Under Occupation, Furst - B

                                  This book is the fifteenth 'Night Soldiers' novel, and is fully three decades older than the first from 1988.  The novels are masterpieces of historical fiction, modeled on Arthur Koestler and Eric Ambler, and, in my opinion, exceeding both. If I can feel the fog rolling in from the North Sea or the Seine, I know I love what I'm reading. Many, if not most, of the earlier books focused on characters of elusive backgrounds and identities, who slipped through central Europe in the 1930's. This is not a series in the traditional sense of the word, but there are recurring themes and about a dozen characters who appear in two or three books. There were a great many communists in hardcore opposition to the growing fascist excesses. Only in this book and the last book one has the actual war been  the background. It is 1942 in Paris and life-long Parisian Paul Ricard, novelist, becomes a resistant. His adventures take him to Kiel in Germany, the Spanish border, Sainte-Nazaire on the French Coast, and throughout the various arrondissements of Paris.  The novel excels when in Paris, where he ultimately avoids the Gestapo as they close in around his circle. If you haven't read these, it's time to start.

The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire, Harper- B+

  How could Rome, seat of state for over a millennium and the wealthiest city ever, come to be sacked by the Goths in the year 410? History tells us of the acts of emperors, generals, consuls, and invaders, but the fate of Rome "was equally decided by bacteria and viruses, volcanoes and solar cycles." The empire, which had spread from Syria to Britain, created pathways for infectious diseases that significantly contributed to the decline and fall of Rome. Gibbon ordained that the 2nd century saw mankind at its most prosperous and happiest. The empire comprised 75 million people. The city itself exceeded a population of a million, a number not to be seen in the west again until 1800. The fall of Rome was "a monumental episode of state failure", characterized as "the single greatest regression in human history." Science now allows us to recognize changes in the climate in the past and affords us the opportunity to apply that knowledge to our understanding of history. 

Rome prospered at an extraordinarily positive time, known as the RCO, the Roman Climate Optimum. During the last two centuries BC and in the first century CE, the environment was perfect for economic and population growth. Temperatures were moderate and the amount of rainfall matched the needs of the times. However, Rome's luck turned early in the Christian Era and by the Dark Ages, the Mediterranean world faced the Little Ice Age. In 165, the world's first pandemic, known to history as the Antonine Plague,  attacked Rome from the east through the Red Sea and the Nile River Valley. All indications are that it was a smallpox virus. Estimates of population loss are difficult to calculate, but somewhere between 10-20% of the people in the empire, from the Red Sea to Hadrian's Wall, died. The city itself lost as many as 300,000 souls. The impact was catastrophic. Fiscal distress and the devastation of the legions put the empire in a defensive posture at its borders, from which it never recovered. A century later, the second half of the 3rd century saw a series of governance and security crises, with emperors ceaselessly usurping their predecessors and invasions on all fronts. Concurrently, a withering drought and another pandemic slashed the empire. An African drought reduced the Egyptian wheat harvest. The Plague of Cyprian struck the length and breadth of the empire, for possibly fifteen years. Some sort of viral hemorrhagic fever is the likely cause. The frontiers buckled in the 250's as Asia Minor and the Danube basin were lost. The Rhine followed. The empire was saved when the moneyed Mediterranean aristocracy was replaced by a long series of Danubian military officers known as the Theodosian Dynasty. The empire recovered and flourished for well over another century. The long 4th century saw the empire shift its focus to the east with the establishment of Constantinople. We have known for centuries that the Hun left the Asian steppes and forced the Goths out of the area north of the Black Sea and into the empire. What we now know is that there was a mega-drought in the steppes in 350-370. The Huns crossed the Volga and headed into Europe. Their ability to shoot arrows from fast-moving warhorses swept the Goths away. The Goths didn't so much invade the empire as they migrated into it. In the fifth century, the western half of the empire of Rome faded away. The empire prospered in the east, particularly in the 6th century reign of Justinian. He reorganized the bureaucracy, codified the empire's laws, recovered portions of Italy, made peace with the Persians and built Constantinople up to a population of 500,000. However, in 541, the bubonic plague made its entry into the empire. The ensuing two decades saw the empire barely able to collect taxes, feed the people or field an army. In the capital city, half of the population died in the summer of 542. The plague devastated Asia Minor and is believed to have spread as far west as Ireland. Plague endured into the next century and even made a singular appearance in Constantinople in 747. The persistenc of Y. pestis"strangled hopes of recovery." The final sequence of Rome's demise came in the 7th century when climate change, political disintegration and the rise of Islam swept west. Two volcanic eruptions in the 530's-540's led to the coldest decade in the last 2,000 years, adding incalculable stress to the Mediterranean world. The reduction in solar radiance led to a century and a half of the Late Antique Little Ice Age. There were droughts in the south and floods in the north. Environmental degradation slowly "sapped the vitality of the empire." The interconnectedness slipped away, and slowly a globalized prosperous, trading world became a localized simpler place. Most of the west's cities entered terminal decline. Rome's population was counted in the tens of thousands. Italy was reduced to a subsistence economy. In the east, the damage was not as significant, but even there, Constantinople could not field the armies it needed and more importantly, could not pay them. The coup de grace came from the Levant. Beginning in 636, and continuing for a century, the armies of Mohammad cleaved and forever severed the southern portion of the empire. From Arabia, through the Holy Land, Egypt and all of North Africa into Spain, the Muslims conquered. Not only was no semblance of the empire's structure left, but its religion was replaced. The dynamism and great zone of energy was lost. Byzantium was a rump state centered on its capital. The Latin west became Eurasia's backwater. 

