Red Notice: A True Story Of High Finance, Murder, And One Man's Fight For Justice, Browder - B +

                                               Thanks to Mike Connell and Wendell Erwin for recommending this superb book. I generally avoid stories of Russian perfidy and memoirs, but this is very well written, tells a tale that sounds like a fictional thriller and isn't filled with too many self-serving justifications. Browder is an Anglo-American investor with a deep family connection to the countries of eastern Europe. He managed to translate that connection into a ground-floor, early 90's business opportunity in Moscow. He formed Hermitage Capital in order to invest in the privatization of Russia. He was wildly successful and even managed to survive the 90% drop in Russian markets after the 1999 sovereign default. He had some luck exposing thievery at Gazprom and decided to take on the oligarchs. His interests were aligned with Putin's until 2004, when Putin imprisoned the owners of Lukoil, and the author contends, started lining his pockets with the cooperation of the oligarchs. A year later, Browder was kicked out of Russia. Next came a raid on his Moscow office and charges of tax evasion. His lawyer Serge Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail and both Browder and the deceased Magnitsky were convicted in absentia. The trial and convictions were right out of the 1930's and were deplored around the world. Interpol wouldn't arrest Browder, the European Parliament criticized the Russians and the US passed the Magnitsky Act, blacklisting the  Russians behind Magnitsky's death. Browder is now a human rights activist based in his hometown of London.

Racing The Devil, Todd - B

                                               This series is as good as it gets, in taking the reader to a different time and place: rural England immediately after the Great War.  It is a quiet time of despair as all struggle with the consequences of the violence.  Our lead character is, of course, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge. He wrestles with his ghosts from the trenches, as do all who survived the western front. This book is specifically about survivors, and one in particular who happens to be a deserter and ultimately, a serial killer. Rutledge works the case as hard as any we've seen. He persists and pulls together the pieces to convict his man on a pretty long investigation in the southeast of the country.

The Vanquished: Why The First World War Failed To End, Gerwarth - B

                                               "Europe's violent transition from world war to chaotic peace is the subject of this book." The focus is on the losing side: the Romanov, Hapsburg, Ottoman and Hohenzollern Empires, as well as Greece and Italy. "Post-war Europe...was the most violent place on the planet." The author compares the devastation of 1918-23 to the Thirty Years War as millions died in the continuing armed conflict. The wars were inter-sectional battles within old empires, civil wars and revolutions. From Finland south to Turkey, war continued; Europe remained in flames.
                                                The failure of Russia's war led to the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty. The decision of Kerensky's government to continue fighting smoothed the way for Lenin and Russia's withdrawal from hostilities by the end of 1917.  Two days after the 1918 Armistice was signed by Germany and the Entente powers, the Russians launched an attack in an attempt to recover some of what they had lost at Brest-Litovsk. "For most of 1919 and 1920 the western borderlands experienced a three-way struggle involving the Bolsheviks, the Whites and a host of nationalist movements.." The incredibly brutal war trickled to an end in 1922 as the heart of the former Russian Empire lay in ruins.  Between the revolution and the establishment of the USSR in 1922, an estimated 10 million people had died in Russia.
                                               Revolution came to Germany when the Kaiser abdicated in November, 1918. However, in elections the following January, the forces of moderation prevailed, as they did in Austria in February.  In Bulgaria and in Constantinople, centrists took control. The hope of all the defeated powers was for a moderate peace.  "Liberal democracy, which had failed to come into existence in 1848, had finally emerged triumphant."
                                               The communists attempted putsches in Berlin, Munich, Spain, Italy, and Hungary. In Germany, the centrist Weimar Republic held them off. Elsewhere, right-wing  forces violently put down the Reds. Europe's first red scare had passed, although a very real fear of Bolshevism would dominate Europe for decades.
                                              The Paris Peace Conference focused on the lands of the defeated powers. "As the continental empires disintegrated, ten new nation states emerged from the ruins: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Turkey. " As the conference took place, there was endless fighting in the lands of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire as various nationalities asserted their statehood. The Poles and Russia fought a war from 1919-21.  The losing Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Bulgarians and Ottomans did not negotiate in Paris. Terms were dictated on a take it or leave it basis. Very few of Wilson's Fourteen Points, particularly the concept of national self-determination, found their way into the treaties imposed by the Allies. Many of the new states, in particular Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia, were nationality smash-ups that guaranteed future conflicts. "Although Europe's territorial reorganization in 1918-19 actually halved the total number of people deemed minorities,.....the new successor states initially had no legal framework in place to secure their rights."
                                            The last scene of violence and genocide was in Anatolia, the Turkish heartland, whose Aegean coast had substantial Greek Christian minorities. Greece decided a land-grab should be its reward for siding with the Allies. The Greeks advanced east from  Smyrna (Izmir today) and for three years committed atrocities against the majority Muslim population. In 1922, the Turks evicted them. Over a million Anatolian Christians left for Greece and approximately 400,000 Muslims in Greece moved to Turkey.
                                             To a great extent, the fighting after the war presaged the disaster that would follow twenty-years later. Europe's reprieve was brief.
                                             

The Trespasser, French - B

                                               Tana French is the author of 'The Dublin Murder Squad' series, of which this is the sixth entry.  Unlike any police procedural series that I've come across in the last thirty years, this one isn't keyed into continuing characters. So, unlike the '87th precinct' series or the Adam Dalgleish stories, these tales are about the process and the place, Dublin.
                                                Here, our lead 'D' is the only woman currently in the squad, is of mixed race and who feels as if the world is stacked against her. She and her partner catch a case and immediately conclude that there may be some police corruption a few layers deep. The two most senior men in the squad obsequiously offer their help. Are they trying to help or hinder?
                                              Antoinette Conway cannot figure out what to do with Breslin and McCann and runs the case with one eye on the facts and one on the two older men.  They stymie her, insult her and ostracize her, but she forges ahead,  unearths a very surprising set of facts, and catches her perpetrator. The novel is bit long, but well-paced, and great on Dublin street talk.

The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West, Cozzens - B

                                               This is the history of what inevitably had to happen as millions poured into the US from Europe. The pre-ordained outcome, though, remains a shame and a painful read.  The author is a noted historian, and, here he tells the woeful tale of the three decades from the middle of the Civil War to the closing of the frontier in 1890. He opens with the 1863 meeting of ten Indian chiefs with Lincoln at the White House. The Cheyenne Lean Bear represented the Indians.  Lincoln pledged peace and gave each Indian a medal. A year later, Lean Bear approached men under the command of Col. John Chivington in Colorado with the medal in his hand. At thirty yards, the militia opened fire and killed him before slaughtering many of his tribe.
                                               Cozzens states that this is his attempt to set the record straight. For eighty years, the Indians were portrayed in history and pop culture as vicious evildoers fighting the all American pioneers and soldiers. Then, since 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' in 1970, the story has been entirely about the noble savage as victim.  "A deeper understanding of all parties to the conflict, better addresses the many myths, misconceptions, and falsehoods surrounding the Indian Wars."
                                               The Great Plains were perceived to be a vast, uninhabitable wasteland that Americans only needed to pass through on the way to the coast. They were inhabited mostly by tribes that had come from the east. In no way were the Indians unified or united. They spent much of their time fighting each other. Within each tribe, there were peace and war factions. Into their homeland in the 1840's, 50's and 60's came a trickle and then a torrent of migrants. The government's strategic goal became settling Indians on reservations and keeping them away from settlers and wagon trains. The end of the Civil War saw William T. Sherman in charge of the US Army on the frontier. The army he had to preserve the peace was totally incapable of doing so. It was small and squeezed smaller each year by Congress. The pay was horrible and the training non-existent. The citizen-soldier of the Civil War was no more. The US Army consisted of lowlife drunks, often incapable of riding a horse or shooting a rifle.
                                                 The first fighting in the post-war era was in the Bighorn territories. White men rushed in after gold. However, the Lakota Sioux, under Red Cloud, put up  a fierce resistance and wiped out the invading columns. A hurried treaty ceded them much of today's South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.  The US then tried to set up  a comprehensive treaty system called the Medicine Lodge Treaty. The Indians did not understand what they agreed to, and the US was duplicitous at best. Sherman knew the treaty meant only a slight deferment of hostilities. When the inevitable atrocities by both sides escalated, Sherman ordered the newly-arrived Phil Sheridan to drive the Cheyenne and Arapaho from Kansas.  By the summer of 1869, the tribes had been decimated or decided to move north and join forces with the Lakota Sioux. When Grant took office, he initiated a peace policy and replaced many Indian Bureau commissioners with Quakers and reliable military officers.  Peace held in the north, although it must be admitted that there were few white intrusions on the northern plains.  The Comanches and Texans continued to war with each other, but in the early 1870's they reached an uneasy and tentative peace.
                                                 Peace eventually ended because of the slaughter of the buffalo. Buffalo hides became valuable and, in the first half of the decade, almost four million buffalo hides were shipped east. On the reservations, the Indians drank to excess, lost their skills and were frequently cheated. This toxic mix blew up into the Red River War in 1874. Within a year, the tribes of the southern plains were conquered. The Comanche, Kiowa and Arapaho would raid no more. Further west, the Army faced the best-armed and most skillful guerrilla warriors they ever would fight - the Apaches. Some Apaches accepted reservation life, but many refused. Among those who continued to roam was a mercurial medicine man named Geronimo.
                                                In the north, different Sioux bands under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were busy pushing the Crow further into the mountains and off the plains. They dominated the western reaches of the Dakotas and both the Wyoming and Montana territories. They viewed the white man as a nuisance off to the east. That all changed with the ambitions of the Northern Pacific Railway to pierce their lands. The Indians were able to stave off the railway, but could not stop the gold miners entering the Black Hills. The US was faced with a treaty that promised the Black Hills to the Sioux forever. The Sioux were willing to sell the Black Hills, but not at the price proffered. President Grant decided to evict them by force. The Indian Bureau manufactured tales of Indian perfidy in order to whip up public opinion. The 1876 campaign against the Sioux would lead to the most famous event in the history of the American West. Under General Terry, the army moved west into Bighorn territory.  The 7th Cavalry was commanded the volatile George Armstrong Custer, who regularly sent anonymous dispatches to the NY Herald, attempting to further burgeon his reputation. On Sunday, June 25th, Custer divided his forces and retained 221 men under his command. By 5:30 PM, they were no more. Although the Sioux and Cheyenne had won a  battle, they would pay a heavy price, for as never before, America was united against Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the Lakota Sioux. The Army destroyed the Northern Cheyenne the following winter and pushed the remaining Sioux into northern Montana. Harassed and starved, the Sioux gave up: Crazy Horse surrendered in May of 1877 and Sitting Bull went to Canada. A few years later, a weary and hungry Sitting Bull surrendered to the US Army. The Great Sioux War was over.
                                               Further west, the Nez Perce, the Utes and the Apache all fell. In 1886, for the third and final time, Geronimo surrendered. The 1880's saw the final act of US treachery on the northern plains, when the government approved of white homesteading on the Sioux reservation. The  Rosebud, Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee reservations saw the last Indian insurrections, which the Army easily put down. "The Indian Wars for the American West were over."
                                             One of the most difficult aspects of reading this book has been the almost universal duplicity of the white men who dealt with the Indians. General Crook may hold prominence for saying he never made a promise to an Indian that he kept.  Promises were meaningless to the Americans who repeatedly killed defenseless women and children.  The most effective tactic the Army developed was the winter dawn attack on a sleeping campsite. All were fair game. There was no discernment about who was the enemy on those mornings. The Indians were deceived and mistreated into surrendering and joining the reservations.  Once there, they were more often than not starved by unscrupulous agents and traders. An elderly Sioux, who had witnessed the 1851 Treaty of Ft. Laramie and the 1890 slaughter at Wounded Knee, said "The government made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it." It is not a story to be proud of.
                                           

