The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III, Baker and Glasser - B+

"Delegate hunter, campaign manager, White House chief of staff, treasury secretary, secretary of state, James Addison Baker III played a leading role in some of the most critical junctures in modern American history." He was principled, but practical, with a fervor for "getting things done. He was born into a world of wealth in Houston in 1930." Privilege was his birthright, but it came with formidable demands of duty and discipline." The law firm  Baker Botts was founded by his great-grandfather after the Civil War. His grandfather was one of the builders of the city, a virtual pillar of the establishment. His father was a WWI hero as well as a tough taskmaster. Growing up, Jimmy had little interest in school, but rather preferred hunting and tennis. He was an indifferent student at Princeton and upon graduation in 1952, joined the Marines. A year later, he married Mary Stuart of Dayton, Ohio and Finch College. He graduated at the top of his class at UT Law School in 1957. Back in Houston, while starting a family and pursuing his law career, he became a doubles partner at the Houston Country Club with a young oil man, George Bush. His world fell apart in 1970 when his 38 year-old wife, mother of their four sons, died of cancer. Tiring of the law, he took up George Bush's suggestion that he get involved in politics. He remarried in 1973 to a good friend, recently divorced and with three children of her own. With the help of then- Ambassador to China Bush, he was appointed Undersecretary of the Commerce Dept. in 1975. A year later, he moved over to Ford's re-election campaign. He was instrumental in garnering the nomination for the president and then was made campaign manager. After Carter's election, Jim Baker returned to Texas to practice law. He took his one shot at electoral politics and ran for and lost the 1978 race for Texas Attorney General. He managed his best friends presidential run in 1980 and pulled off an upset of the frontrunner, Ronald Reagan, in Iowa. Throughout the primaries though, Reagan slowly pulled away. He withdrew Bush from the race in late May and maneuvered him to the VP nomination. He managed Reagan in the two debates, is considered to have out-negotiated Carter's men and was rewarded with the WH Chief of Staff job. As he was non dogmatic and much more establishment than Reagan's people, the conservatives were none too happy. Baker set out to, and did, master the job. When Reagan was shot in March, Baker handled the crisis skillfully and calmly. He courted journalists and was very solicitous to members of Congress. He shepherded the 1981 Tax Act through to passage. As the recession continued to clobber America, Reagan's poll ratings fell and the Republicans lost seats in the House in 1982. The following spring, the commission Baker designed to stave off problems with Social Security delivered a compromise satisfactory to both sides. At this point, all he wanted was out of the hardest job in Washington and harder in this administration because of the President's lack of focus and the backbiting by the hard right. The roaring economy of 1984 led to a Reagan landslide in November. When Don Regan proposed they swap the Treasury and WH Staff jobs to Baker, he jumped at it. At Treasury, he had a presidential mandate to redo the Internal Revenue Code. He led the charge and reconciled the competing political interests in support of the change. The 1986 Tax Reform Act was a monumental success that had true bipartisan support and could not have been accomplished without the skills and commitment of Rep. Rostenkowski and Sen. Packwood. Simultaneously, Baker arranged the Plaza Accord to bring down the price of the dollar. He had always worried that the crazies would start trouble in Central America, and right after the mid-terms Iran-Contra surfaced. Baker was behind the appointment of Alan Greenspan to the Fed. He worked out the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement with the Canadian PM Brian Mulroney. Reagan turned a corner, and spent his final years negotiating with Secretary Gorbachev, and leaving office with some of his highest ratings. Jim Baker now turned his attention to his best friend, George Bush. The nomination was clinched in March. As he was reluctant to leave the Treasury, Baker put off joining the campaign until the summer, at which point Bush was trailing Dukakis by 17 points. Helped by the negative, over-the-top attacks orchestrated by Atwater and Ailes, Bush won handily. He asked Baker to be Secretary of State. The greatest issue of Bush's presidency was responding to Gorbachev's unwinding of the communist empire. In time, Bush ignored the right-wingers and fully embraced working with the Party Secretary and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze. Baker met Shevardnadze in Paris, and then hosted him for a few days in Colorado. Shevardnadze painted a bleak picture of the crumbling USSR, and essentially asked for help holding off the Soviet hardliners. When the Wall fell in November, Gorbachev stood by and did not intervene. The US was shocked and had no plan, but both Bush and Baker were careful not to dance on the East's grave. The reunification of Germany was an incredibly complex issue. The West Germans simply wanted to move on and get it accomplished. Thatcher was opposed. The US proposed that the two Germanys work it out and let the four occupying powers chime in as needed. The USSR agreed and received Baker's assurance that NATO jurisdiction would not spread an inch east. In the spring, Lithuania declared its independence, and the E. Germans voted for a Parliament headed by Helmut Kohl's party. Changes were swift and unpredictable, and in both the US and the USSR, the cold warriors fought every concession. At a summit in Washington in May, Gorbachev conceded that a united Germany could choose to join any alliance it preferred. In September 1990, Germany was reunified and forty-five years after the end of WWII, the Four Powers relinquished their occupation rights. Immediately, another great crisis came to the forefront. The invasion of Kuwait would occupy the world's attention for the next year and a half. Baker traveled the world putting together the coalition that supported the US's leadership. He flew 100,000 miles in ten weeks and held 200 meetings. The Soviets reluctantly assented, and coalition forces booted the Iraqis from Kuwait. It was a clear-cut victory. He had promised Gorbachev he would try to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle and he did. At one point, he spent 23 consecutive days on the road and arranged for a conference of all interested parties in Madrid. That summer, 1991, saw the attempted coup against Gorbachev. The coup failed, but led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It formally ended on Christmas day, 1991. Suffering from Graves disease and a thyroid condition, Bush's last year was marked by a severe lack of energy on his part, a deteriorating economy, and disarray in the White House and in the reelection campaign. In mid-August 1992, Baker was back as Chief of Staff and helping the campaign. A disengaged Jim Baker couldn't help, and Bush was handily beaten by Bill Clinton. Unsure of what would come next, the 62-year-old Baker signed on with Baker Botts, where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had worked, and the Carlyle Group. He also began to explore a 1996 run for the presidency, but it did not come to pass. His next foray onto the national stage came in 2000 when he masterminded the younger Bush's post-election efforts in Florida. Once again, the fixer came through for the Bush family. Throughout the Bush 43 presidency, Baker took on various high-level assignments, even though he had been opposed to the 2nd Iraq war.  When his dear friend George Bush died in 2018, he was at his bedside. Today, he is 90 and his grave in a Houston cemetery awaits him. This book has been criticized as being hagiographic and it is a very valid criticism. It is extremely pro-Baker, and dismissive of both Reagan and Bush. But it is a truly great biography that sheds light on some fascinating times. I suspect history will be kind to Reagan because of his unwavering optimism and his fortitude in pursuing the Cold War. And whether Baker/ Bush will be credited for handling the collapse of the USSR, I do not know. But for those of us who remember the Wall going up, all that it symbolized for 38 years and the fact that it came down, the fact that eastern Europe was freed and that the USSR disintegrated without a shot being fired is still the most significant geopolitical event since 1945 and is an event that remains hard to fathom. The authors heap praise on Baker for "getting things done", and that he did. A text of 585 pages has worn me down, but I'm glad I persevered.

The Dig: A Novel Based On True Events, Preston - B

                     This story is set in Suffolk in 1939 and features an excavation of burial mounds on private land. A widow, Edith Pretty proceeds with the project that had been a dream of her late husband. She hires Basil Brown,  a local man with decades of experience with the soils of southeast England. Brown proceeds to unearth the most important archeological discovery in the country's history. A ship from the Anglo-Saxon era is found, and various museums battle over who will display it. In the end, the intervention of war stops all the plans in their tracks. This is a delightful read and one that has been turned into a good, if not better, film by Netflix.

The Mercenary, Vidich - B+

        This is the fourth high-quality CIA thriller, partially based on historic characters, that the author has penned. The mercenary in question is former CIA and former KGB. It's another heck of a page-turner with action in Moscow, a visit to the Lubyanka and a finale at a Czech border crossing. 

A Nation Forged By Crisis: A New American History, Sexton - A*

                     This book looks at our nation through a global prism, positing that it has been the impact of events beyond our shores that have crafted the US, as much as, if not more than our internal evolutions. The focus of this book is on the Revolution, the Civil War and the era of FDR's presidency.

                    "That thirteen of Britain's North American colonies came to seek their independence was the unexpected result of a volatile international environment." Our independence occurred in the middle of Britain and France's century-long struggle that ended at Waterloo. The middle years of the 18th century also saw a vast wave of migration to the colonies that stressed the existing governance structures. Scots, Ulstermen, Germans and Africans came in significant numbers. Trade and investment ballooned. The Revolution was less a rebellion, and more a civil war about how to manage the growing colonies. After victory in 1763, "...Britain had neither the means nor the will to project its authority in the interior of North America." Asking the colonists to help pay for the recently concluded war was a total failure. Paine's 'Common Sense', which made "the most influential case for the independence of the colonies was less the culmination of some distinctly American political tradition than it was the unanticipated product of the growth and integration of the British Atlantic system."   

                        The war in America was internationalized by France, which was prompted by the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga and the drafting of the Articles of Confederation. Foreign military and financial assistance provided the US with victory and independence. As the 1780's saw a disintegration of American coherence, and the British from the north and the Spanish from the south threatened their independence, the Americans came together at the Constitutional Convention to solidify the nations institutions. They built a system that could hold off centralized domestic tyranny, but that was strong enough to "compete with the monarchial-fiscal states" of Europe. The companion piece, the Northwest Ordinance, "harnessed westward migration on behalf of national interests." Ultimately, the disunion of America and Britain benefited both parties. The UK financed America's expansion and provided innumerable immigrants to the new land. The US became its greatest trading partner. The flaw in the new American establishment, slavery, would eventually push the system to the brink. 