I have found this a compelling read. I have long known that our species has moved from point A to point B because of the impact of the environment where it  lived. Our country's success is a function of the bounty of our continent. So to see a historian use the  recent tools of science to delve deeper into the world's history is extraordinarily enlightening. My only caution  to prospective readers is that this is as much science as it is history.

Old Man River: The Mississippi River In North American History, Schneider - B

"It is impossible to imagine America without the Mississippi. The river's history is our history." Any moving water below the Great Lakes and between the the Appalachians and the Rockies, fully 41% of the water in the country, is part of the Mississippi watershed. It is the busiest waterway in the world,  moving half a billion metric tons per year. The first European to interact with native Americans was de Soto in 1542. The French settled Quebec in 1608. Fur traders and Jesuits headed west into the Great Lakes. The Indians told them of a great river to  the south and west. The hope was that it flowed to the Pacific. An expedition under Joliet entered the Mississippi watershed in Wisconsin in the spring of 1673. He and Marquette went as far south as the Arkansas, realized the river drained to the Gulf of Mexico and headed north. A decade later, La Salle descended the river to its mouth. For the next century and a half, French voyageurs explored every river, creek and by-water in the basin, going as far west as the sources of the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers. The claim to the west for New France was based upon their fur traders, and a hundred years later, the French era in America would come to an end. The British evicted France from Canada and Napoleon sold Louisiana to the Americans. In the 19th century, the river became the highway to the west, and in the later half of the century, became a central part of American lore, under the pen of Samuel Clemens. However, its largest role was as a battlefield  in the Civil War. Both New Orleans and Vicksburg were immensely important, cutting the Confederacy in two and assuring eventual Union victory. Lincoln's comment upon receiving Grant's telegram about the capture of Vicksburg is one of my favorites. "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea." In the last chapters of the book, the author refers to the river as a 'lake of engineers'. The act of taming the river and its floods has dramatically altered forever the channel of the Mississippi. Distributary streams, starting 100 miles north of New Orleans, once made the delta. Today, it is one long canal running strait to the Gulf, and at this stage, diverted from a western flow in order to keep the port of New Orleans open.  Someday, it will once again flow on the course it has for hundreds of thousands of years.

The Scholar, McTiernan-B+

                                  This is one of those rare occasions when the second book in a series is better than the first. Reilly catches a case, but the problem is his girlfriend is the witness who called it in. Emma also works at the lab at the center of it all. This is an excellent tale involving a pharma research lab at a university and the wealthy granddaughter of the founder of the largest pharmacy company in Ireland. There are certain similarities to the first book, including the political and pretty much useless supervisor, but then again seldom does  a detective have a good boss. The sniveling DC who tries to sabotage Reilly is equally hard to swallow. This is a series with a future.