An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler, Fritzsche - B

                                               "This book is about the wartime experience of civilians, the often dubious parts they played in the war, and the ways they approached their neighbors and the groups persecuted by the Germans. The violence of the war was so extensive that people tried to contain it by separating themselves from the fate of others."
 In France in 1940, war led to an exodus as millions took to the roads, and more civilians than soldiers died in the weeks before France's surrender.  The overwhelming worry in French society was how long would the new order last? Vichy encouraged collaboration. In Paris, one had to live next to and with the Germans. The German occupation of France generally was considerably less terrifying than in the east. The French had to make decisions about "good" and "bad" Germans and how to manage their cooperation or collaboration.
                                                 By contrast, in Warsaw, "The keynote of the German occupation was the phrase repeated on legal notices: 'will be punished by death'. Nowhere else did the Germans use the death penalty as promiscuously as in Poland." "The victorious Nazis sought to destroy the Polish nation by tearing out the traces of Polish life in the annexed districts and by subjugating the Poles through harsh colonial-style rule in the occupied territories." The first genocide of the war was the elimination of the Polish elite.
                                                When the author turns to Operation Barbarossa, he embarks on a challenging but enlightening discourse. Smolensk is chosen as a focal point, as it was a crossroads on the way to Moscow and a place that featured significantly in 'War and Peace'. Per the author, Tolstoy's famous novel became the must-read  throughout Europe after the German invasion of Russia. Furthermore, in the fall of 1941, a Swiss Red Cross medical team spent a few months in Smolensk and one of it's members was a prolific diarist. Elsi Eichenberger's diary underscores the depth of hate, the pervasive beliefs, the detestation of Versailles, and the commitment to Hitler and Germany that pervaded the minds of the Wehrmacht men fighting to overcome Bolshevism. "Germans felt themselves to be protagonists in a racial struggle that justified merciless behavior toward the unarmed and weak and murderous action against Jews and other civilians."
                                                Throughout France, Germany and Poland, non-Jews stood by and watched as millions were herded off death. Absorbed by their own problems, likely anti-semitic to begin with and thankful that they were still alive,  the people of Europe witnessed violence, bloodshed and the treatment of their neighbors as something less than human. They took over their apartments, divided up their goods and moved on with survival.
                                                The second half of this book is what one reviewer called a 'reflection' on the war, and whenever a book turns philosophical, it tends to lose me. Clearly, Fritsche is a noted historian and a superb wordsmith.  The fact that it didn't work for me is not conclusive. It's thoughtful and very well-written.
                   
                                               

Conclave, Harris - B

                                                This is a novel about a Papal election, seen through the eyes of Cardinal Lomeli, the  Dean of the College of Cardinals and the man in charge of the event.  But before the doors are closed, he learns of the existence a last minute secret Cardinal appointed in pectore (by the heart)  by the Pope. He is also advised that one of the contenders may have been dismissed by the Pope hours before the Pope's death. Going into the Sistine Chapel, the Italians, a plurality, hope to recapture the Papacy after a forty-year exile.  However, they are split between traditionalists, who wistfully look back on the loss of the Latin mass, and modernists trying to propel the faith forward in a changing world. After a few votes, the Nigerian Cardinal rises and then falls after news surfaces of an  indiscretion thirty-years ago. The Canadian who next has the pole position is side-lined by Lomeli himself, who has found written concerns of the late Pontiff regarding the Quebecois. In the midst of the voting, the Vatican is attacked by a car bomb and a suicide bomber. As the last minute secret Cardinal is the Bishop of Baghdad, he offers up some ideas on facing Islamist terrorism.  When the Cardinal from Venice offers up some spirited right-wing responses, the conclave turns to Benitez from Baghdad and the words 'Habemus Papum' ring out. There is then what the Times reviewer called a "dramatic twist" that for me took a lot of wind out of the sails of this book. Just a bit too unimaginable/cute/bold/unbelievable.

                                             

Born To Run, Springsteen - B +

                                            Thanks to my brother, Bill, for this recommendation. I generally don't do autobiographies, but, as he pointed out, there are few tales of blue collar Catholic upbringings in metropolitan NY, like ours. And Im glad I read it. The Boss was born in 1949 and grew up in central New Jersey. His life lacked emotional and financial security because his dad was a raging, angry, Irish drunk. He hated school. He hated the church next door. He was a bitter young man. He found hope in music and committed his life to his guitar during high school. His second band, Steel Mill, had some success in the late 60's on the Jersey shore. Next came the Bruce Springsteen Band with Stevie Van Zandt. Along with some of the men who would become part of his future, Springsteen cut an album with Columbia, who had signed him as a 70's acoustic singer-songwriter. He cut a few more albums, became almost famous, and formed the E Street band. He also penned a song called 'Born To Run.'
                                           Released in 1975, that album made Bruce Springsteen an international star. The single is a totally great rock anthem and it put a 25-year-old on the cover of Time and Newsweek. It also led to a two-year hiatus from music for Bruce as he and his manger did battle in the courts over his record contract. He released the 'Darkness On The Edge Of Town' album next and began to explore the world he had just escaped from - the living from paycheck to paycheck blue collar life. He states he was inspired by country music and that he "was determined to be the enlightened, compassionate voice of reason and revenge" trying to explain and understand his parents' world". His "music would be a music of identity, a search for meaning and the future." 'The River' and 'Nebraska' followed.  However, it was what came next that propelled him to iconic fame and fortune. "Born In The USA' is one of the great rock albums of all time and its lead track is Springsteen's homage to Vietnam vets.  His album tour also afforded him the opportunity to channel money into charities for vets and the needy, as he continued to explore the differences between the American dream and American reality.
                                          All memoirs suffer from being one-sided and this is no different. But, to his credit Springsteen  is very introspective and speaks freely about his excruciatingly troubled life. Front and center in that story is his tortured relationship with his dad.  Doug Springsteen was a classic depressed drinker who created a world of trouble for his family. The rage that Bruce grew up with is the reason he spent so much of his life on the road, running away from life, and at times, acting destructively. He eventually came to grips with his dad who drove 500 miles to see Bruce right before the birth of his first child. Doug thanked him for how good the son had been to his mother and father and apologized for how bad he had been to Bruce. With his second wife and apparent soulmate, Patti Scialfa, the Boss settled down to a life of partial domesticity in the early 90's. They have three children, and it sounds as if Bruce spent quite a bit of time at home.
                                        However, the road beckoned and he got the E Street Band back together. Along with the Stones and U2, they have dominated the world of stadium tours for the last two decades and, I suspect, have made a fortune in the process. One of my great frustrations when reading about bands and performers is the total scarcity of economic and financial information. This story is no different. In his roles as a dad and  an excellent performer known to provide his audience with great live shows, Bruce Springsteen seems to have achieved success, if not rock immortality. He still lives in, and is at peace with, New Jersey.
                                         This is the second book in a row that Ive read that has caused me to ponder my good fortune. Even though Margo Jefferson got to go to Brandeis and I was pushed to  Marist, the world offered me a smoother path because I am white. I find it ironic that Springsteen would have considered me a college rah-rah. His dad had a job at Ford, way higher on the blue collar ladder than my dad's job a few miles north of him on the Hoboken docks. How is it he grew up in a house that he paints as one of despair and I grew up in a house of unlimited upside? The answer is simple. His dad was a drunk and my dad, a prince.
                                            The Boss grew to fame in the mid-seventies, long after my coming of age listening to the Beach Boys, Beatles and Stones. I am not a student of music and step gingerly into the topic. I am fascinated that he, unlike anyone else I can think of, became the poet of the downtrodden, the minstrel of the forgotten. The Beatles had rough upbringings. Bono of U2 had a dad who worked in the Irish Post Office. Most musicians do not come from a life of privilege. Yet, to his credit, the Boss has sung the praises of those on the bottom of the ladder. His is a unique niche and a great success story. This is a fabulous book that will have you continuously searching your iPod.

