile per day, daily progress by the CP was sometimes measured in inches. But they achieved their triumph in November, 1867 when they pierced the eastern end of the Summit Tunnel and looked into Nevada. The following year saw a race to get as far east, or west, as possible. It was obvious that the meeting point would be somewhere in Utah and likely in 1869. The UP made it to the Wyoming-Utah border at year's end. Although still thousands of feet above sea level, the CP found flat land in Nevada and traversed it in 1868 reaching the Utah border. Because the government released cash, bonds and land to the railroads based on mileage completed, the CP was always at a disadvantage. Even though higher elevation track was paid at a higher rate, the CP struggled to lay uninterrupted track and the land it received was seldom as valuable as the land the UP was able to sell in Nebraska. The Big Four kept the CP afloat and desperately wished to push as far east as possible.
The meeting point was Promontory, Utah in May, 1869. The picture showing the two trains, covered in men and facing each other, is one of the most iconic of the century. America on the cusp of the industrial revolution was transformed. The railroad was an engineering masterpiece. Financially, the Credit Mobilier company created to construct the UP was a font of corruption, and the scandal attached to its name was the greatest of the century. The brilliant, slap-dash, brutal, corrupt and utterly visionary project was quintessentially American.
*A hundred years later, armed with every available engineering technology, the builders of I-80 took the exact same route.
The young, rambunctious nation wanted to build a railroad across the country and the need was obvious. California could be reached by wagon, horse or on foot from Missouri in six months. A trip around the Cape took longer; a traverse of Panama was quicker, but hardly fast, safe or convenient. The question was a northern, central, or southern route. California took the lead in espousing a central route and its chief engineer, Theodore Judah, planned accordingly. He organized the Central Pacific Railroad of California, raised funds and began to survey how to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains. The former Illinois Central lawyer and 1860 Republican candidate for president ran on a platform enthusiastically backing a transcontinental railroad. In July 1862, Lincoln signed the bill authorizing the Union Pacific Railroad to build from the Missouri west and the Central Pacific to build from Sacramento east. A year later, he determined that the starting point for the Union Pacific would be Omaha. Out west, the first track was laid in in 1864 in Sacramento. The CP was almost completely owned by Leland Stanford, Charlie Crocker, C.P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins (the Big Four). The UP did not lay any track until the war was over and both money and manpower were freed up. The route chosen was west from Omaha north of the Platte through Wyoming and southwest into Utah.* One of the early impediments to progress was the hostility of the plains Indians. The US Army was charged with clearing the way for the surveyors, graders and track layers.
Tackling the granite walls of the Sierra Nevada's was a momentous task requiring more manpower than was available to the CP. Charlie Crocker suggested using the Chinese, notwithstanding the fact that they were universally despised, mistreated, denied every conceivable right and thought too small at 120 pounds and in general, shorter than 5 feet. They were such good workers that seven of the nine thousand CP workers at the end of 1865 were 'coolies'. The hardest work in the mountains, involving grading and tunneling with dynamite was done by the Chinese. Thirteen tunnels blasted by hand were necessary to cross the Sierras. It is generally conceded that the CP could not have been built without the Chinese.
Most of the workers on the UP were veterans, many of them Irish, and they literally charged across Nebraska in 1866. They reached the 100th meridian in October, a distance of 267 miles from Omaha. By year's end, they were at 305 miles and running a passenger service from Omaha to Kearney. Congress adjusted the Railroad Act, allowing monies to flow earlier, and declared a race between the two companies to meet at a point to be determined later. The CP, although still in California, had laid track at over 5,000 feet above sea level.
In 1867, the UP reached Wyoming and once again, the Cheyenne and Sioux were a concern. That May, they raided, killed, stole livestock, ripped up track and even managed to derail a train. Surveyors who wandered far and wide were particularly vulnerable. The railroad continued relentlessly and reached Cheyenne by the end of the year. The UP was now 500 miles from Omaha. While the UP could do a mile per day, daily progress by the CP was sometimes measured in inches. But they achieved their triumph in November, 1867 when they pierced the eastern end of the Summit Tunnel and looked into Nevada. The following year saw a race to get as far east, or west, as possible. It was obvious that the meeting point would be somewhere in Utah and likely in 1869. The UP made it to the Wyoming-Utah border at year's end. Although still thousands of feet above sea level, the CP found flat land in Nevada and traversed it in 1868 reaching the Utah border. Because the government released cash, bonds and land to the railroads based on mileage completed, the CP was always at a disadvantage. Even though higher elevation track was paid at a higher rate, the CP struggled to lay uninterrupted track and the land it received was seldom as valuable as the land the UP was able to sell in Nebraska. The Big Four kept the CP afloat and desperately wished to push as far east as possible.
The meeting point was Promontory, Utah in May, 1869. The picture showing the two trains, covered in men and facing each other, is one of the most iconic of the century. America on the cusp of the industrial revolution was transformed. The railroad was an engineering masterpiece. Financially, the Credit Mobilier company created to construct the UP was a font of corruption, and the scandal attached to its name was the greatest of the century. The brilliant, slap-dash, brutal, corrupt and utterly visionary project was quintessentially American.
*A hundred years later, armed with every available engineering technology, the builders of I-80 took the exact same route.
Charlesgate Confidential, Von Doviak - B
This is a fabulous novel set in Boston with a story featuring related events in 1946, 1986, and 2014. The central character is the Charlesgate in the Back Bay. Built in 1891, it has been a luxury hotel, a flophouse, a women's dorm for BU, a flophouse again, an Emerson College dorm and most recently, a luxury condominium building. The starting point is a 1946 robbery of a museum that featured a few murders and paintings that have never been found. The pursuit of those paintings, suspected by all to be hidden in the Charlesgate, is the unifying thread. Throw in some Red Sox flops ('46 and '86) and you have an enjoyable read.
1.25.2019
The Accident On The A35, Brunet - B
This novel caused quite a stir in France when it was published a few years ago. The author was a well-known writer who had committed suicide in the early '90's. He had directed that it not be published until after his mother's death. Everyone assumes it was autobiographical.
A lawyer in St. Louis, a backwater town near the French-German-Swiss border drives off a road on a Tuesday night and is immediately killed. The only suspicious aspect is that the direction he was driving was the opposite of what it should have been. The police ascertain that he had lied to his wife about his Tuesday night club meetings for his entire marriage and that he had been withdrawing cash from his bank every Tuesday for as long. His high school age son finds an address in a nearby town and regretfully discovers the truth when he meets his father's lover and her charming daughter. The novel is well done and I gather that the circumstances of the life of the author are what made it a bestseller.
A lawyer in St. Louis, a backwater town near the French-German-Swiss border drives off a road on a Tuesday night and is immediately killed. The only suspicious aspect is that the direction he was driving was the opposite of what it should have been. The police ascertain that he had lied to his wife about his Tuesday night club meetings for his entire marriage and that he had been withdrawing cash from his bank every Tuesday for as long. His high school age son finds an address in a nearby town and regretfully discovers the truth when he meets his father's lover and her charming daughter. The novel is well done and I gather that the circumstances of the life of the author are what made it a bestseller.
1.18.2019
American Kingpin: the Epic Hunt for The Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road, Bilton - B +
This book tells the absolutely fascinating story of the young man from Texas, Ross Ulbricht, who created the Silk Road, the dark-web site that sold drugs around the world. He was a brilliant physicist with a strong libertarian belief that drugs should be legalized. He created the Silk Road website on his own, and in 2011, he was off and running. Soon, the site was selling every conceivable kind of drug, weapons and was growing exponentially. It was gaining notoriety and attracting law enforcement's attention.. A young federal Homeland Security Investigations agent in Chicago and a seasoned DEA vet in Baltimore were soon trying to crack the site. Ulbricht adopted the nom de guerre of Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR) and his main security henchman and number two was Variety Jones. The expansion led to Ulbricht's commissions generating millions in Bitcoin, a currency that increased in value. The wealth was accumulating and the hackers and the government were after the site and him.
The government's first success was when a DEA team captured one of the site's administrators at his home in Utah. When DPR ascertained what had transpired, he authorized a hit on Curtis Greene, his recently captured employee. Unfortunately for DPR, the man he hired to arrange the hit was the undercover DEA agent who had made the arrest and had spent months electronically befriending DPR. At the same time, a NYC based Task Force headed by the FBI and assisted by the IRS took on the case. One of the members of the team was an IRS agent named Gary Alford. He remembered that in 1977, the year he was born, the NYPD found the Son of Sam killer through parking tickets incurred near the murder sites. Alford went looking for the equivalent of parking tickets. He dug back into the history of Silk Road and, intrigued by a post, he investigated the email address behind the ID of a blogger - RossUlbricht@gmail.com. He had found his parking ticket. In the summer of 2013, the FBI began to close in. Alford found a few more clues about Ulbricht and shared them with the FBI. The FBI confirmed that DPR had used an email name similar to one Alford had found on a server they had captured. They then learned that DHS had spoken to Ulbricht at his San Francisco apartment because he had ordered 9 fake ID's that DHS had confiscated. The apartment happened to be right around the corner from an internet cafe that the FBI believed DPR used.
The FBI tailed him for 2 weeks as the appropriate team assembled in San Francisco. It was necessary to catch him with the computer open and him logged onto the site as the 'Mastermind'. On the 1st of October, 2013, Ross settled into the local public library and logged in. As they had cracked the site, they knew when he was logged in and two FBI agents, posing a a couple, had a particularly loud argument right in front of him. As he looked away from his computer, one agent grabbed the device and a second agent grabbed Ulbright. He was tried in NYC in a federal court. His lawyer failed in an attempt to convince the jury that he was not DPR. He had been tried under a 'Kingpin' statue designed to capture and penalize mob bosses. Thus, the verdict was severe: two life sentences, plus 40 years and no chance for parole. His Samsung laptop is on public display in the Smithsonian. Thanks to Wendell for this recommendation.
The government's first success was when a DEA team captured one of the site's administrators at his home in Utah. When DPR ascertained what had transpired, he authorized a hit on Curtis Greene, his recently captured employee. Unfortunately for DPR, the man he hired to arrange the hit was the undercover DEA agent who had made the arrest and had spent months electronically befriending DPR. At the same time, a NYC based Task Force headed by the FBI and assisted by the IRS took on the case. One of the members of the team was an IRS agent named Gary Alford. He remembered that in 1977, the year he was born, the NYPD found the Son of Sam killer through parking tickets incurred near the murder sites. Alford went looking for the equivalent of parking tickets. He dug back into the history of Silk Road and, intrigued by a post, he investigated the email address behind the ID of a blogger - RossUlbricht@gmail.com. He had found his parking ticket. In the summer of 2013, the FBI began to close in. Alford found a few more clues about Ulbricht and shared them with the FBI. The FBI confirmed that DPR had used an email name similar to one Alford had found on a server they had captured. They then learned that DHS had spoken to Ulbricht at his San Francisco apartment because he had ordered 9 fake ID's that DHS had confiscated. The apartment happened to be right around the corner from an internet cafe that the FBI believed DPR used.
The FBI tailed him for 2 weeks as the appropriate team assembled in San Francisco. It was necessary to catch him with the computer open and him logged onto the site as the 'Mastermind'. On the 1st of October, 2013, Ross settled into the local public library and logged in. As they had cracked the site, they knew when he was logged in and two FBI agents, posing a a couple, had a particularly loud argument right in front of him. As he looked away from his computer, one agent grabbed the device and a second agent grabbed Ulbright. He was tried in NYC in a federal court. His lawyer failed in an attempt to convince the jury that he was not DPR. He had been tried under a 'Kingpin' statue designed to capture and penalize mob bosses. Thus, the verdict was severe: two life sentences, plus 40 years and no chance for parole. His Samsung laptop is on public display in the Smithsonian. Thanks to Wendell for this recommendation.
Energy: A Human History, Rhodes - C
As early as Elizabethan England, coal began to replace wood as the preferred fuel for heating and cooking. The demand for coal led to deeper mines, and those mines were susceptible to flooding. Relieving mines of water required power, and in the 17th century, various English and German scientists tried to harness steam. Thomas Newcomen invented a coal fired steam engine in 1712 that would pump the coal mines of the UK for two hundred years. In 1769, James Watt fabricated the first steam engine in Glasgow. The Industrial Revolution was at hand. In the early years of the next century, steam was powering railroads and a variety of mechanical devices.
Also at the end of the 18th century, the English and Scotch pursued solutions to replace the candle. Indoor gas lighting was first used in Manchester in the late 1790's. In 1807, Pall Mall was the first street in London to be lit by coal gas. Throughout the first half of the century, high quality whale sperm oil remained the standard of excellence for residential indoor lighting because of the consistency and quality of the light. As the whales' population diminished, kerosene next took preeminence. Rock oil, the early nomenclature of petroleum, was discovered in northeastern Pennsylvania in the late 1850's and would soon dominate the lighting market. In the second half of the century, decades of electrical research paid off as current now could light a room, a building and even a city.
