Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, Faulks - B

                                               I'm not sure if it's a subtitle or a characterization, but this fun, well-done novel  is called 'An Homage To P.G. Wodehouse'.   Wodehouse died forty years ago and the series he wrote about Jeeves and Wooster was set in the '20's.  I suspect they are one of the finest examples of English wit and parody ever and they provide frequent laugh-out-loud moments as Bertie Wooster, along with his buddies Tuffy, Chuffy, Stiffy, Oofy, Barmy and my favorite, Gussie Fink-Nottle, stumbles through endless escapades as a 'gentleman' so reliant on his 'man' that you wonder how he survived to adulthood on his own.  As delightful as the novels are, I believe the BBC Masterpiece Theatre shows with Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Bertie are remarkable television comedy and even better.  In this story, the pair concoct a scheme to advance the romances of two couples in their circle. They decide their best chance of effecting their objectives involves them switching places. As an erudite, brilliant man, Jeeves has no difficulty pulling off his role as a member of the gentry.  Bertie, on the other hand, is not ready for the challenges of life downstairs.   All's well that ends well, as Jeeves arranges matters in such a way that both he and Bertie are betrothed in the last chapter. What-ho!

On The Irish Waterfront, Fisher - C+

                                               The subtitle is 'The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York'.  However, before the author gets to the post-WW2 exposes and 'On The Waterfront', he sets forth some very interesting background.  In the late 19th century, the port's dockworkers and just about anyone who did business in and around the port was Irish.  The west side piers stayed Irish, but Hoboken, Jersey City and Brooklyn saw an influx of new immigrants, particularly Italians. By the time of WW2, the piers were diversified but the power structure - the shippers, the union leadership, the politicians and most importantly, the shipper's most prestigious ally, the Church - were still just about all Irish.  The arrival of millions of Irish in NYC was what had led to the ascendancy to wealth and power of the Roman Catholic church, and the church hierarchy had no qualms about accepting the treasure of the shippers and supporting their anti-labor stance. It's somewhat humorous that half of the thieving felons in this story are referred to as 'daily communicants'. However, the most fascinating bit of history about the Port is that the region's planners were never able to establish a freight tunnel under  the Hudson or a train bridge over it, because neither the two states nor the railroads could agree.  Rather, a system evolved of off-loading goods in NJ, ferrying them across the Hudson, and unloading them in NY. Prior to the rise of the trucking industry and the construction of the George Washington Bridge, there was so much volume crossing the river that it supported massive stevedoring operations in NJ, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Sadly, the cross harbor freight tunnel, an infrastructure idea proposed in 1893, has still not been acted on.  After WW2, the shape-up system which thoughtful outsiders viewed as the root cause of a failed social order - alcoholism, the flourishing loan-shark trade, the kickbacks and broken families came under attack from a series of exposes in the  NY Sun by Malcolm Johnson and a west side Jesuit, Pete Corridan. Johnson would win a Pulitzer and Corridan would be immortalized as Father Pete Barry in 'On The Waterfront'.  It took until late 1952 for the opening of hearings by the New York State Crime Commission (NYSCC), better known as the Waterfront Commission, to pull back the shroud of secrecy that hid all of the waterfront's evil deeds and doers.  The commission's report led to  the strengthening of the bi-state Port Authority and the adoption of meaningful reforms.  But the docks never really changed; there was still violence, theft, mob activity, kickbacks, no-show jobs and a less than admirable International Longshoreman's Association.  It was just not as bad as it used to be. The movie, however, was a huge hit that won 8 Oscars and is taught in every film course in America. "Labor reformers, journalists, Irish Americans one generation or a few miles removed from the waterfront and reviewers from the heartland of America adored this movie. Those most directly affected took a different view..."  Most dockworkers consider it an unrealistic joke. In the end though, it all became academic. The first container ship arrived in NY harbor in 1956 and the goods were trucked off the pier with minimal stevedoring help.  A generation later, the piers were collapsing into the Hudson, and today Chelsea, Brooklyn and Hoboken are the desirable wealthy domain of the modern metropolitan global elite.

The Black Eyed Blonde, Black - C

                                               The author is a successful writer of a mystery series set in Dublin. Here, he attempts to emulate Raymond Chandler and write a Phillip Marlowe mystery.  The homage is well deserved, as apparently some of Chandler's stuff is very noteworthy.  A NYT reviewer, the writer Olen Steinhauer, acknowledged that he did a pretty good job.   However, Steinhauer though it lacked pizzaz, and I guess I've concluded that any book that contains the line: "It wasn't the first time in my life I'd been slipped a Mickey Finn, and it probably won't be the last" can't be taken too seriously.  You can see Bogey spit out the words "Mickey Finn" as he tosses a ciggie on the ground.  But, it is 2014 and I don't think it plays well anymore.  The plot involves a gorgeous blonde coming to Marlowe's office and asking him to find her missing lover, Nico.  Nico is believed dead but the lady, Clare, thinks she recently saw him.  Off Marlowe goes and before we know it, Nico's sister is dispatched, Marlowe is beaten up, the dispatchers of Nico's sister are themselves dispatched, Marlowe is slipped a Mickey Finn, Marlowe's contacts on the police department blame him for all the goings on, and, in the end, Nico wasn't Clare lover after all.  A form of justice is served, although  Marlowe never gets paid.

Tune In, Lewinsohn - A*

                                               This is volume one of a planned three of what is expected to be the definitive Beatles biography.  Mark Lewinsohn is a master of their music, their lives and clearly, the most qualified person to write their story. In his introduction, he points out the obvious: how they changed the world of pop culture, music and entertainment. But more importantly, their music was masterful, unique, and could only have come from these four bold, brazen, hard working and committed poor young men from Liverpool.  Born between July, 1940 and February, 1943, Richy, John, Paul and George were defined by their very similar backgrounds.  All lived in a world of bare subsistence that is hard to comprehend.  Austerity was a way of life during and after the war. Indoor plumbing was a luxury; clothes were second-hand.  Radios were few and cars fewer.  All were loved, but for John, it was an aunt and uncle who stood in for his parents. All showed a very early interest in music and virtually no interest in school. All were mesmerized and inspired by the music coming from America. Paul was just 15 when John, just shy of 17, asked him to join his band, the Quarrymen, in the summer of 1957. George joined them the following January.  One of the most significant events during their formative years was the death of Julia Lennon in 1958. "John was scarred for life, and more embittered, more cynical, more harsh, more uncompromising, more edgy, more volatile than ever."  The band was a loose alliance of shifting personalities lacking equipment, gigs, a bass and a drummer. By the time of a name change to the Beatles in 1960, they were still struggling with jobs and families urging them to get on with their lives. Meanwhile, Richy, now Ringo was the regular drummer for the most popular rock band in Liverpool.  They desperately wanted to be musicians, but their efforts to obtain bookings and find a "fuckindrummer" showed their youthful ineptitude and lack of sophistication.  At John's insistence, his good friend, Stu Sutcliffe, bought a bass guitar, started to learn to  play and became the 4th Beatle.  After three groups declined an offer of a two month, 18 pounds per man per week Hamburg gig, they accepted it and had two days to add Pete Best as their drummer.  Hamburg was their defining experience - the place they became individual showmen and  a band.  While performing at the Kaiserkeller, they actually shared the stage, alternating nightly, with Rory and the Hurricanes, Ringo's group.  After three months in Germany and endless arguments with their local bar owner, the Beatles were fired and deported to England.  As 1961 dawned, they were once again without a clue where they were headed.  Back in Liverpool, things were heating up, there was a newly vibrant rock scene, plenty of bookings and a busy few months. They went back  to Hamburg, where they solved their bass problem.  In love with a local gal and fully aware he was not a musician, Stu moved on.  As the most gifted musician in the group, Paul bit the bullet, and bought a left-handed bass guitar.  Now George played lead and John rhythm but the drummer problem remained unresolved. Pete wasn't very good and never fit in with the other three. His days as a Beatle were numbered.  Playing lunch-time shows and a few nights a week at the Cavern and playing other venues, the Beatles were becoming a Liverpool sensation.  They were packing the house, bringing in revenue and were making a better living  than they would have as electricians, fasteners, fitters or any of the other apprenticeships their families tried to get them to pursue.  A curious young man, bored managing his family's downtown department store but enthralled with its record department, stopped by the Cavern for an afternoon show in Nov. 1961. Within a month, Brian Epstein was their manager and already pursuing record opportunities in London.  On March 7, 1962, in Manchester before a live audience, the Brian Epstein version of the Beatles, cleaned up, in custom suits, with mop-top haircuts, recorded three songs that were played on BBC radio the next day. A springtime engagement in Hamburg followed.  They returned to England in June after receiving a telegram from Brian - they had a recording contract with EMI.  The record arranger George Martin was one of the first Londoners they had ever met.  They liked him and he liked them.  It was, however their charm and charisma, not their music that grabbed him on June 6th. He and the music business had to adjust. There were soloists, some groups with a frontman and some backers, but there were no groups with three quality guitar payers, all of whom could sing and who wrote their own songs. The only problem was Pete, who EMI immediately concluded could not be used in studio recordings.  On August 16, Brian fired Pete and hired Ringo.  The Beatles, Brian Epstein, and George Martin - six men who would change the music world - were now on the same  team.  Love Me Do/ P.S. I Love You, both written by Paul, were released on Oct. 5. Love Me Do rose in the charts,  George Martin proposed a Beatles LP, predicted Please Please Me would be a surefire #1 in the new year, their music publisher offered them one-half of the copyright, and they were getting TV and radio air time. Brian Epstein's first year with the Beatle had been magical. However, it was John Lennon who summed it up as 1962 ended: "We were the best fucking group in the goddam world. We thought we were the best in Hamburg and Liverpool - it was just a matter of time before everybody else caught on."
                                              In so many ways, this is an extraordinary book. For Beatles fans who can handle 800+ pages, this is a must read.  The amount of information is overwhelming and for some of their teen years, excessive. Lewisohn is an insider, someone who actually worked for them. He is one of the few who has ever listened to the entirety of the tapes at Abbey Road.  I cannot wait to see what he has to say about their later years in the studio.  He also has an eye on the economics of it all, a side of the rock biographies that I've always thought was missing.  His prose style can be flat at times, but this is a masterpiece about four lads from Liverpool who have added so much to all of our lives.

