A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln And The 1846 Invasion of Mexico, Greenberg - B

                                               This a superb treatise about the politics of an era lost in vague memories of Manifest Destiny and the Halls of Montezuma. After independence, the US prospered, but not so Mexico. Its population declined, there was significant racial conflict between the Europeans and the Indians, and it became what today is known as a 'failed state'.  There was virtually no centralized government and "between 1821 and 1857, the presidency of Mexico changed hands at least fifty times, almost always by coup d'etat".  The 'Texians' had achieved independence in 1836, and were clamoring for annexation. That the US would expand from coast-to-coast was a generally accepted principle. The only real questions were how far north and south on the way west, and who might we have to fight to get there.
                                              As the 1844 election approached,  all acknowledged that the Great Compromiser, the founder of the Whig Party, the master of the House and later, the Senate, Kentucky's Henry Clay would at long last achieve the prize he had been twice denied. The Democrats were in disarray. They nominated Polk, the 'Young Hickory' after Jackson recommended him for the highest office.  He was such a long shot that one Whig paper punned "the Democrats must be Polking fun at us".  Clay was opposed to  annexation because he knew it would lead to war. Polk made it the central theme of his campaign and he pulled off the upset. America was on the threshold of fulfilling its destiny - Texas, Oregon and California awaited. Annexation was approved by Congress and the President, and Texas joined the union on July 4, 1845.  A treaty with England led to Oregon becoming a US territory.  Polk provoked a border dispute, and in the summer of 1846 had his war with Mexico. The letter he sent to Congress stating that the US and Mexico were already at war was generally conceded to be a pack of outlandish lies, but the bloodlust for territory was overwhelming.  Fourteen votes in the House (including former President Adams) and two in the Senate ( John C. Calhoun abstained) were all that mustered the strength to resist.  And from day one Polk made it clear - Texas was a given - he wanted New Mexico and California too.  Within a year though, popular enthusiasm began to fade as American atrocities against the perceived racially inferior Mexicans began to see the light of day. A vigorous anti-war movement surfaced in the northeast and Whigs nationally remained opposed. The Wilmot Proviso ( excluding slavery from any territory taken in the war) passed the House, but not the Senate, thus further dividing opinion around the country  between pro- and anti-slavery supporters. The war, however,  went very well as Gen. Winfield Scott captured and occupied Mexico City on Sept. 14.  Polk waited for a surrender and an honorable peace - but it was not forthcoming.  The Mexicans opposed the occupation and initiated a low-grade guerrilla resistance.  Clay, who had lost his son in battle, protested the war, as did a young Abe Lincoln in his first Congressional speech. The war became so unpopular that many called for the US troops to come home and for Polk to forego his demands for territory.  There then arrived from Mexico, six weeks after it had been signed, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  It had been negotiated on Polk's terms by his diplomatic agent, Nicholas Biddle. This notwithstanding that Polk recalled Biddle after he realized the diplomat had come to oppose the war and the occupation. Biddle, with the support of Gen. Scott, ignored the recall. The Treaty accepted the Rio Grande as the Texas boundary and awarded New Mexico and Upper California to the US, thus achieving all of Polk's initial war aims.
                                              Polk had won the war, magnificently expanded the country, but lost the day.  The Whig General, Zachary Taylor, who had reluctantly participated in the opening invasion of northern Mexico succeeded him in the White House. Polk himself died a few months after he returned home to Tennessee.  Taylor supported the Compromise of 1850 allowing California to enter the union as a free state.  The war and its aftermath led to the inadequate presidencies of Taylor and Pierce and further exacerbated tension between the north and the south.  In his memoirs, one of the successful young West Point officers  said that the war "was one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker one and that the Civil War was our punishment for that transgression". Ulysses Grant's opinion represented the late 19th century view of the war.  The author closes with, " It is one of the few American wars not commemorated in Washington D.C. There is no monument to the 1847 conflict in the nation's capital , not even a statue."
                                              Clearly, the Mexican-American War was inconsistent with our republican principles. We trumped up a phony war against a harmless neighbor. But, I can't help but conclude that the western half of the US prospered in our system in ways that it never could have in Mexico's.  And as a part-time resident of southern California and western Colorado, whose ancestors came to the US a decade after the war, I'm pleased with the consequences of Manifest Destiny.

