Spycatcher, Dunn - B-

                          This is the first book in a series, written by a retired MI6 field agent. Thus, our hero is British.  Will Cochrane is the only agent designated as 'Spartan' and, as such, operates outside of normal channels. His existence is known only to the PM and his controller.  He is truly a superman spy and saves the world from an Iranian assault on the US. The details are unimportant.

Engineers of Victory, Kennedy - B-

                           This book, by the noted Yale professor Paul Kennedy, is subtitled 'The Problem Solvers Who Turned The Tide In The Second World War'.  He studies five strategic challenges identified by Roosevelt and Churchill at the Casablanca Conference in 1942 and makes his case for the technological adjustments and discoveries that led to the dominating Allied victories in 1944 at Normandy, in Operation Bagration in the Ukraine and the Mariana Islands in the Pacific. I do not believe his thesis is compelling.
                           His best argument is about the air war over Europe. By the end of 1943 into early 1944, the RAF and USAAF had virtually abandoned their failed attempts at strategic bombing, which Kennedy, an Englishman who remembers being bombed in London as a boy, calls indiscriminate terror bombing.  There were days when the Allies lost 20% of their planes and the raids on Berlin were costing the British 5.2% of every sortie.  The solution for victory was a plane with an American frame and a Rolls Royce engine; the Mustang.  By providing the bombers full escort coverage with the Mustang, the Allies quickly controlled the air over Europe. The Mustang was faster than anything the Luftwaffe had, could fly higher and longer, and, virtually overnight, grounded the Germans in the spring of 1944. On June 6th, we had 12,000 planes in the air and the Germans had 170. I find it ultimately incredibly ironic that today the Rolls Royce automotive brand is owned by BMW, of Munich.
                          The case for change in the Battle of the Atlantic is a bit less compelling, but certainly credible. In March of 1943, the U-Boats were on the verge of shutting down the UK. Yet, the introduction of radar on fighter planes, a new type of depth-charge, a night vision device that could find U-Boats surfacing to re-charge their batteries, better escort techniques, and escort airplane carriers, eliminated the German challenge in the North Atlantic. For the rest of the war, the U-boats went far afield to the Americas and Africa to carry on their fight.
                          The third strategic challenge was how to land on a foreign shore. After barely coming ashore in Africa and almost losing at Anzio, there was no certainty that Overlord would succeed. The author reminds us that Ike wrote a letter of resignation apologizing for the failure of the invasion. Control of the air carried the day, and the German belief (helped by subterfuge) that the main thrust would come in the Pas-de-Calais assured that Rommel received inadequate reinforcements.
                          The case he makes for stopping Blitzkrieg is, in my opinion, the weakest. He points to the T-34 tank as a weapon that made a difference on the Eastern front. Yet, it is  Russia's overwhelming superiority in numbers that led to Germany's defeat in the East.  Indeed, he points out that man for man, unit for unit, army for army, the Allies had no match the Wehrmacht.
                           His last case study, the tyranny of distance in the Pacific, states that it was the Marines, the aircraft carrier dominance and the B-29 that turned the tide. As I have always assumed that mid-war weaponry and systems adjustments were part of all wars, this just doesn't add up for me.
                            Although, I struggled with the basic premise, I thoroughly enjoyed this esteemed historian's insights into so many aspects of the war. He points out that Ike stopped the strategic bombing and had both Air Forces bomb the French railroad infrastructure. There were 20,000 French casualties, but it prevented the Germans from retreating or being reinforced in Normandy. Also, as the Germans were trying to restart their Eastern war at Kursk in 1943, Hitler moved troops from that front to Italy, because the Allies landed and the Italians withdrew from combat.  He even muses about the consequence of forty-million Ukrainians who welcomed the Germans, despised Stalin, but were brutalized and not welcomed as potential allies.  This was not an easy book, but it is an insightful one.

Cuckoo's Calling, Galbraith (Rowling) - C+

                                                 From sales of approximately 1500 to the best-seller lists when its actual author was identified, this novel is now part of pop culture - famous for being famous.  It's oh-so-trendy and  sequels are being anticipated.  Cormoran Strike is about to become a series. Perhaps the BBC should make a bid before it's too late.   If the author had not been identified, this book clearly would have disappeared.  It's kind of interesting and maybe even well-written, but the story is not that compelling.  A fashion model falls to her death and her brother hires a down-and-out detective to find out if she had been killed, after the police had ruled it a suicide.  The inquiry does highlight the fascinating world of supermodels, designers, rock stars and social-climbers.  The key clue is a designer one-off hoodie  made for a rapper, who has written songs about Lulu, the poor victim here.  I don't think the Strike character is that interesting and certainly isn't fully developed. The Times reviewer couldn't resist calling it a "book set in all-Muggles London", but concludes it "is flawed by a Psycho-like explanatory ending".

As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me, Bauer - C+

                                               This story was written in the mid-fifties in W. Germany and is about Lt. Clemens Forell, a Wehrmacht officer with the most unique post-war experience I have ever read about.  The Soviets imprisoned, in the Gulag, those POWs who survived the war.  Those who lived were not freed until after Stalin died in 1953. Forell chose a different option; he walked thousands of miles over three years on the road from Siberia to Bavaria.
                                               He left a camp near the Bering Straits in eastern Siberia in October of 1949. He was aided by a physician who had stashed gear for his own effort, but realized he was terminally ill.  Although reasonably well-equipped, it was not possible to do without help from people along the way. The first two groups to help were reindeer herders who lived a nomadic life and were not inclined to cooperate with the authorities. They were followed by three Russian Gulag escapees, and then a tribe of Yakut dog breeders.  As he was preparing to cross the border into Mongolia, a German who had been stuck in Siberia since WW1 suggested that he head west and gave him some names of people to seek in the Urals. He was eventually helped by an Armenian Jew, and was ultimately taken into Iran by smugglers in 1952.  It took months for him to convince them he was not a Communist spy.  The book was re-published because a movie was made of this story in 2001.

A Brief History of Slavery, Black - C+

                                        This a very dry, almost academic, summary of slavery that points out that slavery has been part of the human experience since before recorded time. It is mentioned in the Old Testament and was part of life in Ancient Egypt, Israel, Japan, China, Greece and Rome.  Agrarian societies needed labor and  right up until the Industrial Revolution, there was slavery almost everywhere on earth.  Because there is so little information available on slavery in Asia and Africa, this book focuses on the trans-Atlantic slave trade over the 400 years between 1500 and 1900.  During that time, an estimated 12.5 million Africans were transported to the New World in approximately 35,000 voyages.  Nonetheless, it is believed that the Arab-driven trans-Sahara, trans-Red Sea and trans-Indian Ocean slave trade exceeded that number.  All of this was done with the connivance of those Africans who sold their brethren to the foreigners.  In Eastern Europe, serfdom, a system of forced labor based on hereditary bondage, prevailed.
                                        The Portuguese initiated the first trans-Atlantic traffic from the west coast of Africa to Brazil. The Spanish quickly followed as their presence in the hemisphere wreaked havoc on the native populations and created a demand for slaves. In the 18th Century, the success of the plantation systems, which provided tobacco, sugar and coffee to Europe hastened the trans-Atlantic activity. The inability of the white indentured servant to provide the requisite labor pool in the Chesapeake region led to the introduction of African slaves to British North America. Between, 1700 and 1763, the number grew from 20,000 to 300,000 in what became the US.
                                        In London in 1787, The Society For The Abolition of Slavery was started by Quakers, who began the moral crusade that brought down the "peculiar institution". The British banned the slave trade and in 1833, abolished slavery in the Empire. They vigorously tried to remove it from the high seas and by the middle of the century, the Royal Navy had 35 ships cruising off the African coast.  When the states of Latin America threw off their Spanish yoke, they too abolished slavery. America followed and the last major slave economy to abolish it was Brazil in 1888. Although banned and abolished, slavery exists in different forms today. The author points out that indentured bondage and horrible living conditions exist throughout the world. He even suggests that it is possible to characterize the N. Korean state as a perpetuator of slavery. The legacy of slavery challenges the world still.

The English Girl, Silva - B++

                                         This is the thirteenth book in the Gabriel Allon series that just keeps getting better and better.  Allon is the Israeli master assassin, who'd rather be an art restorer, and who first worked for the Mossad avenging the Munich Olympic massacre.  He is a complex character, the only son of Holocaust survivors,  a reluctant, yet terribly skilled agent. Silva has him slated for the Chief's job, which in all likelihood extends the series a decade or so. At some point a sixty-year-old can't be a field agent. In this book, he is requested by his English friends to try and find the PM's kidnapped mistress. He fails in his efforts, but decides to re-consider the whole operation a month or so later. He unearths a unique, diabolical Russian connection and off we go on a great, exciting operation that plays out between London and Moscow. Silva is now the second writer I've read this year who claims that the Cold War is back on and who has Russia's President playing an active role in international intrigue.  He also writes with great conviction in support of the state of Israel, while writing wonderful thrillers.