The Daughter's Tale, Correa - C +

                                            At best, I would characterize this novel as serviceable. It felt predictable. The author has put together a plot focusing on loss, and indeed Lina/Elise lost a great deal throughout the war. Viera and Lina Sternberg were born to Jewish parents in Berlin in the mid-30's. Before Dr. Sternberg died in Saschausen,  he had arranged passage to Cuba for his daughters. Only Viera made it. Lina and her mother found refuge in the French countryside. Amanda, her mother, wrote to Viera, care of her brother in Cuba, but the letters were always returned. Under her French name, Elise, Lina survived the war with Danielle Duval, her 'sister' according to Father Marcel, and later, the baker's wife,  who protected them. She was adopted by a New York relative. Seventy years later, Viera's granddaughter appears at her front door with the letters written by Amanda. 

The Seine: The River That Made Paris, Sciolino - B

Paris, city of light and love, is at the midpoint of the river's 483 mile traverse from Burgundy to the sea. It is France's only river referred to in the feminine, la Seine; all the others are le. Flowing west from its source and through the vineyards of Burgundy, the river reaches Troyes, where it is wide and deep enough for small boats. Past Fontainbleau, and the Marne,  it reaches the Il de France, the province that includes Paris and its suburbs. The first to build stone structures on the Il de Cite and Left Bank were the Romans. The first stone bridge, the Pont Neuf, connecting the Il de Cite to both banks, was built by Henri IV in 1598. Today, there are thirty-five bridges crossing the Seine. It is not the river's physicality, but its beauty that has inspired Parisians for centuries. It languidly curves through the metropolis, and is its beating heart. It has been and still is romanticized as the soul of the city of love. Love locks hang from its bridges. Lovers stroll throughout the day and night. They kiss on its bridges. It is also the focus of the city's nighttime lighting program and draws people in with its visual seductiveness. It is the subject of countless paintings and photographs. Renoir's 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' was set on its banks, as was Seuratt's 'A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte'. To the west, the Impressionists, particularly Monet, spent a significant amount of their time in Normandy, where they were the first to paint water moving. In 'Charade', Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn fall in love on a bateau-mouche.  All of the thousands of movies set in Paris feature the river. The Pont Notre Dame is where Javert ended it all. It is a working river as well with twenty million tons of freight per year and that is most evident west of the city on the way to the sea. At Rouen, the Seine is deep and wide enough to handle ocean-going ships. The estuary is miles wide, a full ten at its mouth, filled with sandbars, islands in flux and  navigational challenges. At the Channel, Le Havre is the large port on the left bank and Honfleur is on the right. Honfleur is a beautiful city, untouched by the passage of time or war. Le Havre is an industrial city considered to be without a soul. Earlier this year, in April, water from the river saved Notre Dame Cathedral. I like river biographies. They tell a slightly different story and touch upon geography, history, sociology, culture and are almost always instructive.

Pure, Miller - B +

This is a truly excellent historical novel, winner of the 2011 Costas Prize, and set in Paris just before the Revolution. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, an ambitious engineer from Normandy, is summoned to Versailles by a Minister of the Crown and offered a job in Paris.  He  is tasked with demolishing the Church of les Innocents and excavating and disposing of the remains in its cemetery. Even though the centuries old burial place has not been used in years, its odor permeates the les Halles neighborhood. Progress  requires its demolition. Jean finds an organist, a sexton, his granddaughter and a blind priest on the premises. He enlists the help of all except the priest. He travels to a mine in Normandy where he used to work, recruits 30 men, and a foreman, and soon the digging begins. It's not as hard as mining coal, but it brings its own challenges. There is stench and the unique experience of digging up layers and layers of bones as far as 30  meters deep. In order to take care of the men, Jean authorizes extra pay, tobacco pipes and whores on Saturday night. On and on they dig, and the idea of excavating a cemetery wears on the bodies and souls of all involved. The foreman tries to kill the sexton's granddaughter. After his landlord's daughter tries to bash in Jean's skull, he falls in love with a local harlot and asks her to move in with him.  Months into the project, the city has prepared the quarry* to receive the bones. After they excavate the cemetery, they turn to demolishing the church, succeed, and at the one year mark, the job is done. The miners scatter. Jean is older, wiser and happier, when he returns to Versailles to hand in his report. The Minister's office, indeed the whole palace, is empty.                                                                                                                             The author has written across a wide range of topics and has received many awards and has been nominated for the Booker. He's very good. This book immerses one fully in its time and place.  I cannot recommend this enough.

*The quarry was filled with the remains excavated from many cemeteries and is now the Catacombs of Paris.