                      The crisis over slavery had domestic and global causes. In the late 18th century, slavery was fading in America. Two generations later, it dramatically increased because of the UK's insatiable hunger for cotton. Over half a century, cotton production grew from 3,000 to 4,000,000 bales per year. By the time of the Civil War, there were 4 million slaves in the South, up from substantially less than a million in 1789. While slavery flourished in the US, it was declining around the world. Britain abolished it in 1833 and most states in Latin America did as well. Its existence in the US became a hot-button issue in the 1830's.  In the US, religions, families, states, and institutions all began to fragment over the issue. When Mexico was dispatched, it was evident that the Union would do more than survive. No longer were the British a geopolitical threat. Once we became masters of the continent in the 1850's, how we would handle the potential westward expansion of slavery became the paramount issue.  Further complicating matters was  the massive German and Irish immigration of that decade.  Religious and ethnic animosities were added to the cauldron of domestic politics and helped wreck the Whig party and divide the Democrats. Into this mix strode Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans, whose electoral victory led to secession.

                   The Civil War took place in the midst of international transitions around the globe and is "notable for what did not happen - foreign intervention." The war disrupted the movement of people, capital, and cotton across the Atlantic. The UK declined to intervene, concluding that the risks outweighed the rewards.  To find raw cotton, it turned to Egypt and India. They also backed away financially and the North funded the war primarily through war bonds sold throughout the country. During the war, immigrants flocked to the North. Eight hundred thousand  arrived, and fully a quarter of the Union army were born elsewhere. Union victory stabilized the world's great emerging market and propelled it to finish colonizing the west and eventually, the US turned its ambitions overseas. "By stabilizing the politics of the US, the outcome of 1865 ignited a surge of immigration and foreign investment that would enhance the population, economy and power of the nation. The US would not realize its potential world power until it was rustled into a period of further innovation during a new crisis..."

                    The great crises of the mid-20th century were whipsawed by America's "volatile and inconsistent" policies. We alternated between isolation and engagement, "economic nationalism and international initiative", nearly unfettered immigration and a closed door. We avoided Europe, engaged in a European war and stepped away again. We reduced annual immigration to 7,000 by 1930 from a million before the war. We swung from being the world's greatest debtor to largest creditor.  All of these shifts took place in and around the First World War. Our economic power stemmed from our upward path, while Europe destroyed itself.  "The First World War... accelerated  the international rise of the United States."  After the crash of Wall Street, we initiated an era of high tariffs that cut world trade by 90%. FDR's policies may have been drawn from foreign models, but his focus was domestic. Most Americans did not wish to be involved overseas. Those with Irish and German backgrounds disliked the British and their empire.  Only between 1938 and 1941 did the tide begin to turn. Roosevelt began to speak of our 'national security'. The outbreak of war led the US to cast its power into all corners of the world. The rest of the world was brought to its knees and we prospered like never before. "The war unleashed the most productive industrial economy the world has ever seen." At war's end, we assumed responsibility for the worlds economic well-being as well as assuring its security arrangements. Our "global commitments had no parallel in world history." "The peculiar postwar form the new American superpower took...was as much the creation of its zigzagging course through this era of international crisis as it was the culmination of long-standing policies and political ideas." The wild swings were "smoothed out into a more linear and coherent course after 1945 - so much so that Americans came to imagine their history as one that had inexorably unfolded toward their global ascendance."

                     The crises of the 21st century have thrown into disarray the idea of America forever on a seamless upward trajectory. In the past, transformative change tackled the problems of each era of crisis. There were also significant foreign factors in the creation of each problem and its resolution. We clearly have not adapted to the era of post-Cold War globalization. So far, the pillars of American democracy and capitalism have held. It appears though that "stormier waters lie ahead." "As we navigate our way through" the next great crisis, "whenever it may be, we would be well served to remember something that American history teaches us: the more we look outward, the more prepared we'll be."

Captain Putnam for the Republic of Texas, Haley - B

                    Putnam receives a letter directing him to New Orleans to await further orders.  He receives a secret directive to command a ship for Texas in its 1836 revolution against Mexico. Under no circumstance is it to be acknowledged that he is an American naval officer acting on orders. His second-in-command is a former colleague, and they are instrumental in stopping a ship carrying canons to Santa Anna. Throughout the novel, Putnam is sidelined for days at a time with malaria, but makes it home to Connecticut.  As a reward, President Jackson offers him any post he wishes, but he pens a letter to the Navy Secretary resigning his commission. My suspicion is that he will go back to sea.  This series appears to have been very accurate historically, but a cursory inquiry indicates that arming a navy for Texas was not something the US undertook. But maybe that's the point of Jackson advising him to never tell a soul.

In The Dark, Freeman - B+

                     Stride, and just about everyone else in Duluth, is not happy when a woman who had graduated from high school in 1977 returns to town. She intends to write a book about the death of a fellow classmate who was murdered on July 4th that summer and whose death is an open cold case. Revisiting the past brings back pain for many, including Jonathan, the town's leading lawyer, and the friends of the late Laura Starr. Once again, this series delivers an intriguing page-turner.

Transient Desires, Leon - B+

                     Yet, another quality entry in a long-running series. Guido and Griffoni investigate an accident on the 'laguna' at night and they delve deeper and deeper into more than the usual crimes and misdemeanors. They seek help from the coast guard as they face an international smuggling operation. Additionally, as the author has done for decades, the tale explores changes in Venice and as a bonus, provides some insight into Griffoni's home, Naples. A pleasure.

Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life and Win the 1960 Election, Kendrick and Kendrick, B

     These events took place in October, 1960. The imprisonment of the 31-year old King and the response of the Kennedys, particularly three of their campaign staffers, had a profound effect on the election and the ensuing decades.                                        Harrison Wofford, along with his boss, Sargent Shriver, had been tasked with liaising with the Negro community. Forty percent of Blacks had voted for Ike, and Nixon had a better reputation on civil rights than Kennedy. Shriver's team was known as the Civil Rights Section, or CRS. They were assisted by a Black Chicago newspaperman, Louis Martin. King came from middle-class Atlanta, a staunch Republican community, and in light of Nixon's reaching out to him, was inclined to believe in the VP. The catalyst for King's time in jail came from a Morehouse student leader, Lonnie King, who had targeted Rich's department store, the most famous in Atlanta. He planned a sit-in at their lunch counter and kept encouraging Martin L. King to join the students. On Oct. 19, King and others were arrested at Rich's. Nineteen women and seventeen men refused bail and were sent to the Fulton County Jail. Although he had been arrested before, it was King's first night in jail.                                                                                                                   As national attention focused on Atlanta, its mayor, William Hartsfield, sprang into action. He brokered a deal to have everyone released from jail and negotiated a truce that would eventually desegregate the stores. To do so, he said that Sen. Kennedy had been in touch, even though it was only Wofford who had called, and he had done so of his own volition. When word of the Kennedy campaign's involvement spread, those in the Republican party seeking the Black vote encouraged Nixon to chime in.                                                                                                                                    As matters in Fulton County were heading toward resolution, an unforeseen problem in neighboring DeKalb County arose. King had a suspended sentence there for driving with an Alabama license while a Georgia resident, and the local judge felt that his actions at Rich's violated the terms of his probation. When the students were freed, King was sent alone to DeKalb. He faced a hearing in a packed court house and, at day's end, the judge revoked his probation and sentenced him to four months in a work gang. The next morning at 3 am, King was awakened, shackled, and driven three hours to the notorious state prison at Reidsville. That same morning, JFK called Georgia Governor Vandiver and asked if he could get King out of jail.  Sargent Shriver also convinced Jack to call Coretta King and, in a minute-and-a-half conversation, Sen. Kennedy expressed his concerns to Mrs. King.                                                                                                                       The following day, Bobby Kennedy called the supervising judge, who had an appeal of the license conviction before him. He decided to grant the appeal and allow King to post bond. The judge mentioned the call and King acknowledged the help from the Kennedys when he was released saying "I hold the Senator in very high esteem..." Wofford, Martin and Shriver decided they had to capitalize on the story and had 3 million pamphlets printed praising Kennedy and lambasting Nixon. The CRS team had those pamphlets distributed at Black churches in the South and Midwest.                                                                                                                                     The election was close. It was the last time an election was fought in every section of the country. Eighteen states were decided by three points, or less. In Georgia, there was a foreshadowing of future trends. DeKalb voted Republican and  Blacks in the state started to turn to the Democrats. Nationally, the Black vote helped Kennedy by increasing from 61% in 1956 for Stevenson to 68% for JFK. Nixon felt he had lost the election because of his actions during the King crisis. When Theodore White published his groundbreaking 'The Making of the President, 1960', he attributed the Black vote in eleven states as decisive.                                                                                                                      "The arrest of King is not only the fulcrum on which the 1960 election pivoted but the dividing line between between the moderate vice president and the president who reshaped a political order that divides us still. Nixon's intuitive genius for exploiting racial divisions, born in the final stretch of the 1960 election, maintains its hold over us. By way of his 'southern strategy' Nixon took Americas's explicit rhetoric of racism and smoothed down its rough edges so that the Republican party...could turn the solid Democratic South red in 1972 and keep it that way for decades."

The Power Couple, Berenson - B +

                       A woman very high up in the FBI and her husband, with the NSA, take a trip to Barcelona, where their college-age daughter is kidnapped. The plot has a complexity and a series of twists and turns that shock, surprise and confound. This is a fun read by a master of the genre.