The Cambridge Concise History of Switzerland, Church and Head - C

                         While recently driving through Confederation Helvetia, I wondered about how it all came about and found the answers here, albeit in a dry, academic tome. The authors emphasize that a myth of community is the Swiss national link, as the country has never had a common language, and since the Reformation has had serious religious divisions. That 'community' developed in the Alps, where the north/south valleys were a key trade route that led to a higher degree of urbanization than elsewhere in Europe. Additionally, the cooperative nature of pastoralism established stronger, cohesive farming communities. Thus, the cities and farms in their mountain isolation were better able to resist those wishing to impose power and control from the outside.  A 1291 Confederation of three cantons grew to nine after a 1386 defeat of an invading Hapsburg army.  Even though deeply divided by the Reformation, the Swiss never took to arms and maintained their neutrality during the Thirty Years War. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia established  Swiss independence within the Holy Roman Empire. The Swiss began to prosper and accumulate wealth because they did not have to fund a military. Indeed, they profited by hiring out their famous mercenaries. Prosperity and credit afforded them the opportunity to be early participants in the industrial revolution. By the end of the nineteenth century, Switzerland was a centralized, democratic state that had one of the highest per capita GDP's in Europe. Neutrality came with a heavy price in WW2.  They were surrounded by the Axis and at one point had to mobilize half-a-million men as the Germans were considering invasion. Their generally cooperative economic policies with the Germans led to some serious disagreements with the US, who had frozen their NY gold reserves. Post-war Switzerland prospered as a bridge between east and west. Since 1989,  the challenge the Swiss have faced has been from a strongly centralizing European Union. How to participate in Europe, while preserving their unique identity, is the issue of today and tomorrow.

Mason's Retreat, Tilghman - B

                                         This novel is the 1996 book that led to 'The Right Hand Shore', last year's prequel, reviewed here in April.  Although this book also deals with the uniqueness of the Eastern Shore, it is more a novel of a family's slow disintegration.  Edward Mason is the last of his family to own Mason's Retreat, a vast farm in the family for three centuries. He reluctantly moves his wife and two sons there in 1936, after his business in England falters.  Edward is indifferent, but everyone else falls for the old place and his oldest son, Sebastien, works diligently and learns how to manage the farm. When Edward returns to England to resurrect his business,  Edith, Sebastien and the youngest, Simon, stay behind and all prosper without him.  On the eve of the war, Edward returns to reclaim his wife, who has strayed from their marriage, and to bring the family to England with him. His efforts lead to a stunning tragedy. I think these two books are worth the effort and I'd recommend reading this one first.

Masaryk Station, Downing - B+

                                         This is the sixth novel in the John Russell/Station series.  Russell is an Anglo-American journalist living in Berlin when the series starts in 1939. He's trying to hold together a complicated personal life that involves an ex-wife married to a high-ranking German, a son in the Hitler Youth and a girlfriend who is a noted actress. The first five novels have a Berlin train station as the title; this one though is named after one in Prague. Over the years, Russell has pulled off an incredible and improbable survival act as a part-time espionage agent who works for both the USSR and the USA.  This novel is set in 1948, just as the Iron Curtain falls over Czechoslovakia and the airlift is beginning in Berlin.  The plots are a bit too complicated and intricate, but the background is historical storytelling at its best. You can see the rubble in Berlin, feel the desperation in Prague and the indifference in Vienna.  There's a superb depiction of uranium mining in E. Germany, as well as information about the creation of the new Deutschmark. Russell is a former communist and watches an old friend fall apart as he slowly realizes that Stalin's Europe is not exactly what they had hoped for.  It's not all one-sided though as Downing takes the Allies and the R.C. Church to task for their complicity in running the rat-line that helped thousands of evildoers escape Europe.

The Pacific War 1941 - 1945, Costello - A*

                                         After completing Atkinson's last book, I realized it had been decades since I had read about the Pacific, and found this extraordinary 1981 publication. It is referred to in any number of websites as the best one-volume treatment of the subject,  and I heartily concur.  The author traces the conflict to the turn of the 20th century when we became a Pacific power by annexing the Philippines and the Japanese became a threat with their sneak attack at Port Arthur, Russia.  TR announced our global  ambitions by sending the  famous 'white fleet' around the world. (Interestingly, a young Lieutenant named Halsey was aboard when the fleet docked in Tokyo Bay.)  Our planners put our Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, fearing that Subic Bay in the Philippines was susceptible to Japanese attack.                        
                                         During the First World War, the Japanese took over the German islands in the mid-Pacific and announced that they would free East Asia from imperialism. The British pulled back to Singapore and our Congress refused to fund a Navy capable of projecting American power in the western Pacific.  The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. By 1938, the JCS acknowledged that we could not defend the Philippines and that we had a greater threat from Germany, so we shifted much of our fleet to the Atlantic.  By the time of Pearl Harbor, war was expected, but it was assumed the strike would come in the Indies, the Philippines or Russia.
                                         Pearl Harbor was followed by the invasion of the American colony of the Philippines, the capture of Singapore and Burma in February and  Rangoon and Java in March.  The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was about to be implemented. Indeed, the newspapers in Tokyo had heralded victory in the Pacific.  One mistake the Japanese made was to place all of their conquered territories under the Army's martial law. Their brutality and inhumanity assured no one would ever side with them against the imperialists.
                                        By the time Corregidor fell in May, MacArthur was in Australia, in charge of the western Pacific theater, and Nimitz was in Pearl in charge of the central Pacific.   For the next three-plus years there would be constant rivalry and tension between the two, yet King and Marshall managed it all from Washington and in the end it worked out spectacularly for the Americans and our Allies.  Our industrial capacity assured the outcome, but one of the great facilitators of our success was Ultra. Throughout the war, we knew everything the Japanese planned and consistently took advantage of that, including when we needed it the most - at Midway.
                                       Doolittle's Raid - the Coral Sea - Midway - Guadalcanal - Papua - the Bismarck Sea - the Solomons - Bougainville - Tarawa - New Britain - the Marshalls - the Admiralty Islands - Burma - Saipan -Philippines Sea - Peleliu - Luzon - Leyte Gulf - Iwo Jima - Okinowa.  Slowly but surely, over three-and-a-half years, American will-power, courage, and determination pounded the Japanese into eventual submission.
                                       As we pursued a dual strategy with Mac headed back to the Philippines and Nimitz atoll hopping, the JCS gave up on China in 1944.  Stillwell called Chiang 'peanut' and no amount of US prodding could get the Nationalists to fight. Their corruption and cowardice awaited the final coup d'etat from the Reds.
                                       By the time it was over, Mac had been appointed Supreme Commander, so the Navy insisted that the surrender be aboard ship in Tokyo Harbor. The USS Missouri was chosen because it was named after Truman's home state.  Wainwright, who had withstood four years of brutal imprisonment, was flown in to stand with the victors, under Perry's 1853 flag, thoughtfully provided by now Admiral Halsey.

Lives By Night, Lehane - B

                                         Living by night is what outlaws and gangsters, men like Joe Coughlin, do.  The nights are filled with hookers, crooked cops, bouncers and bullies in prohibition-era Boston and Tampa Bay. Coughlin, though, is a decent guy living with a wonderful Cuban wife and someone with readily understandable, almost admirable, values.  He is fair, generous, loyal, honest ( in a mobster kind of way), a team player - just someone trying to get along by getting by.  Lehane is a great storyteller and he paints a vivid picture of the era.