The Devil In Paradise, Haley - B +

                                  This is the third book in this series and I can't say enough about it. Historical novels, and in this instance penned by an accomplished historian, can and do convey lessons to be learned. Here, Putnam sails the Caribbean in 1817, saves a handful of Africans from being sold into slavery as part the naval prize laws by the U.S. Treasury, and returns to Boston. His new orders send him to the Pacific, specifically the Straits of Malacca and the Sandwich Islands. He is to go to Hawaii, pay his respects and eliminate any pirates he comes across in the Straits, while not offending the Dutch or British. After a Hawaii stop, Putnam sails to Singapore, takes on supplies and heads out. He also paints the ship so that it would appear to be a merchantman. Although his subterfuge does not fool the local pirates, he still sinks their vessel. They are off to Canton, back to Hawaii where they act against a rogue American pirate and then, head back home.

Last Bus To Woodstock, Dexter - B-

                                 This is the first book in the Inspector Morse series. It was published in 1975. There was a British production of the series that appeared on Masterpiece Theatre for fourteen years beginning in 1987. I picked this book up because of a fabulous modern prequel called Endeavour, featuring 22 shows spread out over the past six years. The Morse of Endeavour is brilliant, amazingly well-read and uses his skills and Oxford education to solve crimes . He's extremely prickly and not easy to like. This book, which features the murder of a woman who missed the eponymous bus, completely lacks the charm of the tv prequel. Morse is smart but pretty much a jerk. He drinks way too much and is flat-out inappropriate with women. He closes with a flourish of deductive analysis, but I've been spoiled by the tv prequel.

Blue Moon, Child - B

                                  Jack is in a bus somewhere east of the Mississippi when he notices an old man asleep and an unseemly fella eyeing the cash envelope in the sleeper's pocket. Jack helps the man and soon finds himself in the middle of a turf war between two foreign gangs running the crime syndicate in a small city. Matters are further complicated by the Ukrainian gang having some sinister relationship with a bunch of Russians. It's timely, and, as always, very good.

The Night Fire, Connelly - B +

                                  The Bosch series is alive and well. This is the second book where the author pairs Harry with Renee Ballard and I expect all of the future books will now feature the twosome. This one closes with the next joint case teed up, and considering Harry's age, he could even be written out at some point in the future. On the late show, Ballard catches a case involving the apparent accidental death of a homeless man. About the same time, Harry helps his half-brother, Mickey Haller, with a case and realizes that the LAPD let a murderer get off. Plus, Harry and Renee work a cold case that Harry's mentor had left on his desk in retirement, and which he had asked his widow to give to Harry after he died. The three cases eventually come together with a fantastic finish. Connelly is very much still on top of his game .

The Mosquito: A Human History Of Our Deadliest Predator, Winegard - Incomplete

  "A swarming and consuming army of 110 trillion enemy mosquitoes patrols every inch of the globe save Antarctica, the Seychelles, and a handful of French Polynesian micro-islands." Last year, 830,000 humans died from mosquito bites. "As the pinnacle purveyor of our extermination, the mosquito has consistently been at the front lines of history as the grim reaper....and the ultimate angel of historical change." Traveling around the world with us, the mosquito has affected the outcome of battles and wars, felled civilizations and helped create our present reality.

  The female mosquito needs blood to reproduce. The saliva it injects into a host is an anti-coagulant and is the method of transferring disease. Mosquitoes have been around for 190 million years and have haunted, primarily with malaria and yellow-fever, our brief 200,000 year existence as a species. Malaria, which still kills hundreds of thousands of Africans annually, is caused by a parasite transmitted by the mosquito. Yellow-fever is a mosquito transmitted viral infection, as is Nile fever, Zika, dengue and various encephalitides. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies meant an increase in human interaction with mosquitoes, in conjunction with the spread of diseases  (common cold, flu, chicken pox, smallpox, measles and tuberculosis to name a few) occasioned by mankind's domestication of animals. Ancient texts from India, China, Mesopotamia and Egypt speak of the consequences of malaria.