Negroland, Jefferson - B

                                               Negroland is where the black upper class lives and the author, a Pulitzer winner, grew up and lived at its heart.  She tells of how many blacks moved north after freedom, and how those who were capable and worked hard (it didn't hurt to be light-skinned) grasped at education and moved into the professions. Her grandmothers were among them and both of her parents were privileged. Her mother graduated from the University of Chicago and her father was a noted physician. She was born in 1947 and  attended the University of Chicago Lab Schools, received a superb education and was taught to be a lady. She describes her class as between the whites and blacks. They looked down on the rough and tumble world of blue collar blacks, but knew they had to be wary, very wary, around whites. She went to  summer camps around the midwest, joined the Jacks and Jills ( a black social organization) and went to college at Brandeis.  She lived a life of true privilege.
                                               But to be black in America is no bargain, and although a success (she worked at the Times), she has apparently struggled with identity issues and relationships. The book loses some its oomph at the end when she goes off on tangents about who she would like to be in 'Little Women.' That said, it is very good, and certainly worth the effort for anyone who isn't familiar with the institutions, people and culture of Negroland.
                                                Any book like this causes one to pause and reflect. I have some familiarity with the upper class  through the novels of  Stephen Carter, a Yale professor. I also grew up next to St. Albans in Queens, which I have since learned was a bastion of black success and privilege. I find it sad that someone who had such opportunity feels that the burden of being black outweighed the advantages she had.

The Last Days of Night, Moore - B +

                                               Seldom would I report on such a superb historical novel by starting at the end. But here, I shall. In the 'Author's Notes', Moore says "..the bulk of the events depicted in this book did happen and every major character did exist." "The book is a Gordian knot of verifiable truth, educated supposition, dramatic rendering, and total guesswork.The central story is the birth of electricity, and the battle royale between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison for control of the light bulb. Very interestingly, the story is told from the vantage point of young Paul Cravath, Westinghouse's lawyer.  The author claims that the lack of a Cravath biography was a motivation for the writing of the book. He cites a lengthy bibliography of historical sources. However, as Moore is a noted screenwriter, I suspect that telling a great tale is the number one motive.
                                              Edison patented the light bulb in 1878, and a decade later was battling Westinghouse over infringements to his patent. Defending Westinghouse was Cravath. The question was what had Edison patented? Was it a light bulb? Or was it incandescent light and thus, all light bulbs?  The second matter between the two legends was the delivery system of electricity to the bulb. Edison was selling direct current( d/c) and Westinghouse's systems worked on alternate current ( a/c ).(One of Westinghouse's colleagues on a/c was Nikola Tesla).  At issue was who would electrify the entire country, and consequently, the financial stakes were beyond enormous. Edison had more money for the battle that at one point was encapsulated in 312 different lawsuits. The general assumption was that Edison would easily prevail. Initially, Cravath intended to prove that Westinghouse's light bulbs did not infringe Edison's patent. He also tried to pursue an argument that Edison had falsified his patent application, as the filaments had been changed. The courts ruled for Edison. "Paul's strategy had been to narrow the scope of Edison's patent to a nonexistent, nonfunctioning device; in response, Edison had succeeded in broadening the scope of his patent to include practically anything that lit up."  Cravath emerges the hero when he finds a solution, inspired by a meeting with Alexander Graham Bell, that will make everyone happy and everyone very, very rich. Cravath convinces the man who owns 60% of Edison General Electric, J. P. Morgan, that spending money endlessly in litigation is not in his best interests.  A compromise that involves cross-selling and licenses is agreed to,  America is bestowed with a mammoth leap forward, and the Westinghouse Electric Company, General Electric and Cravath, Swain and Moore all bound into the 20th century as paragons of modernity and success.
                                             This is a great book and worth the effort of all who see this post. Since I've started the book, I've also learned that it is soon coming to a theater near you, starring Eddy Redmayne as Paul Cravath,

His Bloody Project, Burnet - B

                                               This novel was a 2016 Man Booker finalist. The subtitle is 'Documents Relating To The Case Of Roderick Macrae - a historical thriller'. The documents are essentially Roddy Macrae's hand-written recitation of his crimes, and the press coverage of his trial. In the late summer of 1869, in the far north of Scotland, young Roddy bashed in the head of the village constable, who had been particularly unfair and unkind to his family. Apparently, the highlands of the mid-19th century were barely removed from medieval feudalism. The lords let out their lands through factors to crofters, who sound about as entitled as tenant farmers of that era in the southern US.  The system was brutal, cruel and inconsistent with what we consider the rights of people in an enlightened society. Roddy's trial interestingly offered up the possibilities of an insanity defense.  Of course, it didn't work and the noose was his reward. Obviously, this is a thought-provoking and well-executed book.

Razor Girl, Hiaasen - B

                                               The girl of the title is a redhead who specializes in bumping cars from behind, leading to the bumped drivers' kidnapping. The drivers are easily captured because they are bedazzled by the image of what the razor girl is shaving when they approach her car. Seldom do I read books where I laugh so hard that I shed tears. There is a plot, but it's not important. Laughter is a wonderful tonic for whatever ails you.

Mischling, Konar - B -

                                               This novel is an imagining of the arrival of twin girls at Auschwitz, their life in  Mengele's Zoo and their first few months after their liberation. The book has been praised for its fable-like telling of such a horrible story.  Stasha and Pearl are almost thirteen when they arrive at Auschwitz in the late summer of 1944. Much of the novel is about the almost mystical relationship between twins. It is as if they can read each others' mind and feel each others' pain. Mengele is depicted in all of his horrific depravity. One reviewer points out that his specific cruelties are often skipped over because they were so monstrous. The book is well done, informative and shines a light on often unspeakable events.

The Welsh Girl, Davies - C

                                               I concluded a long time ago that WW2 novels were no match for WW2 movies, as filmmakers around the world have created and continue to create fabulous films on the topic. Similarly, the actual history itself is so extraordinary and covers so much of the human experience that the novels don't seem to have the room to roam without sometimes seeming trivial. And, in the end, this book had no attraction for me. Indeed, I felt as if I knew exactly where the plot was going, not because of foreshadowing, but because it all just seems so formulaic. The two key characters are Esther, daughter of a Welsh farmer and waitress at night in the local pub, and Hans, a truly nice young German POW imprisoned in the newly-built barracks in the late summer of 1944. The first of  two worthwhile takeaways for me are the Welsh use of the local language and their hostility toward the English. One knows about the Scots' centuries-long sense of separation from the English, but I've always assumed, obviously incorrectly, that the Welsh were somewhat more incorporated into the UK. The other is the shame of surrender. The German lads had to lie in their letters home, because their families were still hopeful and didn't want to hear that their boys had surrendered.

The Populist Explosion: How The Great Recession Transformed American And European Politics, Judis - B