The Battle of Bretton Woods, Steill - B-

                                         Bretton Woods is the famous 1944 conference that created the postwar financial world and gave us the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Times calls this book the "gold standard" on the topic, but acknowledges it's a bit "dense".  When you are as economics challenged as I am, the more apt characterization is that it's Greek to me.  The Allies required a system that would make certain there was no repeat of the economic evils of the 30's that were considered contributing causes to the war. The twin evils were protectionism and currency devaluations, which FDR called "economic weapons". However, the two principal creators of the new era would bring conflicting goals to the table. The Americans, particularly FDR and his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, wanted an end to the imperial preferences that propped up the British Empire.  Furthermore, the American public and Congress agreed with Calvin Coolidge's famous comment about Europeans seeking to avoid paying their WW1 loans : "They hired the money, didn't they?" The American side was very reluctant to continue to provide men, munitions and money to prop up the Empire of a nation that didn't pay its earlier debts. We, of course, know that Winston many times had said that he did not become the Kings First Minister to dismantle the Empire.
                                        The adversaries in the two-year battle were an American I had never heard of, Harry White. He was a poor boy from Boston who scrambled to the top of the Economics profession and was the Asst. Treasury Secretary at the Bretton Woods Conference. His opponent was a man referred to by all as God, albeit playing a very weak hand. The amazing thing about Keynes is that six and a half decades after his death, a reader of financial news cannot go more than a few days without seeing his name. Actually the British hand turned out to be a dead mans hand, and the Yanks prevailed on every single issue before, at, and after the Conference. Indeed, the effort Keynes expended in the battle are generally conceded to be the reason for his death in the spring of 1946 at the age of 62. I do not believe I can accurately summarize the many issues that were contested. The primary one was currency convertibility, and the Americans clobbered the world with an insistence that the dollar was the "only gold-convertible currency".  Keynes tried for a newly created reserve currency or a floating system.  The Bretton Woods system was abandoned in 1971 and as we all acknowledge now, Keynes was correct seventy years ago and the Americans were wrong
                               .       Although I could barely (if at all) follow the economics, I still learned some interesting things about the war from this book. Churchill called Lend-Lease the "most unsordid" act of any nation. He was being polite and appreciative. America wrung every last penny out of Britain in exchange for our "loan" of materials.  We required them to sell their American assets at discount prices to the US and squeezed at every opportunity.  Truman cut it off Lend-Lease almost immediately after V-E day.  Henry Morgenthau is best remembered for his recommendation that we impose a Carthaginian peace on Germany, destroy its industry and make it an agrarian society.  Ike acknowledged to Marshall that after Goebbels played that up to the troops  the Germans fought twice as hard, clearly prolonging the war.  Perhaps Economics isn't a dismal science.

Red Sparrow, Matthews - B++

                                         The author spent 35 years in the CIA and brilliantly sets forth the new Cold War, between Russia and the US, assuring us that the old Cold War never really ended.  A certain former KGB officer from East Berlin is now President and is quite involved running the SFR, the modern KGB with a new a set  of initials.  The game is the same, the players too, but with a recently renovated ballpark.  A brilliant Russian ballerina is recruited by her uncle, trained and sent to ensnare a young American who is currently running the CIA's most valuable Russian asset.  Since I believe anyone who sees this post should read the book, I will simply say that the plot is a three dimensional, LeCarre-like chessboard.   The many expositions of tradecraft, by someone who actually did it in some very unpleasant places is the most enlightening part.  This is fun!

Deadly Virtues, Bannister - B-

                                          This is an interesting book set in an English town, wherein the police chief is lauded for having cleaned things up, with the exception of one local bad guy who always seems to slip out of his fingers.  It takes most of the book to figure out that the bad guy helped the chief arrest all of the other evildoers in exchange for his privileged protection.  When a young frightened black man is killed in jail by a local goon, an investigation into his death slowly peels back the layers of deceit and lies.  With the help of a new young woman fresh out of police school, the chief finally does his duty.

The Redeemer, Nesbo - B +

                                          I am not sure which Harry Hole police thriller this is as they are translated out of sequence and this book  takes place well ahead of a few of the recent ones.  It should be noted that they are now advertising these with Michael Connelly (creator of Harry Bosch) saying that Hole is his favorite detective.  Hole is  a fascinating man, totally dysfunctional off the job, yet the consummate pro while leading Oslo's murder squad.  His hardbitten cynicism and personal desolation is what we assume is the epitome of a troubled Scandinavian.  In this novel, a recurrent theme in all of the European series is back - the significant dislocations across the continent caused by the expansion of the EU and the opening of the borders.  Here we have a Croatian serial killer hired by a senior member of the management of Norway's Salvation Army.  Harry gets his man, the Norwegian, and lets the Croat go because the only way he could solve the case is to make a pact with the killer's mother.

Under The Radar, Hamilton - Paterson - B-

                                         This is sort of a British 'Right Stuff' filled with nostalgia for the 60's and the men who flew Vulcans for the RAF.  Vulcans were the airborne leg of the UK's nuclear capabilities.  Toss together some Soviet spying, some repressed homosexuality, a dramatic bailout from a damaged Vulcan, a lot of information about electronic counter measures and British bombing practice training and you get a nice light old-fashioned read.

Fidelity's World, Henriques - C

                                         When I read the Madoff book earlier this year, I noted that the author had written a book about Fidelity, so I ordered it from Amazon. I did not pay much attention to the description of the author as an "investigative reporter", the fact that the book was published in 1995, or the subtitle, 'The Secret Life and Public Power of the Mutual Fund Giant'.  "The lady doth protest too much" kept running through my mind and eventually led to me skimming the last half of the book.  Clearly, from a century ago when "robber barons" "front ran", to today's insider trading scandals, Wall Street  has often been a sink of criminality.  Yet, at the same time it has been the capital allocator throughout this country's extraordinary success and growth.  This book attempts to tie  the Boston mutual fund business, and specifically Fidelity, to every financial misdeed that has ever happened.  Yes,  Ed Johnson ran the company when mutual fund salesmen were certainly sleazy. Yes, his son Ned has run the company since the sixties and his first bond/money fund guru was sentenced to two months in jail (after she left Fidelity) for accepting some extra-legal compensation both at and after she left Fidelity. But so what?
                                       The mutual fund industry was started in Boston as a result of "the prudent man rule" promulgated by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.  That rule led to the private trusteeship of wealth, and in turn, to three investment trusts in the '20's.  Ed Johnson, a young lawyer from Ropes and Gray moved over to the investment side and worked at Incorporated Investors before he purchased a small mutual fund management company.  His son Ned grew Fidelity into one of the largest money managers in the world. Ned went along with Vanguard's Bogle and changed Fidelity's offerings to no-load in 1979. Both Vanguard and Fidelity have completely democratized investing around the world. Ned dreamed up check-writing for money market funds and along the way has become very, very rich and wants to maintain his family's control of the company. I'm quite comfortable with complimenting someone who has built wealth for millions, as well as for his employees and family.                    

Antarctica, Day - B-

                                         We have biographies of cities, and more recently, rivers, so why not a continent?  This very well-written book is the story of mankind's varying attempts to discover, investigate and eventually occupy the vast southern continent.  Something was always believed to there, but the first to venture into its dangerous waters was Cook in the late eighteenth century.  He believed it was a frozen wasteland and not worth the effort to look into.  He was correct, but that did not stop the endless attempts to explore the continent. In the nineteenth century, Britain, France, Russia, America and Norway were the primary searchers.  In the waters north of Antarctica and on the many islands between Antarctica and South America, they found whales and seals and vigorously pursued commercial fishing opportunities.  The golden age of exploration took place at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sir Earnest Shackleton made the "furthest south" on behalf of Great Britain. Over the summer of 1911-12, Amundsen and Scott paired off in their fateful race to the Pole.  This tale is vividly depicted in a Masterpiece Theatre mini-series called 'The Last Place on Earth', which was based on 'Amundsen and Scott', a brilliant and enthralling book by Roland Huntford published in the UK in 1979, and reissued here under the same name as the tv show. I've also read Amundsen's memoirs of the adventure, as well as a number of other books. Unfortunately for me, there are 400+ pages in this book that cover the period after Scott dies.  Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the above countries, as well as the southern hemisphere entrants of Chile, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand all tried to claim sovereignty over the icy wastes.  The issue reached the height of absurdity when the USA and USSR took their cold war competition to the South Pole.  Matters have been more or less resolved since the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which froze territorial claims, provided for the sharing of scientific information, and demilitarized the continent.

A Delicate Truth, LeCarre - B-

                                         There are moments in this book when you feel as if the 80+year-old author has defied time and remains a master of creativity. In the opening scenes describing the joint US/British covert operation on Gibraltar, the words majestically fly off the page; he describes someone as a jihadist Pimpernel - a truly brilliant characterization.  I thought the book steadily went downhill along the way to what one of the two Times reviewers called its "unsurprising conclusion."  One of the principals of the above mission later finds out that the operation went terribly wrong.  He is a retired veteran of the Foreign Office and teams up with an up-and-coming thirty-one year old to try and find out what did happen and to expose it. The cloak and dagger set, the Foreign Office, and the Official Secrets Act all combine to make sure that doesn't happen.  LeCarre takes to task the British establishment for going along with the Iraq War, leading to the inevitable comments that he has become anti-American.  Author Olen Steinhauer in the other Times' review points out that that characterization of anti- Americanism would also encompass at least half of America.
 -

A Conspiracy of Faith, Adler-Olson - B

                                         In the third Dept. Q novel, the author appears to hit his stride. It's not as over-the-top funny nor as compelling as the first one, but is a much better story than the second.  It is a solid police procedural with interesting plot points along the way; a book that knows its place and goes about its business. Dept. Q is handed a case from Scotland, where a bottle with a note inside it has washed up.  Examination reveals a Danish connection that helps lead Carl and his team to a thirteen-year-old kidnapping.  The kidnapper targets large families with an evangelical religious connection, and takes advantage of each sect's tendency to keep everything, even kidnappings and murder, within their own group and away from the police.  The case is successfully cracked and is resolved with a good ending.