Fragile By Design, Haber and Calomoris - A*

                                               In the fall of last year, the authors previewed this book in a 'Foreign Affairs' article that piqued my interest. Indeed, I was astounded, and still am, by one simple statement. Since the late 1830's, the US has suffered through 12 major banking crisis - Canada, none! My historic desire to read books about the 'dismal science' has been pretty low, perhaps exceeded only by my total lack of interest in books about banking systems.  But, how could our unbelievably successful nation have faltered so many times and still have wound up number one? I felt this was a must read.
                                               Banking systems are a function of national political will and design. In essence, you get the banking system your nation's politicians summon up. Without credit, a nation cannot grow and it is critically  important  that a system provide stable credit. The US has had ample credit, but in an inherently unstable system.  In this book, the US system is contrasted to that of a number of countries, but particularly those of England and Canada in what the authors call "The Game of Bank Bargains."  The starting point is that those in charge of the government partner up with aspiring bankers and create a set of rules.  The government charters the banks and passes laws that establish the rights of depositors, borrowers, creditors, investors and insiders. As the arbiter, the government has to juggle inherent conflicts of interest.  For example, how do you establish the rules of debt enforcement, when the people against whom debt may be enforced are the same people who elect the government?  The list of conflicts in a sophisticated modern democratic society are endless.
                                               The first important national financial institution was the Bank of England, established in 1694 to finance Parliament's wars with France and the expansion of the Empire.  It was the only joint stock company ( limited liability) with a banking charter allowed in England until 1825. "The Bank of England deployed its resources to serve government needs throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."  Interestingly, it did very little to help finance the Industrial Revolution.  The tide turned against the B of E in the 1820's when other joint stock companies were allowed to charter banks, and the B of E began to establish branches around the country.  A central premise of this book is that strong national institutions with multiple branches are the key to economic growth and financial stability, whereas small dispersed single branch banks are incapable of spreading risk. The reforms of the early nineteenth century led to a burgeoning economy and a bank system that was essentially crisis free until 2007.
                                                The authors are American - one teaches at Stanford and the other Columbia - and it is our system that is the primary focus of this book.  The  Constitution is silent on banking and it was only by citing 'implied powers' that Hamilton was able to charter a national bank. The agrarian populists were opposed and in 1832 were able to revoke the banks charter. "From this point until roughly 1980, the coalition of small bankers and agrarian populists would dominate the politics of bank chartering and bank regulation." Thus, the US was poorly served by thousands of small state-chartered unit (one branch) banks that were non-competitive supporters of the local gentry. This inherently unstable system would pay low interest on deposits, make risky loans to its supporters and not have the wherewithal to survive liquidity crises. " By 1914, there were 27,349 banks in the US, 95% of which had no branches!" This system had spawned bank crises in 1837, 1857, 1861, 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1896 and most famously, 1907.  After the banking system was saved by J.P. Morgan, Congress authorized the Federal Reserve.  The Fed, however, did not change the underlying fundamental, it merely provided a national liquidity vehicle.  "As late as the early 1970's, only 12 states allowed unrestricted intrastate branching and no states allowed interstate branching." Disintermediation, money-market funds, the computer revolution, globalization, urbanization and the 1986 Tax Act all added up to the end of the 19th century agrarian system in the 1980's. Banks operating national branching networks accounted for only 10 percent of the US banking system in the early 1980's. By the mid-90's, they accounted for more than 70%.  As the US system finally achieved the ability to spread risk, politics intervened. Merging banks were scored by the regulators on many fronts, and one was compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.  In order to assure support on the CRA issue, the banks dropped their credit requirements for poorer  urban borrowers. Banks committed  billions  in CRA lending to underserved  or low -income communities between 1992 and 2007. In turn, the government supported entities (GSE's) of Fannie and Freddie adjusted their rules to accept loans that had smaller down payments, riskier profiles, etc. If this new type of inherently aggressive loan was ok for the urban poor, it was clearly appropriate for the middle class. Three percent down payments became the norm and no-doc loans categorized as Alt-A and sub-prime became the rule not the exception. "The result was the rapid growth of mortgages with high probabilities of default for all classes of Americans." Both the Clinton and Bush administrations pushed the housing envelope because it not only brought the American dream to a much higher percentage of the population, but because real estate fueled the boom that was the '90's and '00's.  The merry-go-round brought in mortgage bankers who churned out loans, leveraged investment banks that packaged and sold the sub-prime stuff around the world and the rating agencies that approved it all.  Capital requirements were lightened by the regulators because it seemed like the boom would go on forever. "By June of 2008 there were approximately 28 million sub-prime and Alt-A loans outstanding with a total value of approximately $4.8 trillion.... roughly half of all mortgages outstanding were high risk."After it was over, a deposed bank CEO said that you had to keep dancing while the music played. The music stopped and the government was required to bail out the banks in order to avoid a repeat of the Great Depression.  The damage to the US will reverberate for decades.  The authors believe, and I believe they make their case, that a strong centralized system with branch banks is the key to financial stability and growth. They laud the Canadians. For almost two centuries, the Canadian branch banking system has spread the risk around the country. It has been so effective that they didn't even need a central bank until the Depression and brought on deposit insurance later than the US.  There were no liar loans, no no-down-payment loans and no negative amortization tables. Excess did not seep into their system and they suffered no Great Recession.
                                               Although it appears throughout this book that the authors discredit perceived truisms of American history (dismissing deposit insurance as inherently risky), and that at times, they carry some right wing libertarian message, I found this to be one of the most insightful books I have ever read. I feel as if blinders have been lifted from my eyes. Branch banking seems so terribly logical and efficient.  When I combine that fact with my personal conclusion that Congress is, and has been,  structurally incapable of governing in the best interests of the nation, I view this book as an economic epiphany.  It was reviewed for the Times by the man who wrote the Pulitzer-winning treatise on the Great Depression called 'Lords of Finance'. The article by Liquat Ahamed on April 11 this year is a superbly composed  must read. He does think that our recent travails are more complex than the authors concede while making their case here and focusing on the CRA. But, he does refer to the book as "brilliant" and that "it deserves to become a classic."