                                               Populism began as an American political movement in the last quarter of the 19th century when disgruntled farmers in the south and west decided to try and fight the monopoly of the railroads.  It was co-opted by both the major parties* and faded from the scene by the election of 1896. One definition of populism is the people, as a noble assemblage, aligned against self-serving elites. The author prefers to make a distinction between populism of the left and right wing varieties. Left wing populists are vertical. It is the lower and middles class against the establishment. Right wing populists champion the people against the elites whom they accuse of coddling a third group, which can consist, for example, of immigrants or blacks. Fluidity describes who constitutes the people and the establishment elites at different times and places.  Populism usually arises at times of great societal stress and political change. In Europe, populist parties tend to survive on the fringe in the multi-party systems that are part and parcel of European democracy. In the US, they tend to be absorbed by the two major parties or shunted to the side while the parties focus on the center.
                                              The farmer-led movements in the south and west called for a progressive income tax, a nationalization of the railroads, direct election of senators, crop storage financed by the Treasury and an easing of the money supply.  In 1892, the People's Party presidential candidate carried five states and in 1894 four congressmen and two senators from the party were elected. They were soon co-opted by William Jennings Bryan's 'Cross of Gold' speech, which led to his first of three Democratic nominations.  Similarly, three decades later, Huey Long's ideas on Share The Wealth generated a huge following that thought his confiscatory tax concepts were what was necessary to end the suffering of the people in the Depression. FDR feared that if Long ran as a third-party candidate, he could tip the election to the Republicans. He quickly passed tax reform, the Social Security Act and adopted a pugnacious populist stance. Forty years later, George Wallace began the process that led to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.  Wallace took the stage as a segregationist, but gained massive traction by selling his frustration as tyranny imposed from Washington. His supporters have been analyzed and categorized as 'middle American radicals' who were neither left nor right, but felt that the middle class was being neglected because the government favored the rich and the poor at their expense.
                                              In our recent campaign, Trump combined moderate Republicanism with anti-establishment views on foreign policy, trade and immigration.  He asked why we were paying for the defense of rich countries, challenged all of our trade agreements as being one-sided and vehemently demonized America's immigrant and  Muslim communities.  In all regards, he was completely opposed by the Republican and Democratic establishments, but enthralling to those stuck in the middle. Trump successfully tapped into the Nixon-Wallace-Perot-Buchanan base of angry, not-well-educated, whites who felt that the elites were favoring the blacks, Muslims,  Mexicans, and those outsourcing America's jobs to foreigners.  For the life-long progressive, Sanders, the decision to run was based on a concern for growing income inequality. His call for free college and Medicare for all was not aimed against any third parties - only the billionaire class.  Both men were propelled to the forefront because of disillusionment created by the Great Recession.
                                            Whether left wing, rightist, European or American, populists raise complaints that point to genuine problems. Globalization in the 90's and 00's led to the export of almost 3 million jobs by American corporations. Immigrants willing to accept lower wages threaten working class natives here and throughout Europe. They also put pressure on social welfare systems. The ghettoization of Muslims in France is a source of political extremism and terrorism.  The author's estimate is that neither the Trump nor Sanders movements will be permanent. The Democrats may shift to the left; the Republicans will have to manage the conflicts between their business supporters and their new white working class enthusiasts. But, Judis suggests that the current understandings between the left and right, rich and poor, labor and management will survive and our country will be little changed. He believes the prognosis for the Eurozone is negative. The inherent instability of the EU, when combined with the massive immigration to the continent from Africa and Asia, may well doom the experiment.
                                           This book is but 150 pages. Even so, I skipped the 3 chapters on Europe because I acquired this because of a need to better understand our election results. And it helps on that front. The left/right wing distinction has been helpful to me and the lesson on parties absorbing their aggressive wings has also been instructive.
                                         

*I have always thought that the words attributed by Herbert Hoover to Andrew Mellon, "to liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate..it will pare rottenness out of the system", if true, were the height of aristocratic arrogance. But, you have to give consideration to comments made by Grover Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture, Julius Morton. In 1893, he said, "The intelligent, practical, and successful farmer needs no aid from the government. The ignorant, impractical, and indolent farmer deserves none." And, he was a Democrat.

When The Music's Over, Robinson - B

                                            This novel is the latest in the DCI Banks series. Alan Banks remains fascinating, and the author has continually proven his ability to range far and wide in the Midlands, exploring English pop culture as well as investigating crimes. One objection though. His first book in 1991 was 300 pages. This one is 479. Amazon's estimated read time is 9 hours. I doubt I took that long, but it raises a question. Does the world want 10- hour police procedurals?  Banks is now promoted to Superintendent and overlooks two investigations.  The first is run by Annie Cabot and involves a grooming operation preparing young woman for prostitution run by Brits of Pakistani descent. There is an in-depth discussion of the racial issues facing both sides of this coin. And, Banks runs a 50-year-old look back, involving a public figure with a penchant for attacking underage girls. All in all, Robinson is still on his game.

American Heiress: The Wild Saga Of The Kidnapping, Crimes And Trial Of Patty Hearst, Toobin - B +

                                                  The seventies, particularly in the Bay area, opened up violently and with a very uncomfortable edge.  San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley saw the Zodiac serial killer; indiscriminate bombings; the Zebra killers, a black group that randomly slaughtered white people; and the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapping of Patty Hearst on Jan. 29, 1974.  The nineteen-year-old heiress had been drifting through life, seemingly without purpose or intent, and living with her boyfriend while taking classes at Cal.  Equally at sea were the handful of members of the SLA, who mouthed revolutionary slogans. "They were shaking things up, stirring the pot, proving that the counterculture was still alive. Beyond that, they had no goals, no agenda." They turned to kidnapping as a strategy after their murder of a well-respected Oakland school official failed to ignite a revolution. Their only demand to the Hearst's was for a food program for the poor. The Hearst's complied, and successfully delivered material aid to many in northern California. The SLA communicated with the outside world via tapes, and the one about a month into the kidnapping showed a Patty Hearst who was starting to sound very comfortable with her surroundings. Eight weeks after her capture, Patty Hearst became Tania, a member of the SLA.  In a video, she said "I have chosen to stay and fight". A week later, she participated in an SLA bank robbery. She had gone from victim to common criminal.
                                                Cinque, the delusional leader and ex-con, Donald DeFreeze, decided they needed to be in LA and in early May, the nine members of the SLA moved to Los Angeles. The trio of Bill and Emily Harris and Patty, out in search of supplies, wound up in a shootout at a local store, and drew the LAPD to their hideout. While the Harrises and Patty escaped to Anaheim, the six remaining members of the SLA were surrounded by the police. "The biggest gun battle ever to take place on American soil had begun, and it was on live television." In over an hour, the police fired eighty-three tear gas canisters, fifty three hundred rounds of ammunition; the six SLA members fired back between two and three thousand rounds. The house they were in burned to the ground and all six were dead. Not a single policeman was wounded.
                                               Bill, Emily and Patty returned to San Francisco and released a tape announcing that the SLA would fight on.  Later that year, they merged with the Revolutionary Army and now were the Sacramento- based New World Liberation Front. They robbed a small bank, became convinced of their skills and went after a second bank. During an April 1975 heist, Emily shot and killed a local mother of four. They then again returned to the Bay area where the Harisses and Patty were captured in September by the FBI, which had been struggling for over a year-and-a-half to find her.
                                              Patty had easily slipped from heiress to terrorist and, once in jail,  she slipped right back. The  US prosecuted her for the SLA bank robbery two months after her kidnapping. F. Lee Bailey put the now demure victim on the stand. She had spent he previous two years mouthing revolutionary slogans, threatening the pigs and completely committed to the revolution. On the stand, she testified that she had been coerced and feared for her life the entire time. During the trial, Bailey made a deal with the prosecutors for Patty to supply testimony in the Sacramento bank robbery turned felony murder case. The coercion defense flopped. Patty Hearst was guilty. She was released on bail pending appeal. She entered federal prison in May of 1978. Immediately, the Hearst's began a campaign for commutation, which Pres. Carter approved the following January. Patty was twenty-four and free.  She married and moved to Connecticut. In her relentless pursuit of redemption, she urged Jimmy Carter to ask Pres. Clinton for a pardon, which she received on Bill Clinton's last day in office  in 2001. "Rarely have the benefits of wealth, power and renown been as clear as they were in the aftermath of Patricia's conviction."
                                         Toobin is a great writer, and turns this pedestrian tale of delusion and selfishness into a superb book.  The most interesting aspect of the book is how - I hate to say this but - how naive and incompetent the terrorists were. Had they not killed a few people, it could have been a comedy. And Patty Hearst's commutation and pardon are flat-out unforgivable.
                 
                                                 

East-West Street: On The Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Sands - B +