Invisible Armies, Boot - Incomplete

                        One does not really expect a professional historian in the Times to be too harsh when reviewing the work of  another professional.  Yet, the reviewer does suggest that the first few sections of this book "could have been pruned back a bit. The early history feels sketchy...."  This endeavor is  subtitled "An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare From Ancient Times to the Present."  Undoubtedly, a history of irregular warfare is going to feel chaotic, and kudos to the author for pointing out that throughout most of history war has been 'irregular'.  Nomadic forces, the Mongols in the east and the Huns in the west are superb examples of early  non-state actors with substantial impact on the outcome of world history. Prior to the 17th century, the only state to recruit, train, barrack, and supply standing armies were the Romans. Thus, it is only in modern history that the assessment of irregular and regular forces can truly be made. There is some very interesting discourse about hybrid wars, part guerrilla and part regular, one example of which is our American Revolution. The southern raiders, like the Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, wore down Cornwallis, while Washington waited for him to stumble. The author also points out that it was the first time that the concept of public opinion impacted an outcome. There was substantial opposition to the war within Britain that led to a discontinuation of an effort well within their capabilities to carry on. The Times reviewer also points out that, "The effort to link guerrillas and terrorists does not come off."  The author cites the Social Revolutionaries in Russia as successful terrorists, as they killed a Czar and, in the twenty years run up to the November Revolution wreaked havoc in Russia.  But, it took  three years of a failed war effort to topple the  Russian Empire.  The first practitioners of irregular warfare  to successfully overthrow the shackles of occupation and domination were the Irish.  Here too public opinion made it impossible to do to the Irish what the British had done to the Boers twenty years earlier or were doing to the Iraqis at the same time. It's hard to slaughter non-combatants or put in concentration camps people who are represented in Parliament.  Ultimately, the reviewer observes that the book "really has two authors, sometimes working together, sometimes not". And ultimately, I put the book down. The jumping around from era to era; the chapters that were sometimes less than ten pages and my inability to find the binding thread made the whole process - well, chaotic for me.

A Most Wanted Man, LeCarre B+

                                         Yet another masterpiece from the the great spy novelist and former member of Britain's MI 6.  This one is set in Hamburg, the city that was home to some of the 9/11 terrorists, and involves a young man just arrived there from Chechnya, via Russian and Turkish jails, a tramp steamer, Sweden, and Copenhagen.  He is there to claim his late father's illicit funds on account with a less than blue chip Scottish bank.  You never know if he is a victim or an evil doer as the Germans hover over him or even after the GWOT hoovers him up.

Topaz, Uris B +

                                         Leon Uris was one of the wonderful novelists to emerge from the WW2 generation.   He was a poor Jewish boy from Baltimore, who joined the Marines at 17 and went on to write many successful books and screenplays. He is most famous for 'Exodus'.  'Topaz' was a 1967 thriller set against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis.  As always, his characters are well drawn, his plotting is intriguing and his historical background information is well researched and accurate.  Here, he provides a very insightful exposition of Franco/American tensions that began during the war and lived on deep into the Cold War.

The Guns at Last Light, Atkinson - A*

                                         This is the third volume of 'The Liberation Trilogy', the author's homage to the U.S. Army and its men in their three theater battle with Germany in World War II.  'An Army at Dawn' told of their start in Africa and won a Pulitzer. 'The Day of Battle' detailed the gruesome, brutal, and under-appreciated campaign in Italy. This is the story of their triumph from D-Day to VE day, at D+335.  As a nation, we remember the perfidy of Pearl Harbor and know the outline of our almost four year battle against Japan, but it is this eleven month tale that we treasure, honor and remember just a bit more. This is the war whose leaders are part of our folklore: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Smith, Ridgeway, Roosevelt,Taylor, Gavin, Abrams, and McAuliffe. Very few of us know as many names from the Pacific.
                                       From June 6, 1944 right up to the end, the Army was hindered by supply shortages. Men and material were perpetually unavailable. The French port of Cherbourg was destroyed by the Germans and only one of the two Mulberries survived a gale that hit the Channel soon after the landings.  It would not be until Nov. 28, when the Belgian port of Antwerp was liberated by the Canadians, that the Allies had reliable and sufficient dockage on the continent.  Fortunately for us, Hitler kept a twenty-division reserve in the Pas-de-Calais, because that is where they figured the invasion would come. The depth of the Normandy beachhead was only six miles on July 1. Casualties on both sides were at the same ratio as 1917. The breakthrough did not come until July 26. By August 21, the Germans were essentially out of France and headed to the Westwall.                                                            
                                      The U.S. Army actually entered Germany on Sept. 11, but it would take them another six months to breach the Rhine, barely seventy-five miles away. Allied planners had assumed they would not reach the Fatherland until May,1945. They were not prepared for their early success. Again, they simply did not have the supplies to project their strength into Germany. Ammo, food, and winter clothing were lacking. The rainfall along the front in November was triple the annual averages. A brutal winter followed. The fall saw the failure of Market Garden, the slog in the Huertgen Forest, and the repulse that was the Battle of the Bulge. When the Germans initiated their Ardennes offensive on Dec.16, they had a 5:1 advantage in artillery  and a 3:1 in armor.
                                        On Jan. 20th, the Soviets were on the Oder, fifty miles from Berlin, and we were still two months from crossing the Rhine. In addition to supply challenges, there still was not an agreed upon strategy for finishing off the Germans. Monty and Ike battled incessantly (as an American, it certainly appears as if Monty was insufferable).  Monty wanted a British thrust into northern Germany; Ike wanted a massive front with Monty on the north and Bradley in the south. It got so bad that Marshall told the Combined Chiefs that Monty "was an impudent and disloyal subordinate, who treated all American officers with open contempt. "                                                        
                                       Two weeks after the March 7 breach at Remagen, seven Allied Armies crossed the Rhine and entered Germany.  It was pretty much over then as there were few organized forces between the Rhine and the Elbe. We met the Soviets on April 25th, the day they surrounded Berlin.  The Battle of Berlin cost the Soviets three hundred thousand casualties, thus confirming for Ike, his decision to not try for the Reich capital.
                                       "Twelve years after it had began, the Thousand-Year Reich had ended. Humanity would require decades, perhaps centuries, to parse the regime's inhumanity, and to comprehend how a narcissistic beer hall demagogue had wrecked a nation, a continent and nearly a world."
                                        In 1947, the US Army forwarded Quartermaster General Form 345 to the next of kin of 270,000 Americans asking if they wished to have their soldier brought home for interment. Over sixty percent came home on ghost ships carrying over five thousand caskets apiece, which then traveled by rail across the republic.
                                        16,112,566 Americans were in uniform during the war. Demographers forecast that the number will dip below a million in late 2014 and 100,000 in 2024. Shockingly, they expect there will be four hundred veterans alive to see the 90th anniversary of D-Day. Certainly those soon to be centenarians never became devotees of the Luckies, Camels and Chesterfields that were staples in their K-rations.

The English Monster, Shepherd - B-

                                          This is a very well done entertaining novel that links together two disparate stories: England's two-and-a-half century leadership of the slave trade and some frightful murders in the East End in 1811.  However, it's not that black and white, as the monster is (I think) an allegory for the slave trade.  Slavery has been an integral part of man's history.  The trans-Atlantic trade was massive in scale and coincided with Europe's conquest of the Americas.  The English heroes John Hawkyns and Francis Drake partook in it in a ship owned by good Queen Bess.  The author contends that it was the source of profits that grew the empire from a 17th century wannabe to the 19th century master of the universe.  The most descriptive sections of the book, however, are those that deal with the expansion of London, its docks and its trade east of the city and further into the Thames estuary.  He almost has Dickens' touch as he describes the blending of earth and sea east of London.

Looking Good Dead, James - B-

                                         There are currently eight novels in the Roy Grace series and this is my third.  They are police procedural/detective stories set in Brighton, on the English coast. The author is a skilled storyteller, a native of Brighton who adds tons of color, and a devious plotter, but a bit on the dark side. These novels have a violent tinge, not unlike some of the Scottish ones I've come across. In this one, Grace uncovers an internet business specializing in snuff films. Similar to almost every European novel I've read in the last decade, this one goes behind the old Iron Curtain to find some vicious bad guys.