By the beginning of the 20th century, steam, electricity and the internal combustion engine were all competing to drive the wheels of the new horseless carriages. The engine won and as auto usage surged, so did the supply of petroleum around the world. Across the industrialized world, excessive use of petroleum products in conjunction with coal fired electrical plants led to massive amounts of smog, sometimes leading to death and certainly, a deteriorating environment. In the 1960's, concern for the well-being of the planet led to a massive movement to curb the damaging effects of the energy industries of the world. We have turned to wind, the original propellant of the sail boat, along with solar and other sources of power to try to face a cleaner future. Hopefully, science will deliver it.
The author's book on the Manhattan project is one of the best I have ever read and it won a Pulitzer Prize. His excellent book on the H-Bomb was also critically honored. This brief treatise is not in that league.
Also at the end of the 18th century, the English and Scotch pursued solutions to replace the candle. Indoor gas lighting was first used in Manchester in the late 1790's. In 1807, Pall Mall was the first street in London to be lit by coal gas. Throughout the first half of the century, high quality whale sperm oil remained the standard of excellence for residential indoor lighting because of the consistency and quality of the light. As the whales' population diminished, kerosene next took preeminence. Rock oil, the early nomenclature of petroleum, was discovered in northeastern Pennsylvania in the late 1850's and would soon dominate the lighting market. In the second half of the century, decades of electrical research paid off as current now could light a room, a building and even a city.
By the beginning of the 20th century, steam, electricity and the internal combustion engine were all competing to drive the wheels of the new horseless carriages. The engine won and as auto usage surged, so did the supply of petroleum around the world. Across the industrialized world, excessive use of petroleum products in conjunction with coal fired electrical plants led to massive amounts of smog, sometimes leading to death and certainly, a deteriorating environment. In the 1960's, concern for the well-being of the planet led to a massive movement to curb the damaging effects of the energy industries of the world. We have turned to wind, the original propellant of the sail boat, along with solar and other sources of power to try to face a cleaner future. Hopefully, science will deliver it.
The author's book on the Manhattan project is one of the best I have ever read and it won a Pulitzer Prize. His excellent book on the H-Bomb was also critically honored. This brief treatise is not in that league.
1.13.2019
Transcription, Atkinson - C
This book is one that was on just about every best-of list for last year. The author is popular, esteemed and a superb writer. The rather poor grade given here is a function of a last minute turn of events that I cannot fit into the story. Perhaps, it is me who deserves the poor grade for my inability to handle modern British literature. Soon after her mother's death in 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet goes to work for MI-5 in London. Her job is to transcribe the interviews that Mr. Toby conducts with unaware fifth columnists who believe they are meeting with a Gestapo agent. But this apparently simple task soon becomes more complicated. First, she is asked to act as a spy on some local Nazis, which she does enthusiastically out of a sense of duty, and boredom. She creates an alternative cover and spends time with British fascists. She is also asked to keep an eye on Mr. Toby by someone higher up. She never reports she saw him leave a few dead drops for a rather mysterious looking stranger. The author is famous for novels that move back and forth in time, and before we leave 1940, Juliet participates in the arrest of an American diplomat and a local fascist. We next find her in 1950 working at the BBC when she receives an anonymous threat and notices that she is being followed. It's never quite clear who is following, but it is at this point that she is unmasked as a traitor and escapes the country before the security services can bring her in. If anyone can tell me what I missed, I'd be grateful.
1.09.2019
Winter Soldier, Mason - B +
This excellent novel is set in the midst of the Great War in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Lucius Krzelewski is the sixth child of a wealthy Polish family living in Vienna. He is in his second year of medical training when the war breaks out. He is commissioned as Lieutenant Doctor and sent east. There he has the good fortune of learning all that he needs to know from Sister Nurse Margarete, a nun who has seen it all and knows how to take care of just about everything. They become an effective team managing their field hospital in a church. In their second winter, after she almost dies of fever, they became lovers. They become separated in the fog of war. He is assigned to a medical train that travels the country. He takes every opportunity to look for her, but fails. After two-and-a-half years at the front, he returns home in Feb. 1917 when one of the afflictions he observed in the east affects him. He can't sleep, screams when he does and begins to walk the streets of Vienna at night. His family's intervention affords him the opportunity to work in Vienna at a large rehabilitation hospital run by his old professor. Armistice brings new borders, conflicts and a discharge. That summer, he travels east to the Carpathians in an attempt to find Margarete. He returns to their old hospital, but it is empty.He finds her a few days later. She had done all she could to find him, but eventually gave up hope and married one of their old patients, the one they had called the winter soldier.
1.07.2019
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Woodard - A*
The people who settled America came from different parts of England, as well as France, the Netherlands and Spain and brought with them their own social, religious and governmental systems. They forever imprinted them on the parts of the New World they colonized. "There isn't and never has been one America." The regions of North America developed differently; they championed different goals, and honored different virtues. Some were WASP and others ethnic and pluralistic. "All of them continue to champion some idea of their founding ideals in the present day. The United States is a federation comprised of the whole or part of eleven regional nations, some of which truly do not see eye to eye with one another."
'Yankeedom' was founded by the Calvinists. Yankeedom believes in education, the possibilities of government, is accepting of immigrants, respectful of learning and strives to build a better society. It extends from New England to New York, to the northern parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and into the eastern Dakotas. 'New Netherland' is essentially NYC and the surrounding parts of NJ, LI, Westchester and Connecticut that focus on global trading, and is multi-ethnic, multi-religious, materialistic, and mercantile. It has a profound tolerance of diversity. The 'Midlands' was founded by Quakers, is pluralistic, indifferent to the role of government, speaks the standard American dialect, and is a swing vote in every national debate. It spread from southeastern Pennsylvania to southern Jersey, northern Delaware and Maryland, central Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, northern Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas. 'Tidewater' was cavalier Virginia, Maryland, southern Delaware and northeastern North Carolina. "Tidewater elites played a central role in the foundation of the US and were responsible for many of the aristocratic inflections in the Constitution, including the Electoral College and Senate." 'Greater Appalachia' was founded by the Scots-Irish who settled in southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and the hill country of Texas. The culture is deeply committed to individual liberty and personal sovereignty. When asked their nationality or ethnicity, most people from Appalachia will say American. The 'Deep South' was founded by Caribbean slavers and extended from Charleston across the Confederacy into Texas. After losing the Civil War, it became the center of states rights, segregation, and labor and environmental deregulation. It is locked in an epic battle with Yankeedom, New Netherland and the Left Coast for the future of the country. 'New France' is Quebec province and portions of Louisiana, where the Acadians settled after the British expelled them from maritime Canada. 'El Norte' is the oldest Euro-American nation and encompasses a hundred miles north and south of the southern border. The 'Left Coast' is a Chilean shaped coastal region stretching from central California to Juneau, Alaska. It is Yankeedom's closest ally. The 'Far West' is high and dry, the region where the nation's reliance on farmer stakeholders failed because of its arid climate. It was developed by the government and large corporations. It is virtually all of the mountain time zone in America and Canada and is still semi-dependent on outside forces. 'First Nation' is the resurgent native population recovering territory mostly in northern Canada. Perhaps the most interesting observation the author makes in the introduction is that these foundational cultures have not been materially changed by immigration or migration. The newcomers tend to adapt.
The Spanish settled the southwestern US a century before the English arrived on the Atlantic coast. The wealth Spain accumulated in Latin America fueled its wars against the Protestant Reformation. A legacy of those aggressions was the hatred of the English and Dutch for the Spaniards and a weakening of Spain in Europe and America. That weakness was manifested in El Norte by the lack of centralized control of the far flung province in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.The French too preceded the English in Acadia and Quebec. New France strove to work with and assimilate the natives, leading to a society that was as much aboriginal as French by the mid-eighteenth century.
Two very distinct nations founded at the same time were Tidewater and Yankeedom. The colonization of Virginia succeeded because the ease of tobacco-growing attracted people and money. They were the Cavaliers who supported the King in the Civil War, believed in the supremacy of the established church, were aristocrats desirous of establishing a traditional feudal system and Norman, not Anglo-Saxon. Tobacco cultivation was labor intensive, and probably 80% of the colonists were indentured servants on three-year contracts. It was a society of haves and have nots who were without any political rights. Rights were earned or given and not naturally inherent. In the eighteenth century, slavery grew from 10% to 40% of the population and helped perpetuate the southern system. The Pilgrims of Plymouth and Puritans of Massachusetts, the settlers of Yankeedom, could not have been more different. Opposed to Anglicanism and hostile to privilege, they were educated, skilled, egalitarian and democratic. Everyone had rights and responsibilities in a self-governing society. This eventually led to the strongest belief in the power of government to do good. Universal public education was established in the seventeenth century. It was the seedbed of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
New Amsterdam "was an unabashedly commercial settlement with little concern for social cohesion or the creation of a model society." The Netherlands itself was the commercial center of the world, home to toleration and religious freedom, known for its' great universities and diversity. The colony was founded on the same principles. It succeeded for six decades before being incorporated into the English crown by James, Duke of York. Later, as James II, he set out to impose a feudal regime on New York, New Jersey and New England and levied tobacco and sugar taxes against Tidewater and Charleston, respectively. The response was swift. In Boston, 2000 militiamen deposed the Royal Governor. Revolt claimed New York, but soon the news of the Glorious Revolution reached America, ending the revolutions of 1689.
Charleston, and the Deep South were settled by the sons and grandsons of the founders of Barbados. It "was the richest and most horrifying society in the English speaking world. Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror." They were Anglicans, aristocrats, and brutal suppressors of an allegedly inferior race. The culture spread to the Mississippi and beyond. The Quakers settled the Midlands with a culture that was tolerant, multicultural, multilingual, religious and deeply skeptical of government. They established Philadelphia, granted the vote to all men, and encouraged the success of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Appalachia was founded by the Scots-Irish Borderlanders, a proud, independent and disturbingly violent people. They arrived in waves in the eighteenth century fleeing upheavals at home. Destitute and land hungry, they went straight to the backcountry. They spread from western Pennsylvania south in the mountains. It was said that the highlands resembled the lawless frontiers of Scotland.
The American Revolution was more of a temporary partnership against British oppression than a unified rally for freedom. The Midlands and New Netherland did not rebel at all. Yankeedom, Appalachia, Tidewater and the South had very little in common. They cooperated to overcome an existential threat. New England was unified and the first to rebel. In Virginia, it was the up-country Piedmont region with Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Mason that stood with the Yankees. Greater Appalachia knew that they wanted to go west and were more than willing to fight. The Deep South was interested in any status quo that would keep the slaves in check. The Yankees of New England chased the British out of Boston and had achieved virtual independence as the war began. NYC was the home of the British army and fleet and diametrically opposed to the war. Indeed, half the population left when independence was granted. The Deep South fought because they feared the British might attempt a slave uprising. The Tidewater gentry were in favor of revolt, but it was the Borderlanders in Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas who fought and eventually defeated the British southern strategy. A decade after hostilities ended, a series of compromises led to the US Constitution.
The America that moved west in the 18th century was led by the nations of Yankeedom, the Midlands, Greater Appalachia and the Deep South. The Yankees stayed to the north and effectively spread their culture as far west as Iowa. They emphasized their belief in education, the pursuit of the common good, a strong church, and would form the backbone of the nascent Republican party. The Midlanders spread their pluralistic society west and just south of the Yankees. "The Midland Midwest would develop as a center of moderation and tolerance, where people of many faiths and ethnicities lived side by side, minding their own business." The Midlanders were joined by hundreds of thousands of German immigrants with similar cultural orientations. Greater Appalachia spread farther and faster than the other nations and soon dominated the national government. They were rural, spurned education, didn't like taxes and deplored Yankee proselytizing. They were Jacksonian Democrats who liked their government light and individual freedom maximized. They had a bilateral relation with God in lieu of formal churches. The Deep South expanded west on the back of the burgeoning cotton trade. The southerners believed slavery was ordained by God and that their slavocracy was superior in every way to the teeming ignorant masses of the north. They believed they were Norman cavaliers and the northerners mere Anglo-Saxon serfs.
By 1830, there were twice as many illegal Americans in Texas as there were Tejanos. El Norte was about to succumb. Texas achieved independence six years later. The Mexican-American War brought the vast northern portion of Mexico into the American realm. The Left Coast was founded by Yankees who arrived from the sea. They dominated the coast north from Monterey, while the interior was settled by Appalachians arriving overland, both groups looking somewhat condescendingly on the El Norte culture to their south.
At the midpoint of the 19th century, the demographic struggle was between the Deep South and Yankeedom, neither of which could abide the other's terms, as they contended for domination of the national government. Immigration and the admission of the west coast states set the stage for the Yankees to win, leaving the south with secession as its only option. New Netherland supported the south because of their commercial ties. The Midlands were relatively ambivalent about slavery and secession. Fort Sumter turned the tide in both nations and they willing joined the Yankees. The North won, but Reconstruction essentially failed, and the Deep South was modified, but not changed.
None of the cultures that spread from the Atlantic to the middle of the continent succeeded in the Far West. Aridity and altitude prevented subsistence farming. Only the outside forces of railroads, mining companies and the federal construction of dams were able to develop and influence the region. "The region became a colonial dependency of an industrial empire." The West developed an antipathy for government, big business and Wall Street that led to decades of populist support for labor unions and the Democrats. Liberalism's turn to social issues and environmental concerns reversed that political trend in the second half of the 20th century. Today, the region is held together by its outright hostility to federal power.