                                                This superb book is a complex, multifaceted story that is part history, part legal analysis and part family memoir. The author is a noted British legal scholar.  The unifying theme of the book is a city called Lemberg, Lvov, Lwow, and now, Lviv, in Ukraine. It saw a multitude of sovereignty and name changes in the last century. (Austro-Hungarian Empire; Russian Empire; Ukrainian Peoples Republic; Poland; German General Government of Poland; USSR; Ukraine). It was home to two legal theorists, Hersch Lauterpracht and Rafael Lempkin, who established the concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide. It was the city from which Hans Frank, Hitler's lawyer and leader of the  General Government, made a speech about ridding Galicia of Jews; it also was the author's grandfather's place of birth and the city to which Sands was invited to lecture in 2010, prompting the journey that led to this book.
                                                Leon Bucholtz, the author's grandfather, was born in Lemberg, Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1904.  Within days of the start of WWI, his older brother was killed and his father died soon thereafter. He, his mother and younger sister moved to Vienna where his older, married sister was raising a family. Although Leon lived into his 90's and Sands knew his grandfather reasonably well, Leon had never mentioned anything about his family life in Vienna. Leon married Rita in 1937 and they had a daughter a year later. Austria expelled the young family and they moved to Paris. They survived the war with papers forged by the underground. In Vienna, their remaining relatives were sent to Auschwitz and Lemberg's 3500 Jews were taken to the woods and shot in March, 1943.
                                                Hersch Lauterpracht was born in Zolkiew, just outside Lemberg, in 1897. He attended Lemberg University, where he studied law.  He was finishing his education as WWI ended and Galicia, along with much of what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire, disintegrated. He began to study the rights of individuals within a state. He moved to Vienna and continued his education, before marrying and moving to London. He received multiple Doctorates from LSE and was appointed to a professorship at Cambridge just before the start of WWII. He was an internationally recognized legal theorist. He travelled to America, where he met with Attorney-General Robert Jackson and Associate Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. He authored The Bill of Rights of Man and worked on the British War Crimes Committee. Lauterpracht's special area of interest was the individual as a victim and when Jackson was struggling to establish the framework for Nuremberg, Lauterpracht suggested the phrase 'crimes against humanity' as the basis of prosecuting Nazi atrocities. It was adopted, became part of the indictment and a precept of international law.
                                              Rafael Lemkin was born in what is now Belarus in 1900. He also studied law at the same University in Lemberg. He became fascinated by the murder of the Armenians by the Turks in 1915-16.  Upon graduation, he became a public prosecutor in Warsaw. When the war began, he fled north and east into the USSR, from which he managed to obtain a visa for Sweden. There he had access to and studied the legal documents, decrees and actions of the orderly Germans as they dehumanized the Jews and other untermenschen throughout Europe. He received an offer from Duke University and travelled to America via the USSR and the Pacific. He achieved some notoriety in Washington and coined the word 'genocide' in a 1943 publication. Both crimes against humanity and genocide were terms used in the final indictments at Nuremberg.
                                               Hans Frank was born in 1900, met Hitler in 1925 and was appointed Bavarian Minister of Justice in 1933. He was part of the German legal system's relentless deprivation of human rights imposed upon many, but primarily the Jews. When Germany occupied Poland in 1939, the western areas were incorporated into the Reich and most of the country became part of Frank's General Government, which he described as a colony and its 11.5 million citizens as slaves. The governed territory expanded east after Barbarossa and 2.5 million of Europe's Jews were in his hands. After the Wannsee Conference, he welcomed the opportunity to host the final solution. Most of the major killing camps were in the General Government. When the Russians came in 1945, Frank fled to Bavaria, where he was captured by the Americans in May.
                                               At Nuremberg, Lauterpracht was part of the British prosecution team. Frank was one of the men in the dock and declared himself not guilty. "The judges were presented with novel legal arguments and unparalleled, ghastly evidence." During the presentation of his defense, Hans Frank acknowledged a collective responsibility among the Reich's leadership. He and many of his colleagues were hung on Oct. 16, 1946.
                                               The Nuremberg Trial led to the General Assembly of the UN taking action and furthering the creation of new international laws. It adopted The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It also affirmed that crimes against humanity were part of international law. Two young men from an obscure school deep in eastern Europe became scholars and refugees in the west, where they had a lasting impact  on the laws that govern  mankind. Today, there is an International Court of Justice in the Hague and the ideas of Lauterpracht and Lemkin are acknowledged as universal standards of conduct.
                                   

 The title refers to the street in Zolkiev where Lauterpracht grew up on one end and Sands' great-grandmother on the other.

The Call of the Wild, Jack London

                                                Thanks to my very special granddaughter, Eloise Fairchild, for letting me check this book out of her personal library. I suspect I last borrowed it from the Linden Boulevard branch of the Queensborough Public Library sometime in the late 1950's.
                                                Buck, a 140-pound St. Bernard, was kidnapped and taken to the Yukon Territories, where he first experienced snow and was put in a harness.  He quickly adapted to the cold northland and became the strongest dog in the pack. Buck becomes the leader of the pack after a vicious fight with the ill-tempered Spitz. After further adventures, Buck was rescued from some incompetent owners by Thornton, a man of the wilderness with an excellent understanding of dogs. While Thornton mines for gold, Buck begins to explore the forest and socializes with a local timber wolf. Eventually, Buck joins the wolves and answers the call of the wild.
                                                 The Call of the Wild was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1903. It established London as a recognized writer and was thrice made into a movie. The fact that it is still in print over a century later is testament to its place in American literature.

Hitchcock, Ackroyd - B -

                                                 He was born in London in 1899, raised in a world of strict Catholicism and developed an abiding interest in the work of Edgar Alan Poe. His first job in the business was as an illustrator. Soon, he was a director. By his 30th birthday, he had moved on to talkies and was the "wunderkind of British cinema". At 40, he moved to Hollywood, where he achieved artistic and financial success. He worked initially for David O. Selznick, but prospered in the 50's and 60's as the studio system broke down and he could contract his services to whomever he wished. He wanted and usually achieved complete and total independence.  As no one was particularly interested in 'Psycho', he wound up owning 60% and made $15m in 1960.
                                                He, apparently, was as odd as his public image. Ackroyd is one of my favorite writers and here, he takes a bit of a leap trying to sort out and assess Hitch's odd, if not very odd, relationships with women. Ackroyd suggests it was a strict, sexually repressive Catholic bringing that led to an almost chaste marriage with career partner, Alma Reville, the mother of his only child, Patricia.  He was obsessed with his leading ladies, particularly Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly. He was so intense with Tippi Hedren that he purportedly ruined her career for her refusal of his advances.  He would fail any and all modern tests of harassment by endlessly focusing on sexual innuendo in the workplace. He sounds like a very weird, fat, asexual in appearance, little man, who happened to make some of the most memorable movies of the century. He died in 1980.

The Boys In The Boat: Nine Americans And Their Epic Quest For Gold At The 1936 Olympics, Brown - B +

                                               This multi-year bestseller (134 weeks and counting) is the story of the crew from the University of Washington that represented the US and won the Berlin Olympics in 1936.  And the fact that our crew was the college team that won the trials and not an all-star team is an interesting takeaway from this book. (Today, an all-star team trains and competes together for years). The previous two Olympic golds were won by the University of California, Berkeley. They raced a-60-foot long, 24-inch-wide lightweight shell, with eight foot long oars, propelling a ton of weight for two miles. It may be the most demanding sport engaged in by man or woman. It is the equivalent of two back-to-back basketball games - in six minutes. It requires the exchange of oxygen at a rate comparable to a racing thoroughbred. "Pain is part and parcel of the deal."
                                              One hundred and seventy-five young men tried out for the 1933 freshmen team. At the end of the fall semester, on Nov. 30, the crews were announced. They won their first real test in the annual May race against Cal and then went east and handily won the Intercollegiate Rowing Association regatta in June. The Washington freshmen boat was heralded around the country. As hard as it is  to fathom, crew was one of the most followed sports in America. Every major paper covered the sport, and the big races were radio broadcast from coast to coast.  A year later, they were the number one varsity boat, as sophomores, and beat Cal in the regatta on Cal's home waters. However, they were demoted to the j.v. boat for the IRA race, which was held every year in Poughkeepsie. Confounding their coach, they won handily and the varsity boat came in third. When the Washington varsity oarsmen turned out in the fall of 1935, Coach Ulbrickson told them it was every man for himself. He'd pick the 9 men for the varsity boat and he expected to take them to Berlin. They trained through a brutal, cold, wet, windy winter on the water.  In March, the crew was selected; in April, they beat Cal; in June, they won the IRA at Poughkeepsie; and at Princeton in July, they won the trials. That evening, the American Olympic Committee told them they'd have to pay their own way; they had to raise $5,000 immediately or Penn, the second place finisher, would gladly go in their stead. The committeeman who advised them of this just happened to be the Chair of the Pennsylvania Athletic Association. The city of Seattle and the entire state raised the money quickly and they were on their way. In the preliminaries, they crushed all comers and broke the Olympic record. The Olympics being the Olympics, the European heads of the committee gave the Americans the worst lane, the one exposed to the most wind, and, in Ulbrickson's opinion, a two-length penalty. The only Olympic sport that garnered more world-wide attention than rowing was track and field. On August 14th, in front of Hitler and Leni Riefensthal's cameras, and millions of Americans listening on the radio, they got in their boat at about 6 PM. Their stroke oarsman was so ill they practically had to carry him. At 500 meters to the finish, they were a full length behind the Germans and Italians. In a photo-finish, their heart rates at an estimated 200 beats per minute, they won by .6 seconds. They were undefeated and never lost a race. All nine and their  coach are in Rowing's hall of fame.
                                            They rowed the 'Husky Clipper' every ten years at a reunion, and for the last time in 1986. Today, the boat hangs in a shell house on campus and every year, the freshman crew orientation takes place just below it.
                                             The story of the boat is interspersed with the personal story of Joe Rantz, the #7 oarsman.  It was not an easy ride from Spokane to fame. Born in 1914, he lost his mother at three and was let out by his father at 10 in the hardscrabble town of Squim. He pretty much looked after himself from that point on. He stayed where he could, worked for nickels and dimes, learned many useful skills in small town Washington, and was smart enough to go to the University. During his college years, he lived in the basement of the YMCA where he was a janitor. One summer, he handled a sledgehammer, hanging in a harness dangling over a precipice for 75 cents an hour, to help build the Grand Coulee Dam. Later in life, he used his engineering degree at Boeing for 35 years.
                                             As is always the case with those of that generation, one is struck by their gracious, steadfast approach to depression, war and life's many challenges. Many thanks to Dr. George Todd for sending this excellent book to me for Christmas.
                                           

Revolution on the Hudson: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the War of America Independence, Daughan - B+