  "On the battlefields of empire building, malaria prejudiced the results of clashes and campaigns during both the rise and fall of Greece and Rome." The miasma of a malarial swamp decimated 70% of  a 5th century BCE Athenian army at Syracuse. The mosquitoes and diseases of the Indus River valley marked the easternmost foray of Alexander the Great's army. Three years later, malaria killed him in Babylon.  The 310 square miles of the Pontine Marshes of Campagna were a malarial fortress protecting the city of Rome from the Second Punic War onward. Hannibal's army handily outmaneuvered and defeated the Romans in three different battles. But, Hannibal could not directly attack the city because it was too well defended. And, he knew he could not linger near the marshes and so withdrew. He lost his strategic advantage and eventually, the war. As Rome grew with fountains, gardens and aqueducts,  its citizens and soldiers were inadvertently exposed to malaria. Those soldiers spread the disease throughout the world. Ongoing and epidemic malaria, along with occasional bouts of bubonic plague, wore down and eventually wore out the western empire and it fell in the fifth  century. 

  When he attributed the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire to the mosquito, I decided to stop reading the book. I re-read the review and noted that the reviewer thought he often overstated his case. There is no doubt that disease has had an overwhelming impact on the history of mankind and perhaps a discussion that included cholera, plague and dysentery would have made more sense. 

not sure about hannibal

The Parisian, Hammad - C

                                  This grand, sweeping novel is, in a very roundabout way, about Palestinian nationalism. Midhat Kamal, a young man from Nablus, arrives in Montpelier, France to study medicine and reside at the home of Frederic Molineau, an anthropology professor. He came to France after years of preparatory study in Constantinople.  He obviously identifies as an Arab Muslim, but his focus is on his studies and improving his French language skills. The First World War breaks out and his foray on the continent becomes uneasy, but never uncomfortable. He slowly falls for the professor's daughter, Jeanette,  but he never has to face his probable rejection by her father. Midhat learns that the professor is studying and writing about him. His language skills, as a 'primitive', are to be the foundation of a doctoral thesis. He parties through the remainder of the war in Paris and heads back to Nablus to apprentice in his father's business. The goal is for him to join his father in Cairo in a year. His dad learns of Midhat's fascination and love for Jeanette by reading a letter addressed to Midhat from Jeanette. His dad harshly demands a local marriage to an appropriate girl. Midhat obtains the hand of Fatima Hammad , the beautiful daughter of a successful local merchant. Just before the wedding, his father dies in Cairo. Midhat soon learns that the business is in the hands of his step-mother and he no longer has a job.                                                       The years marking his return to Nablus coincide with the establishment of the French Mandate over Syria and the British one over Palestine. In Palestine, there is ongoing violence between the local Arabs and the recently arrived Zionists. He and Fatima eventually have five children and raise them in the house he purchased with his cash inheritance from his father. His station in the world is considerably diminished as he has to start a new business. Fatima slowly realizes that she is not married to the man she had hoped for. Midhat carefully avoids the political issues all around him, yet somehow they effect him. His business is burned down in the middle of the 1936 general strike.  He then discovers under the floor in his father's house the letter from Jeannette that he has never seen. Realizing that he has spent his life doing his father's bidding, he goes into a tailspin and is hospitalized.  His family helps him escape from the hospital and he returns to Nablus, where he realizes that he has had a good life and likely will continue to.                                                                                                                                              The NYTimes review of this book was very enthusiastic. I concede that it is very well written. I've gained a few insights into life behind the veil in the Muslim world, and I've learned a bit about Palestine of the era, including the fact that the British were not benign occupiers. But, the most compelling source of information is in the historical addendum. I never realized how many Jews were in the Holy Land that early. There were seventy-five thousand European Zionist immigrants in Palestine before World War I.  Over three hundred thousand came between the wars. At the end of the day,  there just isn't enough meat on the bones of this story. And the life of Midhat Kamal cannot sustain a book this long. 

The Guardians, Grisham - B

                                  The latest by Grisham gets off to a really slow start, leading to the fear that the master has lost a step. It's not his greatest effort, but eventually picks up the pace and delivers. The Guardians is a four person not-for-profit that works on freeing innocent prisoners from jail. Their work is in the south and most of their clients are black. A character in the book refers the Florida - Texas area as the Death Belt. Quincy Miller was framed, completely set up by a small town crooked sheriff, and has spent twenty-two years in jail. As the case begins to come together for the Guardians, those who committed the original crime come back to squelch the innocence process. The good guys always prevail in a Grisham novel. Enjoy this years legal thriller. 