Blood Alone, Benn -C

                    The third novel in this series falls flat. It's set in Sicily and Lt. Boyle is tasked to get a message to the local Don from Ike with the blessings of Lucky Luciano. Although in prison, Luciano assisted the Office of Naval Intelligence to help US forces invading the island. He also helped keep the labor peace on the NY docks. He was released from jail in 1946 and deported to Italy. When he died in 1962, his remains were returned to NY for internment in Queens.

Confessions On The 7:45, Unger - B+

                     This is a fabulous thriller where the layers of complexity keep unfolding and revealing more and more intrigue. The starting point is a woman, mother of two, sitting in her office in Manhattan watching her nanny on top of her husband on the 'nanny cam' she recently installed. For reasons she can't quite fathom, she mentions this to a complete stranger on the train to the suburbs. From that point on, all the wheels come off. 

Calhoun: American Heretic, Elder - B +

                  "Fame and infamy attached themselves to Calhoun early in his life and have persisted since his death in 1850." He was born in 1782 to a Scotch-Irish family from Ulster in the Carolina backcountry. His father had arrived there in the 1750's, and by the end of the war in 1783, he owned 16 slaves and 2100 acres of land. Patrick Calhoun taught his son to despise Britain, and to believe in individual liberty and limited government. He received a classical education at his brother-in-law's academy before enrolling at Yale. He was already a Jeffersonian when he reached Connecticut. He  found himself in a very Federalist environment, one critical of chattel slavery. He studied law at a private school in Litchfield, returned to South Carolina to read the law in 1806, and opened his own office in his home county of Abbeville after passing the bar. After the invention of the cotton gin, all of South Carolina, including what was now known as the upcountry, experienced a boom that united the state economically, and confirmed its reliance on slave labor. He was elected to the state legislature in 1808 and the US Congress in 1810. The following year, he married a wealthy cousin, Floride Colhoun. Once in Washington, he very quickly came to everyone's attention with his analytical and articulate exposition  of the need to prepare for war with the UK. Although there were trade issues between the two countries, it was Britain's continuing impressment of naturalized American citizens that rankled the most. He was the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee when war was declared in the spring of 1812. Although the war and its concluding treaty were, at best, a draw, Jackson's victory at New Orleans led many to consider it a triumph over the British. 

                  In the post-war era, Jeffersonian orthodoxies about the fear of standing armies and centralized government were shunted aside as the nation looked to expand, grow and dominate the continent. After championing bills to advance the nation, Calhoun left Congress and accepted Monroe's offer to be Sect. of War. He modernized and efficiently managed the government's largest department. He navigated through Andrew Jackson's unauthorized attack on the Spanish in Florida and a major recession in the 1820's. During the debates over the Missouri Compromise, Calhoun mused to his good friend and colleague, John Quincy Adams, that the law protected property rights and for he and other slaveowners, their slaves were their property. He also acknowledged the potential for the controversy over the extension of slavery to the west to sunder the union. He aspired to higher office and "as 1824 approached, there were few figures on the national stage who could legitimately claim to have a larger hand in the progress and prospects of American civilization than Secretary of War Calhoun." He won the Vice Presidency in an electoral landslide, while Adams eked out a victory in Congress, over Jackson. Long a nationalist, he began to fear the growing power of the North and started to think about a state's right to veto federal action. A tariff that favored the North and that he believed would impoverish the South moved him further away from the center. He suggested that state conventions, not legislatures, could 'nullify' federal laws detrimental to their state, and that that action could lead to necessary amendments to the Constitution. "While other states' rights advocates saw only a choice between domination by the federal government or disunion, Calhoun worked creatively, almost desperately, to find the resources for a solution within the system itself." 

                       1828 saw Calhoun returned as VP, with Andrew Jackson the new president. At the annual party celebrating Jefferson's birthday in 1830, the most famous exchange of toasts in American history took place. The President offered, "Our union, it must be preserved." Calhoun's reply included, "may we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States..." Soon thereafter, and particularly at the encouragement of Sec. of State Van Buren, Jackson broke with Calhoun. A national debate on nullification, or interposition, propelled by continuing tariff contretemps,  saw Calhoun, quoting extensively from Jefferson's Virginia Resolutions, double down on his position. In 1832, Calhoun resigned and was appointed to the Senate by the SC legislature, which declared the Tariff of 1828 nullified. A historic debate between Webster and Calhoun about the nature of the union followed and most agreed that Calhoun's "compact" concept among sovereign states prevailed. In the end, SC repealed its nullification bill. 

                  The role of slavery in the world came under attack in the 1830's when Great Britain emancipated the empire's slaves and the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed. The abolitionists initiated the first direct mail campaign against the peculiar institution. "Slavery was part of who he was, a generational atrocity woven so seamlessly into the fabric of his identity that he could not imagine himself, his family, or the South without it. So, he defended it." He led the fight against a proposal to emancipate the slaves in DC and argued that slavery was a "positive good" that enhanced the wealth of America and its white population, while raising up the lives of those from Africa. Throughout his long career, though, he did not argue for disunion. He believed in the Constitution.

                   In the spring of 1844, Pres. Tyler appointed him Sec. of State.  He served a year, but was unable to annex Texas or finish a peace treaty with Britain over the Oregon border. He returned to the Senate.  Throughout the war with Mexico, he attempted to rein in Polk's more aggressive ambitions, vehemently opposing a proposed annexation of the entire country. He opposed Wilmot's proposal to ban slavery in New Mexico and California. Beginning in 1848, tuberculosis began to ravage his lungs. The following year, California requested admission with a clause in its constitution prohibiting slavery and provoking a great national debate. Throughout the South, secession was considered. A compromise was offered by Henry Clay, also dying of tuberculosis. Calhoun's final speech was read to the Senate by a colleague on March 4, 1850. He spoke against disunion, but asked for an equalization of power between the free and slave states. If the North was not willing to share power, it should let the South peaceably go. He died later that month.

                   This excellent biography has been acclaimed by  historians and journalists alike. Calhoun was clearly an incredibly complex and brilliant man. His prodigious talents place him in the pantheon of Senate greats, alongside his contemporaries, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. His articulation of the theory of the union as a compact between sovereign states was believed by many in the first half of the 19th century. The flaw, of course, was his reliance on slavery as the foundation of that belief. The idea died with the Confederacy. It is worth remembering that Shelby Foote stated that before the Civil War, the common phraseology was that the United Stares "are."After the war, it became  the United States "is."

The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication, Larman - C

                   Edward VIII acceded to the crown at the age of 41 on January 20, 1936. His father did not consider him fit for the throne. For the previous four years, he had been having an affair with a married American, Wallis Simpson. "From the outset of his reign, he was an unsuited and reluctant monarch, unwilling to compromise his own happiness for the sake of a symbolic role that he barely believed in. He was neither a good sovereign, nor a good man..." His affection for Wallis and his intent to eventually marry her began to unnerve those close to the monarchy. In July, Wallis initiated divorce proceedings against her husband. On Oct. 8th, the PM, Stanley Baldwin, tried to convince the King to stop Wallis' divorce. The feeling in the government was that if an affair with a married woman was conducted discreetly, there would be no serious repercussions. Meanwhile, the divorce garnered extensive foreign press coverage. For the time being, Fleet Street remained mum. In court, Wallis perjured herself to achieve the desired judicial result. For many, the prospect of the monarch marrying the twice-divorced American daughter of a Baltimore boarding house proprietor rankled deeply. Edward, though, was bound and determined to marry her. The King's Private Secretary, Alec Hardinge, wrote him a very stern letter citing "grave dangers" to the country and crown, and recommending that he send Wallis out of the country. The letter had the approval of the PM, whom Edward met with on Nov. 16 and indicated he was prepared to abdicate. Wallis was well aware of the crisis that was blossoming and gave serious consideration to simply leaving the country and Edward. Baldwin discussed the possibility of a morganatic marriage with the Cabinet. They declined to take up legislation on the topic and also refused to allow Edward to appeal to the people on the radio.

                     With Fleet Street ready to pounce, Wallis left for Cannes on Dec. 2. Meanwhile, the populace sided with the King. His supporters, primarily Beaverbrook and Churchill, believed he could wait out the crisis and make a decision after his scheduled spring coronation. Nonetheless, Edward decided to abdicate. Wallis again offered to break her relationship with Edward, who refused to hear of it. As the crisis came to a head, the issue of finances came to the fore. His brother agreed that the royal family would approve a title and funding going forward. On Dec 10, he signed seven copies of the Instrument of Abdication. Parliament approved the bill authorizing the abdication the following day. That night, he spoke to the nation and sailed from Portsmouth for the continent. He married Wallis in 1937; they were married until his death in 1972.

A Fatal Lie, Todd - B+

                     Series  that run for decades have their ups and downs. This one is pretty good. It is spring 1921 and Rutledge is sent to  Wales to investigate a drowning. The local constabulary cannot determine if it is murder or suicide. It turns out to be a complex murder case, with a missing child whose paternity is uncertain in the middle of it. Just about everyone Rutledge deals with lies to him and he spends almost a month in the English/Welsh borderlands running it down. As always, there is some fascinating insight into those who fought and those who suffered at home.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, Yergin - B+

                    This book is an assessment of today's "dramatic shifts of geopolitics and energy." The focus is on the big three, the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia. In America, the shale revolution has made the US an energy exporter and has provided a material financial advantage for our economy. Russia remains an energy superpower, but continues to struggle with the dissolution of the USSR and is losing some of its gas supply leverage over Europe. For the Saudis, the decline in oil prices in the last decade has led to efforts to diversify its economy.  For all, the move to a zero carbon society presents an overwhelming challenge.