                                           

Mr. Mercedes, King - C +

                                               Apparently, this is Stephen King's first attempt at a detective novel and I, for one, am not moved. That's rather presumptuous of me, as the 'about the author' section of the book mentions that he has written over 50 books, all of which are worldwide bestsellers.  Wow - all - worldwide.  A rather creepy guy uses a Mercedes (thus, the title) to kill a bunch of people at a jobs fair waiting area.  A just-retired detective goes after him and, of course, with help from a very eclectic crew, stops him on the threshold of another sensational act of violence.  Any mass murderer is going to be weird, creepy or just plain crazy. But, the fact that this guy is creepy (I can't avoid the characterization ) pushes this very close to the horror genre. And since I think I've only read one of the above referenced fifty, it's just not for me.

Sacred Treason, Forrester - B

                                               This book is a fine example of what I like about historical novels.  It is well-written and well-researched.  It conveys some of the passion, emotion and detail that is often missing in the academic and general histories.   The reason it is so well done is that it is written by a professional historian dabbling on the side under a pseudonym, and presumably looking for a few extra pounds.  The setting is London in the 1560's at a time when Elizabeth I is still very vulnerable.  The Catholics are hoping for a restoration; Mary Queen of Scots is their logical hope, and the plot here is about the possibility that Elizabeth is illegitimate.  Anne Boleyn may, or may not, have been married to Percy. If she had been, a case can be made against Elizabeth.  The lead character is  Clarenceaux King of Arms, a Royal Herald and a designer of coats-of-arms.  He is part of the old religion's underground establishment, finds conclusive proof of the marriage of Percy and Anne Boleyn, but opts to play his cards close to the vest and not rock the boat of rebellion. William Harley will be back, as this is the first of an already published trilogy.