The Ruin, McTiernan - B

                                 This is the debut novel in a new police series set in Galway, on Ireland's west coast. It is off to a fine start exposing, in this instance, the archaic, medieval and dark sides of the Garda and the Church. On his first case out of training twenty years ago, Cormac Reilly finds a fifteen year old girl caring for her five year old brother, with their junkie unmarried mother dead in her bed. He catches a case involving the girl and her now deceased younger brother. The plot is intricate, the story is perfectly paced and the series is one with a future.

Vasily Grossman And The Soviet Century, Popoff - B

                                  Vasily Grossman was a magnificent war correspondent during The Great Patriotic War. In 1944, he wrote the 'Hell of Treblinka', one of the first reports of the Holocaust. It was so well done that it was used as evidence at Nuremberg. He was a Jew whose mother had been killed by the Nazis.  In the 1950's, he wrote his masterpiece, 'Life and Fate'. His great novel, set during the war, compared Nazism and Stalinism in their totalitarian brutality. He was told by the KGB it couldn't be published for 250 years. His final novel, on the Ukraine famine, was so well written that two famous historians, Robert Conquest and Anne Applebaum, relied on it in their histories of the era. 

                                He was born in 1905 in the predominantly Jewish city of Berdichev in Ukraine. His mother took him to Kiev in 1914 to provide better educational opportunities. War was followed by revolution and civil war. Millions died or fled the country. Throughout the chaos, he attended school, but was mostly self taught. He moved to Moscow to study chemistry in 1923. He turned to literature and politics, publishing an article in Pravda in 1928. He graduated from college in 1929 and was assigned as a mine inspector in the Donbass region of Ukraine. He contracted TB and was allowed to return to Moscow. With the help of Maxim Gorky, he published his first novel, 'Gluckhauf'.

                                Grossman worked in a pencil factory and wrote in the evenings, publishing short stories in literary magazines. He quit the factory and soon his writing career thrived. A second novel, 'Stepan Kolchugin', followed. His name showed up on certain NKVD lists, but he was not important enough to merit attention during the purges. He became a Red Star war correspondent in the summer of 1941. "His wartime notebooks contained much invaluable material that he would later use in his novels. However, everything he saw that summer - chaos at the front, the Red Army's rout, officers incompetence, and devastating losses - would later be concealed becoming Soviet taboos". He wrote extensively as he traveled all over the front and managed to obtain 2 months off in the spring of 1942. He wrote 'The People Immortal' about the 1941 invasion. It was an immediate success. He was assigned to Stalingrad in August, 1942. He was there through the end of the year, spent time in the city itself, and even a few days with one of the USSR's most famous snipers.  Some of his words are engraved in a memorial on the Volga.  His 'Stalingrad Sketches' was made into a film.  The following summer, he reported on the Battle of Kursk. As the Soviets advanced, he witnessed the consequences of the Holocaust in person and wrote 'Ukraine without Jews', but it was censored in Moscow.  His 'Hell of Treblinka' "transcended its epoch and a single genre, being at once a work of investigative journalism, a historical and philosophical essay, and a requiem to the victims." He marched into Berlin with the Red Army the following spring.  He was immensely popular, one of the best known writers of the war.

                                  He had never completely toed the line and fell out of favor after the war. As the anti-Semitism of Stalin grew and became virulent after the creation of Israel, his circumstances became perilous. All those who had worked on the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee were under suspicion and many were sent to the Gulag. His novel 'For The Right Cause', which is the first half of 'Life and Fate' came out to acclaim in 1952. Stalin's death in 1953 ended a totalitarian era of unprecedented murder and dishonesty. Stalin's crimes would not be fully known in the USSR until 1989. Millions were released from the Gulag.  It was at this time that Grossman began to fine tune his comparisons of Nazism and Stalinism. "In 'Life and Fate' freedom is the main theme. The war is fought against enslavement by both the Nazis and Bolsheviks, who destroyed freedom in their own land." In 1961, the state confiscated his novel and told him that it was too dangerous a threat to the state. He received a cancer diagnosis in 1962 and began to write 'Everything Flows', his novel on the Ukrainian famine. He died in 1964.