                   The first successful horizontally fracked gas well was completed north of Dallas in 1998.  The ensuing glut of gas led to a reduction in coal usage and consideration of exporting the newfound asset. One enterprising Texas company, realizing that the glut in gas was severe, decided to look for oil through fracking. EOG was wildly successful. Soon, the Bakken field in N. Dakota and the Permian in west Texas were producing massive amounts of fracked oil. Texas alone was producing more oil than every OPEC country except Saudi Arabia. By 2019, the shale revolution was supporting 2.8 million US jobs. "The shale revolution has dramatically improved the competitive position of the US in the world economy." We now are exporting liquid natural gas (LNG) by ship around the world and natural gas to Mexico by pipeline. Most importantly though is the fact that we are once again a net exporter of oil. In February, 2020, we were producing 13M bpd, three times the amount in 2008. A massive trade imbalance has been reversed. The US now exports oil and gas to Europe, China and Japan. 

                 Over the last 20 years, control of Russia's energy has been at the core of Putin's agenda to restore the country. Oil production peaked at 11.4M bd a few years ago and the country has substantially benefitted from the relative price stability (notwithstanding the 2014 price collapse) of the past two decades. It is in the arena of natural gas and LNG supply that Russia is currently carving out its energy future. Russia supplies Europe with a third of its natural gas, most of which passes through Ukrainian pipelines. Russia built the Nord Stream pipeline, which runs under the Baltic Sea, in order to circumvent Ukraine's control of the pipelines. US sanctions halted the completion of Nord Stream 2. Most western Europeans view transacting with the Russians as a commercial, non-political matter. Those Europeans who were occupied by the USSR feel differently. Europe's natural gas industry has been deregulated and market forces now appear to be controlling supply and demand. The Russians are also exporting LNG to Europe, and most importantly, China. Russia has also implemented a three decade, $400B natural gas supply deal with China, which  has prepaid $80B  for oil to be delivered at a later date. The once communist rivals are clearly energy partners and strategic partners as well.

                   Today, China consumes 25% of the world's energy. Its oil imports come from the Middle East, through the Strait of Malacca, a source of considerable anxiety as the US Navy could easily interdict their lifeline. Concern about protecting its oil is what has led to the aggressive actions China has taken staking its claims in the South China Sea. China's BRI has many strategic objectives, and securing an overland energy supply is one of them.

                    The most compelling problem in the Middle East is the ongoing confrontation between revolutionary Shia Persian Iran and the cautious monarchy of Sunni Saudi Arabia. Iran has built an arc of Shiite power and influence stretching through  northern Iraq and Syria into Lebanon. In essence, they have extended their revolution abroad. Iran and Saudi's proxies are currently fighting to a stalemate and totally destabilizing Yemen, on Saudi's southern border.  Notwithstanding Saudi Arabia's challenges from Iran and its own desires to diversify away from oil dependence, it will for a very long time benefit from the fact that it has massive reserves and is the lowest-cost producer.

                   The convergence of electric cars, ride-hailing services and self-driving cars will change the demand for petroleum in the future and lead to major industrial and geopolitical disruptions. Solar and wind are changing the way energy is delivered. There is a new focus on carbon free nuclear, research into hydrogen propulsion and carbon capture and use. "In the years ahead, carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas policies will bring continuing changes in how energy is produced, transported and consumed.." The developing world's demand for electricity is going to slow the industrial world's movement toward a carbon-free planet. The creation of a new infrastructure for battery development and the construction of wind turbines will bring a new set of challenges. The transportation consumption of oil is not limited to cars and light trucks, but also includes trains, heavy trucks, ships and planes, none of which are on the threshold of major change. Oil demand will peak in the next decade or so and then begin a gradual decline. Nonetheless, billions will continue to be needed for investments to maintain oil and gas supplies into the future.  The Covid-19 crisis has stalled world growth and likely set us back a decade, in addition to throwing into doubt many of the precepts our globalized world is built upon. 

                      "Yet the notion of a fast track to a wholesale energy transition runs up against major obstacles - the sheer scale of the energy system that supports the world economy, the need for reliability, the demand of resources for renewables, and the disruptions and conflicts that would result from speed." Oil will maintain its position as the fuel that makes the "world go around." Policies and technology will determine the future.

                    

                    

Eight Perfect Murders, Swanson - B

                     This is a delightful novel featuring a bookseller who posts on his store's website a blog about mysteries involving murders that can't be solved. He attracts a copycat and the FBI. Lot's of twists and references to just about every mystery ever written. 

The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive, Sands - C/Inc.

                   An excellent previous book by the author, 'East West Street', was about the intersection of lives in Lvov, where his grandparents died during the Holocaust. Here, he tells the story of Otto von Wachter, Hans Franks' deputy in Lvov during the war.  Born into an elite Austrian family in 1901, Otto grew up to be a lawyer and early member of the Nazi party. He married Charlotte Bleckmann, the daughter of a wealthy family, in 1932, the same year he joined the SS. He became a state secretary in the office of the Austrian chancellor after the Anschluss. When war broke out, he was assigned as governor of the Cracow district of the General Government of Poland, reporting to Hans Frank. He was instrumental in the German degradation of the Jews and their imprisonment in ghettos prior to their transportation to the camps. In early 1942, Otto was moved to Lvov and made governor of Galicia. A year later, 434,329 Jews had been evacuated; Galicia was Judenfrei. In the summer of 1944, Otto, now a Gruppenfuhrer, returned to Berlin as the Soviets moved west. With his family in Austria, Otto was assigned to northern Italy. At war's end, Charlotte and the six children wound up in the American sector of Austria and Otto, a war criminal under a murder indictment, disappeared.

                        Charlotte was able to stabilize life for herself and her children in Salzburg. As for Otto, no one knew where he was. He was actually hiding in the woods and mountains not far from Salzburg and in regular contact with Charlotte. He stayed in the mountains for three years. He spent some time with his family, was recognized and fled to Italy. His hope was obtain support for an escape to South America. Within a month of his arrival, he caught a fever that proved fatal. Otto Wachter died at the age of 48.

                     Interspersed throughout are the thoughts of Wachter's son Horst, born in 1939 and a believer in his father's innocence. Sands contrasts Horst's beliefs with those of Hans Frank's son, Niklas, who acknowledged without hesitation the evil that his father did. The two sons actually collaborated on a documentary called 'A Nazi Legacy, What Our Fathers Did'.

                    This book has proved to be a disappointment and I stopped with almost half of it remaining. I can't imagine what else could be said about a second tier Nazi's afterlife. 

Stalked, Freeman - B+

                     This is the third book in the Jonathan Stride series. He's back in Duluth and Serena is with him. When his protege is accused of killing her husband, Stride has to step aside and watch the investigation unfold.  He starts inquiries and uncovers a blackmailer, a sex club, and a serial killer undercover in the professional community. Add in some background on ice huts on the frozen lake in the dead of winter and it's a great story. It's also a great series.

The Coast-To-Coast Murders, Patterson and Barker - C

                  This highly-acclaimed novel starts out so strongly that it is hard to believe the second half of the book could crash and burn so spectacularly.  A crazed psychologist spends a quarter of a century trying to implant multiple schizophrenic personalities into a traumatized  boy who was four when he came under his care.  Add in serial killings, an equally abused adoptive sister, funding (unexplained) by the US government, shootouts, explosions and multiple fires all results in what I choose to categorize as a mess.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga Of Churchill, Family, And Defiance During The Blitz, Larson - B

                      On May 10, 1940, George VI asked Winston Churchill to form a new government. Three days later, he told the Commons "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."  He reorganized and invigorated the government for the long fight ahead. The defeat of France left the UK entirely on its own with Churchill thinking constantly of how he could convince America to help. With the Germans on the French coast, the almost exclusive concern in Great Britain was the possible depredations of the Luftwaffe. German air power was believed to be two or three times greater than that of the RAF. The other anxiety was the fate of the French fleet. The UK was quite worried that it would fall into German hands. Thus, they sunk a portion of the fleet that had been at anchor in Algeria. 

                      Hitler was so confident that Britain would either surrender or be defeated that he ordered preparations in Berlin for a victory parade at the end of August. That month saw the unleashing of the Luftwaffe, with its 2300 planes and the beginning of the Battle of Britain. Britain's defense consisted of its effective use of radar, its devoted pilots and two very good planes, the Hurricane and the Spitfire.  On the 15th, Germany sent 2100 planes to attack Britain. Seventy-five of the Luftwaffe aircraft were lost on what became known as Black Thursday. The attacks came in waves all day, and soon came every day. On the 24th, London was bombed for the first time, albeit by accident as Hitler had expressly prohibited the bombing of the capital. The following night, the RAF bombed Berlin. On Saturday Sept. 7, the Luftwaffe sought to deliver a knockout blow to London. A thousand planes attacked in the first wave alone. The all clear did not sound until 5 a.m. Sunday morning. Day in and day out into September, the bombing continued. Through it all, the RAF fought with unprecedented valor and was able to daily challenge the German bombers. The Luftwaffe's failure to control the skies led to Hitler's abandonment of his invasion plans. Even when Hitler turned his thoughts to Russia, the Luftwaffe continued its ongoing raids over England. The year 1940 closed with the bombings ongoing and the UK still very much alone.