The reason generations of immigrants effected, but did not change, underlying cultures, is that they primarily went to New Netherland and the Midlands, both nations multi-cultural, tolerant and respectful of diversity. Yankeedom accommodated immigration by relentlessly pursuing education, fostering the Pilgrim founding myth and emphasizing the importance of hard work.
The one thing that Reconstruction did accomplish was unifying the South against the North. Appalachia, Tidewater and the Deep South were unified in their desire to retain the antebellum society and succeeded in doing so. Their antipathy to Yankeedom's desire to improve society at their expense was absolute. The Evangelicals took over in the south and promulgated their anti-education, and anti-science philosophies. The North assumed that the fire-and-brimstone crowd would stumble over their irrational beliefs. They were wrong. Throughout the 20th century, their intolerant culture grew and prospered. Mid-century brought culture clashes to the north and the south. African-Americans rebelled and with northern assistance achieved civil rights. The youth of the north turned agains the establishment. Weakened at home, the Dixiecrat elites were unable to stop the youth movement's ideas from propagating, but they have been fighting back ever since. The latest cultural wars are an extension of this age-old split. Environmentalism is almost exclusively a northern issue. The Equal Rights Amendment, abortion and gay marriage all have distinct regional differences. The use of American military power breaks down again along the same lines. "US foreign policy is Civil War by other means."
This book was written in 2011 and states that the north and the west coast are primarily Democratic. Dixie block voters back conservatives. The two blocs have stood in near-constant monolithic opposition to each other leaving political power alternating based on the voting in the three swing nations of the Midlands, the Far West and El Norte. The Midlands straddle the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri and backed FDR, Reagan and Obama. In the Far West, they voted with the northerners when they were controlled by outside interests and with the Dixiecrats for the last half a century. Recently and going forward, the Hispanics of Norteno have, and will, play a more outsized role in electoral politics. States with heavy Hispanic populations moved some purple states in the southwest into Obama's column. The author closes with the rather discouraging thought that the US likely will not hold together. And, his pessimism hasn't lived through the last eight years. He posits perhaps the various nations consolidating with their Canadian or Mexican counterparts and the disintegration of the Union. I certainly hope that not to be the case.
For me, this has been a profoundly important learning experience. A decade or so ago, I read David Hackett Fischer's 'Albion's Seed' which dealt with what he called the folkways of the Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers and the Scots-Irish. At 899 pages, he delves deeply into the culture of the four groups and discusses education, architecture, child rearing and just about anything you can think of. He is a Pulitzer winner and his book is esteemed. This book, written by a journalist, is only 314 pages and focuses on politics, covers other groups and goes further afield geographically. It was well-received, but not honored the way Fischer's book was. That said, I am not an academic and I believe this has provided me with a much better insight into our past and our present. This past fall while driving through Iowa, I asked myself how did such a far away place send soldiers to the Civil War. I learned here that they were part of the Yankee diaspora and were naturals to rally to the Union flag. We all see history through our own experiences. As a New Yorker from a blue-collar background, albeit expanded to include a mid-western upper class adulthood, I bring a worldview that is profoundly different from someone from a different culture. I fully understand that today and suggest to my friends, that this is a must read.
'Yankeedom' was founded by the Calvinists. Yankeedom believes in education, the possibilities of government, is accepting of immigrants, respectful of learning and strives to build a better society. It extends from New England to New York, to the northern parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and into the eastern Dakotas. 'New Netherland' is essentially NYC and the surrounding parts of NJ, LI, Westchester and Connecticut that focus on global trading, and is multi-ethnic, multi-religious, materialistic, and mercantile. It has a profound tolerance of diversity. The 'Midlands' was founded by Quakers, is pluralistic, indifferent to the role of government, speaks the standard American dialect, and is a swing vote in every national debate. It spread from southeastern Pennsylvania to southern Jersey, northern Delaware and Maryland, central Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, northern Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas. 'Tidewater' was cavalier Virginia, Maryland, southern Delaware and northeastern North Carolina. "Tidewater elites played a central role in the foundation of the US and were responsible for many of the aristocratic inflections in the Constitution, including the Electoral College and Senate." 'Greater Appalachia' was founded by the Scots-Irish who settled in southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and the hill country of Texas. The culture is deeply committed to individual liberty and personal sovereignty. When asked their nationality or ethnicity, most people from Appalachia will say American. The 'Deep South' was founded by Caribbean slavers and extended from Charleston across the Confederacy into Texas. After losing the Civil War, it became the center of states rights, segregation, and labor and environmental deregulation. It is locked in an epic battle with Yankeedom, New Netherland and the Left Coast for the future of the country. 'New France' is Quebec province and portions of Louisiana, where the Acadians settled after the British expelled them from maritime Canada. 'El Norte' is the oldest Euro-American nation and encompasses a hundred miles north and south of the southern border. The 'Left Coast' is a Chilean shaped coastal region stretching from central California to Juneau, Alaska. It is Yankeedom's closest ally. The 'Far West' is high and dry, the region where the nation's reliance on farmer stakeholders failed because of its arid climate. It was developed by the government and large corporations. It is virtually all of the mountain time zone in America and Canada and is still semi-dependent on outside forces. 'First Nation' is the resurgent native population recovering territory mostly in northern Canada. Perhaps the most interesting observation the author makes in the introduction is that these foundational cultures have not been materially changed by immigration or migration. The newcomers tend to adapt.
The Spanish settled the southwestern US a century before the English arrived on the Atlantic coast. The wealth Spain accumulated in Latin America fueled its wars against the Protestant Reformation. A legacy of those aggressions was the hatred of the English and Dutch for the Spaniards and a weakening of Spain in Europe and America. That weakness was manifested in El Norte by the lack of centralized control of the far flung province in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.The French too preceded the English in Acadia and Quebec. New France strove to work with and assimilate the natives, leading to a society that was as much aboriginal as French by the mid-eighteenth century.
Two very distinct nations founded at the same time were Tidewater and Yankeedom. The colonization of Virginia succeeded because the ease of tobacco-growing attracted people and money. They were the Cavaliers who supported the King in the Civil War, believed in the supremacy of the established church, were aristocrats desirous of establishing a traditional feudal system and Norman, not Anglo-Saxon. Tobacco cultivation was labor intensive, and probably 80% of the colonists were indentured servants on three-year contracts. It was a society of haves and have nots who were without any political rights. Rights were earned or given and not naturally inherent. In the eighteenth century, slavery grew from 10% to 40% of the population and helped perpetuate the southern system. The Pilgrims of Plymouth and Puritans of Massachusetts, the settlers of Yankeedom, could not have been more different. Opposed to Anglicanism and hostile to privilege, they were educated, skilled, egalitarian and democratic. Everyone had rights and responsibilities in a self-governing society. This eventually led to the strongest belief in the power of government to do good. Universal public education was established in the seventeenth century. It was the seedbed of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
New Amsterdam "was an unabashedly commercial settlement with little concern for social cohesion or the creation of a model society." The Netherlands itself was the commercial center of the world, home to toleration and religious freedom, known for its' great universities and diversity. The colony was founded on the same principles. It succeeded for six decades before being incorporated into the English crown by James, Duke of York. Later, as James II, he set out to impose a feudal regime on New York, New Jersey and New England and levied tobacco and sugar taxes against Tidewater and Charleston, respectively. The response was swift. In Boston, 2000 militiamen deposed the Royal Governor. Revolt claimed New York, but soon the news of the Glorious Revolution reached America, ending the revolutions of 1689.
Charleston, and the Deep South were settled by the sons and grandsons of the founders of Barbados. It "was the richest and most horrifying society in the English speaking world. Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror." They were Anglicans, aristocrats, and brutal suppressors of an allegedly inferior race. The culture spread to the Mississippi and beyond. The Quakers settled the Midlands with a culture that was tolerant, multicultural, multilingual, religious and deeply skeptical of government. They established Philadelphia, granted the vote to all men, and encouraged the success of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Appalachia was founded by the Scots-Irish Borderlanders, a proud, independent and disturbingly violent people. They arrived in waves in the eighteenth century fleeing upheavals at home. Destitute and land hungry, they went straight to the backcountry. They spread from western Pennsylvania south in the mountains. It was said that the highlands resembled the lawless frontiers of Scotland.
The American Revolution was more of a temporary partnership against British oppression than a unified rally for freedom. The Midlands and New Netherland did not rebel at all. Yankeedom, Appalachia, Tidewater and the South had very little in common. They cooperated to overcome an existential threat. New England was unified and the first to rebel. In Virginia, it was the up-country Piedmont region with Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Mason that stood with the Yankees. Greater Appalachia knew that they wanted to go west and were more than willing to fight. The Deep South was interested in any status quo that would keep the slaves in check. The Yankees of New England chased the British out of Boston and had achieved virtual independence as the war began. NYC was the home of the British army and fleet and diametrically opposed to the war. Indeed, half the population left when independence was granted. The Deep South fought because they feared the British might attempt a slave uprising. The Tidewater gentry were in favor of revolt, but it was the Borderlanders in Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas who fought and eventually defeated the British southern strategy. A decade after hostilities ended, a series of compromises led to the US Constitution.
The America that moved west in the 18th century was led by the nations of Yankeedom, the Midlands, Greater Appalachia and the Deep South. The Yankees stayed to the north and effectively spread their culture as far west as Iowa. They emphasized their belief in education, the pursuit of the common good, a strong church, and would form the backbone of the nascent Republican party. The Midlanders spread their pluralistic society west and just south of the Yankees. "The Midland Midwest would develop as a center of moderation and tolerance, where people of many faiths and ethnicities lived side by side, minding their own business." The Midlanders were joined by hundreds of thousands of German immigrants with similar cultural orientations. Greater Appalachia spread farther and faster than the other nations and soon dominated the national government. They were rural, spurned education, didn't like taxes and deplored Yankee proselytizing. They were Jacksonian Democrats who liked their government light and individual freedom maximized. They had a bilateral relation with God in lieu of formal churches. The Deep South expanded west on the back of the burgeoning cotton trade. The southerners believed slavery was ordained by God and that their slavocracy was superior in every way to the teeming ignorant masses of the north. They believed they were Norman cavaliers and the northerners mere Anglo-Saxon serfs.
By 1830, there were twice as many illegal Americans in Texas as there were Tejanos. El Norte was about to succumb. Texas achieved independence six years later. The Mexican-American War brought the vast northern portion of Mexico into the American realm. The Left Coast was founded by Yankees who arrived from the sea. They dominated the coast north from Monterey, while the interior was settled by Appalachians arriving overland, both groups looking somewhat condescendingly on the El Norte culture to their south.
At the midpoint of the 19th century, the demographic struggle was between the Deep South and Yankeedom, neither of which could abide the other's terms, as they contended for domination of the national government. Immigration and the admission of the west coast states set the stage for the Yankees to win, leaving the south with secession as its only option. New Netherland supported the south because of their commercial ties. The Midlands were relatively ambivalent about slavery and secession. Fort Sumter turned the tide in both nations and they willing joined the Yankees. The North won, but Reconstruction essentially failed, and the Deep South was modified, but not changed.
None of the cultures that spread from the Atlantic to the middle of the continent succeeded in the Far West. Aridity and altitude prevented subsistence farming. Only the outside forces of railroads, mining companies and the federal construction of dams were able to develop and influence the region. "The region became a colonial dependency of an industrial empire." The West developed an antipathy for government, big business and Wall Street that led to decades of populist support for labor unions and the Democrats. Liberalism's turn to social issues and environmental concerns reversed that political trend in the second half of the 20th century. Today, the region is held together by its outright hostility to federal power.
The reason generations of immigrants effected, but did not change, underlying cultures, is that they primarily went to New Netherland and the Midlands, both nations multi-cultural, tolerant and respectful of diversity. Yankeedom accommodated immigration by relentlessly pursuing education, fostering the Pilgrim founding myth and emphasizing the importance of hard work.
The one thing that Reconstruction did accomplish was unifying the South against the North. Appalachia, Tidewater and the Deep South were unified in their desire to retain the antebellum society and succeeded in doing so. Their antipathy to Yankeedom's desire to improve society at their expense was absolute. The Evangelicals took over in the south and promulgated their anti-education, and anti-science philosophies. The North assumed that the fire-and-brimstone crowd would stumble over their irrational beliefs. They were wrong. Throughout the 20th century, their intolerant culture grew and prospered. Mid-century brought culture clashes to the north and the south. African-Americans rebelled and with northern assistance achieved civil rights. The youth of the north turned agains the establishment. Weakened at home, the Dixiecrat elites were unable to stop the youth movement's ideas from propagating, but they have been fighting back ever since. The latest cultural wars are an extension of this age-old split. Environmentalism is almost exclusively a northern issue. The Equal Rights Amendment, abortion and gay marriage all have distinct regional differences. The use of American military power breaks down again along the same lines. "US foreign policy is Civil War by other means."