                                 A French edition of 'Life and Fate' appeared in 1983, an English version one a year later, and a Russian publication was released in 1988. The book became a bestseller in 2011 after a BBC Radio production starring Kenneth Branagh aired. A 2018 stage adaptation in London brought the novel publicity and, it has been referred to a the 20th century's'War and Peace'. As Russia returns to Stalinism, Grossman has faded into the background again.

                                I read 'Life and Fate' over thirty years ago and remember it as a grand. sweeping, wonderful book that displayed the war from the Soviet side better than anything I had come across. It was and is a great book, on par with those of Tolstoy, Pasternak, and Solzhenitsyn.

Cari Mora, Harris - B +

                                  The author is of course the creator of such memorable monsters as Francis Dolarhyde (the Tooth Fairy), Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter. Here the eponymous Cari is a young woman in her twenties who is in Miami illegally after growing up as a child soldier in the FARC in Columbia. As a consequence, she is very, very careful in addition to being smart, adept with weapons, and wary of men. Being beautiful carries its risks in her world. Then there's Hans-Peter, maniacal murderer of Paraguayan-German heritage, reciter of obscure songs and owner of a liquid cremation machine and obsidian scalpels. He sells body parts and 'customizes' women for his customers. At the center of a vast layer of thieves and killers is a refrigerator size box under the late Pablo Escobar's Miami house. The box is filled with about $25m of gold and protected by an explosives system. This is another very enjoyable read.

The Satapur Moonstone, Massey - B

                                  As is often the case, the second book in a series experiences a drop off from the debut novel. The British government requests that Purveen travel to the northwest of the country to resolve a conflict amongst the family of a young maharajah about his future education. Of course, there's a lot more going on than education planning. This book reminds us that the Raj was never a completely British operation. Throughout the vast sub-continent, the British presence was often slight. In the northwest alone, in the 1920's, there were dozens of principalities with their own rulers who were assisted, not governed, by a local Imperial agency.

The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America, Okrent - B

                                  This is the history of America's virulent renunciation of a meaningful part of its heritage a century ago. A combustive mixture of racism, fear and pseudo-science led to the closing of our borders for over forty years. In 19th century England, the scientific community, fixated on Darwin's theories,  developed the field of eugenics. The term derived from the Greek  meaning 'good stock'.  Proponents of the eugenics movement believed that society could be improved by selectively breeding couples with positive genetic traits; later negative eugenicists tried to eliminate by sterilization those with unpleasant or unhealthy tendencies. Sir Francis Galton observed at a London symposium that society paid more attention to the selection of plants and animals than to people. In the US, Charles Davenport founded a lab in Cold Spring Harbor, NY to focus on the science of cross-breeding, experimental biology, evolution and eventually, eugenics. Simultaneously, one of Boston's Brahmins, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge a believer of his own admirable personal heritage, and the descendant of generations of Harvard educated men, took up the cause of limiting immigration to the US. American xenophobia was not new in America. In the previous century, Ben Franklin had deplored all the German speakers pouring into the colonies. The Irish and Germans were abhorred when they arrived prior to the Civil War. As the 19th century closed, it was the polyglot masses from Italy, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire that frightened the elitists. They looked vastly different from their northern European predecessors, did not speak English, were illiterate and worshipped differently. An 1891 law turned all immigration policy over to the federal government and precluded the admission of "idiots, insane persons and loathsome diseased peoples." Private lobbying organizations, such as Boston's Immigration Restriction League, sprang up.  The restrictionists supported Lodge's Literacy Test bill. The test would require a person to be able to read and write in their native language and per Lodge "would bear most heavily upon the Italians, Poles, Russians and Asiatics."  In Cold Springs Harbor, Davenport was able to take a major step adding the science of human evolution to his studies. Over time, all of the information compiled and the theories proposed by his Eugenics Records Office have been proven to be worthless. But, in the early 20th century, its anti-immigrant screed carried weight.                                                                                                                  The last decade of the 19th century saw 3.7 million Europeans arrive in America.  The following decade the number jumped to  6.7 million.  A restrictive immigration bill with the literacy test passed in 1912, but was vetoed by Taft in the last month of his presidency.  Two years later, Wilson vetoed a similar bill. The vitriol and hatred for dagos, kikes and bohunks could not outweigh generations of an open door policy and the need for inexpensive labor.  It finally passed in 1917 when America was in the thrall of anxiety about the war. Wilson spoke of immigrants "who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life" and called for them to be "crushed out." He actually vetoed the bill, but it finally passed over his veto.  The war virtually stopped immigration in its tracks. It started to pick up  again when 430,000 came in 1920. The Bolshevik Revolution shook the post-war world and the concept of completely eliminating immigration came to the fore in the US.  A State Dept. study referred to those looking to enter as undesirable; from Sicily - "small in stature and of a low order of intelligence", Jews from various locales - "filthy, un-American and dangerous in their habits, from Warsaw - "filthy, ignorant and verminous", and from Danzig - "decidedly inferior." The NYT berated the Senate for not acting on the "swarms of aliens." The final immigration restriction bill passed in 1924.  It lowered the number of immigrants allowed per year to 155,000 and  established a nation-by-nation quota of 2% based on the the US population as per the 1890 census. Victory did not end the anti-immigrant campaign. Millions and millions of inferior peoples were now in America and needed to be controlled. They were inclined to be ignorant, criminals, flat-footed and insane. The twenties saw the eugenics movement pursue the negative policy of forced sterilization. The Supreme Court approved a Virginia law, with Holmes stating "three generations of imbeciles is enough." Soon however, the sciences began to reject the movement.  It was taken up by the Nazis in Germany and faded from the American mainstream. The ERO finally closed in 1940. 