                      The new year dawned with FDR conceiving, and then introducing during a fireside chat, his brilliant Lend-Lease program to assist the British. The president's personal envoy, Harry Hopkins, was sent to London and spent a month assessing Churchill and Britain's war effort. Averell Harriman followed to help implement America's assistance. On every front though, the war continued to go badly. The Luftwaffe continued to pound England. Greece was abandoned by British forces. In Africa, Rommel pummeled the army and appeared ready to capture Egypt. Indeed, right up to Barbarossa, the Luftwaffe came and came again wreaking endless destruction. But, all at once it was over as Germany turned her attention east. The United Kingdom had survived and Churchill had provided the leadership the situation had so sorely called for. The Blitz had killed 29,000 Britons and injured many more. Vast expanses of all the major cities, especially London, had been destroyed. Yet, it was the country's finest hour.

The Book of Lost Friends, Wingate - B+

                     Every chapter of this exceptional novel is preceded by a reprint of an article from the 'Lost Friends' column from the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper in the early 1880's. The articles were intended to be read by pastors at the colored churches in the Louisiana-Texas borderlands and throughout the south. The clippings are very brief and some of the most painful reading imaginable, simple requests for information about siblings, children and parents, all lost and separated prior to emancipation.  The novel tells two stories, one set in 1875 about a woman, Hannie, who was born enslaved but lived to be free, and about a school teacher, Benny, in 1987. Both are connected by a place and the exploration of that place reminds us of the extensive intermingling of the races that was part of the South. This is a great book and another fine Wendell Erwin recommendation.

White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness In America, Williams - B+

                     This book is a discussion of the challenges facing non-college graduates, whose wages have been halved in the last half century, while the elites have stopped connecting with them and have written off their anger as racism, sexism and xenophobia. Fully two-thirds of the country have no chance for the good life, and have become extremely disaffected. The author refers to this group as the 'working class', those neither in the top 20%, nor the bottom 30%. The term 'middle class' seems the most descriptive, but it has lost its place since so many Americans, including those at the top and on the bottom, label themselves as such. For this book, the working class is, in 2015 numbers and statistics, those between $40,000 and $130,000 of family income. They receive fewer government subsidies than the poor and seriously resent what those poor get, because they believe they follow the rules and the poor don't. They believe in family values and view the raising of a successful nuclear family as a major accomplishment. Working class people are closer to their extended family than elites are and they do not consider relocating as easily as elites do. They do not consider college as a must. They feel resentments and injustice at their place in society.  They simply want decent jobs. They're not interested in safety nets, and probably don't realize they do receive substantial, but often disguised, subsidies from the government. They are tired of being disdained by the elites. They simply want to work. 

                  This very short book (117 pps.) is an expansion of an article in the Harvard Business review. It, and the author, a California based law professor, have received widespread support and acclaim for the ideas set forth herein. The author posits the question whether the liberal elites can accommodate this group and suggests that the answer is yes. Required is understanding, training for all in civics leading to an acknowledgement that the government is not our enemy, and once again - decent jobs and respect. 

                     

               

Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, Sorin - B

                      The title refers to the challenge of "encountering danger, harassment, and even violence while operating a car on the road in the United States. This is a reality...every African American family still lives with each and every day." 

                        Mobility for slaves was virtually non-existent, and was only marginally better during the Jim Crow era. The Great Migration which began in 1916 saw millions of Blacks leave the south by train and bus to head north and west. Returning to visit family in the south became part of the Black experience. In the first half of the 20th century, separate and clearly unequal conditions were prevalent on the trains and buses of the south. For Black Americans, obtaining a car was a means to "take charge of one's own destiny." Cars offered freedom, privacy and the added benefit of depriving Jim Crow transportation systems of ongoing funding. Automobiles were also used to help transport   Blacks boycotting segregated bus systems. "Black buying power, vehicle selection, and even driving practices were all sharply determined by discrimination." Blacks preferred large powerful cars and Buicks were their favorites. The bigger the car, the more space to carry things on long trips in order to avoid interacting with whites. The"racialized roadside" was a constant threat. Disappointment, embarrassment and rejection were around every turn. Even the purchase of gas could be a distressing experience and use of a station's rest rooms was seldom an option. The only company to solicit Black business, and even have almost two-hundred Black owned stations, was Esso. 

                     White dissatisfaction as the Blacks sought equality led to increases in violence by random individuals against Blacks in cars. Ever present were two other risks. Any interaction with the police in the north and south was always potentially dangerous situation for Black drivers. Also, when there was an auto accident, Blacks, particularly in the south, were not afforded emergency medical assistance. Finding a decent place to stay was almost impossible for Black motorists. The saving grace for many was a travel guide, "The Negro Motorist Green Book." Modeled on travel guides for Jews, it was published by Victor Green from offices in Harlem.  It provided Blacks with information about how to safely navigate the roads throughout the country.  Green had predicted that his guide would eventually go out of business when it was no longer needed and that was the case by the late 1960's.  Businesses that catered only to Blacks faded away as traveling Blacks had the opportunity to stay at the national chains. 

                    The phrase that is the title of this book wasn't coined until the 1990's, long after Jim Crow had passed. But the concept in terms of potential issues with police, is very much alive and well. In 2017, the NAACP issued a warning about people of color driving in Missouri. This is interesting, well-written and quite informative.

Three Hours In Paris, Black - C

                   The title refers to the time Hitler spent in the City of Light in June, 1940. This novel is a silly attempt to tell a story about a fictional English attempt to assassinate him.  

Lady Chevy, Woods - D

                    On the recommended lists, but a horrible, depressing read. It is set in today's southeastern Ohio, deep in the heart of fracking induced Appalachian poverty and dead ends. Everyone is a miserable miscreant. We have a h.s. senior murderer, her KKK grandfather, her obese adulterous mother, a police sheriff who takes the law into his own hands, an Afghan vet suffering from PTSD and filled with hate, a lecherous guidance counselor and on it goes. I get that Appalachia is hopeless and horrible, but couldn't the point be made with one decent soul in the whole town.

Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Fremont Mapped The West, Invented Celebrity, And Helped Cause The Civil War, Inskeep - B+

                  This is a history of a couple who were front and center during the westward expansion of the nation, the first struggles for women's rights and the anti-slavery movement in the 1840's and 1850's. Born in 1813, Fremont was living in Charleston when he obtained work on a railroad survey, and then a mapping expedition for the army, that led to his commissioning as a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. In Washington DC, he met and fell in love with, Jessie Benton, the second daughter of Sen. Thomas Hart Benton. They eloped in 1841. She was 17 years old.

                 Benton lived, breathed and epitomized the concept of America's 'manifest destiny' to conquer the continent and suggested Fremont lead an expedition to Oregon, which he wanted populated with Americans. The War Dept. ordered Fremont to explore and map the Platte, but he also headed west through the South Pass on the Continental Divide on the Oregon Trail before heading home. Jessie took the lead in writing his 'Report' and had it published broadly. The Senator then arranged for a second expedition to head for the coast. Fremont explored the area around the Great Salt Lake, headed to the Columbia River, came back to the Salt Lake area, somehow transversed the Sierra Nevadas in the winter and made it to Alta California before turning back to Washington. Once again, Jessie penned the 'Report' as part of a process of promoting the Fremont name. The timing of his increased association with the west coincided with Polk's 1844 election campaign seeking American domination of Texas, Oregon and California. The 1845 mission again brought Fremont to California. Tension between the US and Mexico increased because of  Polk's move to annex Texas and the sense, unstated but obvious, that California was next. Fremont was a US army officer leading men in a foreign country and attracting the attention of the local Mexican authorities. Fremont was assisting a settler's revolt around Sonoma when an American naval task force landed in San Francisco and raised  the American flag in California. Although no one in California knew it in the summer of 1846, the US and Mexico were already at war. The naval commodore, Robert Stockton, appointed Fremont military governor and they attempted to take control of California. When Army Gen. Kearny ordered Fremont to stand down, he refused, was arrested and returned to Washington to face a court martial. Notwithstanding Fremont's status as a hero who had helped conquer California, he was convicted, with a recommendation for clemency. Polk granted clemency and a re-instatement, but the stubborn Fremont refused and resigned from the army in early 1848.

                 Benton arranged for Fremont to conduct a railroad survey through the Rockies, thus affording him another opportunity to travel to California in 1848. By then the war was over, California was US territory and gold had been discovered. Jessie and their daughter, Lily, sailed to California from New York. The family reunited and soon were on the way back east to Washington, as John was elected to the Senate by the state constitutional convention.  His time in office was short-lived as the legislature did not reelect him, and he found himself in 1851 living in California attempting to manage his affairs. During  previous times in California, he had acquired significant tracts of land, although the validity of his titles was uncertain. He was also being hounded by creditors as he had broadly borrowed upon the credit of the government during his expeditions and not all the bills were honored in Washington. 

                   The 1850's were a tumultuous time in America as the issues of slavery, expansion and immigration were tearing the country apart. Party alliances were shifting and a new party, the Republicans, arose from the ashes of the Whigs. They were looking for a candidate who was anti-slavery and had a "slim record" and certain people put forth Fremont. He was nominated and ran under the slogan "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men and Fremont." The Know-Nothings nominated former president, Millard Fillmore and the Democrats nominated James Buchanan. It was a vicious campaign, with Fremont's illegitimacy leading to charges that he was not born in America. He was accused of being a Catholic and everyone complained about ballot stuffing. Buchanan won with the support of a solid south.

                  During the Civil War, he was twice appointed general and twice relieved. He did, however, provide early opportunities under his command to a washed-up Union officer, U.S. Grant. The Fremont's had the misfortune to miss the Gilded Age, as John's financial inadequacies reduced them to penury before his death in 1890. Jessie lived another 12 years.

                 One of the men who had placed Fremont at the top of the Republican party later claimed he had been the perfect candidate for the new party. He was a well-known hero with anti-slavery positions and laid the foundation for the future that Lincoln would capture. This is a very enjoyable history book.