This book was written in 2011 and states that the north and the west coast are primarily Democratic. Dixie block voters back conservatives. The two blocs have stood in near-constant monolithic opposition to each other leaving political power alternating based on the voting in the three swing nations of the Midlands, the Far West and El Norte. The Midlands straddle the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri and backed FDR, Reagan and Obama. In the Far West, they voted with the northerners when they were controlled by outside interests and with the Dixiecrats for the last half a century. Recently and going forward, the Hispanics of Norteno have, and will, play a more outsized role in electoral politics. States with heavy Hispanic populations moved some purple states in the southwest into Obama's column. The author closes with the rather discouraging thought that the US likely will not hold together. And, his pessimism hasn't lived through the last eight years. He posits perhaps the various nations consolidating with their Canadian or Mexican counterparts and the disintegration of the Union. I certainly hope that not to be the case.
For me, this has been a profoundly important learning experience. A decade or so ago, I read David Hackett Fischer's 'Albion's Seed' which dealt with what he called the folkways of the Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers and the Scots-Irish. At 899 pages, he delves deeply into the culture of the four groups and discusses education, architecture, child rearing and just about anything you can think of. He is a Pulitzer winner and his book is esteemed. This book, written by a journalist, is only 314 pages and focuses on politics, covers other groups and goes further afield geographically. It was well-received, but not honored the way Fischer's book was. That said, I am not an academic and I believe this has provided me with a much better insight into our past and our present. This past fall while driving through Iowa, I asked myself how did such a far away place send soldiers to the Civil War. I learned here that they were part of the Yankee diaspora and were naturals to rally to the Union flag. We all see history through our own experiences. As a New Yorker from a blue-collar background, albeit expanded to include a mid-western upper class adulthood, I bring a worldview that is profoundly different from someone from a different culture. I fully understand that today and suggest to my friends, that this is a must read.
12.31.2018
The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise To Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic, Hett - B +
February 27, 1933 was the night of the Reichstag fire and arguably, the end of German democracy and the Weimar Republic. The next day, the Cabinet approved and President von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree giving the Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, dictatorial powers to fight a communist conspiracy. The Germany of Weimar had been a bastion of freedom, electoral rights, flourishing arts, creative music and theater, manufacturing and science. But, all of those positives eventually failed. "The Nazis were a response to an overwhelming triumph of global liberal capitalism at the end of the Great War." The war had cost the country the lives of 2 million men and saddled it with reparations and economic chaos. Not enough people were willing to move on and attempt to rejoin the world community.
Germany was met with abdication, armistice and revolution in November, 1918. "The German Army was stabbed in the back" was a statement made by von Hindenburg to an investigative committee in 1919. It would be the battle cry of the right for decades. It was a theme Hitler picked up when he began his public speaking career in Munich. The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch brought Hitler fame and afforded him the opportunity to write Mein Kampf. In the second half of the decade, Germany successfully negotiated a treaty to establish its borders, joined the League of Nations and restructured its debt. Its role as pariah began to fade. Domestically though, the country was falling apart."Divisions, increasingly bitter, increasingly irreconcilable, in matters of politics, religion, social class, occupation and region, were the hallmarks of the Weimar Republic." The Communists were opposed to the Social Democrats and the Nazis and vice versa. Everyone had militias that fought with the police. There was a distinct urban/rural divide capped by an antipathy for Berlin around the country. Insurgencies on the right and left, as well as the military and big business wished to either eliminate or emasculate the Reichstag. The structure of the Reichstag allowed parties seats based on their percentage of the vote in national elections. This led to multiple parties unable to form governing coalitions because of their inherent tribalism and inability to consider compromise.
Elections in 1930 gave the Nazis 107 seats with 18.3% of the vote, up from 12 seats and 2.6% two years earlier. They had made a major inroad into the centrist Protestant parties, whose voters feared communism. Germany had the largest Communist party outside of the USSR. It followed Stalin's instructions and German stability was not one of his goals. Hitler realized that he might achieve power through legitimate electoral means. The Depression played into his hands. Germany was still struggling with reparations, making the global world order their enemy. Throw in the antipathy toward the 80,000 eastern European Jews who had settled in the country after the Great War as fuel for the Nazi fire. The Depression deepened so in 1931 that Germans were going hungry and comparing circumstances to the war years. The dysfunctional system led to endless elections, and in 1931, the Nazis moved up to 230 seats. Emboldened by their success, Hitler unleashed the SA and planned to use his Reichstag seats to impeach von Hindenburg. "The intransigencies of Germany's political parties, especially the right-wingers, and several years of miscalculation by President Hindenburg, Brining, Schleicher and Papen, had thrown German politics into a full-blown crisis. The Nazis knew they could not come to power against the establishment. But, neither could the establishment go on without the Nazi's." Hitler would not accept any offers for a coalition government without him as Chancellor. Everyone kept trying solutions, but Hindenburg, who viewed the "Austrian private" as perhaps qualified to be the postal minister, refused. He eventually gave in and offered the position to Hitler on Jan.30, 1933. It took Hitler and the Nazis the next eighteen months, until von Hindenburg's death, to consolidate their power and lead Germany and much of Europe into the abyss.
This is a very interesting book and a fascinating reminder once again about how determined minorities can take over countries and impose their will on others. The author, by focusing on the global order and a populist pushback, draws the obvious comparison to the 21st century in Europe and America. The stumbling block for me to thoroughly enjoying this has been the Constitution of the Weimar Republic. I do not wish for more explanation of it because I'm not sure it would have helped me wrap my mind around the process and the problems.
Germany was met with abdication, armistice and revolution in November, 1918. "The German Army was stabbed in the back" was a statement made by von Hindenburg to an investigative committee in 1919. It would be the battle cry of the right for decades. It was a theme Hitler picked up when he began his public speaking career in Munich. The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch brought Hitler fame and afforded him the opportunity to write Mein Kampf. In the second half of the decade, Germany successfully negotiated a treaty to establish its borders, joined the League of Nations and restructured its debt. Its role as pariah began to fade. Domestically though, the country was falling apart."Divisions, increasingly bitter, increasingly irreconcilable, in matters of politics, religion, social class, occupation and region, were the hallmarks of the Weimar Republic." The Communists were opposed to the Social Democrats and the Nazis and vice versa. Everyone had militias that fought with the police. There was a distinct urban/rural divide capped by an antipathy for Berlin around the country. Insurgencies on the right and left, as well as the military and big business wished to either eliminate or emasculate the Reichstag. The structure of the Reichstag allowed parties seats based on their percentage of the vote in national elections. This led to multiple parties unable to form governing coalitions because of their inherent tribalism and inability to consider compromise.
Elections in 1930 gave the Nazis 107 seats with 18.3% of the vote, up from 12 seats and 2.6% two years earlier. They had made a major inroad into the centrist Protestant parties, whose voters feared communism. Germany had the largest Communist party outside of the USSR. It followed Stalin's instructions and German stability was not one of his goals. Hitler realized that he might achieve power through legitimate electoral means. The Depression played into his hands. Germany was still struggling with reparations, making the global world order their enemy. Throw in the antipathy toward the 80,000 eastern European Jews who had settled in the country after the Great War as fuel for the Nazi fire. The Depression deepened so in 1931 that Germans were going hungry and comparing circumstances to the war years. The dysfunctional system led to endless elections, and in 1931, the Nazis moved up to 230 seats. Emboldened by their success, Hitler unleashed the SA and planned to use his Reichstag seats to impeach von Hindenburg. "The intransigencies of Germany's political parties, especially the right-wingers, and several years of miscalculation by President Hindenburg, Brining, Schleicher and Papen, had thrown German politics into a full-blown crisis. The Nazis knew they could not come to power against the establishment. But, neither could the establishment go on without the Nazi's." Hitler would not accept any offers for a coalition government without him as Chancellor. Everyone kept trying solutions, but Hindenburg, who viewed the "Austrian private" as perhaps qualified to be the postal minister, refused. He eventually gave in and offered the position to Hitler on Jan.30, 1933. It took Hitler and the Nazis the next eighteen months, until von Hindenburg's death, to consolidate their power and lead Germany and much of Europe into the abyss.
This is a very interesting book and a fascinating reminder once again about how determined minorities can take over countries and impose their will on others. The author, by focusing on the global order and a populist pushback, draws the obvious comparison to the 21st century in Europe and America. The stumbling block for me to thoroughly enjoying this has been the Constitution of the Weimar Republic. I do not wish for more explanation of it because I'm not sure it would have helped me wrap my mind around the process and the problems.
12.29.2018
Rome: A History In Seven Sackings, Kneale - B
The seven sackings of the subtitle are the Gauls, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Normans, Hapsburgs, French and Nazis. In the year 387 BC, about 10 miles north of the city, an army of the Republic, less than 10,000 men, prepared for an attack by the Gauls. Although the Romans were organized and disciplined, they fell before the savage ferocity of the invaders. The Gauls soon descended on a city that was home to about 25,000 people. According to Livy, whom the author suggests simply synthesized tales and myths into history, the Romans defended the city, and bought their freedom from the marauders for 1,000 pounds of gold. Afterward, they built a new wall and reorganized the army.
Rome reigned supreme for over seven centuries until the 4th century AD. The Visigoths in 378 crushed a Roman army at Adrianople and killed the Emperor Valens. Led by Alaric, they sacked Athens, and proceeded to lay waste to northern Italy. Alaric headed south and in November, 408, a horde of 150,000, a fifth of them warriors, appeared outside the gates of Rome. The city that Alaric approached was much changed from its heyday in the 2nd century. It was half its size, with about 800,000 residents. It was not as rich as it once had been after centuries of internecine warfare and endless defense of the realm. Most of the Temples were abandoned because of the ascent of Christianity. Trade, prosperity, and wealth were all a fraction of what they were in the past. Surrounded, the city began to starve. The Goths were bought off, but it was only a matter of time because they entered the city two years later. As they were Christians, it is believed their three days in the city were not a classic rampage and sacking. Most of the city's great buildings and monuments survived but Rome did lose half its population.
One hundred and twenty-seven years later, Ostrogoths would do much greater damage than their cousins had. The last western Emperor had quietly retired in 476. The Ostrogoth, Theodoric, took over as king and ruled for decades, but a succession issue led to the Eastern Emperor Justinian sending an army to Italy. While the Gothic leader was in the north, Count Belisarius led a Roman army into the city. Rome was a fraction of her former self, occupied in the sixth century by only tens of thousands. The Ostrogoths vastly outnumbered Belisarius and began a siege by cutting off food and water to the city. The Goths broke it off after a year and Belisarius returned to the east. A new Gothic leader returned stronger and wiser and entered the city in 546. This time, the Goths truly sacked Rome and brought it low. It was emptied and deserted. The Goths faded away and the city slowly came back to life. It was a diminished place, but slowly recovering under the tutelage of the new potentates, the Popes. Later, when the Muslims overran Jerusalem, it became the first city of Christendom.
In 1077, King Henry IV of Germany, Burgundy and Italy came to Italy to prostrate himself before Pope Gregory VII. "Four years later, in May 1081, King Henry appeared outside Rome at the head of an army, keen to enjoy a little revenge." After decades of corruption and moral failure, the papacy was assumed by Gregory who intended to reform the church, if not the continent. He had clashed with Henry, but Henry strengthened his base in Germany and marched south desirous of a papal coronation. Henry wasn't very well prepared and immediately disengaged. His on again, off again campaign finally succeeded and three years later when he was crowned Emperor in March, 1084.The Romans had repudiated Gregory and locked him away. He had requested help from his ally, Robert Guiscard, the Norman leader in the south of Italy. As the Germans left, the Normans entered and returned Gregory to St. Peter's, but in the confusion, substantial parts of the city burned. Gregory was compelled to leave for the south with Guiscard. As it always had, the city recovered.
Clement VII, a Medici allied to the Emperor Charles V became pope in 1523. Clement was a pious man hopeful of leading a reform as Martin Luther was stirring up the Christian world. When Charles, who was Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, was offended by Clement's dalliance with Francis I of France, he sent an army to depose the pope. The city in the 16th century had retained its cosmopolitan feel, was up to a population of 80,000 and had a Jewish community of 2,000. Although St. Peter's was being reconstructed, the Vatican was on the way to becoming the largest palace in Europe. Still protected by a wall, the city withstood the beginning of the Imperial siege. However, the army of 20,000 was soon inside the walls and unleashed the most vicious thrashing the city had ever seen. There were at least three full days of rape, pillage and plunder. Neither the clergy nor church property was spared. Plague struck the city and still, the soldiers stayed for ten months. They extracted every ducat they could find. Yet, in the ever-shifting world of Imperial and Italian politics, six years later, Clement crowned Charles Holy Roman Emperor.
The revolutions of 1848 swept the continent and triumphed in Italy in February, 1849 with the establishment of a new Roman Republic under the leadership of Italian patriots, Mazzini and Garibaldi. The previous fall, the pope had sought sanctuary with the conservative King of Naples. The forces of reaction recovered from the tumult and desired to place Pius IX back on the throne. It was a French army that came to Rome that spring to reinstate the pope and still any discussion of a unified Italy. The army breached the defenses on April 30. Pius and his cardinals sought revenge and absolute control. The Papal States had but two decades before unification ended the Church's days as a temporal power. When the time came and the Pope was limited to ruling Vatican City, Pius declared himself and his successors infallible in matters of religion.