The Son, Nesbo - B+

                                               As this is this blog's 4th Jo Nesbo book, one can easily conclude that the author is quite prolific. Clearly, he tells absolutely gobsmacking great stories and this is another. Interestingly,  it is not part of the Harry Hole series, but a stand-alone. Thankfully, Oslo, Kripos, Murder Squad and all of the city's corruption, failed institutions and individuals are here.  Twelve years ago, a very good cop who was on the verge of exposing the Police Dept.'s mole was killed.  Before he was shot with his own gun, the killers had him write out a suicide note confessing to be the mole. Afterwards, his son became a drug addict and took the fall for two murders in exchange for a promise of a lifetime supply of heroin while in prison. Sonny finds out that his dad was scapegoated and murdered, escapes from prison and begins a process of revenge murders that include a suburban housewife, a junk dealer, a human trafficker, a few thugs and more as he tries to take down everyone who had helped set up his father.  Clearly, Sonny is not a saint, but somehow you wind up rooting for him. He, his mom and his dad were victims and he is pursuing righteous revenge against the bad guys.  The one policeman who seems to be able to put the pieces together is a man who was his dad's best friend. At one point, they actually team up as they pursue both the mole and the Twin, Oslo's ultimate crime lord. But, this is Oslo - a place Nesbo portrays as next door to hell- and nothing is ever as it appears. Once again, he has written a great book.

Prayer, Kerr - D

                                               Kerr is the author of the Bernie Gunther series set in Berlin before, during, and after WW2. He strays far afield here and builds a story around a rogue FBI agent and a series of killings in and around  Houston.  It's also his vehicle to explore what I can only assume is his very personal crisis of faith.  For me, it completely missed all the marks.

Forgotten Ally, Mitter - B

                                              'China's World War II 1937 - 1945' is the telling of the  story of the war's longest participant, a story seldom told from China's perspective.  China suffered fourteen million casualties and 80 million refugees.  The war was instrumental in assuring Chiang's defeat by Mao and continues to play a critical role in China's internal affairs and worldview today.  As the Chinese Empire slowly fell apart in the 19th century, the Japanese transformeded themselves very quickly into a world power. They defeated the Russians after the turn of the century and occupied Korea, Formosa and parts of Manchuria. After WW I, Japan was awarded Germany's territories in China. The Japanese were in the throes of nationalistic aggression and felt they were entitled to dominate the weak Chinese landmass. They occupied Manchuria in 1931. The China that Japan attacked on July 26, 1937 was nominally ruled by Chiang and his Nationalist Party, but was still very much the fractured and war-lord dominated cauldron of chaos it had been for a century. Peking, Shanghai and Nanjing quickly fell to the Japanese onslaught, notwithstanding Chiang's alliances with the USSR and the CCP. To his credit, Chiang declared a war of national resistance and vowed to never surrender to the invaders. It was his belief that resisting the Japanese was what was needed to build a nation. In 1938 as Chiang retreated further south and west, he made an extraordinary decision. In order to protect his then-capital of Wuhan, he had the Yellow River dikes blown up in order to flood the valley and stop the Japanese Army.  Wuhan was preserved for five months at a cost of 500,000 confirmed Chinese dead.  By the time war broke out in Europe, most of eastern and southern China, home to most of its cities, infrastructure, wealth and population was in Japanese hands.  The years prior to Pearl Harbor settled into a relatively quiet jostling for position and preeminence between the Nationalists in the southwest, the Communists in the north and the Japanese in the east.  Mao slowly became the sole leader of the CCP and committed it to a policy of guerrilla warfare only.  He did not believe in fighting pitched battles.
                                              The Sino-American alliance was doomed from inception. Chiang expected massive amounts of American supplies, forces and treasure, while the US's only concern was that the three-quarters of a million Imperial soldiers stay in China. Joe Stillwell had visions of aggressive offensive actions, yet reported to the cautious defensive-minded Chiang. Chiang wanted to be a major player; for FDR and Churchill, China was a sideshow.  Stillwell and Chiang despised each other and fought from day one until the bitter end.  Mix in Chennault's bravado, hundreds of millions of starving Chinese,  a rump failed state with no administrative capabilities, reduced Allied supplies when Japan conquered Burma, and a totally corrupt elite and you get some sense of the hopelessness in the theater.  As the war progressed, Free China became a terrorist police state.  The Japanese launched a major offensive, their largest of the war, in central China in May, 1944.  Chiang and Stillwell bickered over the degree of each other's commitment to recapturing Burma and defending against the onslaught in China.  FDR finally gave in and removed Stillwell from Chiang's command, in essence neutering Chiang as commander-in-chief of Free China.  Three months later, he reversed himself and recalled Stillwell.  The author contends that the bitterness and distrust still carries over to current US-Sino relations.  The Japanese offensive petered out, but had very important long-term affects. The Nationalists were beaten down and were never able to recover. At war's end though, China itself was in unique position it had not been in  for a century. It was fully sovereign. A sovereignty, however, on the verge of civil war.
                                              Forty years ago, thanks to Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize winning 'Stillwell and the American Experience in China', I came to the conclusion that the man Vinegar Joe called Peanut was one of the most incompetent dictators we've ever allied with. This author presents a much more nuanced assessment. For all of Chiang's faults, Stillwell was not the paragon Tuchman presented.  He was a headstrong prima donna, incapable of working with anyone, including Mountbatten and just about anyone else he came in contact with. That said, Chiang was clearly not up to the tasks he took on. His failure to lead the Nationalists has had a long term deleterious effect in China and devastating consequences for America. The adoration of the old 'China Lobby'  for Chiang and the legacy of that lobby's impact on our foreign policy, even  today, is a hard pill to swallow.

The Man Who Never Returned, Quinn - B-

                                               The 'Man' in the title is Judge Joseph F. Crater, whose 1930 disappearance has been part of New York City's lore ever since.  Quinn's fascination with the topic is traced to his dad having been a Crater student in law school, and later a judge assigned to the same chambers as Crater.  The author has fun playing with the facts and possibilities of the case, but, as in his book I commented on in February, the story really is about Quinn's favorite character, the city of New York.  He is an artful master of portraying the smell, touch and feel of the streets, neighborhoods, hotels and speakeasies of the metropolis.  He paints the picture as well as anyone and any lover of the city would enjoy his work.

Children of the Revolution, Robinson - B

                                               DCI Alan Banks is at it again.  A man in his early sixties is found dead in the woods. There's 5000 pounds in his pocket. We learn that he was broke and the early conclusion is that he had to be blackmailing someone.  The likely candidate is Lady Chalmers, wife of a noted West End producer and a successful writer in her own right. But,why?  The story takes us back to the early 70's, a time of tremendous social change in England and along the way, we get a tutorial on Marxism and the coal miners.  As I said in this space a year ago this month, Banks is my favorite and the retirement question raised last year has been addressed. It's been put off.