Empires Of The Dead, Crain - B +

                                                This superb book is about Great Britain's transformation from a nation with little enthusiasm or interest in its foreign wars and it's victims to a country that reveres the memory of those lost and takes devoted care of over a million overseas graves.  This is the history of Britain's war cemeteries and the man responsible for them.  "The man who made it possible for a country to come to terms with the slaughter and unbearable debt it owed its dead, is scarcely better known than the unidentified thousands whose graves bear the inscription 'Known unto God'. His name was Fabian Ware."  He had served in the Boer War, had established a reputation for administrative efficiency and was appointed as the Major-in-charge of the Graves Registration Commission (GRC), a hybrid Red Cross/Army entity, early in the War. By 1915, he had convinced the French government to grant land in perpetuity to Great Britain, which would assume responsibility to forever maintain the cemeteries. Reconstituted as the Imperial War Graves Commission,  Ware and his colleagues were entrusted with endless decisions: how to layout the cemetery, what kind of foliage and shrubbery (maples for the Canadians), which direction would the graves face (east to face the enemy), crosses or stones (stones), whether to allow repatriation of remains(no), whether to make the usual class distinctions between the officers and the ranks (no), how to segregate and respect the Muslims and Hindus from the colonies, how to denote regimental affiliations, and on and on.
                                              After the war, the battle became one of personalization and the ability of wealthy families to memorialize individually.  In the Commons, the matter reached an end when an MP suggested that men who had died together should not be separated by their fathers. In the end, the IWGC prevailed in its theme of uniformity for the graves.  Another vexing problem was how to memorialize the 'unknown' graves and how to honor by name those who were never found. Rudyard Kipling, member of the commission and poet of the Empire, lost his beloved son Jack and never knew where he lay. He came up with the phrase 'A Soldier of the Great War known unto God' which can be found on 180,000 headstones. The Army identified eighty-five distinct battles and for each one a memorial was constructed and the names of those believed lost were listed. The most famous is the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. "On it are inscribed the names of 72,085 soldiers who were killed on the Somme and Ancre and have no known graves." Beyond the western front, the commission memorialized and buried the dead around the world and, most importantly for New Zealand and Australia, at Gallipoli in Turkey.
                                               For a hundred years, as Americans, our primary insights into the horror of the Great War have been the histories, poems and fiction written by the British. This is not a great book and certainly will not achieve any kind of immortality. But, it is very, very good at conveying the unfathomable hell of mud and death that was WW1.

Jack of Spies, Downing - C, Inc.

                                             Downing is the author of an interesting six-book series, each named after a Berlin train station and set around WW2.  The lead character in those books was an Englishman, John Russell, a journalist and part-time spy. This novel is apparently the beginning of a new series, one about Jack McColl,  international traveling auto salesman and budding British spy.  The time is just before WW1 and the book follows McColl from China to San Francisco and onto NY.  The Germans are wise to him in Shanghai, where he's trying to find out their naval dispositions in the Pacific. In SF,  he looks into supporters of unrest in India and in NY, into Irish republican activities. That said, two-thirds of the way through, I kept hoping I was closer to the end than I was, and I've concluded it's not worth finishing.