In July of 1943, the Fascist Grand Council stripped Mussolini of his power and appointed King Emanuele as commander-in-chief. The king promptly removed Mussolini from office and arrested him a week later. In September, Hitler's soldiers, knowing full well that the Italian assurances about continuing the war were not believable, occupied the Eternal City, once again home to a million-and-a-half people. The German occupation was an immediate threat to the the thousands of Allied pilots in hiding and the city's Jews. The first roundup was in October and 1,000 of Rome's 12,000 Jews were on their way to Auschwitz. As winter approached, food became scarce and a curfew kept Romans in, even on Christmas Eve. To the west, a battle was raging after the Allies landed at Anzio. When the Germans staged equipment in the city, the Allies bombed it, creating a huge antipathy to them. In March, the Germans massacred 335 men and boys in retaliation for a partisan attack on a small SS unit. The Allied breakthrough seemed to take forever, but finally materialized in May. The Americans were soon pouring into Rome. Once again, Rome had survived.
This is a unique and interesting way to tell the story of a city. I suspect anyone who ever took a Latin course, or took an Ancient Roman course or Medieval Europe course, or anyone who has ever visited Rome, would enjoy this book.
Rome reigned supreme for over seven centuries until the 4th century AD. The Visigoths in 378 crushed a Roman army at Adrianople and killed the Emperor Valens. Led by Alaric, they sacked Athens, and proceeded to lay waste to northern Italy. Alaric headed south and in November, 408, a horde of 150,000, a fifth of them warriors, appeared outside the gates of Rome. The city that Alaric approached was much changed from its heyday in the 2nd century. It was half its size, with about 800,000 residents. It was not as rich as it once had been after centuries of internecine warfare and endless defense of the realm. Most of the Temples were abandoned because of the ascent of Christianity. Trade, prosperity, and wealth were all a fraction of what they were in the past. Surrounded, the city began to starve. The Goths were bought off, but it was only a matter of time because they entered the city two years later. As they were Christians, it is believed their three days in the city were not a classic rampage and sacking. Most of the city's great buildings and monuments survived but Rome did lose half its population.
One hundred and twenty-seven years later, Ostrogoths would do much greater damage than their cousins had. The last western Emperor had quietly retired in 476. The Ostrogoth, Theodoric, took over as king and ruled for decades, but a succession issue led to the Eastern Emperor Justinian sending an army to Italy. While the Gothic leader was in the north, Count Belisarius led a Roman army into the city. Rome was a fraction of her former self, occupied in the sixth century by only tens of thousands. The Ostrogoths vastly outnumbered Belisarius and began a siege by cutting off food and water to the city. The Goths broke it off after a year and Belisarius returned to the east. A new Gothic leader returned stronger and wiser and entered the city in 546. This time, the Goths truly sacked Rome and brought it low. It was emptied and deserted. The Goths faded away and the city slowly came back to life. It was a diminished place, but slowly recovering under the tutelage of the new potentates, the Popes. Later, when the Muslims overran Jerusalem, it became the first city of Christendom.
In 1077, King Henry IV of Germany, Burgundy and Italy came to Italy to prostrate himself before Pope Gregory VII. "Four years later, in May 1081, King Henry appeared outside Rome at the head of an army, keen to enjoy a little revenge." After decades of corruption and moral failure, the papacy was assumed by Gregory who intended to reform the church, if not the continent. He had clashed with Henry, but Henry strengthened his base in Germany and marched south desirous of a papal coronation. Henry wasn't very well prepared and immediately disengaged. His on again, off again campaign finally succeeded and three years later when he was crowned Emperor in March, 1084.The Romans had repudiated Gregory and locked him away. He had requested help from his ally, Robert Guiscard, the Norman leader in the south of Italy. As the Germans left, the Normans entered and returned Gregory to St. Peter's, but in the confusion, substantial parts of the city burned. Gregory was compelled to leave for the south with Guiscard. As it always had, the city recovered.
Clement VII, a Medici allied to the Emperor Charles V became pope in 1523. Clement was a pious man hopeful of leading a reform as Martin Luther was stirring up the Christian world. When Charles, who was Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, was offended by Clement's dalliance with Francis I of France, he sent an army to depose the pope. The city in the 16th century had retained its cosmopolitan feel, was up to a population of 80,000 and had a Jewish community of 2,000. Although St. Peter's was being reconstructed, the Vatican was on the way to becoming the largest palace in Europe. Still protected by a wall, the city withstood the beginning of the Imperial siege. However, the army of 20,000 was soon inside the walls and unleashed the most vicious thrashing the city had ever seen. There were at least three full days of rape, pillage and plunder. Neither the clergy nor church property was spared. Plague struck the city and still, the soldiers stayed for ten months. They extracted every ducat they could find. Yet, in the ever-shifting world of Imperial and Italian politics, six years later, Clement crowned Charles Holy Roman Emperor.
The revolutions of 1848 swept the continent and triumphed in Italy in February, 1849 with the establishment of a new Roman Republic under the leadership of Italian patriots, Mazzini and Garibaldi. The previous fall, the pope had sought sanctuary with the conservative King of Naples. The forces of reaction recovered from the tumult and desired to place Pius IX back on the throne. It was a French army that came to Rome that spring to reinstate the pope and still any discussion of a unified Italy. The army breached the defenses on April 30. Pius and his cardinals sought revenge and absolute control. The Papal States had but two decades before unification ended the Church's days as a temporal power. When the time came and the Pope was limited to ruling Vatican City, Pius declared himself and his successors infallible in matters of religion.
In July of 1943, the Fascist Grand Council stripped Mussolini of his power and appointed King Emanuele as commander-in-chief. The king promptly removed Mussolini from office and arrested him a week later. In September, Hitler's soldiers, knowing full well that the Italian assurances about continuing the war were not believable, occupied the Eternal City, once again home to a million-and-a-half people. The German occupation was an immediate threat to the the thousands of Allied pilots in hiding and the city's Jews. The first roundup was in October and 1,000 of Rome's 12,000 Jews were on their way to Auschwitz. As winter approached, food became scarce and a curfew kept Romans in, even on Christmas Eve. To the west, a battle was raging after the Allies landed at Anzio. When the Germans staged equipment in the city, the Allies bombed it, creating a huge antipathy to them. In March, the Germans massacred 335 men and boys in retaliation for a partisan attack on a small SS unit. The Allied breakthrough seemed to take forever, but finally materialized in May. The Americans were soon pouring into Rome. Once again, Rome had survived.
This is a unique and interesting way to tell the story of a city. I suspect anyone who ever took a Latin course, or took an Ancient Roman course or Medieval Europe course, or anyone who has ever visited Rome, would enjoy this book.
Conan Doyle For The Defense, Fox - B
This is an interesting little piece based on a real life murder mystery that caught Doyle's eye. In 1908, a wealthy woman in Glasgow was brutally murdered and the police took the easy way out. They arrested, and eventually convicted, an unemployed immigrant, Oscar Slater, of the murder. Their primary proof was that he pawned a diamond brooch and that the victims' diamond brooch was missing. The fact that the descriptions of the two pieces of jewelry were completely different didn't enter into the equation. Two eye witnesses were pressured into identifying Slater. Of the fifteen members of the jury, nine voted to convict him. As a foreigner, Jew, gambler and low class habituate of brothels, he was the perfect scapegoat. His hanging sentence was commuted to life and he spent over twenty-years in a brutal northern Scotland prison. Twice Doyle got involved. In 1912, he read every word of the investigation and trial and wrote an 80 page booklet eviscerating the logic of the conviction. Two years later, after a top Glaswegian detective pointed out the correctness of Doyle's booklet, the case was reopened but upheld after the police closed ranks. The prisoner got a secret request out to Doyle who tried again in 1925. He teamed up with a Scottish journalist for another book. He orchestrated a public relations campaign to free Slater. The two witnesses were found and both retracted their stories. The Secretary for Scotland ordered his release. Justice was served. The interesting aspect of this book is the background on the education and life of Doyle, who was knighted and quite active in British public life.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Bassani - C
This very famous novel was written in the late 50's and is a tale of growing up Jewish in northern Italy in the 20's and 30's. The narrator, son of a doctor and Fascist party member, is enthralled by the brother and sister, Alberto and Micol, of the aristocratic Finzi-Contini family. They occupy the highest pew in synagogue, and later restore a 300 year-old Spanish synagogue for their personal use. Life becomes complicated in 1938 with the enforcement of racial laws inspired by those in Germany. That fall, the tennis club 'resigns' all the Jews and the town's young people begin to congregate at the court at the Finzi-Continis home. Tennis is played late into every evening. When winter comes, the narrator and Micol stay in touch and soon he is dreaming of her in his sleep. While she is away at school in Venice, he spends most of the winter exploring her father's extensive library of Italian literature. When she comes home for Passover, he declares his love, only to be rebuffed. She tells him they have known each other since they were children and it simply wasn't appropriate. That season's tennis gatherings are eliminated by the Fascists. Only he, Alberto, Micol and their communist friend, Giampi play on. As war approaches, the narrator fears Giampi and Micol are a couple, but is never really certain. War takes Giampi to the eastern front and the Finzi-Continis to the camps. After the war, he writes this tale after seeing their family's tomb in Ferrara.
Wretched, Ide - B
This is the third book in the Isaiah Quintabe series and a pretty good addition. The author goes out of his south central LA comfort zone and brings in some evildoers who teamed up at Abu Ghraib and whose past is haunting them. IQ's possible girlfriend seeks his help to find her mom, who just happens to be blackmailing the bad guys. The book made the NYT's top 100 books of the year, as well as Marilyn Stasio's recommended list.
12.10.2018
When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, Rosbottom - B
"Parisians retain a magical belief that the City of Light is impervious to destruction." And fortunately, not a shell fell on it before the Germans arrived in 1940. The wounds Paris would suffer would be subtle, but traumatic. Before Paris was occupied, the city was shocked by the defeat of the Army, the civilian exodus from north to south and the end of the Third Republic. The city was declared 'Open' on June 12 and the Germans marched in two days later. The early occupation had a light touch, as there was no destruction, shortages or panic. The Germans came fully prepared and ready to occupy the city. "They know where everything is" was a common refrain among the locals. Behind the occupation was a respect for a great city and a desire to show the world that they could be benign victors. This correlated well with the French embarrassment about their own collapse. The Fuhrer made a brief stop in the city, a place he long studied and admired for its beauty and architecture, and simultaneously despised for harboring communists, Jews, homosexuals and mixed-race degenerates. The city became a tourist destination for the soldiers of the Reich. As time went on though, German visitors and the 20,000 occupiers soon described a 'Stadt ohne blick' ( the city without a glance) to describe the Parisians' ability to stare right through them.
France has been unable after 75 years to sort out the true role of the Resistance during the war. The myth of its effectiveness helped absorb the pain of defeat and arguably provided France with a seat at the victors' table. The existence of the myth deferred for generations the acknowledgement of France's complicity in the Holocaust. Does the Resistance require actively resisting or merely maintaining a state of non-acceptance? Over the four years, throughout France, approximately 100,000 died fighting the Germans, although that did not have a material effect on the occupation. Yet, Ike acknowledged that in the weeks before and after Overlord, the Resistance was very helpful and hastened the success of the invaders. In Paris, resistance initially took the form of underground publications and occasional acts of violence against German officers. It was followed by a youth-driven, four-year graffiti campaign featuring V for victory with de Gaulle's Cross of Lorraine in it. After Barbarossa, French communists took to aggressive resistance and throughout the era, women and Jews were proportionately over represented as active resisters.
The Jews of Paris knew they were headed for trouble when the Germans arrived. Within weeks, the government voided all naturalizations since 1927, thus depriving thousands of their citizenship. Austrian and German Jews were immediately arrested. Individuals and businesses were required to register, and the laws prohibiting Jews from most of civil society soon followed. Galleries, luxury apartments and houses soon were confiscated. Beginning in May, 1942, yellow stars were required. The great shame of the war came on July 16,1942 when Paris' police led the roundup of 13,000 Jews, taking them to the infamous Velodrome, where they waited in deplorable conditions until deported to Drancy and then on to Auschwitz and other camps. Approximately 4500 French policemen participated in the aktion. There were 150,000 Jews in Paris, half of them were French, and the rest were refugees from around Europe. Forty thousand survived. It would be fifty years before president Jacques Chirac acknowledged the state's and society's complicity.
In 1942, Germany demanded workers for the war effort and in the next two years, 600,000 men and women went east to work. The following year saw the Resistance come under a united de Gaulle command and a serious increase in activity took place. It became apparent the Germans were losing, and the French were receiving less and less food.