The Patriarch, Nasaw - B

                                                One of the NY Times Ten Best of 2012, this book is subtitled 'The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph  P. Kennedy.'  To anyone of my age, proclivities, and background, the general story of Joe Kennedy is well-known.  What this author accomplishes though is the providing of substantial  detail in a smooth, almost effortless, narrative.  As the text runs to 787 pages, that is a noteworthy feat.  This book was written at the request of Ted Kennedy and his sister Jean Smith, the two youngest of the nine Kennedy children.  The author is an award-winning biographer and professor, who was afforded unlimited access to Kennedy's papers. There was a substantial degree of separation, bias and prejudice that  existed in Boston a century ago.  The Irish Catholics were outsiders for whom access to Boston Latin, Harvard, the right clubs and jobs was difficult to obtain.  The proper Bostonians were Protestant, old money and not willing to share with the newcomers. Kennedy was an extremely talented and supremely ambitious man, and there was no obstacle he could not overcome. He succeeded at Harvard, graduated in 1912, married Rose Fitzgerald in 1914, went into banking, then industrial management and worked for the Hayden, Stone brokerage in the early 20's.  He was a financier in the truest sense of the word, buying, selling, and trading stocks, making deals, wheeling and dealing, all while acquiring and disposing of businesses.  He was involved in Hollywood as an owner, producer and lender as the industry switched to 'talkies'. He was relentlessly focused, as the author continuously points out, on his only true ambition - making himself and his family richer - and in a few short years, he did just that. He made millions when he sold his Hollywood interests to David Sarnoff and RKO. Before he was forty, he had established trusts for his children which were the foundation of multiple generations of wealth. He was a master short seller, who kept increasing his net worth throughout the Depression.  It is Joe Kennedy's personal life though that amazes the reader and is undoubtedly the reason that his times are referred to as 'turbulent'. Apparently, he was a serious Catholic, yet one who had affairs with hundreds of women. His most famous paramour was Gloria Swanson, who was amazed that he felt that by confessing his continuous sinning, he was forgiven and could continue as a member in good standing of his church.  He was virtually never home, often away three hundred days per year, but was quite attentive to his children. They all adored him and thought that he was a great dad. But as a father, he suffered incalculable pain as he buried four of his nine children and ruined the life of a fifth, when he had Rosemary lobotomized.  At the time of his death, 8 years after a debilitating stroke, he had  learned of Teddy's misdeeds at Chappaquiddick. Joe Kennedy's personal career highpoint came during his fifteen months as the first SEC Commissioner.  Appointed because he 'knew' the ways of  Wall Street, he is universally credited with getting the important Commission off on the right foot. One of his most important friendships from his Washington tour was Arthur Krock, columnist and Washington Bureau Chief of the Times, who became Kennedy's personal public relations advisor for years.  Kennedy had a reputation as bootlegger, but the author completely disagrees and points out that it would be difficult for Kennedy to pass Congressional muster if there was any truth to those rumors.  He was, though, an astute businessman, who in anticipation of the repeal of Prohibition, garnered the import rights for a decade and a half of Haig and Haig Scotch and Dewars White Label. Those rights were worth $900,000 per year and were the primary funding for a second series of trusts.  His second job for FDR was as Maritime Commissioner, but he made it quite clear that there was only one job he wanted as reward for being the most prominent business backer of the New Deal. It was a job that just about everyone, including Roosevelt, knew he was totally unqualified for - Ambassador to the Court of St. James.  Cocky and totally undiplomatic, immediately upon his arrival in London, "he was trying to usurp the authority of the Secretary of State and interfere in British politics. And two weeks into his tenure, he had already been slapped down by Cordell Hull for doing so."  FDR knew he had made a significant mistake, but with his eye on the politics of the 1940 nomination, knew he didn't want an angry Joe Kennedy back in the states shooting off about this, that and everything.  So, he left him there until Oct. 1940.  Reading about Kennedy's two and a half years in London, one is appalled at his disloyalty, hypocrisy,  headline hunting, arrogance, bigotry, total lack of any true sense of values and daily egomaniacal posturing.  He was opposed to war, any war, at that time, and the author leaves a strong impression that his opposition was personal, not philosophical.  He was justifiably and understandably concerned about his two oldest sons and was also fearful of the impact of war on his wealth. He comes off less an appeaser than a defeatist, although history has characterized and condemned him for being both. Upon his return to the states while technically still Ambassador, he equivocated about Lend-Lease and became persona non grata in the Roosevelt administration. Banished to Palm Springs and Hyannis Port, he would never hold public office again. The war extracted a terrible price from his large family.  Jack, fortunately, survived his 1943 encounter with danger. For Joe, Jr. death came in August of 1944.  It was an awful blow for Joe, Sr: "Joseph P. Kennedy would never recover from the death of his oldest son and namesake, the handsome, charming, charismatic young man who believed - with his father - that he could do anything he set his mind to". Kick's English husband, Billy, oldest son of the Duke of Devonshire, was killed in action in France in September.   After the war, Kennedy turned to further building his assets and advancing Jack's career, and was rewarded with Jack's election to a very safe Congressional seat in Boston.  Tragedy struck again in 1948, his sixtieth year, when Kick was killed in a plane crash in France.  Of his four oldest, two were dead, one a victim of a botched lobotomy, and the fourth perennially ill.  Throughout the 1950's, Kennedy remained very much behind the scene and continued to financially support Jack's political ambitions.  And he was rewarded when Jack became the first (and still only) non-Protestant American president.  Indeed, Jack remains only the second president (Van Buren) without a British heritage.  Joe insisted, in the face of almost universal opposition, that Bobby be Attorney General. A year later on December 19, 1961, Joe Kennedy suffered a severe cerebral stroke that would put an end to the life he had so vigorously led. He was wheelchair bound and unable to speak.  He viewed the sixties through a prism of pain, helplessness and indignity. He died on Nov. 18, 1969.

The Downfall of Money, Taylor - B +

                                                The subtitle of this excellent book about Weimar Germany is 'Germany's Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class'.  One of the author's opening observations is that as the Great War approached,  unified Germany..."was for the last time until well into the latter half of the twentieth century simultaneously fully solvent, fully employed and fully at peace." That all ended with the war. Because Britain was able to blockade Germany, the home front saw four years of declining food production and near starvation.  As the armies walked home in the third quarter of 1918, the German population also faced severe economic challenges. Fully sixty percent of the war had been paid for by war bonds - a superb 5% yielding investment that now would not be paid back.  The food blockade continued until June, 1919 when Germany signed the peace treaty. Armistice and peace did not bring quiet to the German political scene.  Revolt and  fighting in the streets between the left and right were legacies of the war. The Weimar Republic, effective in August 1919, was never quite able to get its arms around the political turmoil that preceded the economic conflagration.  By signing the peace treaty,  Weimar sealed its own fate. The right vehemently opposed the signing, despised the war guilt clause, never accepted the treaty's terms and was bent on overthrowing the government.  The country was irretrievably divided.  The economic situation throughout Europe was equally troubled.  The two victorious allies, Britain and France, were suffering from inflation after years of wartime expenditures. They were effectively broke and owed the US billions of dollars.  They needed reparations from Germany to pay the US. Essentially the three largest European economies needed to run surpluses in order to generate dollars to pay the US. But, who would they trade with who would be running a deficit?  Not the US. The situation was hopeless.  And for the Germans, most hopeless of all. They were obligated to pay crippling reparations and there was no political will to comply.  Governments came and went; ministers were assassinated. The strongest economy on the continent became a 'banana republic'.  Government printing presses tamped down the social unrest.  The author summarizes it as:  "the government continued to use wartime legislation to subsidize employment, and to regulate food prices and rents broadly in favor of the workers. ....it continued to print money in order to do so. Inflation crept up." Further straining the system were the needs of 550,000 war widows, 1.3 million war orphans and 1.5 million disabled vets.  When the in-kind coal reparation for 1921 fell behind schedule, the French occupied the Ruhr Valley.  The arrest of Germans, from the head of Krupp's down to street fighters, further inflamed emotions.  The Germans struck and resisted at every turn as the French tried to seal off the Ruhr from the rest of the country.  The country came close to collapse.  Insurgents on the right and left sought to revolt, as Berlin lost control of the country.  Hitler's Beer Hall  Putsch failed in Munich in the fall of 1923. Soon thereafter, a currency reform led by Chancellor Gustav Stresemann and future Finance Minister Schacht ended the papiermark and introduced the rentenmark.  Virtually every debt in the nation, including the obligations of the state to its people, were reduced to pennies. Hyperinflation was over.  Within a year, a new Reichsmark was introduced and stability came to Germany.  In the mid-twenties, normalcy returned thanks to a significant amount of foreign, particularly American, investment.  But of course, the Depression was a worldwide event and one that saw the return of extremism and eventually the end of the Weimar Republic.
                                              The author makes a compelling case that the German educated and middle classes, the supporters of the monarchy, were the ones who suffered the most during the war and its aftermath.  They fought and lost and were saddled with the 'war guilt' clause.  Their savings were destroyed by inflation and currency reform.  "They went from a position of unchallenged privilege within continental Europe's most powerful country to become, in practical terms, just one group competing in a modern political and economic marketplace for which it felt little else but contempt and loathing."  Without  a centrist middle class, Germany was easily susceptible to the radicals who followed.  Although not an easy read, this book helped to connect the dots for me going from war to reparations to inflation to the failure of  Weimar Germany.

By Its Cover, Leon B +

                                               This, the 23rd in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series,  proves that this author is getting better and that her creative skills are undiminished.  Here, there is a continuing theft of pages from books and actual books from an antique Library.  We meet the Director, the guard, a daily reader of Latin who was once a priest, and an outright deceiver and thief posing as an academic.  One winds up dead and  the evildoers are unmasked by Guido.