Don't Turn Around, Barry - B+

               This is a really good thriller set in today's Texas. At midnight, Cait picks up Rebecca outside her house in Lubbock and begins driving to New Mexico. Cait is a volunteer who drives women to abortion centers, and Rebecca is carrying a severely ill fetus who will die within an hour of birth. Both are haunted and looking over their shoulders. Rebecca's married to a Congressman running for the Senate and cannot abide an abortion that will end his career. Rebecca posted an on-line criticism of a brutal well-known singer and is being targeted as a feminazi. This is a fast-paced excellent book.

Trials And Tribulations, Grainger - B

                  Finishing this trilogy off in 1950, the families have made Robinswood a successful hotel and everyone in the extended family now lives there happily ever after. Not even a dollop of historical insight here.

The Six: The Lives of The Mitford Sisters, Thompson - B

                     The sisters were born in the heart of aristocratic England between 1904 and 1920. The ancient Mitford name preceded the Conquest. Their names were Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. They became a novelist, a countrywoman, a Fascist, a Nazi, a Communist, and a Duchess. They grew up in the closed world of their family and servants at their country estates and London home. They were uncharacteristically politicized in an era of extremist political philosophies. The 1930's tore their family apart and diminished their father's wealth. They remain a focus of fascination to the English for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was their extraordinary self-confidence and indifference to what people thought of them.

                    When his older brother died in WWI, their dad inherited a lordship, some financial assets, and an abundance of real estate. David Mitford sold off his father's houses assuring, that although his daughters upbringing was strictly upper-class, it was somewhat peripatetic.  They were not afforded the opportunity for a formal education, and grew up in a house with an austere mother and a loving father, a member of the House of Lords, a true conservative and a man wholly incompetent financially. The two best-known of the girls were Nancy, the oldest, and Diana, the third. Nancy had a successful career as a novelist writing about the upper classes she knew so well.  Diana was considered one of the most beautiful woman in the world and was the first to marry. In 1929, she and Bryan Guinness, heir to the vast family fortune, were wed. She was 18. Nancy, on the other hand, was a bit too quick and witty for the average upper-class male and drifted through her 20's single, but launching  her writing career.

                   The year 1932 saw the beginning of the unraveling of the family's place in society. Diana walked out on her husband and took up with Sir Oswald Mosley, former MP and leader in the Labour Party, and about to be founder of the British Union of Fascists. Mosley and the BUF were quite popular and were lauded by such disparate people as Lloyd George and George Bernard Shaw. However, Diana's conduct was wildly beyond the pale of its times. In 1933, Diana and Guinness were divorced, the epic-philanderer Mosley's wife died, and Nancy married a totally unsuitable womanizer named Peter Rodd. Nancy's next book mocked her new husband, as well as his family and satirized the fascists in the BUF. Soon, Unity, the fourth daughter, entered the arena as a serious fascist and joined the BUF. Diana and Unity went to Germany, attended the first Nuremberg rally and met Hitler. Unity decamped to live in Munich. She and Hitler became fast friends and met 140 times before the war's outbreak. She was sort of a "younger sister, court jester and talisman." Their dad made a pro-Hitler speech in the House of Lords. Diana actually obtained funding from Hitler to help keep the financially floundering BUF afloat.  She and Mosley married at Goebbels' house in Berlin in 1936. In response to all of the Germany-loving in her family, Jessica, the fifth, became a communist.  Jessica fell for her cousin, Esmond  Romailly, and followed him to Spain, where he reported on the Civil war.  She was pregnant when they married in 1937. The sedate and entirely normal sixth daughter, Deborah, had her coming out parties in 1938. Two weeks into her debut, she met and fell for Andrew Cavendish, the future Duke of Devonshire. They would marry three years later. The day after the war began, Unity put a gun to her head in Munich. Although she lived, she was in a childlike state and would be so until her death in 1947.

                  Lord David and Lady Sydney Mitford retreated from public life to their last remaining piece of real estate, an obscure island off Scotland's western coast. Nancy drove an ambulance in London and Mosley was arrested for being part of an organization "subject to foreign influence or control." Diana soon followed him into captivity. After 18 months in horrid prisons, the Mosley's were placed in a married accommodation for two years and eventually placed under house arrest in late 1943. Nancy's husband Peter, their brother Tom and Jessica's husband Esmond were all in combat positions overseas. Esmond died in late 1941 while flying over the North Sea. The ultimate blow for the family came when the only son and brother, Tom, was killed in Burma in early 1945. Lord and Lady Mitford split up and David became a recluse.

               After the war, Nancy continued her very successful writing career and moved to Paris to share her life with a Frenchman. Jessica was already in America, where she had remarried and settled down. Diana and Mosley also moved to Paris. David died in 1958 at the age of eighty. Jessica achieved literary fame when she published a history of their upbringing in 1960. Three years later, their mother died. Nancy's career continued very successfully in France until her death in 1973. Pamela lived comfortably abroad and in the English countryside until her death in 1994. Mosley died in 1980 and Diana lived until 2003. Jessica published an acclaimed book excoriating the American funeral industry in 1963 and became a bit of a media celebrity until her death in 1996. Andrew and Deborah lived a long privileged life as the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. She died in 2014 at 94.                                                                                                This group biography feels less like a history and more like a social analysis and assessment. The author constantly compares their lives to Nancy's novels which apparently were heavily autobiographical. One who has never read any of those novels (certainly almost all Americans) is at a distinct disadvantage. The concept of being 'famous for being famous' comes to mind in an attempt to understand their role in English society. One does walk away though with an admiration for their tenacity and marvels at the literary accomplishment of women who were not afforded any education.

The Big Goodbye: Chinatown And the Last Years Of Hollywood, Wasson - B

                   This is the story of the legendary movie told from the viewpoint of its four principals: director Roman Polanski, screenwriter Robert Towne, star Jack Nicholson and producer Robert Evans. The film was nominated for and won many of the preliminary awards, and was up for 11 Oscars, but only Towne took one home. The perspective is that it was the end of a brief era, that began in the mid-1960's and lasted barely a decade. The Hollywood of the studio moguls had been tottering for decades and the 60's saw it end, with sales of the legendary dream factories to holding companies and conglomerates. The decade was the time of the auteur young directors: Peckinpah, Coppolla, Friedkin, Bogdanovich and Polanski. They created movies of magic and integrity. The first was Bonnie and Clyde; the last was Chinatown. This time of free-flowing talent was followed by the blockbuster era, epitomized by Jaws and all that followed. In addition to pining for the Hollywood of that era, the book looks wistfully back on the inter-war years of a simpler, less congested and more bucolic LA.

 

Stripped, Freeman - B

                     Stride has left Duluth for Serena and a job on the Las Vegas PD as a detective. He starts a murder case that quickly graduates to a series of killings, all related to a murder forty years ago.  The killer believes he is the son of a murdered dancer and sets out to take vengeance against any and all who knew his mother and were part of her downfall. The investigation is totally complicated by the relationships from the past and the survivor's clout in modern day Sin City. In the end, a return to Duluth is the preferred option.

Return To Robinswood, Grainger - B

                  Back, after only two weeks, to my Irish soap-opera set just after the end of WWII.   The entire extended family comes together for Christmas, as everyone is happy and the Kenefick's and Murphy's work hard to put the estate back together.  The only interesting takeaway is the discussion of food. After the war, the UK continued rationing for a decade because it was not agriculturally self-sufficient and it was broke.  A major source of food, with a touch of irony were the abundant harvests of Ireland.   

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, Demick - B

                  This book is a highly-acclaimed best seller that tells of the takeover and on-going oppression of Tibet and its people by the CCP. Although the book ranges far and wide, it focuses on the town of Ngaba in western Sichuan province. The Tibetan plateau is a vast million square miles with an average elevation of 14,800 feet above sea level. It is larger than India, and is known as 'the roof of the world'. Tibet, prior to the advance of the Red Chinese, had a very loose affiliation with China, but was more of a place than an entity. The residents were nomadic Buddhists in a land with few towns. Beginning in 1950, the Chinese began the forced collectivization and subjugation of Tibetans in what they called their "Democratic Reforms" - a redistribution of land. Tibetans call 1958, the year of an aggressive crackdown, as the time "when the sky and the earth changed places." The temples were destroyed and the Buddhist monks turned out. The Dalai Lama fled to India. Mao's death in 1976 led to change. Economic activity took off. Ngaba began to recover some of the vibrancy it had lost under communism.  The traditional nomads made a fortune harvesting and selling medicinal herbs. Slowly though, the Han moved in, and soon vastly outnumbered the locals. A period of liberalization was reversed in the 1990's, after Tiananmen, when the Han began constructing massive infrastructure projects throughout the plateau. The year 2008 saw Chinese police fire on Tibetans and the beginning of a decade-long self-immolation wave. By the end of 2019, 156 people had committed suicide this way, with about a third of them in and around Ngaba. Tibetans poured over the border and joined a substantial expatriate community in India. The plight of these victims of communism has resonated and garnered sympathy around the world. But like their Uighur neighbors now under the heel of the regime, they are too far removed and isolated from free peoples to ever achieve any semblance of the free life they once enjoyed.

     

Blacktop Wasteland, Cosby - B

                   This somewhat unusual novel is about a black man, Beauregard, who has been trying to get out of the life, but keeps getting pulled back in. Like his daddy before him, he is a wheel man of exquisite skill, and is recruited for a job that will solve his many financial problems. When it goes sideways, he has to pull off a second in order to get out from under the man who was robbed in the first job. It's exciting and explores some interesting father-son dynamics, but I would suggest should not have shown up on a recommended list.