Once the Allies landed in Normandy, Paris became a military conundrum for both sides. The Allies did not think it was worth taking and the Germans were reluctant to commit the manpower to hold it and the resources to feed it. De Gaulle wanted it freed by French soldiers and FDR and Churchill wanted it occupied by the Allies with de Gaulle nowhere in sight. The Germans left August 25th and the CO never really considered reducing the city to rubble, as Hitler had ordered. A French division had spun off from the main Allied advance and arrived in Paris at midnight on the 24th to the peals of the bells of Notre Dame. The next two weeks saw a convulsion of violence and retribution against Germans, collaborators and scapegoats. Summary executions became commonplace. "The events that immediately followed the departure of the Germans would mark the city and its residents indelibly as had the black years of the occupation itself." France suffered through the destruction of a significant portion of the country and a massive demographic loss in WWI. In 1940, the armies were routed and the most famous city in the world was occupied. The thirty years that framed these debacles have been almost impossible for the nation to digest or interpret. Needless to say, these years and the Occupation itself are still matters of considerable thought and anguish for a proud nation, and likely one they will struggle with for a long time.
I've enjoyed this excellent, well-written book. I prefer narratives that set out facts and seldom stray from that discourse. This is more of a free-wheeling conversation about freedom, the impact of occupation on both sides, the psychology of the the four years of occupation. My recently acquired familiarity with the city has significantly enhanced the fun of reading this book.
France has been unable after 75 years to sort out the true role of the Resistance during the war. The myth of its effectiveness helped absorb the pain of defeat and arguably provided France with a seat at the victors' table. The existence of the myth deferred for generations the acknowledgement of France's complicity in the Holocaust. Does the Resistance require actively resisting or merely maintaining a state of non-acceptance? Over the four years, throughout France, approximately 100,000 died fighting the Germans, although that did not have a material effect on the occupation. Yet, Ike acknowledged that in the weeks before and after Overlord, the Resistance was very helpful and hastened the success of the invaders. In Paris, resistance initially took the form of underground publications and occasional acts of violence against German officers. It was followed by a youth-driven, four-year graffiti campaign featuring V for victory with de Gaulle's Cross of Lorraine in it. After Barbarossa, French communists took to aggressive resistance and throughout the era, women and Jews were proportionately over represented as active resisters.
The Jews of Paris knew they were headed for trouble when the Germans arrived. Within weeks, the government voided all naturalizations since 1927, thus depriving thousands of their citizenship. Austrian and German Jews were immediately arrested. Individuals and businesses were required to register, and the laws prohibiting Jews from most of civil society soon followed. Galleries, luxury apartments and houses soon were confiscated. Beginning in May, 1942, yellow stars were required. The great shame of the war came on July 16,1942 when Paris' police led the roundup of 13,000 Jews, taking them to the infamous Velodrome, where they waited in deplorable conditions until deported to Drancy and then on to Auschwitz and other camps. Approximately 4500 French policemen participated in the aktion. There were 150,000 Jews in Paris, half of them were French, and the rest were refugees from around Europe. Forty thousand survived. It would be fifty years before president Jacques Chirac acknowledged the state's and society's complicity.
In 1942, Germany demanded workers for the war effort and in the next two years, 600,000 men and women went east to work. The following year saw the Resistance come under a united de Gaulle command and a serious increase in activity took place. It became apparent the Germans were losing, and the French were receiving less and less food.
Once the Allies landed in Normandy, Paris became a military conundrum for both sides. The Allies did not think it was worth taking and the Germans were reluctant to commit the manpower to hold it and the resources to feed it. De Gaulle wanted it freed by French soldiers and FDR and Churchill wanted it occupied by the Allies with de Gaulle nowhere in sight. The Germans left August 25th and the CO never really considered reducing the city to rubble, as Hitler had ordered. A French division had spun off from the main Allied advance and arrived in Paris at midnight on the 24th to the peals of the bells of Notre Dame. The next two weeks saw a convulsion of violence and retribution against Germans, collaborators and scapegoats. Summary executions became commonplace. "The events that immediately followed the departure of the Germans would mark the city and its residents indelibly as had the black years of the occupation itself." France suffered through the destruction of a significant portion of the country and a massive demographic loss in WWI. In 1940, the armies were routed and the most famous city in the world was occupied. The thirty years that framed these debacles have been almost impossible for the nation to digest or interpret. Needless to say, these years and the Occupation itself are still matters of considerable thought and anguish for a proud nation, and likely one they will struggle with for a long time.
I've enjoyed this excellent, well-written book. I prefer narratives that set out facts and seldom stray from that discourse. This is more of a free-wheeling conversation about freedom, the impact of occupation on both sides, the psychology of the the four years of occupation. My recently acquired familiarity with the city has significantly enhanced the fun of reading this book.
Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World, McLean - B
This brief book is about fracking and the transformation of America from a country that imported two-thirds of its oil in 2006 to a country that exported oil in 2015 and became the leading producer of natural gas in the world. Indeed, it is possible the US could become a "net exporter" by 2022. "Texas's Permian Basin, now ranks second to Saudi Arabia's legendary Ghawar oil field in production per day."
After the oil shortages of the 1970's, Congress encouraged the search for natural gas and oil from unconventional sources. This led to an aggressive company, Chesapeake Energy, pursuing horizontal drilling and fracturing technologies in older fields in east Texas. Other companies were soon pursuing opportunities in the Bakken Field in North Dakota, as well as the Permian in west Texas. The fracking firms tended to be run by either wildcatters or people with a wildcatting style, and analysis showed they were spending more than they took in. They were exploring and living on the cheap money available after the 2008 recession. In late 2014, Saudi Arabia and OPEC took a shot across the bow of the frackers by allowing the price of oil to drop and by early 2016, it was $26 per barrel. It was estimated that the cost of an extracted barrel for the frackers was twice that. The shale boom appeared to be over. But it wasn't. An endless supply of cheap capital and truly creative approach to the drilling took the breakeven down to a point where shale would be competitive.
At the end of the day, it is west Texas, the Permian Basin below Midland and the surrounding area, the home of boom and bust for a century, that is the major contributor to our geo-strategic turnaround. It was producing 1 million bd in 2010 and is expected to reach 4 million bd soon. Russia and Saudi Arabia average a bit over 10 million bd. We could be at 17 in five years. However, in an industry known for booms and busts and endless course corrections, nothing is assured. Fracked wells drop down in production much quicker than traditional ones. The flow of capital is not guaranteed either because many of these companies are not cash-flow positive. Other uncertainties are that, as a nation, we have no energy policy other than bringing back coal. Beggaring Russia and Saudi Arabia could backfire, and pushing China into world leadership in renewables raises another set of issues. Even if we achieve independence, we will still be part of a world market and will likely continue to spend $50B per year to defend the Gulf because Europe and Japan are allies and we'd prefer that neither China nor Russia take over. In the end, the success shale business will depend on its profitability.
After the oil shortages of the 1970's, Congress encouraged the search for natural gas and oil from unconventional sources. This led to an aggressive company, Chesapeake Energy, pursuing horizontal drilling and fracturing technologies in older fields in east Texas. Other companies were soon pursuing opportunities in the Bakken Field in North Dakota, as well as the Permian in west Texas. The fracking firms tended to be run by either wildcatters or people with a wildcatting style, and analysis showed they were spending more than they took in. They were exploring and living on the cheap money available after the 2008 recession. In late 2014, Saudi Arabia and OPEC took a shot across the bow of the frackers by allowing the price of oil to drop and by early 2016, it was $26 per barrel. It was estimated that the cost of an extracted barrel for the frackers was twice that. The shale boom appeared to be over. But it wasn't. An endless supply of cheap capital and truly creative approach to the drilling took the breakeven down to a point where shale would be competitive.
At the end of the day, it is west Texas, the Permian Basin below Midland and the surrounding area, the home of boom and bust for a century, that is the major contributor to our geo-strategic turnaround. It was producing 1 million bd in 2010 and is expected to reach 4 million bd soon. Russia and Saudi Arabia average a bit over 10 million bd. We could be at 17 in five years. However, in an industry known for booms and busts and endless course corrections, nothing is assured. Fracked wells drop down in production much quicker than traditional ones. The flow of capital is not guaranteed either because many of these companies are not cash-flow positive. Other uncertainties are that, as a nation, we have no energy policy other than bringing back coal. Beggaring Russia and Saudi Arabia could backfire, and pushing China into world leadership in renewables raises another set of issues. Even if we achieve independence, we will still be part of a world market and will likely continue to spend $50B per year to defend the Gulf because Europe and Japan are allies and we'd prefer that neither China nor Russia take over. In the end, the success shale business will depend on its profitability.
The Fire Witness, Kepler - B +
This is the third book by Kepler about fictional Swedish detective Joona Linna that I've read in six months. The suspension from active service is still on and Joona totally ignores the investigating services as he pursues the truth with absolute Javert-like conviction. His boss asks him to consult on a case hundreds of miles from Stockholm. There are two murders at a group home and Joona is convinced the conclusions of the local cops are wrong. Off we go on another page turner. My only complaint with theses books is that they could be 400 pps. instead of 500 .
The City of Crows, Womersley - C
This well-reviewed historical novel is set in Paris in the late 1670's and somehow manages to be both occasionally delightful, as well as way too weird. The author has a flair for describing a far-off place and time with insight and perceptive detail. However, the lead characters, a magician just released from the galleys, and a peasant woman convinced she is a sorceress, are just not the right vehicles to tell a tale of that time. Some of the characters in the book were real life denizens of the Parisian underworld of abortionists, magicians, conjurers and charlatans.
11.26.2018
Crashed: How A Decade Of Financial Crises Remade The World, Tooze - A*
Adam Tooze is an acclaimed economic historian and professor at Columbia University. This tome has been labeled the authoritative work on the Great Recession. He refers to it as 'The First Crisis of the Global Age'. It was a global catastrophe, but with significant American causation. The contention of the book is that the responses to the crisis are central to understanding how the liberal democracy consensus has deteriorated. To do that, we must explore the economics of what happened. We will see an interconnectedness that makes the concept of the nation state seem an anachronism, but it was the central bank of one country that literally saved the world from financial collapse. Yet, it was the same central bank's almost zero interest rate after the dot.com bubble and 9/11 that created the vast liquidity that fostered the crisis. In contrast to the successful US response to the Great Recession, the EU totally mismanaged its subsequent debt crisis. The world's problems appeared to be resolved by 2012, but then reemerged as globalization strengthened issues of inequality and opportunity into "a comprehensive political and geopolitical crisis."
Early in the second Bush term, a Brookings Institute colloquium articulated concern about the rising US fiscal deficit being absorbed by foreign investors, particularly, China. It was a particular concern when combined with the trade deficit. However, it would not be this imbalance that led to a global crisis, but an old-fashioned bout of Wall Street excess. The story of the real estate bubble is quite familiar. Expanding home ownership was encouraged and easy credit was available. Loans of limited quality were packaged, securitized, and sold, while everyone's house values went up and up. "The subprime mortgage boom of the 2000s led to a financial crisis because hundreds of billions of private label MBS' were stockpiled on the balance sheets of the mortgage originators and securitizers themselves." By 2007, a handful of private investors and institutions were shorting the real estate boom. As America's financial system fell apart in the fall of 2008, Europeans confidently asserted that it was the failure of the laissez-faire philosophy of regulation and assured themselves that they were immune. They did not realize how much capital the subprime boom had sucked into the US or that although they did not speak English, their investment banks did. London was as complicit as Wall Street and all of the continent's banks were players. Additionally, the EU had a built in problem because of the incomplete nature of the currency union. They had allowed Greece join and, then watched its tax revenue to collapse to the point where it could not service its national debt. The early 2000s saw egregious real estate booms in Europe, especially in Spain and Ireland. Lurking on the periphery were all of the new members of the union. Former satellites of the USSR, as well as former republics, were now part of an expanded Europe. They hadn't participated in any of the aggressive financial activities of the decade. But they were funded by all of the excess liquidity in the system. The crisis may have originated in the Anglo-Saxon economies, but the pain and consequences were spread far and wide.
The liquidity crunch began in 2007 in Europe when banks started failing because they could not roll over their short term fundings. The following year, Bear Stearns was absorbed by JPMorgan when they faced a crunch. Lehman filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15 when it could not meet creditors' collateral calls. A day after Lehman, AIG was hours away from failing, and the Reserve Fund notified the Fed it was about to 'break the buck'. Every investment bank in the world was on the cusp. It was more than Wall Street and the City that were in pain. The collapse of available credit stalled economies everywhere and shattered the personal fortunes of many around the world. In the US, nine million families lost their homes, over 20 trillion dollars of wealth disappeared and the largest mass migration since the Depression took place. Worldwide job losses have been estimated at 35 million. Ben Bernanke has said that September and October of 2008 were worse than anything in the Great Depression. The world of 1929 had not been as coordinated as it is now. "The speed and force of the avalanche was unprecedented." The decisions that were made that staunched the bleeding were made by the Fed chair, Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner. "Bailout battles were fought in the US, Iceland, Ireland, Britain, France, Germany, the Benelux, and Switzerland." The US solved its problem quickly, but the political cost separated the Republican managerial elite from the party's right wing base. After bailing out FreddieMac and FannieMae over Republican opposition, Paulson and Bernanke were not willing to ask Congress again for a new authorization for Lehman. It was immediately apparent that they underestimated the Lehman failure. The next day, facing what was labeled "an extinction level event", they offered Fed credit to AIG. Realizing that they were still looking at extinction, Paulson and Bernanke asked Congress for a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. It failed in the House. TARP passed the second time it came before Congress. Paulson and Bernanke insisted the nine largest banks take a capital infusion of $125B. A month later, Citi required another $20B, as did BofA, who was strong-armed into completing its acquisition of Merrill. The incoming Obama team was prepared to be fully supportive of government intervention to solve the problems of the financial markets.