                                               This book is an excellent military history of the Revolution. The author's opening comments are that the British plan to sever the colonies by conquering the Hudson Valley, thus isolating New England, was flawed. Everyone fighting the war, and historians right up through Admiral Mahan a hundred years later, also agreed with British strategy. The flaw is the distance between New York and Canada and the length of the NE coastline. It was much more than the Royal Navy could have blockaded. I've always thought that the concept made no sense for the same reason. Montreal is 375 miles from NYC, and Quebec City, where the British were actually headquartered, was another 100 plus miles further east. It's brutally cold in the winter, and at the time, the whole distance was wilderness.
                                               Fed up with the colonist's many and varied successful acts of insurrection in 1775, including Lexington and Concord, and Bunker Hill, George III and his first Minister, Lord North, declared war on the colonies. On June 30, 1776, a hundred and ten British vessels arrived in NY harbor. Hundreds more were to follow. The British expected meaningful support from loyalists throughout the NY region and in the deep south.  The eventual lack of loyalist support doomed the Hudson River strategy. The navy would have needed collaborators to effectively hold the lengthy distance to Albany. They would never receive any help. However, the British did get off to a spectacular start by invading Brooklyn, defeating the Americans and trapping Washington in Brooklyn Heights in late August.  With the East River patrolled behind the Americans, the British ground commander, General Howe, thought he had the war won.  Howe's brother and overall commander, Lord Admiral Howe, also thought it was over and didn't patrol the river. Washington and 9500 men, their equipment and horses, escaped across the river in one night. Two months later, they abandoned Manhattan, fled to Westchester and eventually, New Jersey. Further north, the British couldn't even make it to Lake Champlain from Canada.There would be no severing of the colonies in 1776.
                                               For the new year, London directed the Howe's to capture Philadelphia by land, force the Delaware River and then meet General Burgoyne, who would descend from Canada. When Howe learned that Burgoyne had already passed Ft. Ticonderoga and was less than 100 miles from Albany in early July, he headed to Philadelphia by sea. Washington confronted Howe at Brandywine Creek in Delaware. Howe won, but Washington again escaped. The British entered the capital on Sept. 26. Meanwhile, Burgoyne was stalled in New York as the American forces grew and grew. He was stopped at Bennington, crossed to the west side of the Hudson at Saratoga, and engaged an army under Horatio Gates, winning the first round but losing the second. In October, Burgoyne surrendered.  Both of the Howe's resigned. Seventeen seventy-seven was another failure for the British.
                                              At that point, the French entered the war on the side of the Americans, leading the King to order the army to withdraw from Philadelphia and return to New York. America was now secondary to saving the lucrative sugar colonies of the Indies from the French. "London was once again expecting the theatre commander to reclaim the colonies without providing the necessary troops or naval support." It was a year of moves, counter- moves, marches and almosts, but nothing strategic came to pass. By the end of 1778, both the British and French navies were in the Indies.
                                               Desultory activity was the case again in 1779 as the British took Savannah and eyed Charleston, which was handed to them in early 1780 by equally incompetent army and navy officers. Charleston, however, was not the beginning of the King's new southern strategy. Cornwallis floundered, incited the south to guerrilla warfare, and marched his shrinking forces into Virginia in 1781. Although reinforced, Cornwallis had no real plan or strategy and allowed himself to be trapped at Yorktown. The French had fought a British relief force to a standstill off Cape Henry, Virginia, assuring that there was no saving Cornwallis. The Yorktown surrender came on Oct.19, 1881. The British would no longer take offensive actions in America. They hoped for peace without independence. The Americans would not stay in the empire. The Treaty of Paris granted America full independence and generous borders.
                                               For NY, home to the British occupation and a Tory stronghold, it was a bitter blow. Tens of thousands dispossessed Tories left for Canada. Evacuation Day came on Nov. 25, 1783. It was celebrated in NY until 1916.
                                               The outlines of this story are familiar to all of us; Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Trenton, Saratoga and Yorktown.  And therein lies an issue. Much went on in the beginning of the American Revolution and not much in the four years after 1777. The indifferent lack of support Congress and the states gave to Washington was appalling. It's a wonder he and the army didn't march on Philadelphia and toss them out. We 'Remember LaFayette', but seldom do American books state that without the French navy and vast amount of funds, it would have been much harder, if not impossible, to thwart the British. The whole British strategy appears ridiculous. How an army and navy stationed in NY were to be moving up and down thousands of miles of coast in the age of sail makes one wonder if they had maps in London. Add to the indifferent strategy, unenthusiastic and incompetent commanders, the worst being Gen. Henry Clinton, the man who succeeded Gen. Howe. I had known that the British were cruel to the prisoners, but not as depraved as they were. Of 30,000 men held in NY, fully 18,000 died of abuse and starvation. Only 7,000 continentals were killed in combat.  The war was unnecessary and inflicted on both countries because of George III's stubbornness. The British were incompetent, dismissive, arrogant, cruel and deserved to lose the war and the colonies. Funny that we all appreciate the language, literature, culture and legal system as much as we do. Great book.





                                           

Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe, Matzen - B +

                                              Jimmy Stewart grew up in mildly prosperous circumstances in a smalltown in western Pennsylvania. On both sides of his family, the men had fought in all of America's wars back to the Revolution. The other abiding influence in his life was a total and absolute fascination with flight. He graduated from Princeton at 24 in 1932 and tried his hand on Broadway.  Two years later, the 6'4", 135-pound Stewart was off to Hollywood with an MGM contract. He was a prodigious ladies man from day one, and soon was a full-blown movie star. In March of 1941, just after winning an Oscar, he pushed to be drafted when his number came up and he had been deferred because of his weight. Once in, he had to fight for pilot training because of his age. He was a training officer for over a year and finally, made it to England in late 1943.
                                              Kiel was the target on his first mission on Dec.13, 1943. As the squadron commander, Stewart flew in the co-pilot seat on the eight-hour round trip missions. They went up every second or third day on flights that were frightening, freezing and totally exhausting. He had to write the 'letters home' to the families of his men when a plane went down. The planes themselves were capable of falling out of the sky for no apparent reason and were considered extremely difficult to fly. Indeed, the word 'wrestle' is frequently used to describe handling the B-24. Throughout the first four months of 1944, the Luftwaffe  was still wreaking havoc on the British and American invaders. Getting to 25 missions was still considered unlikely. Stewart had 10 missions by February. One of the things that rattled him was his role in 'The Mortal Storm', the film that led to MGM being banned in Germany. If he were ever captured, they would  have a filed day in the propaganda ministry. He was considered very good, cool, calm, collected and 'lucky' in his role as a squadron leader. His superiors concerned about his 'visibility', even though he kept his head down eschewed the press and any publicity. He was promoted to group ops officer in a different group and was now on the ground a bit more often. By mid-summer, now Lt. Col. Stewart was again promoted and flying became less frequently. The Luftwaffe was pretty much gone at this stage and the summer weather made flying slightly easier.  On March 21, 1945, Col. Stewart flew for the last time as Wing Commander. The op was a close-run thing as they were bombing the field where the Germans had their jet fighter planes. and when it was over, Stewart was spent. Hap Arnold told him he needn't fly any more and he welcomed the respite. On August 1, he stepped off the HMS Queen Mary in NY harbor. His war was over.
                                            "He was thirty-seven, looked fifty and his career as a Hollywood romantic figure was over." He returned to LA, but was completely at sea; stressed out, feeling as if it all was unimportant, yet he needed to work. Equally at a loss for what to do with himself was former Army Col. Frank Capra. He approached Stewart with a movie based on a short story called 'The Greatest Gift.' Running down the street in a very hot Encino,   California in June of 1946 yelling "Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls", Jimmy Stewart knew he could carry on.
                                              I have always liked Jimmy Stewart. Probably my earliest recollection of him is as Charles Lindbergh. I remember reading in his obituary in 1997 that as a nine-year-old, he lay in bed in Indiana, Pennsylvania listening to the reports of Lucky Lindy. I thought how serendipitous. On a Friday night in the late 70's, stressed out after a hard week and with my family asleep, I came upon 'It's A Wonderful Life'. This was before it had made its legendary comeback. I was mesmerized and felt as if I had stumbled upon one of the finest movies I had ever seen. I still love the film. I knew Stewart had flown in the war. I didn't know just how hard he had fought. In truth, anyone who flew over Europe in a B -17 or a B-24 had a hard war.  The planes were rudimentary, the conditions were horrible and with flak and enemy fighters all around, death was capricious, random and very near each and every day. God bless the 'Greatest Generation'.