The Glass Kingdom, Osbourne - C

                   Once again, a highly acclaimed novel eludes me. Set in Bangkok and designated a NYTimes Notable book, it is about decay, unrest, karma, and greed. A 30-ish New Yorker absconds with $200,000 from her aging employer and hides out in an anonymous old luxury building that feels anonymous and safe. It isn't.

V2, Harris - B

                   This very successful writer of historical fiction has written mostly about WW2 and Ancient Rome. Here, he focuses on the Revenge rockets on which Germany wasted a massive fortune  in order to terrorize the UK, particularly London. There are two stories. One is about a German civilian who has worked with von Braun since the beginning, is the flight officer, and in the waning days of the Reich, struggles with the tightening  SS security apparatus. The British side of the story is based on the memoirs of a woman who was part of the team tasked with figuring out where the rockets were fired from. Armed with radar information about the arc of the lift-off and the location of the hit in London, they were able to calculate the parabolic arc and figure out where they were launched from. Fun read.

The Witch Hunter, Seeck - B+

                This is one heck of a read, featuring a serial killer(s) in Helsinki replicating multiple murders in a trilogy of mystery books. They plot, plan, execute and keep a few steps ahead of the police, especially the detective in charge who keeps finding disturbing personal connections. Nordic noir at its best.

What Once Was True, Grainger - B

                   I purchased this because it was presented as an Irish WW2 novel, and the simple uniqueness of that intrigued me. It's more of a romance themed soap opera, but did offer limited insight into the Republic's position of neutrality. It had been less than twenty years since the English had been ousted and it was simply too soon to move past 800 years of oppression and oppose the forces of evil in Germany. In the novel, an Anglo-Irish Lord dies, leaving his family bereft, causing his wife to leave and lease out the land, and compelling the family that worked the land to also leave. The central story is the love between the young RAF pilot who succeeds his dad and the 3rd daughter of the long-time manager of the farm. The farm manager has some interesting IRA skeletons in the closet as well. It's not especially compelling, but I'll likely read the next two books in the trilogy.

The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Agents at the Dawn of the Cold War - A tragedy in Three Acts, Anderson - A*

                   This book is an attempt to pinpoint when anti-communism went from being a worthy crusade to a dictator-backing refutation of our national values. The author, who grew up in Taiwan, S. Korea and Indonesia, places his father was stationed for USAid, and who saw aspects of the Cold War in person, selects 1944-1956. America's transformation was "nothing short of staggering." We went from toppling empires and supporting democracies to bankrolling the British and French overseas, and overthrowing the left-leaning governments of Guatemala and Iran. At home, we engaged in a Red Scare that "fueled cynicism and distrust of government."  The focus of the story is four men. Frank Wisner, Michael Burke, Peter Sichel and Edward Lansdale, all of whom worked for the OSS in WWII.

                    Wisner, a Wall Street lawyer, salvaged the OSS's operations in southeast Europe after they had been infiltrated by the Abwehr. Then in Bucharest, he witnessed first hand the Soviet Union's first perfidious occupation and takeover of a sovereign country. Burke, an upper-crust Ivy Leaguer, fought behind the lines with the Maquis. Sichel, a German-Jewish refugee to NY, was the OSS's blackmarket currency trader in N. Africa and Italy, and then ran agents in the Moselle region of France. Lansdale, a California advertising executive, was, because of his age, an OSS desk jockey in San Francisco, but one who had developed the ability to befriend anyone, particularly Asians, and so was assigned to be the Army's post-war deputy chief of intelligence in the Philippines. He was considered a genius in his ability to understand and observe people. The OSS, particularly Gen. Donovan, anticipated and wanted to be ready for the Cold War. Lansdale was ready in Asia and the younger three in Europe.

                 The transitioning of the OSS into a permanent peacetime foreign intelligence service was not a sure thing, in particular because it was vehemently opposed by J. Edgar Hoover. Indeed, in Sept. 1945, Truman shuttered the agency and moved its functions to the Depts. of State and War. The aggressive conduct of the Soviets throughout eastern Europe eventually led to a firmer America response. The National Security Council and the CIA were established in 1947. A year later, the CIA was tasked with covert responsibilities. As the agency slowly morphed from a think tank to an active opponent of communism, Wisner was slotted in to run covert operations. Burke was hired to start a revolution in Albania. Lonsdale was just back from four years in the Philippines and was training Air Force officers in Colorado. Sichel was running agents in W. Berlin.`

                   Burke went to Rome and began working with the British on the joint effort to undermine the Albanian regime.  It was doomed to fail as the mission was an extreme long shot and his UK colleague was Kim Philby. Even before the mission was finished, Burke was sent to Germany to begin planning destabilization activities in Poland and Ukraine.  Lansdale had been recruited by the CIA, and was now working on how to counter the Huks' peasant uprising in the Philippines. He knew he had his work cut out for him because he had witnessed the landlords, who had collaborated with the Japanese, slide right back up to the top of Filipino society when the war ended. He proposed countering the Huks on the ground and in the villages. He befriended a junior politician, Raymon Magsaysay, a future Filipino president. The two men teamed up in 1951 to assure the honesty of the national election, by challenging the Huks with land reforms and financial awards. With Magasaysay now the Defense Minister, they increased the army's pay threefold and ended the it's endemic corruption. Magasaysay was on the road to the top and Lansdale was right next to him. In 1952, Sichel was sent to DC because he could no longer stay in Germany after having married a German national. And after seven years in Berlin, he was ready to leave. He felt that the US was sacrificing the lives of countless  emigres by returning them to their homes on the other side of the Iron Curtain to foment revolt in a police state, a very unlikely eventuality. Burke, Sichel and others on the front line in Europe slowly realized that they were simply and conclusively sending brave men to their graves. While these men had their doubts, Ike was elected because of his record and his promise to ratchet up the war against communism.

                             Wisner was to be the new CIA Director in 1953, but Hoover despised him, shunted him aside with innuendo and implied threats and laid the groundwork for Allen Dulles to be appointed.  Wisner wound up as number two. Dulles' older brother, John Foster, was the new rabidly anti-communist Secretary of State and looking for opportunities in the wake of Stalin's death. After the British intimated that the popularly- elected PM of Iran, who had just nationalized BP, might get friendly with the local communists, John Foster pushed to overthrow him. Wisner was opposed and thought we should be aligning ourselves with the young nationalist, not the fading empires, but was he overruled. The CIA-led coup eliminated Mohammad Mossadegh, and propped up the Shah. Almost seventy years later, the US is still suffering the consequences of that decision. John Foster squelched Ike's plans to seek some sort of rapprochment and locked in the Cold War. The early Eisenhower years also saw Joe McCarthy resuscitate his Red Scare, and in cahoots with and fed an endless supply of material by Hoover, went after the CIA. To his credit, Allen Dulles backed him down and stopped him in his tracks.

      After Lansdale helped Magsaysay win a presidential election, he returned home, where Dulles told him that "we want you to do the same thing in Vietnam that you did in the Philippines." He arrived as the French were leaving after their defeat at the hands of the Viet Minh and Diem was assuming leadership in the south. After their first meeting, Diem asked Lansdale to come to work for him. Lansdale became indispensable and helped Diem hold down a revolt by a massive crime syndicate in Saigon, eliminate the influence of the die-hard French colonials and solidify Diem's standing in Washington. However, Diem and his brother, Nhu, soon began a slow drift toward dictatorship, thrilling the US overseers and demoralizing the idealist Lansdale.

                   John Foster Dulles was so happy with the Iranian coup that he set his sights on Guatemala. He put Frank Wisner in charge. In Guatemala, the man who had won the most recent election with two-thirds of the vote had decided to end the country's feudal structure and initiate land reform. He also took on an American fruit company, represented by Dulles when he was a a lawyer in NY. He also put a few communists in his government. Unfortunately for Jacobo Arbenez, these actions spelled the end of his career. The Army of Liberation marched in, and once again the CIA had triumphed over incipient communism. Cries of 'Yankee imperialism' rang out around the globe.

                  The Eisenhower administration believed in the CIA and expanded its budget and responsibilities. For Michael Burke, it was time to go; he retired in 1955 and returned to NY.  Wisner's doubts were mounting after his role in the Guatemalan coup the previous year. Continuing to lose people behind the Iron Curtain was gnawing at his soul. And he never received a satisfactory answer to his question: if we succeed in creating an uprising in eastern Europe and the Soviets crush it, which we know they will, what are we accomplishing? His conduct became erratic, prompting one colleague to conclude that"Frank is in real rouble."

                  The year 1956 saw a breakdown in Lansdale's relationship and influence with Diem, who was now an absolute and total dictator. Lansdale came home. In Moscow, Khruschev delivered his famous de-Stalinization speech in February. The news of it shook the world.  In the US, John Foster squelched any discussion of detente and stuck to the hard line. After years of the US encouraging revolt, it finally happened in Budapest. Peaceful protest morphed into spontaneous revolution, with Hungarians shooting the soldiers of the Red Army. They succeeded in expelling the Soviets from the city and the PM, Imre Nagy, declared that he would negotiate the end of Soviet occupation. The Soviets decided to leave, but Khruschev changed his mind the next day. The Soviets responded while the Hungarians awaited an American armed effort. It never came, and the Soviets brutally crushed the rebellion. Wisner was devastated. 