The Accident, Pavone - B +

                                               Chris Pavone rocketed to fame a few years ago with his first book, 'The Expats'.  He had spent twenty years in the NYC book business, was the classic insider, and was then suddenly a new novelist, because he had gone to Brussels with his successful  and well-known wife.  He wrote about a cabal of expatriates and had a big hit on his hands. Here, he thoroughly explores New York, its writers, editors, agents, and publishers, as he has built a fabulous tale around an anonymous submission.  The book at the center of the novel is the purported true story of Charlie Wolfe, sort of a cross between your favorite love to dislike Fox News personalities and the man behind the cable news network that made news politicized  entertainment.  Wolfe is not to be trifled with as his dad was a deputy director of the CIA and he's about as well-connected as you can imagine.  Part of the reason for Wolfe's success is a long-term relationship with a fella who may or may not still be in the CIA. The CIA man has been feeding Wolfe information about politicians and others for years. Wolfe has parlayed that information into big time cable success and the CIA man has a substantial Swiss bank account.  The author of the book marked as 'Anonymous' is Wolfe's right hand man, who after twenty-years of deceit and worse has decided to fake his own death and write an anonymous tell-all. The problem is that Wolfe is well prepared for the submission to hit the street in NY and all of a sudden everyone who touches the book is in perilous danger.  As the book gets copied and passed around, bodies are dropping from one coast to the other.  The author devises a surprising plot twist at the end of the book, that I suspect will be a very big seller.

Amsterdam, Shorto - B

                                               The subtitle is 'The History of the World's Most Liberal City'.   Shorto traces the city's openness and willingness to accept new ideas, and its commitment to equality and individual freedom to two sources. First, it always was and still is a trading city filled with people from the four corners of the known world.  Port cities chock full of  foreigners doing business with locals are historically open minded places. Second, it never had a medieval top-down structure.  The land was mostly reclaimed, and consequently, was broadly owned.  Living on a floodplain requires strong individuals capable of cooperation with their neighbors.  Of equal importance to those traditions is its escape from Spanish domination and Catholicism, an event celebrated as the Alteration and traced back to May, 1578.  The next step in the city's forward trend was the prosperity brought on by the success of the Dutch East India Company.  It was the world's first for-profit permanent entity, an extraordinarily successful business, and one that led to Amsterdam's per-capita income to be four times that of Paris.  The public ownership of its stock allowed for that stock to be sold, exchanged, even shorted in the world's first stock exchange. Amsterdam was always open to new people; it had a vibrant Jewish section, and welcomed the Hugenots when they were expelled from France and the Catholics forced out of Germany and England. We sometimes forget it was from Amsterdam that the Pilgrims sailed, after fleeing religious persecution in England. Shorto has also written a book about Manhattan and clearly believes that much of New York's inheritance is traced to the Dutch.  As Amsterdam marched through time, it became the home of worker's rights, women's rights,  homosexual's rights  - a place where those on the outside were afforded respect and choice. There were  two reviews of this book in the NYTimes. The staff reporter was complimentary, and an outside historian posited that the author had lost his way as he finished the book.  As I thought that his foundation in the 16th and 17th centuries was much stronger than his observations of Amsterdam more recently,  I think I prefer the first half of his book and consider the rest a bit forced.

Where Nobody Knows Your Name - Feinstein, B -

                                               This book is the master storyteller's tale of the 2012 season in the minor leagues.  He follows nine men: mostly players, some old, and some young, a manager and an umpire.   With his deft touch and insight, he paints a picture of the life of transients, some on the way up, some on the way down and all striving - either for the big payday or just a chance to extend the life they love.  It's baseball that they love; it's just that Triple A is the place no one wants to be.  Focusing on his core nine stories and interweaving dozens and dozens more, Feinstein tells the heartbreaking story of life in the minor leagues.  Most of the tales do not have happy endings.  What the minors do have though is great names - Lehigh Valley IronPigs, Savannah Sand Gnats, Toledo Mud Hens, Richmond Flying Squirrels, Charleston RiverDogs, and my favorite, the Louisville Bats.

Wheel of Fortune, Gustafson - B +

                                                This fascinating 2012 book is about the Russian oil industry since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  At the time of publication,  Russia accounted for 13% of world production and 22% of non-OPEC oil.  However, as  North American energy production skyrockets, those percentages are reducing monthly. Russia is unique among energy exporting countries because the industry has developed indigenously and the oil industry is part and parcel of a large industrialized economy.  Dependency on a commodity, though, has assured that Russia is a petro-state with the same ailments as any other country suffering from the "oil curse".   Corruption is rampant and the industry is not prepared for the modernization required to continue to maintain its position.
                                                When the USSR fell apart, it was the legal/administrative/management  system that disappeared.  The physical plant stayed in place.  The 1992 Mineral Resources Law affirmed the state's ownership of the underground assets and authorized production, refining and distribution of oil and gas by licensees.  As the industry scrambled to reorganize itself, production in 1996 fell to half of the Soviet peak year of 1987.  Having studied the west, they realized they needed integrated oil companies.  Lukoil, Yukos and Surgutneftegaz were the first Russian "majors".  Of the three, only Yukos was wrenched from the hands of the old "oil generals" and was taken over by one of the famous financial barons known as oligarchs, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.   After a near collapse of the state, when it defaulted on its bonds in the late 90's and the impact of the 'Asian flu' financial crisis,  oil prices rebounded and Russian production grew from 3.3 million barrels per day to to 6 million between 1998 and 2004.  Leading the increase in volume was Yukos, where Khodorkovsky turned over production responsibility to an American.  The Russian miracle was a typical oil industry boom/bust cycle, and this time one that revitalized the Russian state in conjunction with the introduction of a man who wished to reestablish central control in Moscow.   Strengthening the state was the mission of Vladimir Putin and those from St. Petersburg who came to Moscow with him.  In 2003 Putin struck, Khodorkovsky went to jail, and Yukos was dismantled and renationalized.  The reason was that for those around Putin -- many civil servants from St. Petersburg and veterans of the security service -- the oligarchs had trumped the state and we're using their wealth and power for personal goals and not to help revitalize the Russian nation.  Yukos was selected because, "it was more aggressive and more radical, than the other oil companies".  Khodorkovsky personally challenged Putin on a number of fronts and came close to merging Yukos with Chevron, an unthinkable outcome for those resentful of the oligarchs.  While Khodorkovsky went to jail for a decade and Lukos was dismantled,  Rosneft hurtled to the front of the Russian pack.  It had barely survived the end of the USSR as a state-owned catchall and wound up as the state oil company, sponsored by Putin and one of the largest in the world.  However, the size and national strategic importance of the oil industry have not been enough to accelerate progress away from the infrastructure and habits of the old Soviet Union.  The state has made it extremely difficult for foreign investors, oil companies and technical specialists to participate and move the industry into this century.  Thus, the frontiers of Arctic oil and extracting tight oil, as is being done in  Canada and the US, remain the challenge, but one at which the system isn't prepared to succeed.  The system requires increasing oil prices for the Russian petro-state to prosper and the author does not believe that is in the cards.   Between 2001 and 2011, oil prices quadrupled, allowing  a nine-fold increase in the Russian state budget and the accumulation of an $800 billion surplus. That cannot be repeated and the state is likely to progressively and systematically decline. Gustafson, who is a professor at Georgetown, prescribes a litany of positive thinking reforms of the nature often suggested in the 'Economist' and 'Foreign Affairs'.  My suspicion is that Putin's Ukrainian activities have already put those possibilities to rest.  This is a superb book, very well-written and packed (and I mean packed) with detail.  He is best when painting the big picture.

The Cairo Affair, Steinhauer - B -

                                              I  became a fan of Olen Steinhauer quite some time ago, when I read his series of historical novels set in a mythical eastern European country.  The first took place  in the 1940's and, there was one for each decade through the fall of the Berlin Wall. He fantastically portrayed the desperation of life behind the Iron Curtain. My recollection is that the books were sort of a combo police procedural/thriller/spy series.  He went straight spy/thriller with his Milo Weaver trilogy.  Those books lead to the inevitable John Le Carre comparisons, but it occurred to me after about 100 pages of this book that at least with Le Carre, you have some sense of where you are headed a fourth of the way through. Not here. A Libyan-born CIA analyst, Jibril, asks to make an off-the-books trip to Libya. On his way there, he meets with a CIA agent, Emmett, in Budapest.  Emmett is gunned down soon thereafter.  Libya is on the brink of the Revolution and Jibril is murdered shortly after crossing the border from Egypt.  The first death was clearly part of whatever is going on; the second may have been due to the random violence overwhelming the country, or maybe not.  The connection is a CIA plan, Stumbler, to replace Quadaffi with Libyan exiles.  Is the CIA implementing Stumbler?  Perhaps the CIA is only appearing to?  Is it the Egyptians? They purchased Stumbler from Emmett's bored and unfaithful wife, Sophie. How do the Serbs fit in? It was their agent, Zora, who approached Sophie.  Maybe, Libya is trying to take out the exiles? Perhaps, with help from a rogue Egyptian?  It's all eventually resolved and settled - in Cairo.
                                            Interestingly, the Times published two different reviews nine days apart.  Janet Maslin, a Times staffer, acknowledged that the plot of the last Milo Weaver book bordered on the "impenetrable", but she liked this book even if it was a bit complex.  The second review was by the author of 'The Good Lord Bird', a National Book Award winner commented on here earlier this year.  James McBride said, "The book becomes more of a guessing game or puzzle and less of a story, and then it's time to reach for the remote."  He follows up by suggesting  it is "..a work that will surely have his fans clamoring for more -- and the rest of us trying to figure out a nice way to reach for the bar bill and exit."  I'm in McBride's corner. That said, I'm sure I'll pre-order the follow-up.