The crisis in Europe reflected the interconnectedness of their markets with the US, but their political system did not grasp this, and was not capable of solving the problem. Both Sarkozy and Merkel repeatedly criticized the Anglo-Saxons and stood in the way of coordinated European action. The US Fed, without consulting Congress, became the lender of last resort in Europe. It worked "hand in glove with the European mega banks to unwind the transatlantic balance sheet." The Fed lent dollars to the ECB, the Bank of England, the National Bank of Switzerland and the Scandinavian national banks, who in turn funneled it to their banks. Additionally, the Fed lent to fourteen banks in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia. It was also necessary for the IMF to step up in the former Soviet states. Two countries that did not receive help from the Fed were Russia and China. Russia suffered from a collapse in oil prices and the ubiquitous liquidity challenge. The state intervened, but Putin exacted a price from the oligarchs. He demanded they contribute and clawed back some of their excesses for the state. China had not participated in any of the financial hi jinks but suffered significant consequences as the largest holder of US debt and the US' largest trading partner. The state responded with a spending program that was the largest stimulus package in world history. Indeed the Russian, Chinese and emerging market actions made the derisory actions in Europe look laughable, as the only western stimulus that was worth the name was in the US. The Obama stimulus and the Fed's initiation of Qualitative Easing were, on top of the TARP, all that the American political system could tolerate. Unfortunately for the future, there was no program or solution for the millions with underwater mortgages. The Obama administration turned to the banks and successfully put "the American banking system on a forced road to recovery." After years of crisis, the American banks, with aggressive government support, were alive, well and sufficiently capitalized. That was not true of Europe.
After the largess of 2008, stepping back to prudent fiscal and monetary policies became the theme on both sides of the Atlantic. But in Europe, Ireland had guaranteed its banks' liabilities, and in Greece, the decline in tourism meant that the national debt could not be serviced. A return to normalcy was not in the cards. French and German banks were the largest holders of EU sovereign debt and each country's leaders had diametrically opposed philosophies about how to handle a debt crisis. The Germans wanted haircuts on the debt of troubled nations. The French wanted to refinance them. The US weighed in, and the outcome was an EU/IMF/ECB (the troika) program labelled here as 'extend and pretend'. But it failed to satisfy the markets and by May 2010 the world appeared ready to spin out of control again. Greece was being analogized to Lehman. The troika came back with more money and stabilized the markets, but at the price of more Greek austerity. Fear of debt contagion spread strict budgeting around the world. The entire G-20 committed to halving their respective budget deficits in three years. When Ireland teetered, they too slashed expenditures further. By 2011, it was evident that the extend and pretend of the previous year had failed. The US insisted on more refinancing and the troika accommodated. Europe argued, modified, made deals, ousted irresponsible leaders and still it was necessary, in early 2012, to go to the G-20 and ask for $300-400B of IMF funding. The US, China and Brazil refused. Europe had still not addressed the instabilities in their sovereign bond markets or their banks' need to recapitalize. That spring, Greece's debt was reduced by a fifth and the debt that remained was now held by the European Financial Stability Fund, the ECB and the IMF. In May, voters fed up with austerity turned out the governments in Greece, Spain and France and pushed hard to the left even in Germany. However, the crisis in Europe ended when Mario Draghi, ECB president assured the world that the ECB "was ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro." Markets calmed and yields dropped. The eurozone collapsing was no longer on everyone's lips. "The eurozone was saved by its belated Americanization." Obama's reelection and Bernanke's QE3 on top of Draghi's speech righted the world. All appeared resolved.
The year 2013 saw income inequality come to the fore as an issue in America. Over the previous forty years, productivity increased bu 80% but wages by about half as much. The wealth created was flowing to those at the top, and that was even more true during the very slow recovery since 2008. It was not just globalization and technological change that led to inequality. To some extent, the deck was stacked; the government worked for the elite. This concept had been accelerated in America's consciousness by the fallout from 2008, and would become the issue of the next presidential election cycle. The Tea Party and its Congressional hard-liners opposed anything the government, and in particular Obama, tried to accomplish on this or any front. Meanwhile in Europe, Russia appeared to be in a death spiral after its 2014 invasion of the Crimea led to severe sanctions and the price of oil collapsed, only to be saved the following year by a helping hand from China. In Greece, the economy deteriorated further when 400,000 of its best educated and most capable emigrated because of round after round of German imposed austerity. A leftist government was prepared to leave the EU if more austerity was all it could offer. The IMF acknowledged publicly that extend and pretend was hopeless. Yet, again, the 2015 Greek compromise was more of the same. The next crisis for Europe would not be financial, but political. Right wing governments were elected in the UK and Poland, right wing extremist politicians were gaining strength.
"Nationalism and xenophobia were the common denominators from the challengers from the Right." In June 2016, the UK narrowly voted for Brexit. In the US, the Republican candidate "promised to fight for the neglected, ignored and abandoned..the forgotten man and woman.. Americanism not globalism will be our credo." When elected, he announced he was withdrawing from NAFTA, and denounced the EU and NATO.
Since 2007, the scale of the financial crisis has placed democratic politics and capitalist governance under a great strain. Party alliances around the world are being reconfigured. In some countries, the moderates have been eliminated. Brexit has hamstrung the Tories. The GOP can win elections but "is incapable of legislating or cooperating effectively in government." The author closes with a comparison between 2008 and 1914. "How does a great moderation end? How do huge risks build up that are little understood and barely controllable? How do the tectonic shifts in the global order unload in sudden earthquakes? Who is to blame for the ensuing human induced man made disaster? Is the uneven and combined development of global capitalism the driver of all instability? How do the passions of popular politics shape elite decision making? Can we achieve perpetual stability and peace? These are the questions we have asked about 1914 for the last hundred years. It is not by accident that their analogues are also the questions we ask about 2008 and its aftermath. They are the questions that haunt the great crisis of modernity."
I submit my observations here quite humbly. There is a great deal about the dismal science I do not comprehend. There were entire chapters in this book where I did not make a single note. It wasn't just the trilateral repos or the single tranche open market operations that befuddled, but the big picture as well. I remain unclear about Greece. Why they were allowed in the EU and why they were allowed to stay? Apparently the political imperative of continental unification is the reason. But, how and why the leaders of Europe would spend so much time, money and political capital to extend and pretend is beyond me. Angela Merkel comes off as a real heavy in this book and the austerity imposed on the Greeks by the Germans is hard to fathom.
Nonetheless Tooze is probably the best expositor of economic history I've ever come across. He brilliantly ties the overlapping issues around the world together and I for one feel much better informed about what transpired. I remember thinking in 2008 that this was a 10-20 year problem and I believe we are still in the middle of the problems created by the Great Recession. I don't disagree with the author's contention that the response on the right is correlated to all of the problems created by the cross-Atlantic elites, but I do not think he connects the dots well enough in the last fifth of the book. I believe he drifts from superb economic history into somewhat banal assessments of the political results. That said - this is a must read!
Early in the second Bush term, a Brookings Institute colloquium articulated concern about the rising US fiscal deficit being absorbed by foreign investors, particularly, China. It was a particular concern when combined with the trade deficit. However, it would not be this imbalance that led to a global crisis, but an old-fashioned bout of Wall Street excess. The story of the real estate bubble is quite familiar. Expanding home ownership was encouraged and easy credit was available. Loans of limited quality were packaged, securitized, and sold, while everyone's house values went up and up. "The subprime mortgage boom of the 2000s led to a financial crisis because hundreds of billions of private label MBS' were stockpiled on the balance sheets of the mortgage originators and securitizers themselves." By 2007, a handful of private investors and institutions were shorting the real estate boom. As America's financial system fell apart in the fall of 2008, Europeans confidently asserted that it was the failure of the laissez-faire philosophy of regulation and assured themselves that they were immune. They did not realize how much capital the subprime boom had sucked into the US or that although they did not speak English, their investment banks did. London was as complicit as Wall Street and all of the continent's banks were players. Additionally, the EU had a built in problem because of the incomplete nature of the currency union. They had allowed Greece join and, then watched its tax revenue to collapse to the point where it could not service its national debt. The early 2000s saw egregious real estate booms in Europe, especially in Spain and Ireland. Lurking on the periphery were all of the new members of the union. Former satellites of the USSR, as well as former republics, were now part of an expanded Europe. They hadn't participated in any of the aggressive financial activities of the decade. But they were funded by all of the excess liquidity in the system. The crisis may have originated in the Anglo-Saxon economies, but the pain and consequences were spread far and wide.
The liquidity crunch began in 2007 in Europe when banks started failing because they could not roll over their short term fundings. The following year, Bear Stearns was absorbed by JPMorgan when they faced a crunch. Lehman filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15 when it could not meet creditors' collateral calls. A day after Lehman, AIG was hours away from failing, and the Reserve Fund notified the Fed it was about to 'break the buck'. Every investment bank in the world was on the cusp. It was more than Wall Street and the City that were in pain. The collapse of available credit stalled economies everywhere and shattered the personal fortunes of many around the world. In the US, nine million families lost their homes, over 20 trillion dollars of wealth disappeared and the largest mass migration since the Depression took place. Worldwide job losses have been estimated at 35 million. Ben Bernanke has said that September and October of 2008 were worse than anything in the Great Depression. The world of 1929 had not been as coordinated as it is now. "The speed and force of the avalanche was unprecedented." The decisions that were made that staunched the bleeding were made by the Fed chair, Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner. "Bailout battles were fought in the US, Iceland, Ireland, Britain, France, Germany, the Benelux, and Switzerland." The US solved its problem quickly, but the political cost separated the Republican managerial elite from the party's right wing base. After bailing out FreddieMac and FannieMae over Republican opposition, Paulson and Bernanke were not willing to ask Congress again for a new authorization for Lehman. It was immediately apparent that they underestimated the Lehman failure. The next day, facing what was labeled "an extinction level event", they offered Fed credit to AIG. Realizing that they were still looking at extinction, Paulson and Bernanke asked Congress for a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. It failed in the House. TARP passed the second time it came before Congress. Paulson and Bernanke insisted the nine largest banks take a capital infusion of $125B. A month later, Citi required another $20B, as did BofA, who was strong-armed into completing its acquisition of Merrill. The incoming Obama team was prepared to be fully supportive of government intervention to solve the problems of the financial markets.
The crisis in Europe reflected the interconnectedness of their markets with the US, but their political system did not grasp this, and was not capable of solving the problem. Both Sarkozy and Merkel repeatedly criticized the Anglo-Saxons and stood in the way of coordinated European action. The US Fed, without consulting Congress, became the lender of last resort in Europe. It worked "hand in glove with the European mega banks to unwind the transatlantic balance sheet." The Fed lent dollars to the ECB, the Bank of England, the National Bank of Switzerland and the Scandinavian national banks, who in turn funneled it to their banks. Additionally, the Fed lent to fourteen banks in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia. It was also necessary for the IMF to step up in the former Soviet states. Two countries that did not receive help from the Fed were Russia and China. Russia suffered from a collapse in oil prices and the ubiquitous liquidity challenge. The state intervened, but Putin exacted a price from the oligarchs. He demanded they contribute and clawed back some of their excesses for the state. China had not participated in any of the financial hi jinks but suffered significant consequences as the largest holder of US debt and the US' largest trading partner. The state responded with a spending program that was the largest stimulus package in world history. Indeed the Russian, Chinese and emerging market actions made the derisory actions in Europe look laughable, as the only western stimulus that was worth the name was in the US. The Obama stimulus and the Fed's initiation of Qualitative Easing were, on top of the TARP, all that the American political system could tolerate. Unfortunately for the future, there was no program or solution for the millions with underwater mortgages. The Obama administration turned to the banks and successfully put "the American banking system on a forced road to recovery." After years of crisis, the American banks, with aggressive government support, were alive, well and sufficiently capitalized. That was not true of Europe.