                By the end of Eisenhower's second administration, the US was "now regarded as just one more imperial power bent on the  3rd world's political and economic subjugation." Being tough on communism became the mantra of US policy for the next thirty years.  Ironically, Lansdale's retirement party was  the day of the Diem coup in 1963. The US was committed to a very different path than the one he had encouraged. Wisner's deterioration continued and his career took a downward spiral after he was hospitalized for mental illness. Sichel ran the Hong Kong office for years. In the 50's, he was tasked with the new mission of sending Nationalist Chinese from Taiwan to the mainland to undermine the regime. It sounded like the pipe dream he had walked away from in Berlin a decade ago, and he retired. 

                This is a magnificent book, very well-written, an easy read and a great spotlight on challenging times. The story is much broader than the four men referenced in the book's subtitle. As I have never been much of a fan of America's messianic and interventionist foreign policies, this is right up my alley. The reviews I have seen are all positive and the Times has put the book on their Top 100 for the year.

     

Snow, Banville - B+

                   The past is not even past, particularly in 1957 Ireland when a Garda detective investigates the vicious murder of an RC priest at a Protestant's home. The evisceration points in a likely direction, but the Archbishop would prefer no one looking  that way. The author has won a Booker and, needless to say, has a way with words. Three hundred easy-reading pages pass in a flash.

Bringing The War Home: The White Power Movement And Paramilitary America, Belew - B

  This is the history of the white power movement from  the mid-70's to its high point - the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1994. "It united a wide array of groups and activists previously at odds, thrown together by tectonic shifts in the cultural and political landscape." Loss of faith in the government in the tumultuous 1970's, particularly the country's failure in Vietnam, led to its formation. "The movements religious extremism was integral to its broader revolutionary character." 

  Countless people on the right viewed the US's failure in Vietnam as directly attributable to the weak-willed federal government. Based on their experiences in the military, many whites who fought there came away with a strong dislike for African-Americans. "The Vietnam War signaled a divide between the America of the past and one transformed by antiwar protest and the (civil) rights movement.."  After his tour, Louis Beam, a combat veteran living in Texas, began organizing and training Klansmen to be soldiers at a fifty-acre camp in south Texas. They harassed the Vietnamese fishermen on the Gulf coast and conducted patrols along the US-Mexican border. Significant tensions and violence followed. White anger escalated because of a fallacious belief that the Vietnamese fishermen were also receiving welfare. They began to burn Vietnamese boats in the Galveston area. Texas police, judges and the legislature shut down the white power training infrastructure in 1981.  

  In North Carolina, Klansmen and neo-Nazis began to work together toward the common goal of defeating communism. In Greensboro, the Communist Workers' Party organized an anti-Klan demonstration that led to violence on Nov. 3, 1979. Five demonstrators were killed by the supremacists. A year later, the prosecution of the 14 vigilantes led to state and local verdicts of not guilty. Greensboro garnered support around the country for the supremacists as they portrayed themselves as the righteous, and only, fighters against pernicious communist infiltrators, and anyone who didn't agree with them was  a communist. Some Vietnam vets engaged in armed conflict around the world, particularly in Central America and Africa. Rhodesia attracted Americans, but it was Nicaragua that became their focus because Nicaragua had actual, and successful, communists. The Sandanistas were a threat to the American-backed Samoza dictatorship. Similarly, El Salvador reminded them of another Vietnam. The CMA, an organization founded by a Marine vet from Alabama was actually the entity through which Iran-Contra funds and equipment flowed. 

  "In 1983, The White power movement declared war on the state." Instead of fighting for the US, they decided to destabilize it. The preferred method was to use cells that operated without a top-down system, thus requiring a common cultural narrative and assuring some insulation from the police. The movement featured ex-cons, as well as veterans and was centered in the Northwest, especially in  Idaho. The FBI engaged the movement vigorously and around the country, but was never able to convict more than a handful. The movement was armed to the teeth because of its effectiveness in stealing materiel from the military. With the end of the Cold War, the supremacists simply left behind their anti-communism and focused on anti-semitism and race-hatred of people of color. More people joined organized militias. But they now faced a state that had militarized policing and which crushed them at Ruby Ridge and Waco. At Ruby Ridge, the government used excessive force and broke its own rules of engagement to capture a man who had sold two illegally modified weapons, killing his wife and son in the process.* "It (Ruby Ridge) codified an alliance of tax protesters, radical ant-abortionists, militiamen, racists, Identity Christians, survivalists, conspiracy theorists, and those who simply believed the US government had grown too large." The following year, seventy-six Branch Dividians, violent cultists building a fort with a vast amount of weapons, died in a fire at their compound in Waco when it was stormed by agents of the ATF. Both events inflamed and further grew the movement.   

   The 1995 OKC bombing killed 189 and wounded over 500.  "McVeigh acted without orders from movement leaders, but in concert with movement objectives."  The movement fully supported his act of terror against a symbol of the state. "Indeed, the  bombing launched an almost immediate and widespread wave of violence as the militia movement, and the broader white power movement, took action around the country." Nonetheless, the FBI vigorously tamped down white power activity. The movement disappeared from public view until it re-appeared in the 2016 election. The inability of the state to prosecute and contain the white power movement or resolve the issues that led to its existence provide it with an opportunity to resurface once again.

    This is not an easy book as the prose is somewhat turgid  and the topic altogether frightening.  I do believe the author makes her case throughout. As the movement was extremely vibrant, I'm inclined to not believe it went on a twenty-year hibernation, but that today's vitriol and violence is a different offshoot that the author cannot yet diagnose.                                     

*The FBI agent in charge was demoted and Randy Weaver's family was awarded $3.1M in damages.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins Of Power, Prosperity, And Poverty, Acemoglu and Robinson - B

    The accumulation of wealth happens in societies where political rights are broadly dispersed, thus affording a wide swath of the community to prosper. 

    The discrepancies between the US and Canada and the rest of the hemisphere stem from the differences in their respective foundings. Throughout the colonies of Spain, the conquerors decapitated the local elites and began extracting tribute and wealth. The objective was exploitation of the land and the people. "After an initial phase of looting, the Spanish created a web of institutions designed to exploit the indigenous peoples." Whereas in Virginia, colonists were given land and the vote. They were incentivized to work and invest. Eventually, all thirteen colonies had governors and elected assemblies. America grew in the 19th century, while south of the border there was instability and uncertain property rights. The wide-open banking system and the industrial revolution brought prosperity in the US. The political process determines economic outcomes.

    Patterns of prosperity and poverty around the world have been marvelously consistent for over one hundred and fifty years. It is not geography, religion or culture."The great inequality of the modern world that emerged in the nineteenth century was caused by the uneven dissemination of industrial technologies and manufacturing production." The author's two recurring examples are Nogales, a city in Sonora and its compatriot in Arizona. They share everything except governing systems and have had radically different results. Similarly, East and West Germany and North and South Korea. Economic activity in the north of Korea is one-tenth of that in the south. Inclusive systems generate prosperity; extractive ones, failure. That said, extractive institutions can generate growth, but it is a growth based on existing technologies, and thus, has limits.  The planter elites in the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries created vast wealth on the backs of slaves cultivating sugar. The prime example, though, is the first 50 years of the USSR. The Communist Party re-ordered and grew the economy. But, by the 1970's the Soviet system had stalled as a prelude to collapse, because there were no incentives or property rights. On the other hand, inclusive societies may achieve success, for example Venice, and then drift into failure. The sea-going trading nation was the richest place in the world in the early Middle Ages. Its legal system encouraged business partnerships which in turn created upward mobility. The Doge was selected by a general assembly. In the 14th century, Venice slowly succumbed to aristocratic control and "went from powerhouse to museum."

    The Industrial Revolution in England was the most important event in the transition of mankind from subsistence economies to today's technological-based system of vast wealth and improving public health around the world. By the 18th century, the UK had broad pluralistic political institutions and enforceable property rights, thus creating an environment for entrepreneurial growth. The fields of textiles and transportation were the first to be transformed. While England and northern Europe embraced change, the absolutist regimes rejected it, thus causing their societies to fall behind Europe's. Free societies invariably trump absolutist systems.  The US and Australia eagerly adopted the revolution and had inclusive institutions that embraced it.  The end of absolutism in France opened up that country as well. The Russian, Austro-Hungarian,  and Ottoman Empires retained absolutist systems and fell further behind. China remained both closed, i.e. it discouraged any foreign trade, and absolutist. Of course, today's China is a much different story. It has succeeded by offering economic freedoms, but not political ones. The authors believe that China's oppressive politics will eventually stall economic growth.

    The success of inclusive states is not assured in any sense. "They are often the outcome of significant conflict between elites resisting economic growth and political change and those wishing to limit the existing...power of the elites." But, when conflict leads to reforms and broad-based empowerment, it also invariably leads to further success. 

    This book was highly acclaimed when it was published in 2012. Indeed, it is a brilliant exposition of a compelling idea. Jared Diamond offered his constructive critique that it did not hew close enough to his geographic considerations, but that said, the concepts are not mutually exclusive. However, it is a challenge to read because each chapter travels far and wide, spatially and temporally. My thanks to Wendell Erwin for suggesting (I think twice) that I read it.

    

    

First Wave, Benn - B

     This is the second book in the Billy Boyle series. This time, our Hardy Boy-ish hero is in North Africa for the US's introduction to war with the Germans. First though, the Vichy French need to be handled. The plot involves theft of the new penicillin wonder drug and French Nazi collaborators. As said earlier, pure light-hearted WW2-era escapism.

The Abstainer, McGuire - C

                     This novel is set in 1867 Manchester and features Jimmy O'Connor, a cop sent there from Dublin. His role is to try to find the Fenians, who are starting to make trouble, including the occasional act of terror. Most of the English cops don't trust O'Connor, who begins to have second doubts after a few failures. He leaves for the States to seek revenge on another Irishman who has killed his nephew. I am somewhat befuddled by the high-praise this book has received.