An Officer And A Spy, Harris - B -

                                                My initial reaction was to pass on this novel, as somewhere along the way I have read extensively about the Dreyfus Affair and didn't feel compelled to review it again..  However, Harris is quite skilled  and I reminded myself of how often  I've learned a great deal from good writers of historical fiction.  In this book, he attempts to hew as closely as possible to the actual story with a few of the novelist's artifices to help him along.  The narrator is a fictional Colonel who takes over the Security Dept. and starts to look into the treason trial and condemnation of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus.   Our fictional Col. Picquart finds a French officer in desperate need of cash visiting the German Embassy in Paris.  It slowly becomes clear to Picquart that that officer, Count Esterhazy, is the traitor to France, and that Dreyfus was framed for being the only Jew on the General Staff.  Indeed, the overwhelming evidence is that being a Jew from now German-controlled Alsace  and being married to a wealthy woman were Dreyfus's greatest offenses.  He was accused of treason and convicted on evidence that didn't reach the level of flimsy.  It was a straight-forward railroading based on bigotry and prejudice. Dreyfus's suffering as the only inmate on Devils Island was quite severe. His correspondence from home was limited, and nightly, he was shackled to his bed.  When Picquart presents his findings to his superiors, he finds himself on an inspection tour in southern France and eventually shunted aside to Tunisia.  Called back to Paris, he is now in the frame. Injustice screams out from every page. I believe Harris spends too much of his time on the mistreatment of Picquart, to the point that he places Dreyfus in a subsidiary position.  The book keeps to the storyline, with the focus, though, on Picquart.  Emile Zola's famous front page newspaper article in a paper owned by future prime Minister Georges Clemencau, 'J Accuse'  leads to the first crack in the edifice created by the French Army.  Although Zola loses the libel suit, enough doubt about Dreyfus's conviction turns up that Dreyfus is afforded another trial.  He is convicted again but amnestied soon thereafter.  Dreyfus was later completely exonerated and restored to the Army.  The chasm the Dreyfus Affair created between the right and left in French politics are generally conceded to be a significant turning point in early 20th century French history.

Uncivil Society, Kotkin - B+

                                                Thanks to my brother Will for this brief treatise, the subtitle of which is '1989 and The Implosion of the Communist Establishment'.  In the author's depiction, "uncivil" is the opposite of civil and his chosen categorization of three communist regimes:  E. Germany, Romania and Poland.  Each state fell for similar reasons, but under decidedly different circumstances. They were not pushed. They simply lacked the inner strength to hold together without the threat of Soviet troops to sustain them. The primary reason they collapsed was the abandonment of the socialist bloc by Gorbachev, who denounced the use of force as a doctrine to hold the Warsaw Pact together.  E. Germany suffered for almost its entire existence by comparison to the miracle occurring in W. Germany, which miracle was broadcast into the homes of the regime's populace on television in their own language. The Wall could not block the images of the success of capitalism.  As things deteriorated in what was arguably the communist bloc's most efficient country, the leadership turned to borrowing from the West. By the end in 1989, E. Germany owed $23.5 billion. They were not only morally bankrupt, they were on the verge of default. "The GDR was a Ponzi scheme that fell in a bank run." There were a few thousand protesters in Leipzig in October and a million in the streets of Berlin on Nov. 9th.  A botched announcement by a junior Politburo member sent the people to the Wall. The guards did nothing and it was over before anyone knew what had happened. It was completely unplanned and spontaneous.
                                              Events moved so quickly in Romania that the author says it was almost a coup d'etat. Communism in the impoverished country wrought hardship that was compounded by foreign debt. Ceausescu
responded by harshly suppressing the quality of life in order to pay the banks. By the late 80's most Romanians queued for rationed bread and meat, had hot water one day per week, went without electricity for the majority of the day, and watched the party elite live high on the hog.  Within a week in December, a rural protest over the eviction of a priest turned into a national uprising that overthrew the government; three days later the dictator was executed.
                                             Only in Poland was there an opposition: the indomitable Catholic church, the well-known Solidarity movement and other national organizations.  Additionally, agriculture was never collectivized in Poland, which like the rest of the communist bloc, fell behind the West and also went down the perilous road of serial borrowing.  The wheels became loose first in 1979, when Polish Pope John Paul II returned home and in the  words of one local "undid thirty years of communist propaganda".  A year later, Walesa and Solidarity successfully struck at the Gdansk Shipyard. The end for the communists came in 1989 when they agreed to legalize Solidarity and run national elections, which they were assured they would win.  They were crushed and allowed themselves to be voted out of business.  In the end, the onslaught of capitalism and Gorbachev's decision to not fight to hold the communists in power ended the post-war settlement in Europe.

Hellhound On His Trail, Sides - B

                                                Thanks to my friend Jack Blair for the recommendation and the loan of this book. The Hellhound is James Earl Ray and he is on the trail of Martin Luther King, Jr.   The trail ends in Memphis, a city which in no way was predestined to be their meeting place. In February of 1968, two black men, non-union hourly workers of the Memphis Sanitation Dept., were swallowed up and killed by a defective garbage truck. The truck had killed before and the compensation for the dead was a month of severance pay.  The strike that ensued brought King to Memphis a few weeks before his death. By 1968, King had shifted his focus to economic rights and support of the strike fit perfectly into his poverty theme.  At the same time, Eric Galt (the name Ray had been using since a Missouri prison break a year before ) was driving through the deep South and decided to take a detour to Selma, where King was scheduled to speak.  Galt missed King and went ahead to Atlanta where he followed King's schedule in the papers.  He went to Birmingham, purchased a rifle and drove to Memphis, where King was to meet the strikers and hopefully, lead a peaceful parade.  Knowing where King customarily stayed, Galt rented a room in a boarding house across the street.  A minute or so after 6pm on April 4th, King stepped out onto the balcony of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel.  Galt looked down on him from 200 feet away, a distance that seemed only 30 ft. when viewed through the 7X magnification scope on his Remington Gamemaster.  Within minutes of the firing of a single shot, Galt had tossed the rifle, gotten to his Mustang and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead.  The FBI had his fingerprints within 24 hours, along with other leads and clues. But this was the analog era, and fingerprint data was analyzed manually. As the FBI had millions of fingerprints, it took a decision  by Asst. Director Deke Deloach about a week later to narrow the field.  The clues indicated that the murderer was someone on the run and using aliases.  DeLoach ordered the search to be limited to the 53,000 sets of  convict's prints .  Within a  day, they had Ray's identity and broadcast it, literally, around the world. By then he was in Toronto.  Eventually, with the cooperation of the RCMP,  the FBI learned he was in London, and Scotland Yard arrested him in early June.   Sentenced to 99 years, he escaped once and died in prison in 1998.

The Cartographer of No Mans Land, Duffy - C

                                               This is a novel set in 1917.   The action takes place simultaneously in Nova Scotia and with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in France.  The lead character is Angus MacGrath, a mid-thirties seaman, son of an anti-war pacifist, husband of Lettie and father of 13-year-old Simon.  Because of his skills as an artist and navigator, he is trained as a cartographer, but nonetheless winds up as a lieutenant in the endless maw of filth and violence that is the trenches.  He tries to find his missing best-friend and brother-in-law, Ebbin.  Back home, his wife is lost in a netherworld of fear, anxiety and worry.  Everyone on the home front pours over maps and newspapers and follows the action of the CEF.  Angus does find Ebbin, but he no longer answers to, or even seems to acknowledge the name. Indeed, the Army has announced Ebbin as dead. But he isn't. He is now Lcpl. Havers, the legendary survivor of four years of battle.  Havers, though, appears to be a series of different men who have taken up the dog-tags in an attempt to create and embellish a legend. Soon thereafter,  the decision was made by the Generals for the Canadians to attempt a massive attack comparable to the British multiple failed attempts on the Somme.  The attack at Vimy Ridge became the focus and pride of the Canadian nation. It was, however, the end of Ebbbin/Havers - shot by the Germans and witnessed by and the scene of a serious wound for MacGrath.  The story then  moves to Angus's time in recovery without the use of his right arm and hand and his bittersweet homecoming.  The book has been very well received and reviewed.  The author was a neuroscience writer for the Mayo Clinic and this is her first novel.  Her family has had a lengthy connection to Nova Scotia and her facility with the sailing scenes is obvious.  Her career transition has generated enthusiasm amongst the reviewers.  That said, for me, it wasn't that exciting and offered no particular new insights to the war.