After the largess of 2008, stepping back to prudent fiscal and monetary policies became the theme on both sides of the Atlantic. But in Europe, Ireland had guaranteed its banks' liabilities, and in Greece, the decline in tourism meant that the national debt could not be serviced. A return to normalcy was not in the cards. French and German banks were the largest holders of EU sovereign debt and each country's leaders had diametrically opposed philosophies about how to handle a debt crisis. The Germans wanted haircuts on the debt of troubled nations. The French wanted to refinance them. The US weighed in, and the outcome was an EU/IMF/ECB (the troika) program labelled here as 'extend and pretend'. But it failed to satisfy the markets and by May 2010 the world appeared ready to spin out of control again. Greece was being analogized to Lehman. The troika came back with more money and stabilized the markets, but at the price of more Greek austerity. Fear of debt contagion spread strict budgeting around the world. The entire G-20 committed to halving their respective budget deficits in three years. When Ireland teetered, they too slashed expenditures further. By 2011, it was evident that the extend and pretend of the previous year had failed. The US insisted on more refinancing and the troika accommodated. Europe argued, modified, made deals, ousted irresponsible leaders and still it was necessary, in early 2012, to go to the G-20 and ask for $300-400B of IMF funding. The US, China and Brazil refused. Europe had still not addressed the instabilities in their sovereign bond markets or their banks' need to recapitalize. That spring, Greece's debt was reduced by a fifth and the debt that remained was now held by the European Financial Stability Fund, the ECB and the IMF. In May, voters fed up with austerity turned out the governments in Greece, Spain and France and pushed hard to the left even in Germany. However, the crisis in Europe ended when Mario Draghi, ECB president assured the world that the ECB "was ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro." Markets calmed and yields dropped. The eurozone collapsing was no longer on everyone's lips. "The eurozone was saved by its belated Americanization." Obama's reelection and Bernanke's QE3 on top of Draghi's speech righted the world. All appeared resolved.
The year 2013 saw income inequality come to the fore as an issue in America. Over the previous forty years, productivity increased bu 80% but wages by about half as much. The wealth created was flowing to those at the top, and that was even more true during the very slow recovery since 2008. It was not just globalization and technological change that led to inequality. To some extent, the deck was stacked; the government worked for the elite. This concept had been accelerated in America's consciousness by the fallout from 2008, and would become the issue of the next presidential election cycle. The Tea Party and its Congressional hard-liners opposed anything the government, and in particular Obama, tried to accomplish on this or any front. Meanwhile in Europe, Russia appeared to be in a death spiral after its 2014 invasion of the Crimea led to severe sanctions and the price of oil collapsed, only to be saved the following year by a helping hand from China. In Greece, the economy deteriorated further when 400,000 of its best educated and most capable emigrated because of round after round of German imposed austerity. A leftist government was prepared to leave the EU if more austerity was all it could offer. The IMF acknowledged publicly that extend and pretend was hopeless. Yet, again, the 2015 Greek compromise was more of the same. The next crisis for Europe would not be financial, but political. Right wing governments were elected in the UK and Poland, right wing extremist politicians were gaining strength.
"Nationalism and xenophobia were the common denominators from the challengers from the Right." In June 2016, the UK narrowly voted for Brexit. In the US, the Republican candidate "promised to fight for the neglected, ignored and abandoned..the forgotten man and woman.. Americanism not globalism will be our credo." When elected, he announced he was withdrawing from NAFTA, and denounced the EU and NATO.
Since 2007, the scale of the financial crisis has placed democratic politics and capitalist governance under a great strain. Party alliances around the world are being reconfigured. In some countries, the moderates have been eliminated. Brexit has hamstrung the Tories. The GOP can win elections but "is incapable of legislating or cooperating effectively in government." The author closes with a comparison between 2008 and 1914. "How does a great moderation end? How do huge risks build up that are little understood and barely controllable? How do the tectonic shifts in the global order unload in sudden earthquakes? Who is to blame for the ensuing human induced man made disaster? Is the uneven and combined development of global capitalism the driver of all instability? How do the passions of popular politics shape elite decision making? Can we achieve perpetual stability and peace? These are the questions we have asked about 1914 for the last hundred years. It is not by accident that their analogues are also the questions we ask about 2008 and its aftermath. They are the questions that haunt the great crisis of modernity."
I submit my observations here quite humbly. There is a great deal about the dismal science I do not comprehend. There were entire chapters in this book where I did not make a single note. It wasn't just the trilateral repos or the single tranche open market operations that befuddled, but the big picture as well. I remain unclear about Greece. Why they were allowed in the EU and why they were allowed to stay? Apparently the political imperative of continental unification is the reason. But, how and why the leaders of Europe would spend so much time, money and political capital to extend and pretend is beyond me. Angela Merkel comes off as a real heavy in this book and the austerity imposed on the Greeks by the Germans is hard to fathom.
Nonetheless Tooze is probably the best expositor of economic history I've ever come across. He brilliantly ties the overlapping issues around the world together and I for one feel much better informed about what transpired. I remember thinking in 2008 that this was a 10-20 year problem and I believe we are still in the middle of the problems created by the Great Recession. I don't disagree with the author's contention that the response on the right is correlated to all of the problems created by the cross-Atlantic elites, but I do not think he connects the dots well enough in the last fifth of the book. I believe he drifts from superb economic history into somewhat banal assessments of the political results. That said - this is a must read!
11.20.2018
The Shetland Bus, Howarth - B
This is an excellent book written soon after WWII by the naval officer who was the executive officer of the British operation that shuttled men and supplies into Norway. They were 185 miles from the nearest point on the Norwegian coast, approximately 24 hours away in fair weather. They only operated in the winter because of their need to sail when it was dark. There was a 50 mile limit off the coast where the Germans allowed fishing. Thus, the danger was aerial discovery somewhere between the 50 mile mark and the Shetlands. Almost all of the sailors were volunteer Norwegian fishermen. The structure of the Shetlands Navy led to endless challenges. The Norwegians were not amenable to any kind of military discipline and the officers in charge were not allowed to sail with them. The powers that be couldn't understand the necessity for a light touch, and round and round it went for years. They sailed 50-70 foot boats with crews of three or four in some of the roughest waters in the world. The depiction of sailing in winter hurricanes with 100 mph winds is harrowing and downright scary. I suspect being a northern fisherman requires more courage than I can fathom, and doubly so in wartime. Their success led to increased German patrolling, which when combined with restrictions on diesel fuel almost shut down fishing in Norway. Without the cover of being amongst thousands in the fishing fleet, the operation slowed considerably. They finished the war on an upswing when the US gave them three sub-chasers, affording them the opportunity to continue their mission. The author concludes that they helped the Norwegian resistance and helped foster support for the government-in-exile.
11.10.2018
West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride Of The Pony Express, DeFelice - B
The Central Overland California & Pikes Peak Express Company was founded in 1860 by Russell, Majors & Waddell, a company on the threshold of becoming a western freighting and delivery empire. It was known as the Pony and it delivered mail and telegraph messages for a period of only 18 months. It never made a penny and was created for the publicity it would garner and would, hopefully, earn the owners the $1M contract to take mail by coach to California. It could move information from St. Joseph, MO to Sacramento in ten days. Each rider rode about seventy miles of the 1750-mile trail. He changed horses at way stations every 10 or 15 miles. The job paid $50 per month plus room and board. The help wanted ad allegedly said: "Wanted. Young , skinny, wiry fellas not over eighteen. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred." Although there were Indians and horse thieves about, the greatest danger the drivers faced was from the weather. Division One of the ride ended at Ft. Kearny. Then the route followed the N. Platte River across what is now western Nebraska and eastern Colorado up to Ft. Laramie. From there, the trail, which paralleled the Oregon Trail, went west through Wyoming and through the South Pass. Twenty-miles wide, the pass afforded a route through the Rockies neither exceedingly cold nor warm. Slightly south and a bit of a descent from the mountains was a city two miles wide. Salt Lake City was the only urban way station on the route west. Now the riders were in the desert. It stretched over 500 miles and rose over two thousand feet to Virginia City before the riders entered the Sierras, where a substantial way station was above Lake Tahoe. The Pony added a few days to its schedule in the winter, although it was a miracle they got through at all. The highest point on the trail in the Sierras was over 9,000 feet. The news reaching California of Lincoln's election took six days and sixteen hours from St. Joe. Meanwhile, in Washington, one of the firm's partners was accused of defrauding Congress, but escaped on a technicality. War was imminent, the mail contract was awarded, and the company got a piece of the action, but turned the running of the Pony over to Wells Fargo. On Oct. 24, 1861 the final telegraph link connecting east to west was completed and the Pony went out of business. There had been 308 runs and only one lost mailbag.
This is a fun, brief book that is a tour of the west, discussing people who were along the way. For example there are sections on the famous, like Bill Cody, Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, various discourses on states, rivers and quite a bit on the Mormons and plenty of people we've never heard of. The theme, though, is the ride in November, 1860 carrying west the news of Lincoln's election. Side trips into national politics are also here. I think this would be enjoyed by serious students of the west.
This is a fun, brief book that is a tour of the west, discussing people who were along the way. For example there are sections on the famous, like Bill Cody, Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, various discourses on states, rivers and quite a bit on the Mormons and plenty of people we've never heard of. The theme, though, is the ride in November, 1860 carrying west the news of Lincoln's election. Side trips into national politics are also here. I think this would be enjoyed by serious students of the west.
11.06.2018
Dark Sacred Night, Connelly - B +
Bosch acknowledges an age of 69 in this one, an age at which it's not easy being a detective, retired from LAPD and a part-timer for SFPD. So, Connelly comes up with a brilliant idea - this is the first Bosch and Ballard novel. We met Renee Ballard two years ago when Connelly introduced her. She's a tough-as-nails detective who has been banished to the 'late show', the midnight to 8 shift. They team up on a cold case Harry is working and she also helps Harry big time on a case he has in the Valley. They agree to work together in the future, she as the insider and he as sort of a silent partner on the outside. We thus have a platform to run with for quite a few more years.
Past Tense, Child - B +
This one got off to a very slow start, and I felt, that Reacher was a bit aggressive in his first instance or two of remonstrating with those who have strayed. He spends his time in and around a small town in NH where his dad grew up. Of course, there are all sorts of complex issues and bad guys that need his attention. He masterfully solves the problems and sticks out his thumb for San Diego.
The Reckoning, Grisham - B-
He can tell a story better than anyone else. Arguably, he is the best of our generation. Once again, he magically transports us to the countryside and court rooms of rural Mississippi. But he throws curves and spends a significant portion of the book in a flashback to WWII combat in the Philippines. And he finishes with his usual flurry - but this time it's simply not much fun. A John Grisham book is always a page turner and that is the case here.
11.01.2018
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, Macintyre- A*
This is the story of Oleg Gordievsky, KGB rezident in London, and British spy. Born in 1938, he was the second son of an agent in the KGB. The agency recruited him in 1961. During his first overseas posting, in Copenhagen, the doubts he had about the system blossomed. On his second posting in the same city, he was recruited and committed to MI-6. Oleg proceeded to provide Britain with massive amounts of quality intelligence material. One stumbling block in his career was the collapse of his marriage to a fellow KGB employee and his love affair with another. He divorced upon his return to Moscow and was assigned a dead-end job. After learning his fourth language, English, he was rehabilitated and assigned an overseas post. With his new wife and two infant daughters in tow, he went to London. The early 80's saw a Soviet reaction of fear and paranoia in response to Reagan's bluster, and Yuri Andropov became convinced that the US was planning a first strike. Oleg's input that the former head of the KGB was serious was the first instance of his intelligence being shared by the UK with the US. He was providing the British with gold, and in order to help him, they provided him with chickenfeed to turn back to Moscow. One of the few people on the American side who knew about Oleg was Aldrich Ames. In November 1983, the USSR viewed the NATO winter war games involving 40,000 troops as the first step in the impending nuclear war. Again, Gordievsky advised MI-6 that the Soviets were serious. Alarmed at the Soviets' anxiety, both the UK and US toned down their rhetoric and sought a thaw in relations. Oleg was promoted to rezident in London in 1985 just before Ames offered his services to Moscow. The man he replaced in London thought he was a mole and told Moscow so. Either Oleg's name or position was reported by Ames. Soon thereafter, he was recalled to Moscow. He was drugged, interrogated and told he was demoted and that the KGB knew he had betrayed the USSR. Instead of being taken to the Lubyanka basement, he was sent home and told to take a vacation. He concluded that he was a dead man, but the sentence was delayed because they wouldn't kill a KGB colonel without better proof. He signaled a request for extraction and a long planned operation was begun. It required and received final approval from Margaret Thatcher. On a Friday afternoon, Oleg left his apartment and made his way to an overnight train to Leningrad. There, he changed trains and headed to the Finland border. In Moscow, the head of station, a Viscount, later an Earl and head of MI-6, and his wife, began a long car ride to the same border. Their cover was that they were taking her to a doctor in Helsinki. After his second train, Oleg rode a bus the last two hours to the rendezvous point. Meanwhile the embassy car was bracketed front and rear by KGB agents on the road from Leningrad to Finland. The Brits outraced the Soviets, picked up their man, drove north through Finland to Norway, a NATO ally, and pulled off one of the great intelligence coups of the Cold War. In the west, Gordievsky's knowledge was so valuable that CIA Director Casey spent hours with him in order to prep Reagan for his first meeting with Gorbachev. Oleg met with every western intelligence agency and met Thatcher at Chequers and Reagan at the White House. Although his wife and daughters joined him after six years, the marriage was over and both parties moved on. Gordievsky lives quietly today on a nondescript suburban street, but under 24 hour protection. The order to execute him still stands. LeCarre could not outdo this true story with one of his novel. It's fabulous.
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