The Discovery Of France, Robb - B +

                                                This fascinating book is subtitled 'A Historical Geography From The Revolution To The First World War' and is somewhat hard to characterize.  I suppose it's a wandering sort of social history. The startling ( at least to me) premise is that as recently as the Revolution, the state we know/perceive of as France did not exist. It may have existed on maps and national taxes were exacted, but only the folks in and around Paris considered themselves Frenchmen.  The geographic diversity was substantial, villages were isolated from each other, there were hundreds of dialects, few people knew about the nation and according to the author, the tribal divisions were such and there was so much self-sufficiency that folks seldom ventured more than a few miles from where they were born and they married locally.  France was still a medieval country.  Indeed, the Revolutionaries initiated a report on 'The Necessity and Means of Exterminating Patois and Universalizing the Use of the French Language', as they were fed up with the expense of translating their decrees into Catalan, Picard, Basque, Provencal, Alsatian, Occitan, Flemish and Breton.  The linguistic divide was so substantial that ninety years later, in 1880, only one-fifth of the nation was "comfortable" with French.  Linguistic differences were indicative of social ones, as well as political and legal ones. The author spends a great deal of time discussing the pre-Industrial Revolution countryside that was certainly agrarian and rooted in the distant past. On more than one occasion, he points out that Caesar, who conquered it and Pliny, who wrote about it, could easily wander about 19th century Gaul and think that not much had changed.  However, change did arrive." In the century that followed the Revolution,  the national road network almost doubled in size and the canal network increased fivefold. There were fourteen miles of railways in 1828 and twenty-two thousand in 1888." Mapping the country became something continuously pursued, but without effectiveness or vigor.  Napoleon III was defeated at Sedan in 1870 for number of reasons, not the least of which was that the French had inadequate maps and were not sure where they were going or what was there.  The Third Republic that followed the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War began to build a nation around compulsory education, the eradication of patois as a first language, and revenge and recovery of Alsace and Lorraine.  The author contends that August 1, 1914 was the first time in the history of France that the entire country simultaneously learned of an important event - war.  Essentially, France became a modern nation only to be irrevocably torn asunder.
                                             This has been a thoroughly enjoyable, yet challenging read. I clearly do not know enough about France to fully comprehend this book.  The country he presents is so unlike the American or the immigrant-American world I know.  The colonists came to Virginia and kept going to Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois. The Germans, Irish, Scandinavians, Italians and Jews came to America and again, they kept going west.  Our national story is one of near-constant motion. This is about a country, society and culture  where people stay in their own villages and towns for hundreds and hundreds of years. The land is prosperous enough and safe enough that the need to keep migrating is not present.  That stasis leads to change 'in situ', a sort of  organic evolutionary process.

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society, Shafer & Barrows - B

                                                This is a delightful  novel, set in 1946 London, that looks back on the occupation of the Guernsey Islands.  The story of the Germans five-year presence is told through a series of letters posted to a London author by the members of the society in the title. The author becomes so enthralled with the islanders that she moves to Guernsey. The occupation was light, probably the lightest of the war.  Nonetheless, it was not without death, starvation, betrayal and hardship.  This book is a superb evocation of a place and time. The Channel Islands were bypassed by the Allies when they invaded France. Liberation came after the war was over the following May.  I believe that only Norway, Poland and Czechoslovakia were occupied longer. Thanks, Marce, for the recommendation and your ongoing editorial assistance here.