Germania, Winder - C, Incomplete

                                                The author is an editor at Penguin in London and this book is subtitled  'The Wayward Pursuit Of Germans And Their History'.   It is perhaps categorizable as a series of personal observations and explanations, stemming from his travels through Germany and Austria.  His follow-up book 'Danubia' was published last year and although he states in its introduction that it is not necessary to have read 'Germania' first, I figured I might as well.  His portrayal of German history is a bit offbeat. He wanders all over the place in his travels and relates back to some distant era of history by focusing on a specific place. So, he cites Quedlinburg as the burial place of Henry the Fowler, and uses that city to explain Germany at the turn of the first millennium.  It's a different approach, but an effective one. He uses the term fissiparous (tending to break up in parts) to explain and illustrate how power, wealth, and population were scattered around hundreds of Germany's cities.  Those cities, margraves, bishoprics, duchies, mini-kingdoms and principalities were all part of the loosely constructed Holy Roman Empire for over a thousand years.  This lack of centralization is a defining aspect of German history and culture.  As there was no one trying to establish a centralized state, no London or Paris ever emerged. As he moves through the passage of time, he adeptly evokes the horror and destruction of the Thirty Years War. He credits Napoleon with the positive act of decreasing the number of German governments from over 200 to a mere 39. But as the book wore, the witticisms began to outweigh the insights and history. At the one week mark and two-thirds of the way through this book, I decided to throw in the towel . He stops the book before the Nazi takeover and as tempting as it might be to hear what he had to say about Wilhelm II or von Hindenberg,  I demurred. I might add that I had already deleted 'Danubia'.  I guess eclectic, witty history is not my style.

American Rust, Meyer - B-

                                               This is the 2009 debut novel by the man who wrote last year's award winning 'The Son'.  The story here, though, is totally demoralizing, as Meyer delves into the disastrous lives of those who somehow  survived the grinding poverty of the post-industrial era in the Mon Valley, southwest of Pittsburgh.  The mill jobs have been  gone for over a generation. Those who stayed exist in a world comparable to that of the subsistence agriculture economy of  a century before - only with no hope for the future. Now they survive on disability pensions, jobs at Walmart, government largesse, and by poaching in the surrounding woods.  Two twenty-year-olds walk into an abandoned building, are attacked by three drifters, and soon thereafter, one of the drifters is dead. This sets in motion a complex series of events involving the two boys, their families, and the town's Chief of Police.  Suicide, alcoholism, living with a permanent disability, and totally irresponsible parenting amidst hopeless poverty are the themes explored, along with a chilling evocation of some time in prison.  I am very familiar with many of the place names throughout this book, because I lived in Pittsburgh in the early 80's, as the wheels were coming off the area's economy.  I've never given much thought to what happened out in all those river towns and now I know.

The Smartest Kids In The World, Ripley - B +

                                               This book has received a vast amount of mainstream attention.  The fact that it is a topic I doubt I've ever read a word about yet it crossed my radar is proof enough. I've always thought that the key to a successful childhood education is parents who insisted on effort, achievement and accountability. Results would be even better in a school system that focuses on the same.  I've also believed that the great detractor from success in America is distraction - tv for most of my life and now, video games and social media.  The author sets out to find the answer to the question of why so many countries do better on international testing than the US.  Her methodology is fascinating: she analyzes the experiences of American exchange students in S. Korea, Finland and Poland. Each country is more successful than the US for similar, but different, reasons.  The South Koreans school day is  twice as long as the rest of the world's.  After the high school day is over, just about everyone goes to the cram schools that teach preparation for a nationwide test. Korean kids go to these 'hagwons' until 10:pm. The system works, but everyone deplores its intensity and emotional drain on all concerned. As for the Poles, they jump started their entry into the free world by decentralizing, educating their teachers, and emphasizing that school was critical to survive in a post-communist Europe. It is the Finns, though, that the author holds up as the best. The Finns concluded that the way to improve their country's prospects was to hire the best and the brightest to teach their children. It is as hard for a Finn to enter one of their teacher prep colleges as it is for an American to enter an Ivy League school. Respect for the profession is high and the result is one of the best educated populaces in the world. Ripley sums up by emphasizing rigor - you must work, because it's important. There must be accountability, and she takes a well-deserved shot at America's focus on children's self-esteem that leads to social promotions and a refusal to let 'Johnny' know there are consequences to indifferent effort and results.  She points out that in the adult world there are unending consequences to middling performances.  As the oldest child of a woman who today would be called a 'Tiger Mom', notwithstanding the fact she was no more Asian than she was a Yale Law professor, I am thankful for being held accountable for my actions. Good parenting knows no time, racial, or economic limits.  I am certain that the post-war NYC Catholic school system was not terribly different than the day to day life of all of my Jewish friends in NYC's public schools. I would further surmise that the public school lives of my Protestant friends in rural Texas or Indiana also emphasized rigor, accountability, and responsibility.  I suspect today's educators probably aren't interested in turning the clock back 50 years, but there might be some lessons to be learned there.

Hour of the Cat, Quinn - B

                                               This a very good historical novel and first in a trilogy about a WWI and NYPD vet who turns to private investigations as a career move in the early 1930's.  The year is now 1938 and the story is set in NYC and Berlin. The backstory is eugenics, the pseudo-science of racial defects, as practiced in America and Nazi Germany.  Forgotten by most in the US, we once led the world in the incarceration and sterilization of defective people, such as epileptics, the retarded, and mentally deficient. In a patchwork quilt of different state rules and protocols, the medical profession, with the approval of a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case, went about their business with funding from the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations.  Of course, the Germans took matters well beyond sterilization and into mass murder. What makes this novel fascinating is the author's breadth of knowledge about pre-war New York.  He can describe streets, locales, and neighborhoods with astounding detail and color. He introduces equally interesting characters.  His hero, Fintan Dunne, is an Irish veteran of the famous 69th Regiment of Joyce Kilmer, Father Duffy, and Medal of Honor winner, Col. William Donovan. I had only known of Donovan as the WWII mastermind of the OSS. I did not know about his rise from blue collar Buffalo, his ascendancy to the top of the Wall Street legal profession, or his unsuccessful run for Governor in 1932.  The Berlin portion of the story is a bit less interesting, as it details the Nazi move towards war and the rivalry between Gen. Heydrich and Adm. Canaris.  I suspect  that it will be the OSS where we find Donovan and  Dunne in the next two books.

The Birth of the West, Collins - B

                                               This is the story of how different  individuals and institutions came together a little over a thousand years ago to lay the foundation of the culture we now live in. 'Rome, Germany, France and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century' is the book's subtitle.  From a lawless dark age, there emerged stability and a well-ordered world, partially thanks to the conversion to Latin Christianity of Poland, Hungary, northern Germany and particularly the Vikings. Rome itself was emblematic of conditions in the west. While Byzantium grew and the Muslims spread their religion and knowledge around the Mediterranean, the city's population had dropped to 30,000 from over a million during the 1st century A.D. Rome was a perfect storm of failed governance involving the assassination and kidnapping of Popes and, in one instance, the exhumation of a Papal predecessor who had been dead for almost a year, dressing him up, and remonstrating against his performance. The center of the Christian world was a ghetto ruled over by local mobs. The Papal States were virtually defenseless and as late as 846, Saracens raided the eternal city.  A generation  later, the Vikings besieged a Paris of 3,000 inhabitants for eleven months.  In what had been Charlemagne's Empire, stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the Elbe, there was now chaos, war and total dysfunction. His heirs kept further subdividing his empire, which itself had no particular geographic, linguistic or administrative coherence.  The deaths of the last Carolingians opened up opportunities for men of talent, and Otto I of the Saxons and Hugh Capet in France stepped to the fore.   Otto I was crowned Holy Roman Emperor after he had brought a modicum of peace and stability to the eastern lands of Charlemagne's former empire.  He also helped secure portions of southern Italy from the Byzantines when his son and successor, Otto II, married Theophano, the Emperor's niece.  The son's peaceful succession  established a pattern and set in place an Empire (neither Holy nor Roman according to Voltaire) that lasted over 800 years.  Otto III appointed Pope Sylvester II, a reformer who had a very positive effect on the Church. He abolished simony, nepotism, clerical marriage, encouraged monastic reform, established new monastic orders,  and reformed the episcopacy throughout the continent.  "We have now come full circle. We began with the parochialism of Rome and the Papal State. Now we have come to the beginning of the massive reform of the papacy that the German emperors from Otto I onward had called for and struggled to achieve for one hundred years.  That reform was to make the papacy the greatest power in Europe after a gargantuan struggle with the very empire that had initially reformed it.  What is important here is that by 1050 the chaos of the late ninth and early tenth centuries has been overcome and a new polity had emerged, the German Reich.  Europe had been born, but it still needed a reformed church and papacy.   And the reform of the papacy led, in turn, to a struggle to define the politics of the West and still influence our ideas on the separation of church and state."    I do not know enough about the era to know if the author makes his case.  But,this book is very well written and has a wealth of information about the era for those so inclined.
                                                       

Lost Girls, Kolker - B

                                              The subtitle of this true crime book is 'An Unsolved American Mystery'.  It is the heart breaking story of the five Craigslist prostitutes whose corpses were found near Gilgo Beach on Long Island's south shore barrier island in 2010.  The book is in two halves: the first tells the women's  backstories; the second details the oft-criticized performance of the Suffolk County police and the bickering among the highly dysfunctional families that created these poor young women.  Their five stories are obviously different, but have so much in common that the NYTimes reviewer said, "..their histories bleed together in one long chronicle of childhood abuse, neglect and sorry choices".  Poverty, ignorance and limited choices that lead to teenage mothers having children out of wedlock is the repeated theme. Jobs at MacDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, call-centers and cleaning jobs at night along with truly useless men leads to a repetitive circle of despondency and desperation.  Eventually all of them leave their hometowns in Maine, N.C., Buffalo, Connecticut and upstate N.Y.  Ironically, the success of the police departments in and around metropolitan NYC in shutting down 'escort services' put these girls on the street and eventually onto the internet, where they could be self-employed and not need to share with their pimps.  The downside of what is known as an 'outcall' is that you have no protection and no chance to assess the john.  Exactly how they met their end and who the killer is is, as the subtitle says, unsolved.  The appalling media frenzy, epitomized by Nancy Grace and her ilk, is painful to read about. The only thing worse is the telling of how the families, one mother in particular, adopted their new roles of public grievers seeking out the spotlight and someone to sue or blame.  Ever since 'In Cold Blood' scared me decades ago, I've avoided true crime. Not a bad idea.