The Night Ranger, Berenson - B

                                         This is the author's ( a former NYTimes reporter) seventh novel about John Wells: Montana boy, Dartmouth grad, Muslim convert, good guy and all around butt-kicker.  To Bernson's credit,  Wells has not remained in the the same time or place. He has evolved from undercover agent in Afghanistan, to national hero, advisor to Presidents, and now, retired from the CIA. Here he is called upon to rescue kidnapped aid workers near the Kenyan-Somalia border. These books are always a great one-day read - what thrillers are all about.

Russia Leaves The War, Kennan - B

                                         "Peace, Land and Bread" was what the Bolsheviks offered the Russian people, but unilateral peace was anathema to the allies of the Entente.  While I was reading the Hardy Boys in 1958, apparently adult America had a taste for nuanced and extremely detailed diplomatic history, as this extraordinary book won the Pulitzer, Francis Parkman, Bancroft and National Book Awards.  It is actually Vol. I of a work called 'Soviet -American Relations 1917-1920'.

                                           Kennan was a superb writer, and here he tells the tale of the US response to the November Revolution, and specifically to the decision to withdraw from the capitalists war.  What is striking is each side's complete lack of understanding of the others' history and culture.  Lenin and Trotsky honestly believed that the workers of the world would throw off their shackles and their governments because they offered the world a chance to end the war.  The Wilson administration (and all the Allies) found it incomprehensible that Russia would not honor its treaty obligations, and kept thinking they could appeal to the Russian people's sense of honor and love of democracy.  The legendary 'Fourteen Points' were a partial response to the Russian Revolution and an attempt to go over the head of the Soviets and speak directly to the Russian people. Kennan summed it up succinctly and critically:"Both Wilson and Lenin had made the mistake of attempting to project their respective ideological images onto the world at large and to seek an international validity for principles that were a product of their own specific environmental and educational backgrounds."          

                                          In early February, at Brest-Litovsk, while delaying so the workers of the world could unite, Trotsky played his famous "no war, no peace" negotiating ploy on the Germans.  It totally backfired as the Germans advanced toward Petrograd, which led to the permanent removal of the government to Moscow and the Allie's embassies decamping to Vologda.  Preposterously, the Allies seriously considered intervening in Vladivostok, nearly 6000 miles away. Their stated concern was the fear that the supplies they had sent to Russia, which were on the piers and in the warehouses of Vladivostok because Czarist and Revolutionary Russia were incapable of moving them west, might fall into the hands of the Germans.   The British and French wanted the Japanese to intervene, to deny the enemy "the vast agricultural resources east of Lake Baikal".  You have to wonder if the decision makers had access to maps or were just delusional about transport capabilities. The US prevailed upon the Japanese to defer.  As the sequel is called 'The Decision To Intervene', I suspect we will read more about the attraction of boots on the ground in Siberia.  Back in the west, the Germans  prevailed and the Treaty was signed in  March.  While the Treaty was being considered by a Soviet assembly, Wilson again tried to speak directly to the Russian people.  Kennan acerbically closes the book with, "Once again, as is is so often the course of these rapidly moving events, Washington - troubled, hesitant, and ill-informed  - had spoken, reluctantly, into the past". Kudos to Greg Weiss for finding this challenging book and recommending it.

The Legend of Broken, Carr - C

                                         Undoubtedly, I saw the author's name and downloaded the book without reading the  Times review. That is a habit I need to break.  This book is a science fiction/fantasy presented in the cloak of a history of a portion of northern Germany late in the first millennium. There is even correspondence from Edward Gibbon introducing it to Edmund Burke as a recent (1790's) find of a manuscript.  If you think you might wish to try it, the Wall St. Journal review recommends that you not only read all 651 pages, but the 80 pages of notes.

Savage Continent, Lowe - B+

                                         At long last we have a thorough, continent-wide treatment of the chaos that was Europe in the aftermath of WW2.  The Germans may have surrendered in the first week of May 1945, but the violence and inhumanity of people and nations lasted for months and, in some locales, years.  It is hard to envision, but there were no governments, police, schools, universities, banks, currencies, telephones, post offices, private property, trains, cars, buses, gas, electricity, food or water.  There was utter devastation and then,  starvation, vengeance on a massive scale, ethnic cleansing, on-going anti-semitism, pogroms, massacres and civil war. A writer for the New York Times called it "the new Dark Continent".
                                        The descent into anarchy began with personal vengeance.  Those freed in their camps killed their guards, those held in slave labor murdered local Germans, and the Poles and Czechs took particularly violent actions against the Germans still in their midst. The author states that the peoples of eastern Europe did to the Germans what the Germans had done to them.  In all countries, collaborators were sought out and summarily executed.  The Resistance and the Partisans who led the revenge against the the traitors were actually exempted from any responsibility by laws passed ex post facto allowing their actions.  Frustrated by twenty years of fascism and years of German occupation, northern Italy saw 15,000-20,000 revenge killings in 1945-46.  Centuries of anti-semitism led to either indifference to the Jews who tried to go home or actual massacres in Poland and Hungary.
                                       Allied-approved ethnic cleansing led to the massive dislocation of millions, which the author analogized to the disruptions occasioned by the collapse of the Roman Empire. The decision had been made by the Big Three to move Poland west. Thus, Poland took over land from Germany and the USSR, specifically the Ukraine, took over eastern Poland.  Although most had fled prior to the arrival of the Red Army, there had been eleven million Germans in what became Poland. The Poles sent millions of German packing and the Ukrainians did the same to the Poles.  There was little oversight and non-stop violence.  Throughout Europe, nations pursued racial policies to make Poland all Polish, Czechoslovakia all Czech, Hungary all Hungarian etc. Millions of Germans were returned to the Reich; in many instances they were descendants of immigrants from earlier centuries.  There were over four million deportees in the British and Russian Sectors and three and a half million in the American.  Eastern Europe became ethnically cleansed with homogenous populations.
                                        The final source of conflict was between the communists and their opponents.  In southwest France, where the Resistance liberated a large section of the country, many were murdered, not because they were collaborators, but because they were opposed to the Reds. The Croats fled to Austria to escape the Serbs, were returned to Yugoslavia, and 70,000 were summarily executed.  The incredibly vicious Greek Civil War soon followed, leaving the country free, but devastated.  The problems in Greece led to the creation of the Truman Doctrine, followed soon thereafter by the Marshall Plan.  The Marshall Plan helped Western Europe finally get back on its feet, but confirmed the split with Stalin.
                                       Communism did not come peaceably or easily in the east.  As many as 400,000 Ukrainian partisans were still fighting the Soviets in 1950.  In the Baltic states, the ongoing resistance formed the legends that maintained the will of ethnic Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians throughout the Soviet era.
                                       History is never past and lives on in the national myths of every country in Europe today.  The occupied nations view their now almost universal resistance and courage through rose-colored glasses. The Russians are wistful for 'The Great Patriotic War', the British have made the war a national industry and in America, we honor 'The Greatest Generation'.
                                       During a Baltic trip in 2005, I saw firsthand the passion and anger still felt by many.  In Tallin, Estonia, a twenty-something tour guide spoke vehemently about what the Russians had done to the city and it's people when they fought the retreating Germans.  He didn't mention what the Germans did during their occupation and retreat. The next day at a Romanov Palace, a young Russian woman was brought to tears describing  the Germans' depredations and destruction of the famed Amber Room. Hopefully the passage of time will move theses emotions further into the past and not resurrect them.

A Man and His Ship, Ujifusa - B+

                                         For a decade after its 1952 launch, the SS United States was the grandest, most luxurious, fastest, indeed greatest ship that had ever sailed the seas.  The ship captured the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing by crushing the record held for twenty years by the Queen Mary.  No US ship had held the record in over a hundred years.  Yet, the age of the jet airliner terminated the era of first class Atlantic crossings and the United States career was over by the late 60's.   This very enjoyable book tells the story of Atlantic crossings in the 20th century and the obsession of William Francis Gibbs to build this ship.  The tale  is filled with the legendary names of the times: Titanic of course, but also, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Andrea Doria, Leviathan, Il de France, Normandie, Morro Castle, Lusitania and many more. Gibbs first dreamed up his plans as a schoolboy and spent forty years working toward the day he could build his vision.  Interestingly, the prime financial backer was Vincent Astor, whose father died on the Titanic.  Speed was the name of the game and the United States could go 45 mph.  If you like stories about boats and the sea, as I always have, this is a great read.