Red Fortress, Merridale - B

                                                This interesting book ties together the history of Russia with that of the Kremlin, along with the famous fortress's role in the Russian national psyche.  The 47-acre fort atop a hill in Moscow was first enclosed in a stone wall six and-a-half centuries ago.  As the Lords Of All The Rus consolidated power when the Mongols finally drifted away, they also began to construct a sophisticated fortress at the Kremlin.   The reign of terror that was the rule of Ivan The Terrible was succeeded by a Time of Troubles so severe that " in 1611, the state of Muscovy ceased to exist.  The capital was occupied by foreign troops. Smolensk had fallen to the Poles. Novgorod was in Swedish hands."  Stability began to take hold in 1613 with the Romanov ascension and their assertion of a Russian style of absolutism.  In the 17th century, Russia expanded her borders east to the Pacific and west into the heart of Europe as Russia became a European state.  Exposure to modernizing Europe through trade, diplomacy and culture led to a collision with the old ways of the Russians.  The young Tsar Peter would literally smash Russian society in his attempt to modernize the state.   The following century was an interlude for Moscow and the Kremlin ; the hierarchy and influence of the church were diminished as Russia's capital moved to Peter's spectacular new city on the banks of the Neva.  "By mid-century, the Kremlin was decaying into Russia's Fontainbleu, the poor relation to St. Petersburg's Versailles."  After its partial destruction by the French in 1812, the Kremlin received a massive forty-year overhaul and started to become a symbol of the state, and in the second half of the century, Moscow itself came to represent the culture and tradition of Russia, while 'Peter' was it's European face. Moscow and the Kremlin were restored to their primacy when the Bolsheviks moved their capital in Feb. of 1918. The Kremlin became both the house of government and the home of the nation's leaders. Over the centuries, the Kremlin was home to churches, cathedrals, icons, religiously-themed buildings, arches and monuments.  The Soviets stripped the fort of all religious decorations and destroyed or altered most of the offending buildings.  Stalin's death led to archaeological research and even tourism in the Kremlin.   Under his successors, it remained and still remains  the center of the Soviet, then Russian, state, and symbol of the country.

Midnight In Europe, Furst - B -

                                                Cristian Ferrrar is a partner in the Paris office of Coudert Brothers in 1937.  As a twelve-year-old, he left Catalonia with his parents and grandmother during civil unrest in 1909.  He remains a Spanish citizen and responds positively to a request from the Spanish Embassy for help during the Civil War. He is asked to purchase arms in Czechoslovakia from Skoda and ship them to Spain.  And so off goes a respectable lawyer into the  role of arms smuggler on a trip to Danzig and a successful  shipment of anti-tank weapons to Spain.      That success is followed by sneaking arms out of Odessa and shipping them too to Spain. 'Midnight In Europe' is the 12th novel in the series, occasionally called the Night Soldier novels, all set in Europe in the thirties.  The novels are extraordinary in their ability to convey  fear and anxiety as the Fascist storm gathers.  The novels have no continuing lead  character nor are they sequential.  They range  from Hungary to Greece to Poland to Yugoslavia to England to Switzerland and often stop in Paris. Furst is so good that you can see the fog and hear the train whistles. This book is probably not as good as some of the others, but was nonetheless, a pleasant respite.

Asia's Cauldron , Kaplan - B

                                             This book is subtitled 'The South China Sea And The End Of A Stable Pacific'.   Kaplan is considered one of America's greatest strategic thinkers, has been an Atlantic Magazine foreign correspondent for decades, a Pentagon advisor and most importantly, a great writer on the topic of the role of the physical world in defining the political one.  The South China Sea is strategically important because of energy, specifically, oil.  Almost all of the oil consumed by Japan, China and S. Korea is shipped through these waters. A total of 60,000 ships and 13 billion barrels of oil pass through the Sea annually. Also, as many as 130 billion barrels may lie beneath its waves.  The Chinese have aggressively taken the position that their maritime rights extend far into the Sea. The British Empire's dominance of the sea lanes passed to the US Navy after WW2 and we have been in complete control since then.  With China's naval ascendancy, or at least equality, on the horizon, the inherent natural rivalries between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia will come into play. The concern is that without Pax Americana all hell may break loose and the Chinese won't be the benign maintainer of peace and order that we have generally been.  The Chinese view their role today as reversing the depredations of the west in the 19th and 20th centuries and restoring the Middle Kingdom.  A state by state review of China's maritime neighbors shows that none of them can really stop the Chinese if they wish to take all of the disputed islands.  What the US will or won't do seems to be the million dollar question.  The author concedes that regardless of our "pivot", we will have to share hegemony in the western Pacific with China.  One would hope that that could be done on the basis of both sides mutually guaranteeing free navigation rights and open sea lanes.

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.