The Founding Conservatives, Lefer - C+

                                               Our, particularly my, tendency to think of the Founders as all on the same page until the contretemps around the Constitutional Convention and Federalist Papers and not really bi-partisan until after Washington, is a function of what the author calls the consensus school of post-WW2 historiography.   They really weren't monolithic in anything, not even their desire for freedom from Great Britain. The author's two primary points are that the conservatives saved the revolution from leftist extremism, and that they firmly planted the seeds of free market capitalism in US soil. The two most prominent conservatives were John Dickinson and Robert Morris. Dickinson was a successful lawyer,  educated in England, and was the author of 'Letters From A Farmer'.   His 'Letters' , which spoke eloquently for American freedom in the early 70's, made him one of the most famous men in the colonies and the  empire.  He penned the First Continental Congress's petition to George III in 1774.  Morris was a  skilled merchant who in 1775 was able to smuggle two-and-a-half tons of gunpowder into America and provide Washington with desperately needed supplies.  His success led to a dominant role as the member of the Continental Congress with significant executive authority over matters of business, finance, procurement, and armaments. Neither was overly enthused, though, about pushing for independence, and Dickinson didn't even sigh the Declaration. Morris did.  Both were members of the financial elite and were uncomfortable with the radicalism of Sam Adams, his cousin John, and the the rebellious Virginians.  Throughout the war years, there was endless political controversy about how to pay for the war, how to manage  scarce resources, whether to provide pensions for the officers, and who and what to tax.  Dickinson drafted the Articles of Confederation. His draft  initially provided for a strong central government, but a more state-centric solution prevailed.  Morris continued his financial and organizational wizardry,  enabling the Continental Army to stay in the field until Yorktown.  Both men were participants in the Constitutional Convention, where Dickinson played a constructive, active role.  Proponents of tradition, structure, the rule of law, and the importance of enterprise, they certainly were deserving of the characterization "conservative revolutionaries".  I found this book enlightening, as I knew very little about the internecine politics of the war years.  But at times, it felt as if the author struggled to fit facts into his thesis and find modern comparisons.

Saints of the Shadow Bible, Rankin - C+

                                               The shadow bible was a very old, leather-bound copy of 'Scots Criminal Law' that the Saints swore allegiance to over thirty years ago.   However, they reserved the right to determine which rules of the criminal justice system they adhered to.  If a particular bad guy had an unfortunate accident, perhaps rectifying a miscarriage of justice in the more rule-bound courts, well, who's to say that's wrong. At this stage of the game, all of the old crew is retired, with the exception of John Rebus, who has been readmitted to the force. Rebus is trying to keep his nose clean in order to stretch out a few more years on the job that constitutes his life, when the activities of his old gang come up for reconsideration.  The impetus is the overturning, by an ambitious minister, of the double jeopardy rule in Scotland.  Tied into the ancient case to which a new corpse is added are the two sides of the upcoming referendum on Scottish disunion, along with some drug dealing, a car accident and a revenge killing.  Notwithstanding his advanced age, continued smoking and drinking, and conflicted loyalties, Rebus doggedly pursues all the matters to their logical conclusions.

Beatles v. Stones, McMillian - B

                                                 "The Beatles want to hold your hand, but the Stones want to burn down your town." - Tom Wolfe.  That said, the early Beatles leaned more toward thuggery than the Stones. They came from tough working class backgrounds,  lived in council estates, were 'Scousers' from Liverpool, and spent two and a half years drinking, popping pills, and being quite rowdy on the Reeperbahn, in the rough and tumble port city of Hamburg.  Mick, Keith,  and Brian Jones were the sons of middle class families and lived their entire lives in the much more sophisticated capital city of London. Mick did well enough that he was admitted to the prestigious London School of Economics. It was their respective managers who molded each groups public image. Brian Epstein insisted the Beatles clean up their act.  The Stones adopted their somewhat raunchier approach naturally and let Andrew Loog Oldham tout it.  The British tabloids played up a rivalry that both groups refused to articulate; indeed, they were friends, spent a lot of time together, shared music and travelled in the same circles. They both evolved into more sophisticated musicians as time went on. But, "in the end" the lads from Liverpool were first: they sold more records, were better songwriters, and edged the Stones in creativity, genius, and popularity.  I submit the Beatles had a greater social/cultural impact, perhaps because I believe the mid-to-late sixties was their era and the Stones owned the more turbulent epilogue. That said, I love both bands, and  in the last decade I saw Paul McCartney's first US tour singing Beatles tunes in decades and the Stones most recent effort - each were awesome, unforgettable and touching. Thank God for the British invasion and this fine brief prelude to 'Tune In'.

The Tender Bar, Moehringer - B

                                          Thanks to Jack Blair for this recommendation.  This memoir is about the importance of a bar in Manhasset on Long Island in the life of the author.   Manhasset holds a special place in my memory, as it is the town that I aspired to as I came of age in Queens. It was the first place I ever earned any money,  the location of the North Hills Country Club, where my friends and I caddied. We'd hitch north on the Cross Bay and east on the L.I.E.  I went to one of the best Catholic schools in metropolitan New York, Archbishop Molloy in Queens, and St. Mary's in Manhasset was run by the same order of Marist brothers. The difference is that all of the other Marist schools were in dumpy sections of Manhattan and the Bronx, whereas St. Mary's was where the rich kids were.  I knew from a very early age that I didn't want on be on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder a minute longer than I had to. I dreamed of being in a place like Manhasset. A few years later, I worked for a lawyer who lived in Manhasset and was a member of a country club there - one a lot classier than the one I had worked at.  Being Irish-American, having some familiarity with bars and hooked on the location, it is no surprise that this book had me from the preface.  The author, known as JR, lived on the wrong side of the tracks in a crazy house owned by his grandfather and filled with a constantly changing cast of relatives.  His dad was totally absent; his mom struggled to raise him and was often so broke that at one stage, she filed for bankruptcy. His uncle worked at Dickens (later Publicans), a bar "142 paces away" and it proved to be his boyhood home away from home. When his uncle announced that JR had gotten into Yale, the crowd in the bar broke out in a chorus of 'Boola Boola'.  It was also the place where he found and adopted a panoply of male role models, that included bartenders, waiters, cooks, cops, and gamblers.  It was the home that nurtured him through his long, painful romance with the glamorous Sidney at Yale, a romance that I'm not sure he ever recovered from, as well as his stumbling start at a writing career at the Times.  The death of the owner led to the end of an era and the closing of  the bar. Fortunately for Moehringer, the closing coincided with his move west and his coming to the realization that, having grown up in a bar,  he had a drinking problem. The story closes on a melancholy note, as he came back to Manhasset, after September 11th to write about its new fatherless children.

Five Days At Memorial, Fink - B +

                                      American's (perhaps humanity's) propensity to call in the cavalry for one's ill loved ones and gotcha second guessing are the dominant themes of this Pulitzer Prize winning book's harrowing true story,   subtitled,  'Life And Death In A Storm-Ravaged Hospital'.  Memorial was an older hospital in downtown New Orleans and one that probably wouldn't have been mentioned in a discussion of great medical centers. Its patients were poor, its staff came from the same neighborhoods, as did some of its physicians.  It was owned by an out-of-town for-profit firm and seems to have been supervised/regulated by more federal and state agencies than one could keep track of. Underfunded, understaffed and totally unprepared for Hurricane Katrina when it hit, Memorial really didn't have a plan for dealing with disasters.  In the past when hurricanes threatened, the staff would bring their kids and pets and usually, after a day of heavy lifting, things went back to normal.  This time, things slowly cascaded into a living and dying hell. A 21st century hospital without power is, perhaps, a step above the Bedlams and Bellevues of yore.  Without lights, air-conditioning, ventilator machines, life support monitors, phones ( neither land nor cellular), water, flushing toilets, elevators, computers, food, a tall building filled with very, very ill people quickly becomes another level of Dante's Inferno.  Almost all of the staff performed heroically and at the highest levels of their professions.  On the fifth day, one doctor 'sedated' quite a few patients, many of whom were comatose, unmovable and had signed DNR's, as well as one morbidly obese man, who had seemed ok that morning.    All signs pointed to the conclusion that under extraordinary stress,  Dr. Anna Pou had euthanized the patients.  Was it second-degree murder?  The state Attorney General thought so, as did the national forensic consultants who reviewed the case.  But, the local coroner wasn't so sure about autopsies done on bodies that had sat in the sweltering heat for ten days.  The local prosecutor's office was overwhelmed in a city with the most per capita murders in the country. Additionally, this case was factually very complex, and just about every medical organization in the state had rallied around the two nurses who had been accused with Pou. In the end, the coroner said there was no homicide and the grand jury went along with that conclusion. The 'good news' of this story is that a concerted national effort has begun to design protocols to ration healthcare in future emergencies.