A Man Without Breath, Kerr- B-

                                         This is the twelfth book in a series about Bernie Gunther, a Kripo (Kriminalpolizei) detective in Berlin.  Gunther is a standard modern detective - very skilled, a bit cynical and very witty.  Kerr is quite good at historical background and depicting a real sense of time and place.  The magic here is that the setting  is Weimar Germany.  Gunther quits the police in 1933 and acts as a private detective in the Nazi era, but finds himself in uniform when the war starts.  In all of the previous books that I've  read, the big picture is part of the background.  Unfortunately, here Gunther is an actor in a historical event, and I'm afraid this book is just not as good as its predecessors.  Gunther works for the Wehrmacht as an inspector in the War Crimes Bureau.   Yes, the Germans had a group inspecting other nations' war crimes. He winds up in the middle of the two month unearthing of Russian depredations at Katyn.  There are a few interesting plot points involving an NKVD spy in their midst, and a lot of solid information about what was going on in the spring of 1943. But, the story falls apart when Gunther engages in a personal tete-a-tete with, among all possible people, Field Marshall von Kluge and needs to be saved by, unbelievably, Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr.

The War Council, Preston - B+

                                         This book, which is subtitled 'McGeorge Bundy, the NSC and Vietnam', is cited in 'The Sleepwalkers' as an example of intergovernmental power struggles and intrigues. The book is referred to as "a brilliant study of the US entry in to the Vietnam War...showing that while LBJ and JFK were reluctant to wage war.....the NSC narrowed options....until war was inevitable."
                                          I believe the story told in this book is more nuanced than its citation above.  Mac Bundy believed in the US role as maintainer of worldwide institutional structures such as the UN and NATO that would preserve peace and stability. He accepted America's role as the indispensable state that had responsibilities around the world. He was a believer in containment. He was staunchly opposed to the NLF and believed that the US was required to establish and preserve a noncommunist South Vietnam.  He came to Washington in 1961 and worked for a President who wanted to be his own Sec. of State.  JFK picked Dean Rusk, whom the author says would have been a much better Undersecretary, because Kennedy did not want  interference with his ideas, and he knew he could manage Rusk.  JFK believed in  our commitment to South Vietnam, even though State, Walter Lippman, Sen. Mike Mansfield and the editorial board of the New York Times were some of the many voices recommending a policy of neutrality in  southeast Asia.  Standing up to the North, while building up the South was a broadly accepted policy in the Kennedy administration.
                                         War as the only option seems to be what the "Harvards" presented to LBJ.  By the time the fateful decisions on  the road to war were made in 1964 and 1965 the Administration was already operating in a narrow feedback loop consistent with the characterization above.  However, it wasn't just the NSC, as Defense was gung ho from the very beginning.  I'm looking forward to Caro's final book on Johnson, for what I hope is the definitive analysis

Standing In Another Man's Grave, Rankin - B

                                         This is the twentieth novel in the police procedural series about Edinburgh Detective John Rebus.  Rankin has always done a good job filling in with color and background on the city, it's neighborhoods and southern Scotland.  Rebus is a lot like Alan Banks, mentioned earlier this month, only more so.    Banks drinks; Rebus is close to being a drunk.  Banks quit smoking; not Rebus.  Both act on hunches, but Rebus operates way outside of the normal lines of inquiry.  In this book, Rebus is retired, but working as a civilian on cold case files.  He gets an idea about one of the cases that leads him down a road that everyone considers a long shot.  In total defiance of just about every conceivable boss, he gets his man with a bit of extra-legal coaxing. Left open is his application to rejoin the force.

The Hangman's Daughter, Potzsch - C+

                                         This first novel of a series about the Kuisl family of Bavaria proves you can write mysteries about just about anything.  The time is the years immediately after the end of the Thirty Years War (1618-48). The author's ancestors were the designated executioners in their town.  Apparently, the chores included torture and a mastery of the the many means of ending someone else's life.  The Hangman in this instance is a good guy who saves a woman accused of witchcraft and sorcery.  This book  seldom strays from the storyline and provides very little background or information about the era.  The Thirty Years War was fought over religion and the Peace of Westphalia established that a communities form of worship was up to its ruler.  We know Bavaria remained Catholic, but there is no mention of it in this book.

Spillover, Quammen - B

                                         This is the third book I've read in the last two years written by a National Geographic writer.   The first two were actually histories about T.R. and Garfield.  This one is about science and one conclusion I've come to is that NatGeo folks can write. The topic here is zoonosis - the transference of viruses from animals to humans.
                                         It's a scary topic because this transference has led to the Black Death, the 1919 flu pandemic, Hendra, bird flu, Ebola, SARS, Marburg, West Nile fever, Lyme disease and the big one - AIDS.  Science strives to find out who was the reservoir host and when and how the transference was made.  As most of these viruses are in the tropics, the challenge becomes bringing modern medical research to primitive societies, often in the midst of political turmoil.  Unfortunately for the physicians and researchers, their reward is often a grisly painful end.
                                         HIV-1 is the modern catastrophe that has garnered the most attention, as it has killed 30 million and there are another 34 million infected.  The scientists believe it has been around for a very long time and that there have been twelve spillovers.  The modern spillover took place about the year 1908 in southwest Cameroon, almost certainly through blood to blood contact, when a local harvested bushmeat from a chimp.  For the next fifty years, it remained contained in a small population, but started to spread through sexual contact in the late fifties.  It is believed to have left Africa in the sixties when Haitians took over for the expelled Belgian medical community in the Congo.  It came to the US in the seventies through the import of blood plasma from Haiti. The rest is, as they say, history.
                                         The concern in the scientific community is "the next big one".  Scenarios like the movie 'Contagion' is what is feared.  And the consensus expectation is that it will be some sort of avian flu from the Asian continent, thus affirming one of my life conclusions- no Africa or Asia on my bucket list.

The Right Hand Shore, Tilghmam - B+

                                         This superb novel, set on the Eastern shore of Maryland, was a NYTimes Notable Book of 2012.  The author's surname is the name an island in the Chesapeake Bay.  His ancestors were some of the earliest settlers. Thus, he is well equipped to write about a place that is neither black nor white, land nor sea, north nor south.
                                         The story covers three generations of Masons, owners of The Retreat, a plantation with a mansion and thousands of acres of farmland on the Chester River, and the blacks who were once their slaves and later their servants and employees. Before the Civil War, 'Duke' Mason sells most of his slaves south, as he fears having his lands confiscated should there be a war and a punitive peace.  This act haunts his son-in-law and granddaughter, the next two managers of The Retreat. Most of the the black families stay on, as Wyatt Bayly, husband of Duke's  daughter, is a fair man, perceptive businessman and without racial prejudice.  The tension throughout is based on his generosity to his foreman's son, his son's only companion and best friend.  So, when it's time for tutors for Thomas, Randall is included in the two-boy school.  Randall is so talented that Wyatt pays for him to go to college, albeit a Negro school, Howard, in D.C. Randall's sister is beautiful and her relationship with Thomas is the second major plot line.   There is some fabulous background information on the ill-fated quarter century of peach farming on the Shore, as well as the growth of the dairy industry.  The issues between the blacks and whites are not as predictable as you would expect. This is well worth the read.

The Right Hand, Haas - B

                                         Derek Haas co-wrote '3:10 to Yuma' and the tv show Chicago Fire.  He is the creator of a website, popcornfiction.com, which promotes genre short fiction.  I've read his 'Assassins Trilogy.' His books are short thrillers about men with extraordinary interpersonal combat skills.  In this story, his protagonist is an "off the books" CIA operative who takes on the Russian FSB, saves the gorgeous Marika from the FSB bad guys ( four or five times), prevents the assassination of the CIA head of EuroOps  and exposes a 20-year deep cover traitor at Langley. Phew! It's the type of book you enjoy when you need a brief break.

Sweet Tooth, McEwan - I

                                         I generally love McEwan, and I just checked to see and the NYTimes reviewer really liked this.  I wound up scanning the last 2/3rds, as I thought it rather flat.