A Rage For Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, Worth - C +

                                               This book is on many year-end must-read lists, perhaps because it handles the Arab Spring succinctly (i.e. in 222 pages). As much as I love brevity, I am not convinced that it is worth the kudos it has received. The author suggests  that the events of the Arab Spring were not a beginning. They were simply the end of the strongman era that had dominated the middle east since the end of WW2.  Within days of the self-immolation suicide of the Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian dictator, Ben Ali, fled. Within a week, the Mubarak regime was on the rocks. On the eighteenth day of the protests, Mubarak resigned. The members of the  Muslim Brotherhood were let out of jail, organized and began their plan to win an election. In Libya, Benghazi erupted and Qaddafi was on the run. His counter moves were met with an Arab League-approved NATO no-fly zone. After a nasty civil war, Qaddafi was murdered by the rebels. Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, Libya continued to drift as warlords controlled different parts of the country.
                                               The push back against Syrian strongman Assad quickly turned into Sunni v. Shia (Assad and his ruling clique are Alawites, a Shia sect), and has been going downhill since the spring of 2011. It descended into extreme violence in a Rubik's cube chaos of Iranians, Hezbollah, Kurds, and zealots from around the world all fighting each other on behalf of distant powers and different local factions.
                                               "Most Arab dictators have been corrupt and manipulative, but Yemen's ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh, brought these traits to a whole new level of cynicism and mastery." Yemen was barely a step  up from medieval tribalism. Al-Qaeda emerged from the disarray. Yemen too, quickly descended into a Shia-Sunni proxy war.
                                               The most powerful, largest and coherent civilian entity in Egypt was the Muslim Brotherhood. Organized in the post WW2 era, suppressed for decades and easy victors in the elections less than a year after Mubarak's ouster. They overplayed their Islamist hand, added a touch of authoritarianism, and the following year  there was a 'second revolution'.  With broad based support, the military ousted Mohamed Morsi and took over. Abdel Sisi,  a former intelligence chief, was in charge as much as Nasser, Sadat or Mubarak had ever been. Egypt had reverted to form.
                                               ISIS came about when the US left Iraq and the Shiite President al-Maliki purged the Sunni from leadership positions.  They made the strategic decision to go 'savage' in an effort to eliminate all opposition. ISIS proclaimed a new Caliphate and drew fighters from around the world into a never-never land between Syria and Iraq.
                                              Only in Tunisia, the least Arabic and most European of the states in N. Africa, did the center hold. The Islamists and secularists agreed on a constitution and a sharing of power. Each side was led by a very old man and the question is whether the peace can hold.
                                               This is an adequate book. The author spends way too much, indeed, almost all of his time, on stories of a few different families in each country. Yes, it is a way of telling of the depths of despair and terrible experiences that are part and parcel of religious civil wars, but it's hardly great exposition or analysis. Indeed, I don't think the book accomplishes its stated objective of reporting the consequences of the Spring. There are 3 pages in the second half of the book that mention Yemen, and then a few comments in the epilogue about the Saudi invasion. The long section on Syria is only about one jihadist who changed his mind and returned home to Jordan. Again in the epilogue, he tackles the current mess involving a US-led coalition bombing ISIS and the Russians on the ground supporting Assad.
                                               The people of the Middle East sought citizenship and a future. "But they ran headlong into the seventh century..." This feels very much like a slapdash effort. Indeed, I am reminded that in the prologue, Worth points out that much of the book is previous pieces from the Times.
       

The Infidel Stain, Carter - B

                                             This is the second book in a series about Captain William Avery and his colleague, Jeremiah Blake.  Earlier, we saw them in Calcutta, in a novel that painted a vivid picture of the British East India Company in its waning days about a decade before direct rule, the era known as the Raj.  It is now a few years later in London in the early 1840's,  and they are engaged by Lord Allington, a noted philanthropist, to conduct an inquiry into the suspicious deaths of two printers engaged in some 19th century pornography. The background to the inquiry is the struggle between the landed gentry, the nascent manufacturers, and the rural and urban poor. Britain had enacted some reforms in 1832, but they hardly deserved to be called democratic as still less than 1 in 20 men could vote.
                                             In the capital, as opposed to the plains of India, Jemmy Blake appears more and more like Sherlock Holmes. He has an indulgent landlady, dresses haphazardly, has all sorts of street connections, can sort out any problem, is inclined to disguises, and a rather serious opium habit. Avery is not handy with his words, but he is quick with his fists in a rougher era in London, and is about as slow as Dr. Watson ever was. In the end, the murder mysteries are resolved in a manner I would best characterize as indifferent. The import takeaway is on the Chartist movement. They submitted 3.3 million signatures to Parliament in an attempt to expand suffrage. The toffs ignored them.

Exposure, Dunmore - B

                                             This is a fascinating novel set in 1960 in London. If I had to pick a word to describe it, it would be 'anxious'. Giles is an aging functionary at the Admiralty office who spies for the Soviets. One night, he falls down the stairs at home after taking photos of a top secret file. He's drunk, badly hurt, and terribly anxious about that file, now in his study and not at work. He calls Simon, a lackluster underling who dutifully goes and picks up the file and gets very worried. Simon doesn't know what to do. His wife finds the file, buries it in the backyard, and now spends all of her time fretting about her future and that of her three children, as Simon has been dragged off to gaol. Giles' boss is desperate to find the file. It is clear that Simon has been framed, but there's no way for him to prove it. Things work out in the end in an unlikely and barely believable sequence of events. At least though, they work out the way they should.

City Of Secrets, O'Nan - B +

                                               This is a superb, brief, historical novel set in post-war Jerusalem.  Our lead character is Brand, a Latvian Jew who had somehow survived, and is now a taxi driver and a member of Haganah. "He wasn't weak enough to kill himself, but wasn't strong enough to stop wanting to." Throughout Palestine, the Jews waged a relentless, guerrilla war of terror against the British. Brand, who lost his wife, parents and siblings during the Holocaust loses his lover during the Irgun bombing of the King David Hotel. He's seen enough of war and violence. He leaves Jerusalem and heads to Haifa, where he can ship out, as his merchant seaman's paper are actually in order.

An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy, Levinson - B

                                               The reviews of this book attracted me because its theme is a conclusion that my amateur reading of history for the last half century has led me to. I have thought for some time that the expectations of almost everyone in this country, regardless of age, class, education or background are predicated on the illusion of the boom from the post-war era. It was temporary, and that is this author's premise. And quite depressingly, he asserts that the boom is not going to come back.
                                               The author cites the quarter century from 1948 to 1973 as a time when the world economy expanded faster than ever before or since. In 1973, the average income per person around the world leaped 4.5%.  "The almost universal feeling of prosperity quickly faded." The primary reason was a slowing down of productivity, without which economies and living standards do not improve. Theorists and politicians of every stripe have offered solutions, none of which have worked.  Perhaps governments and central bankers can't fine tune economies. As this came to pass, most wealthy societies turned right and no longer saw collective solutions to problems. "Political leaders frequently understate the connection between large global trends and the individuals' well-being, first so they don't seem hapless while in power and second so they can blame the incumbents for economic troubles while in opposition." "As the Golden Age became a memory, so did the boundless optimism of an era of good times for all."
                                              At the end of the war, 2 million mules plowed US farms and one in 175 Japanese homes had a telephone. By the mid-70's you could cross the Atlantic on a super-sonic plane in less than four hours. The US -funded Marshall Plan in 1948 jump-started the economies of the free world. Part of the reason for the beginning of the boom was pent up demand after almost twenty-years of depression and war. Millions moving from farms to factories was equally critical. It seemed as if labor, capital and government were together marching toward the future. Trade barriers fell, infrastructure was modernized, education became more universal and productivity doubled in the US, tripled in Europe and quadrupled in Japan. Capitalism and economic planning seemed to have created a new world.
                                              The Seventies brought some new challenges to that prosperity. A US-based rise in         inflation spread around the world because of the Bretton Woods system. Environmentalism raised its head for the first time and many, many people and nations began to reconsider just how they profited from the planet. Exchange rates became unglued after the US abandoned the gold standard in early 1973. The Yom Kippur War in October led to an almost doubling of the price of oil and an embargo on Israel's supporters. Add in the above-mentioned productivity decline (which this author cannot ascribe to anything in particular), and the party was over.
                                              The mid to late seventies saw two defining changes. The first was the Japanese onslaught in almost very manufacturing sector that wreaked havoc throughout industrial Europe and America. Globalization had begun. The governmental response were protectionism, tariffs, and quotas, all of which raised the cost of living in the US and Europe by protecting failing businesses. The west's first and truly effective response was deregulation in energy, telecommunication, transport and finance. Better and better technology now came into play. Economic growth would no longer be driven by the massive industries of old. "The era of well-paid factory jobs for all was over; in the new economy, value would come from innovation, design, and marketing, not from the physical process of  turning raw materials into finished goods."
                                               As matters deteriorated, reducing the welfare state was not an option and in many countries tax burdens rose to provide continued support. This led to the swing to the right embodied by Kohl, Thatcher and Reagan. Thatcher's privatization of British industry moved 650,000 workers from state-subsidized jobs to the private sector and ushered in the UK's transformation to a service economy. She is deemed to have reversed Britain's slide, but to have only barely set it on an upward trend. In late 1979, in the US, Paul Volcker, Fed Chair, shifted the focus from monetary supply to bank reserves and saw interest rates skyrocket. Two years later, the Fed Funds rate was over 20%, the economy was in free fall and Ronald Reagan initiated a small tax cut, while borrowing heavily to increase the size of the navy. In August of 1982, Wall Street concluded that inflation had been contained and the great bull market in stocks and bonds began. The Reagan Revolution tamed inflation (thanks to the Democrat Paul Volcker) but made little difference to the well-being of the common man. "What the Reagan Revolution could not do was restore the broad improvement in living standards that Americans expected." Referring to the leaders of the eighties, the author states, "When it came to restoring the sense of economic security that had vanished along with cheap oil, their efforts were no more effectual than those of the less market-oriented politicians they drove from office."
                                               In the closing chapter, Levinson again returns to the productivity theme. It boomed, then slowed down and no one knows why. He acknowledges that the micro-processor provided a temporary increase in productivity in the 90's, but has not established a long-term trend. He closes with a quote from Paul Samuelson. "The third quarter of the Twentieth Century was a golden age of economic progress. It surpassed any reasoned expectation. And we are not likely to see its equivalent soon again."
                                               
                                             