                                     

Catastrophe 1914, Hastings - B

                                          After reading  'Sleepwalkers' last year, I had concluded that I was up to date on 1914 and was prepared to put the topic to rest for a while. But I have twice seen Sir Max speak at the Pritzker Military Library in Chicago, and because of his wit, charm and superb prior books,  I concluded that I might as well give this a whirl.  Like Tuchman's masterpiece 'Guns Of August' from half a century ago, and unlike 'Sleepwalkers', this book reviews the opening campaigns and takes us through year-end. Hastings makes clear in his introduction, as he did in his presentation in Chicago, that he is sticking to the traditional conclusion - that the causus belli remains Germany and its policies.  I have always thought that the militaristic, lightweight and incredibly insecure Kaiser was someone the world would have been better off without.  He also points out that the younger von Moltke was but a shadow of his uncle and blindly committed to war as the means for Germany to rise on the world stage. He takes to task the Austrian Chief of Staff, Hotzendorf, who thought that by prevailing at war he could win the heart of his amore. The Austrians wanted war with the Serbs and the author claims that many were quite happy to use the Sarajevo assassinations as a pretext. Within two weeks of the Austrian ultimatum, thanks to the treaties, the mobilizations, and the hubris of the continent, Europe plunged into war. "The various participants in what soon would become the Great War had very different motives for belligerence, and objectives with little in common."
                                             Although the Austrians and Serbs were engaged in bloody, vicious combat before the major powers even mobilized, it is the clash of the Germans with French and British  that has captured the imagination of historians for a century.  The implementation of the von Schlieffen Plan ("Let the last man on the right brush his sleeve on the Channel") was the first great massive modern attempt at envelopment that the Germans would perfect a generation later.  They marched through Belgium with twice as many men as the Allies had in opposition. The Belgians, British and French fell before them. As August turned to September, the Germans were confident that they would soon be in Paris again.  For hundreds of miles, the British, and more importantly, the French, kept retreating before the teutonic onslaught.  But, slowly, the tide turned as the German General Staff lost control of their armies, the French stiffened, and by mid- September, it was over. The Germans were stopped.  Men started to dig in, and create the trenches and the hell that defined the western front for the next four years.  All that remained was the battles of October and November, particularly First Ypres, extending the lines to the Channel.
                                           In the east, Germany whipped the  Russians so emphatically at Tannenberg that the Russian commanding officer, Samsonov, walked off into the woods and shot himself.  Further south in the vast reaches of Galicia, the Russians and Austrians stumbled into each other, and managed despite their respective institutional incompetencies, to inflict unconscionable slaughter on each other.  German reinforcements allowed the Central Powers to stabilize the eastern front.
                                            Hastings' concluding comments emphasize his feeling that the Germans bore the brunt of responsibility for the Great War and that pursuing it to the bitter end was the only choice the Allies had.  He states that the only way to avoid a German occupation and domination of Belgium and eastern France was to beat them. They would not relent until pushed back to their own borders. He acknowledges the horrible suffering, the incompetent generalship, the futility of the war. But, he points out that no one has ever suggested a methodology that could have ended it - other than fighting the Germans for as long as it took.
                                         
     

The Good Lord Bird, McBride - B

                                          This book was a National Book Award winner and on every "best" list for the year 2013.  The premise of the novel is that in an old Negro church in Wilmington Del. in the early 60's, a deacon finds a  memoir written by Henry Schackleford, a parishioner who, as a ten year old in 1856, was liberated from slavery by John Brown. Called 'Onion' by the Captain, young Henry spends the next three years with the Browns in Kansas, Missouri, and ultimately Virginia. He is befriended by the Captain, a number of his sons, and a daughter, Anna Brown. He wryly observes the Captain's ways, which include a lot of praying, bible quoting, letter writing, mystical insights, and occasional beheadings and other murders.   Brown was a terrorist of the first order, and is depicted here as crazy as a loon.  But he was a man on a mission, and freeing slaves was the center of his universe. Sacrifices of all kinds, including the deaths of his sons, did not shake him from his appointed rounds.  The success of the book is due to Henry's unique story telling style.  After Brown reveals to his assembled men his plan to attack the Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Henry makes the following statement. "You had to reckon, for an insane man, he sure knowed how to cook it up, and for the first time, the looks of doubt started to fall off the men's faces…." Although this novel provides some interesting perspective on Brown and the Raid, I can't say it has added much to my understanding of the era. However, it is highly entertaining and I laughed out loud a number of times.

The Economic Consequences Of The Peace, Keynes - A*

                                         This is one of the seminal masterpieces of the 20th century, written by Keynes in 1919 upon his return to London from the Paris Peace Conference. In a modern introduction, Paul Volcker compliments the author for being the visionary who saw how foolish the Treaty was, and more importantly, for seeing where Europe should have been headed.  Keynes envisioned the mutually dependent continent we have almost a hundred years later. I have long known that this book opposed the mistakes the victors were in the process of making when it was written.  I had no concept of how sharp and critical of Clemenceau, Wilson and George he was. He referred to Clemenceau as an old man and one whose vision of Europe was a perpetual prizefight. "Thus a magnanimous Peace based on the Fourteen Points would simply shorten the interval before Germany recovered and hasten the day she would once again hurl at France her great numbers."  The French wanted a Carthaginian peace. Referring to Wilson, Keynes said, "This blind and deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where a swift and glittering blade was in the hands of an adversary. There can seldom have been a statesman of the first rank more incompetent than the President in the agilities of the council chamber." Of the three heads of state, he says that "the future life of Europe was not their concern"; it was all about "enfeeblement" and "revenge".  He then turns to the Treaty and pounds away at its complete inconsistency with the  Fourteen Points and the terms upon which Germany signed the Armistice. He points out that many of its provisions (for example, confiscating overseas private German property) were inconsistent with international law.  He turns to the requirement that Germany allocate a huge percentage of it's coal to Italy and France and suggests that "the industrial future of Europe is bleak and the prospects of revolution very good."  He then turns to the reparations issue and spends one-half the book dismantling the thought process behind them, pointing out that Germany can't pay them. "The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe."  He reminds his audience that the governments of Europe were doing Lenin's bidding. Lenin preached "debauching" capitalism's currencies and Keynes predicts that the treaty will lead to inflation.  He says that inflation is "a continuing phenomenon of which the end is not yet in sight."  "An inefficient, unemployed disorganized Europe faces us, torn by internal strife and international hate, fighting starving, pillaging, and lying.  What warrant is there for a picture of less somber colors?"  This extraordinary book is only 133 pages long and is amazingly prescient in its painting of the bleak turn Europe was about to make. I suspect that somewhere along the way someone has made a series of economic or geo-political predictions more accurate than these. But it is hard to imagine any set of advice or prognostications that we can say about with such certainty: what a tragedy that they were ignored.

The Circle, Eggers - B

                                         Thanks, Lauren, for this gift. Novelists take us places we otherwise do not get to go: the past, both recent and long ago, possibly the future, exotic locales, sinister worlds, and happier times. Here, Eggers takes us to a workplace and an imagined reality unlike any I have  ever encountered - a composite of what I believe Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter et al. might be like. It's a glass-filled modernistic wonder, the headquarters of The Circle, a magical place filled with compassionate, considerate young people and an oh so exciting place for Mae Holland to go to work. It is led by the Three Wise Men, who are advised by the Gang of Forty. All social media and all commerce, banking, and business is handled by The Circle. The firm's prosperity is based on its successful TruYou technology which has consolidated everything on the web into a one site, one password location that creates a seamless universal internet experience. However, transparency and inter-connectedness can become oppressive in a company where being part of the "community'' is highly esteemed and one's participation is monitored, along with one's heart rate, caloric intake, hydration status and much, much more. To be a true member of the Circle, Mae goes transparent and achieves instantaneous fame.   By wearing a pendant that shows her millions of followers everything she sees and hears every day, Mae accepts the premise that if everything we do is seen, we are more likely to never misbehave. Everyone we see and interact with will be better, because everyone is watching. The more connected the world, the safer, better place it will be.  The more we know about each other, our pasts, our hopes, our likes, the more complete The Circle will be, until this internet portal knows everything about everybody.  Like Orwell before him, Eggers portrays a future run amok, this time by a Silicon Valley company, not a national government. Since the NSA and the five companies mentioned above, along with dozens I've never heard of, probably know 90% of what The Circle aspires to, this is a timely, thoughtful book.  It is also a fun creative work, by a brilliant writer.