The Sleepwalkers, Clark - A*

                                         In the introduction to this extraordinary book, which is sub-titled 'How Europe Went To War In 1914', the author cites a historian who said, "it was the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang". Indeed, the seventy-five  years after 1914 saw the calamities of unspeakable war, an absurd peace, revolution and Depression, another war - even more horrid, totalitarianism and Cold War.  As the  war itself was an appalling slaughter of a generation and four years bereft of civilian or military competence, the run-up to it has garnered the attention of generations of historians.  Barbara Tuchman's 'Guns of August', which won a Pulitzer and which I read as a high school freshman fifty years ago, was my introduction to both grown-up history and this topic.  Somewhere along the way, either through the standard teaching of American history or after reading a biography of the oddly flamboyant, irksome Kaiser, I came to the popular conclusion that it really was the fault of the Germans.  Although Clark says there is no smoking gun and  "the outbreak of the war was a tragedy, not a crime", he tells a tale where there are quite a few culprits queuing up in front of the Germans.
                                       The book is detailed and complex.  There is much more here than Sarajevo, the dual alliance, the triple entente, mobilization and war. There are many moving parts and the author keeps coming back to the imperial rivalry between Russia and England.  The Russians had been expanding for centuries; they were pushing in the Far East, where England had allied with Japan, as a counter-balance.  The Great Game threatened English hegemony on the Indian sub-continent; Russia threatened English interests in the Mid-East by pushing into Persia. Most importantly, the Russians wanted Constantinople, an assured passage through the Bosporus and access to the Mediterranean, a threat to the English imperial lifeline, the Suez Canal.                                                    
                                       The decay of the Ottoman Empire is the source of immeasurable tension.  Its slow-motion collapse, which led to the creation of  Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia in the 19th century,  is the reason for the first two Balkan Wars, wherein the above four countries fight the Turks and then everyone turns on Bulgaria, because they won too much territory.  Toss in the Italians invading Libya, the creation of Albania, Serb ambitions for all of Serbdom and Montenegrin nationalism and you have an incendiary mess in and around the Balkans.  Why anyone would fight for these craggy mountainous hellholes is beyond me. As Bismarck said "they weren't worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier".
                                       Serbia comes off as a backward, impoverished, ignorant, violent country of thugs with a chip on its shoulder and ambitions well above its skill level.  There is a great deal of material on how and why the Russians back their "little brothers", as they were wont to tab their fellow Slav coreligionists. It is a policy rather than a strategy and one that makes no sense to the author. The Serbian government knew about the plans of the Black Hand and the Russians had actually contributed funding.  The assassinations on  June 28th created righteous indignation in Vienna.  The Serbs were happy about what happened and did nothing to appease Austrian concerns or help investigate the murders. The Russians took the position that the Serbs had nothing to do with it and viewed it as an internal Austrian matter.  The Austrians wished for a punitive war, but were incapable of quickly launching one and were waiting for some sort of approval from Berlin.
                                      The Treaty system was not as black and white as it is perhaps often presented. Indeed the so called Triple-Entente was scheduled to lapse the following year. Britain had a tremendous amount of flexibility in its accord to aid France and had no direct obligation to Russia. The Brits had actually been exploring options with the Germans. Germany and Austria did not have a coordinated policy either before the assassinations  or in July. No one expected that the events at Sarajevo would trigger a continental war. A month later, Serbia rejected the Austrian ultimatum because the Tsar and his ministers told them to. The French President, an ardent Germanophobe, who happened to be in St. Petersburg, signaled his assent to war. Russia wanted a go at Austria, felt confident and started a partial mobilization on July 25. On the 28th, Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized on the 30th, a day late, because Nicky got cold feet after a telegram from Willy. Germany declared war on the 1st, but Wilhelm held his troops at the border, while he tried to get in touch with George V. The British Cabinet only had a minority ready to vote to fight, but somehow the desire to tether themselves to the Russians, contain Germany and defer the implementation of recently approved Irish Home Rule led to an August 4th declaration.  What a mess!

Watching the Dark, Robinson - B+

                                         This is the latest in the series about DCI Alan Banks, set in the fictional town of Eastvale in Yorkshire, in the English midlands.  I suspect I've read most, if not all, of the books and must confess that he is my favorite English detective.  Banks is 62 at this stage and, as Robinson has aged him as the books have progressed since 1987, one must assume that retirement cannot be too far off. I believe that what I like most about him is that he is a decent guy, is very, very good at what he does, generates loyalty amongst his troops by simply being forthright and honest with them, and usually doesn't get along with his immediate superior, who always seems to be more interested in statistics than good policing.
                                         This story involves three homicides and opens with a cop being shot with an iron bolt from a crossbow.  Banks is very good with popular culture, particularly music, but this time shows his facility with  film. Someone asks about a crossbow death in one of the Bond movies and he immediately supplies the answer - 'For Your eyes Only'.  An Estonian journalist is next and Banks concludes the tie-in is a missing persons case that he worked on six years ago and travelled to Tallinn to investigate.  Banks is correct and while he in in Tallinn wrapping up most of the issues, his deputy at home, Annie Cabbot, solves the rest of the case.
                                         The main thing that makes a series like this work is the lead character; his idiosyncrasies, methods, inadequacies, but mostly his charm.  The other part is the author's ability to paint a  picture of what's going on in a particular place and time.  This one is filled with all sorts of information about cross-border migration in the EU.

The Idea Factory, Gertner - B--

                                         Perhaps the fault lies somewhere between my indifference to science and the author's presentation. But somehow, this story of Bell Labs, the most formidable commingling of science and business in the 20th century, is flat-out boring. That is not easy to do considering that the men of Bell Labs invented the vacuum tube, the transistor (from early germanium to silicon wafers), Unix computer language, Telstar (the first US communications satellite), binary digitization of information, as well as wireless and cellular telephony.  They were co-pioneers in the development of radar, sonar and lasers; huge contributors to national defense and along the way designed and built a national, smoothly functioning phone system that itself was filled with technological marvels. However, like all good things, Bell Labs pretty much fell apart when it lost its mission, upon the break-up of the phone company.

Epitaph For A Spy, Ambler - B

                                          I read this because it was one of the three classics mentioned in the NY Times review of 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold'.  It was penned in 1937.  The story is about a stateless language teacher, who lives in Paris and is hoping to become a French citizen.  While on vacation near Toulon, he is ensnared in a devilish plot, wherein he is accused of spying and photographing French shore defenses.  He is innocent, but somehow the real spy and he wound up inadvertently with each other's camera.  The French police require him to help and most of the story is about the various guests from around Europe at the small hotel on the beach.  As it precedes the horror of WWII, the complexities of the Cold War and the significant advances in technology that we are so accustomed to, Epitaph seems almost like a young adult version of a spy thriller.

Natasha's Dance, Figes - B

                                         Thanks to Greg Weiss for this recommendation of a fine book subtitled  'A Cultural History Of Russia'. The dance in the title is from a scene in 'War and Peace' when the aristocratic Natasha joins in a folk dance even though she has never seen the dance or heard  the music.  As a Russian, it came to her instinctively because of all Russians' inherent connection to their folklore and people.. The author points out that because there has been no free press or unobserved political discussion, it is in the area of the arts that Russians held up a mirror to their political, philosophical and religious discussions.
                                         There lies within the Russian cultural framework a conflict that, as an occasional student of Russian (particularly 20th century) history, I was unaware of.  It is the clash between the western-oriented residents of St. Petersburg and the less cosmopolitan people of Moscow.  Peter the Great disliked Moscow, a city that after centuries of Mongol occupation had turned inward-looking.  The construction of 'Peter' and its establishment as the nation's capital created a great schism in Russia. Doestoevsky said "We Russians have two fatherlands: Russia and Europe".  This dichotomy continues to this day.
                                         Most of the book deals with the nineteenth century, for it was the French invasion of 1812 that was the watershed event.  The aristocrats spoke and wrote in French, but the war led to a rejection and, in turn, a liberation from French intellectual leadership. After slogging through that war with their soldiers, many of the aristocrats were disillusioned with Alexander I's reversion to reactionary politics, leading to the Decembrist revolt in 1825.  Tolstoy's favorite uncle was one of those banished to Siberia for participating in the uprising.
                                        In the 20th century, we have the blight upon the land that was Bolshevism. Three million people fled in the decade after 1917 to all the corners of the earth, but primarily to Berlin, Paris and New York. Among those who took their extraordinary talents elsewhere were Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Nabakov, Gorky, Chagall, Diaghilev and Balanchine.  For those who stayed the literary prizes went to 'Cement" and 'How The Steel Was Tempered', while Pasternak, Grossman and Solzhinetsyn had to have their works published overseas.

Suspect, Crais - B-

                                         Robert Crais is a great mystery/police procedural writer and a fabulous storyteller.  His novels, which often involve a private detective named Elvis Cole, paint a vivid picture of the criminal world of Los Angeles that is frightening.   This book is a bit off his beaten path and involves a cop who was badly shot up teaming with a German shepherd that was equally battered in Afghanistan.  They become a "pack" and solve the mystery behind the attack on the policeman a year earlier.