Blood In The Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 And Its Legacy, Thompson - A*

                                           This is the history of the most important prison riot in US history.  Much of the information has been accessed by a historian's good fortune, as NYS keeps most of it under lock, key and classified designation.  I suspect his book is going to win a lot of awards - it is a masterpiece. The NYT reviewer refers to it as "a superb work of history." That said, it is a long tough slog, not because of the writing, which is excellent, but the topic, which is flat out horrible.
                                           The State Correctional Facility at Attica was understaffed, the correction officers (COs) were not trained, and they were severely underpaid. The inmates were overcrowded, virtually starved, provided with a roll of toilet paper and a bar of soap per month, underpaid for their work, uncertain of the rules as inconsistency of enforcement was rife, allowed parole only if they had a job, seldom visited because of the distance from NYC, unable to communicate with common-law relations, proscribed from writing or receiving letters in Spanish, unable to read almost all outside material, free to listen only to three local am stations, completely lacked access to medical or dental services - essentially hopeless. Conditions were and had been horrible.  Add into the mix a new black militancy among the prisoners and a power structure that felt obliged to suppress and fight them, and you had a burgeoning problem. "Warden Mancusi viewed prisoner activism as the work of black militant troublemakers who needed to be watched with particular care and shut up the minute they spoke out."
                                            The summer of 1971 saw increased militancy. Riots had taken place in NYC and  at nearby Auburn. Standing pat was Rockefeller's new man in charge, Russell G. Oswald, a wannabe reformer put on the defensive upon taking over the NYS system. The prisoners at Attica had sent a petition to Oswald. He told the men he would consider their requests to improve life at the prison. But, after the Attica Liberation Faction had wrote to the Commissioner, the guards began to strictly and brutally enforce all the rules. On the morning of Sept. 9, a combination of fear, confusion, change of routine and general sense of anxiety led to violence in A Tunnel and a full scale riot within minutes. Although there was no plan for a response to a riot, the COs and the State Police were able to re-take half of the cell blocks by noon. About half of the prisoners, approximately 1300 men,  gathered in the Yard of Cell Block D and began to organize themselves.
                                             Oswald arrived and immediately prohibited a violent re-taking. He was in the Yard by 4 pm. His primary concern was the well-being of the 40 hostages. He acceded to the demand that tv, newspapermen and outside observers be allowed into the prison. Ironically, it was only the presence of the outsiders that kept those clamoring to attack at bay. Outside the prison, the families of the hostages, local police and state troopers, as well as COs from around the region, gathered, waited, and were primed for revenge. The whole concept of observers turned into a circus within twenty-four hours. There were dozens in the prison including rabble-rousers and outsiders more radical than the inmates. Among the more notable observers were William Kunstler, Tom Wicker, Congressman Herman Badillo and State Senators John Dunne and Arthur Eve. Oswald spent a meaningful amount of time with the prisoners and agreed to the majority of their demands. However, the ongoing sticking point was amnesty, and unbeknownst to all inside, the forces of revenge were marshaling in Rocky's office. It was an era of law and order and the Governor could not be seen as lacking.  Matters became more complex on the third night when Bobby Seale showed up to stir the pot and the officer hurt in the riot by the inmates, William Quinn, died. "By Saturday night, no one...thought that this standoff could continue much longer. Someone, somewhere was going to break." Discussions continued on Sunday but the prisoners wanted amnesty and the state would not budge. By 7 pm Sunday, Oswald had given up. Both the State Police and the Corrections Dept. left the planning and implementation of the recovery of the prison in relatively low-level hands, which the author suggests was a case of Rockefeller deliberately distancing himself from whatever the consequences would be.
                                              On the morning of the 13th, the troopers  who were readying the attack were characterized by a National Guardsmen standing by as "haggard" and "exhausted". They had had zero training in an action such as this, and had never handled the rifles given them. Those rifles were loaded with particularly destructive ammunition. The men were unfamiliar with gas masks, which would impede their ability to communicate. They  were not instructed on how to accept a surrender, or what to do after they stormed the yard. No one had even recorded the serial numbers of the rifles distributed. Many were also armed with personal handguns. It was a classic snafu ready to happen. At about 9:40 am, a helicopter dropped cs gas on the Yard. The troopers followed and unleashed all they had, firing indiscriminately, often with intent to kill. One-hundrd and twenty-eight men were shot, nine hostages were dead, as were 29 inmates.  The author, undoubtedly correctly, attributed the massacre to racial ferocity and animosity.
                                              The State began spinning immediately, attributing all of the hostage deaths to the prisoners, who had purportedly slit their throats. The truth was that all but one had been shot. Throughout the day and the first night, the COs tortured and beat the inmates and Warden Mancusi denied them medical attention. It would take days and outsider's efforts to force the State to allow the wounded men medical care. As the first weeks passed, interest in what had happened grew and it became apparent that the state's coverup would fail, notwithstanding the public assertions of Rockefeller, Agnew and Nixon that organized militancy was behind the riot.
                                                The Governor eventually assigned the Organized Crime Task Force to look into Attica. This commission became known as the Fischer/Simonetti Commission and was charged with assigning criminal responsibility. In December of 1972, Simonetti indicted sixty-three prisoners for 1289 crimes, which included the death of William Quinn as well as three prisoners who were murdered by their fellow inmates.  The grand jury did not indict a single trooper or CO in the three dozen shooting deaths. Aligned against the state was the Attica Brothers Legal Defense (ABLD). It was more of a loosely organized movement than an entity, but it was  able to change the trials' venue from Attica to Buffalo. The state lost the first two cases, but won the trial for murder of the guard, William Quinn, even though the evidence was patently fraudulent. The next trial for two murders of inmates was lost by the state. In the third trial, the state allowed a man to plead to 'time served' and not acknowledge his guilt. By late 1975, the state's prosecutorial record was a total failure and someone inside the prosecution team went public as a whistleblower. That attorney's actions led to more newspaper stories, a lengthy report, another commission and a Special Asst. Attorney General assigned to reconsider everything. In 1976, all cases except one against an inmate for murder were dismissed. The only indicted CO also had his case dismissed. At the end of the year, Gov. Carey pardoned or granted clemency to all inmates and attempted to "close the book" five years after the riot. Millions and millions had been spent and millions of pages of reports, affidavits, grand jury and trial testimony produced. But the truth was buried far from the public view.
                                                  Soon thereafter, the civil lawsuits began. It would take two decades for some semblance of justice to be provided. In January of 1991, a federal court in Buffalo, in a class action lawsuit, determined that the inmates civil rights had been violated during the retaking. The Judge in charge delayed the penalty stage of the trial for another five years. Big Black Smith, the lead plaintiff, did not have a chance to testify about his torture until June, 1997. After a day of deliberation, the jury awarded Smith $4,000,000.  Smith's damage case was the strongest. Next the plaintiffs presented Frank Brosig's story, believed to be an average Attica case, and he was awarded $75,000. At that point, the state decided to appeal the original liability case, because they now knew they could be on the hook to the 1200 surviving inmates. In 1999, the Second Circuit reversed the liability judgement. It had been almost thirty years since the riot
                                                  The senior judge for the Western District took over the matter and forced the state (by now, Gov. Pataki after Mario Cuomo had refused to settle for 8 years) to pay $12m. The state never admitted guilt. Judge Telesca allowed every man to recount his story and thus place on the record the full saga of what had happened at Attica. The inmates and their lawyers were finally paid. The last chapter of the Attica tale is the pursuit of damages on behalf of the hostages, the families of the slain hostages and the now forty-year old-daughter of the slain guard, William Quinn. However, having previously received some monies from the workers comp funds, they were precluded from any other remedy. One woman had accepted $36 per week until her daughter turned 16 after being told by the state's lawyers they would be provided for for life. The FVOA ( Forgotten Victims of Attica) only had a political option and once again, a commission was authorized by Gov. Pataki. Hearings were held over the summer of 2002 and once again, the only thing that outweighed the depth of the damages suffered was the perfidy of the state. In January of 2005, the state agreed to $12m of damages - the same amount previously granted to the inmates. However, the state parceled out the money over six years, without interest.
                                                     Although, starting in 1973 NYS led the way with meaningful prison reform, it also led the nation into the era of mandatory minimum sentencing and the criminalization of previously civil matters.  In 1996, Congress passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act, severely restricting prisoners' access to federal courts. The incarceration rates around the country skyrocketed after Attica. NYS had 12,500 prisoners in 1971 and 72,600 by 1999. Both Congress and President Obama have begun to reverse this process. Nonetheless, we still lead the world in the percentage of our population incarcerated.
                                                      The author clearly takes the side of the inmates and  relentlessly, in a manner reminiscent of Robert Caro, pours it on against the state. Although there seem to be points in the narrative where she is more than sympathetic to the inmates' activities, including brutal criminal acts, history has shown that the state treated the inmates horribly, viciously and indifferently murdered them and the hostages during the assault. It  covered it up and cheated throughout all the legal proceedings and follow-up.  I am reminded of the Kerner Commission referring to the events at the 1968 Democratic Convention as a "police riot." This is much more egregious government activity. I also cannot escape pop culture's most famous reference, as far as I know, to the riot, i.e. Al Pacino riling up the Brooklyn crowd with "Attica, Attica" in 'Dog Day Afternoon'. This is a great  history book and one of the most powerful stories I've ever read.