The Looking Glass War, LeCarre - B

                                         In the early nineties, almost thirty years after this book was published, the author penned an introduction to a new edition.  In it, he explains the role of this book as the follow up to Spy.  Spy was "a fan letter" to the British security establishment and as a veteran of that Service, he knew it had over embellished the skills of both the British and the Germans.  This book "would be a deliberate reversal, if not an actual parody, of  The Spy".  He totally succeeds.
                                        Here, a security agency (never clearly identified, but certainly not the Circus) attempts to uncover information about Soviet missiles in the north of E. Germany.  Their first agent is killed.  Their second effort is absolutely, depressingly, appallingly third rate. Lacking funds, personnel, transport and the support of their unhappy wives, the men behind this operation scrounge up government backing and delude themselves into thinking they know what they are doing.  They are so incompetent that they recruit a naturalized Pole who botched his only WWII mission as their agent.   In borrowed training facilities, they prep him to go behind the Iron Curtain.  He unnecessarily kills a border guard, asks inappropriate questions all over town and has the slowest imaginable 'hand' on the telegraph equipment he carries with him.  Every one in E. Germany is looking for him within days of his infiltration. Smiley shows up and pulls his handlers from their hideout on the western side of the border and leaves the poor Pole to his own devices. LeCarre observed in the aforementioned introduction that the British public hated the book.
                                       

The Beautiful Mystery, Penny - B

                                         This is the eighth book in the very good Inspector Armand Gamache series.  He is Chief Inspector, Homicide, Surete du Quebec Province.  Gamache is a likable, complex, thoughtful man, devoted to his family and his team  and revered throughout the department, the city of Montreal and indeed the entire province.  The biggest problem in his life is his boss, with whom he shares a total mutual dislike.
                                        His writ runs far and wide and, so far, none of the novels have been placed in Montreal.  They are all out in the country and the settings often provide some interesting and fabulous learning experiences.  Here the scene of the crime is a four hundred year old monastery far out in the Canadian woods.  There are but twenty-four apparently devout men at Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, but one is now dead and one a killer.  The fascinating background story is that the monks have recently become world-famous because of a release of a cd showcasing their extraordinary skills performing Gregorian chants.  A reader of this novel will learn all they need to know about chants and the neumes that guide the singers. And to top things off, there is even a visitor from Rome - from the modern day Office of the Inquisition.

Afrika Reich, Saville - C

                                         As I read this klunker , I kept wondering how it wound up on my to-do list.   The setting for this "thriller" is Africa in 1952.  As the British were not able to evacuate Dunkirk,  Lord Halifax as Prime Minister made peace with Germany.  The Germans took over most of western Africa and this story is about an attempt on the life of the SS ruler of the Kongo.  Sadly, it's apparently round one of a trilogy.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, LeCarre - A*

                                         A little over a year ago, when the movie 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' was released, I decided to revisit the Smiley books and the two brilliant BBC miniseries. I rated both 'Tinker, Tailor' and 'Smiley's People' as A's and then thoroughly enjoyed Alec Guinness as George Smiley.  The productions are over thirty years old, show a very dated UK and for my money are two of the best shows ever on tv.  I also took a peak  at Kindle and pre-ordered two early Smiley books. They were not available last summer and just downloaded this week.  When I was about to start, I noticed that they referred to 'Spy' as a Smiley novel. Shame on Penguin and Kindle because George plays a very small role in 'Spy'. That said, I'm glad I read it again.
                                       The original 1964 NY Times review is fulsome in its praise and quotes Graham Greene, who referred to it as "the best spy story I have ever read".  I am not sure of the state of the spy novel genre fifty years ago.  Even then, I knew the Bond novels were a spoof.  I've since read Greene's 'Our Man In Havana', which is a bit of a satire. (Incidentally, the 'Our Man' movie stars Guiness). The review mentions a few others that were the benchmark at the time and refers to 'Spy' as being "a light year removed" from its competition.
                                      It was the first book awarded both the British Gold Dagger Award and the American Edgar Award.  The Brits like it so much that they gave it the Dagger of Daggers Award in 2005, a one-time award given to the Golden Dagger winner regarded as the standout among all fifty winners over the history of the Crime Writers Association. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the movie received many BAFTA awards and that Richard Burton's performance as Alec Leamas was nominated for an Oscar.
                                    Like so many of LeCarre's cold war masterpieces, this novel involves multi-dimensional chess on both sides of the Iron Curtain.  Leamas is out of the Service, on the road to personal and financial ruin, because the E. German spymaster, Karl Mundt, has rolled up his Berlin network.  It's all a contrivance to tempt the E. Germans to 'turn' him, so that he can fill their minds with doubt about Mundt. At Mundt's trial, Leamas realizes that he's been played, because the real intent of the operation is to get Mundt's subordinate because Karl Mundt is really London's man.  I suspect that it was such a success fifty years ago because it opened a window on the brutal complexity of cold war spying.  It's still great because of the author's narrative skill, and I love the fact that back then it could all be done in 250 pages.  It's a reminder of why so many people wondered what LeCarre and others would write about when the Wall came down in 1989.

Proof of Guilt, Todd - C

                                         This is the fifteenth book in the superb Inspector Ian Rutledge series that is now seventeen years old.   Rutledge is a veteran of four years of trench warfare, a very scarred and troubled survivor who has struggled since returning to Scotland Yard.  He solves his cases, but endlessly deals with the consequences of the Great War. He can identify veterans a mile away. Thunderstorms unnerve him. His claustrophobia keeps him off trains, making him one of the early regular drivers of an automobile. Most of all, he is tortured by the memory of his Scot sergeant, Hamish, who refused his order to go over the top.  Rutledge knew his order was absurd, but had Hamish executed for his refusal. The authors (it is actually a mother/son team) know their history, as the British executed seven times as many of their front-line line soldiers as the Boche did. Hamish is his conscience/troubled soul/second guesser, with whom he carries on endless silent conversations and the most fascinating literary contrivance I have ever experienced.
                                       The books usually excel on three levels: a sense of time and place, Hamish's conversations and the mystery Rutledge solves.  Here, there is little feel for London and its environs in the fall of 1920 and Hamish has been significantly played down. The plot, which involves a missing wine importer and his partner, meanders from one confusing place to another.  I sincerely hope the authors had a bad day and that they haven't run out of creative steam.

Six Months In 1945, Dobbs - A*

                                         WWI was easily followed by WWII, but in no way was it certain or inevitable.  Magnanimous policies by the victors, fewer reparations, a different Weimar constitution, a less devastating depression or any number of wiser decisions could have avoided the "Austrian corporal" and his march to war.  But according to this author, in a book sub-titled 'FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman - From World War To Cold War', the falling out between the Allies was as inevitable as night following day.  The Anglo-Americans and the Soviets might as well have been a different species, for all they had in common.  They did not understand each other's history, perspective, goals, political systems - all they had in common was Nazi Germany and by early May, the Reich was gone. Hitler himself predicted the alliance would not last, and that each side would covet the Germans.
                                         At Yalta, a dying FDR thought he could charm a man who viewed Ivan the Terrible as his role model.  FDR wanted the Soviets to agree to the UN and declare war against Japan.  It was thought that the Soviets were needed to help conquer the home islands. Stalin wanted peace and a chance to rebuild his country, and never contemplated that anyone would argue with the centuries-old European tradition that the ruler (or occupier) of a country determined its policies. If the self-determination provisions of the Atlantic Charter had exceptions carved out for the Empire and the Monroe Doctrine, why were  they questioning his plans for eastern Europe? At Tehran, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to move the Soviet's borders into what was Poland and to move Poland into Germany.  In exchange, they were promised "democratic institutions" and "free elections".  To the Soviets, a democratic institution was one free of fascists. A fascist was anyone opposed to communism and elections were always "fixable".
                                        By VE day, those few who understood the Soviets knew trouble was brewing. Kennan said, "They [Washington] think the war is ending, but it is beginning" and Harriman told Truman, "we are faced with a Barbarian invasion of Europe."  A month after VE Day, the Soviets let the US and Britain into their respective sectors of Berlin. The Westerners were shocked by the looting and shipment of everything movable to the east and were told by Zhukov that there was no food or coal.  By the time Churchill and Truman arrived, the lines were being drawn; some were already using the phrase "iron curtain" and the Americans and Brits were seeing what went on behind it in Berlin. Knowing he was about to have an atomic bomb, Truman rejected any claims for reparations from the Western sectors and told Stalin we would not recognize his governments in Finland, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
                                      By the time of Hiroshima, the Allies had fallen out. Stalin had to preserve his territorial gains in order to protect the Homeland from a future invasion.  Truman had to fight for free speech, markets, and peoples as the US had now intervened in two wars in order to make the world safe for democracy. No one particularly wanted to head into a series of confrontations.  But there simply was no way to compromise such disparate strategies. Although the British were reduced to observers by Potsdam, Churchill had not lost any of his verbal skills. Atlee was there as an observer, in case Labor carried the election.  One day Sir Winston looked at him and muttered, "a sheep in sheep's clothing." Somehow, Churchill always carries the day.