                                                                                  Hundreds of thousands of the undesirable Greeks, Jews, Italians, Serbs, Russians and Poles who otherwise could have come to America died in WW2. The end of the war saw a slight crack in the wall. Our Chinese alliance led to the repeal of the 1882 Exclusion Act. Refugees from the war were admitted, and later those fleeing communism were allowed to enter. In 1965, LBJ, at Liberty Island, signed the Immigration and Naturalization Act scrapping the old quotas. One of the co-authors was Emmanuel Celler of Brooklyn, grandson of German Jewish immigrants, who had vigorously fought the 1924 act as a new Congressman.                                                                                                                                                                  This is a difficult book to read. The racism and hatred of the many of the old-line elites drips from every page. It is of course a reminder that tribalism, extreme partisanship, racism and hatred have always been part of US history.

Cold Storage, Koepp - B +

                                   When an NYT reviewer calls a novel "pure, unadulterated entertainment" and compares it to a Michael Crichton novel, the book is immediately downloaded and read within a day. Good as Crichton? Close, but no cigar, but a ton of fun. The parasitic fungi was in a containment vial when Spacelab fell to earth in 1979. It took seven years for it to escape in a more lethal form, but was contained again. That is, until 2019. Enjoy!!

Lethal Agent, Mills - B +

                                 This is probably the best Mitch Rapp book by the new author. No longer working for the Agency, but rather as a contractor with a direct line to the Director, Mitch and his team are in Yemen trying to track down the ISIS commander. They do not get him and have to return home in order to stop ISIS's threat to use a bio-weapon in the states. Most of the action takes place in Mexico, where the team faces the enemy. As always, a delightful romp.

The Widows Of Malabar Hill, Massey - B +

                                  This is an intriguing and enjoyable novel set in Bombay in 1921. The principal character is Purveen Mistry, the first woman solicitor in India. It is based on the memoirs of an Indian  woman who returned home after studying law in England in the late 19th century. The mystery is about the three surviving Muslim wives of a successful businessman, the exceedingly complex estate inheritance world under Muslim law and the equally complex domestic laws of the Parsis community in India. It passes all of my historical novel tests: it is well-written, explores interesting times and places and puts the reader in the middle of it all.

The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction Of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924, Morris and Ze'Eve - B +

                                      This is a history of the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, and also of the mistreatment of all Christians under three different Turkish governments over three decades. "The annihilation of the Christian communities was not the product of a single cause. At play were fears of foreign machinations and interference, Turkish nationalism, ethnic rivalries economic envy, and a desire to maintain political and social dominance." Islam played a pivotal role throughout. "It was the glue that bound together perpetrating Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Chechens, and Arabs...".                  

                                      In the late 19th century, ethnic and religious tensions in the Ottoman Empire increased under the pressures put upon the state by a Russian invasion that would have captured Constantinople were it not for British, French and German intervention. Throughout the empire, there were nationalist movements: Greek, Arab and Armenian. For decades, overcrowding in the east and systemic Muslim prejudices had made life more and more difficult for the Christian minorities. In 1863, the government approved a very limited autonomy for the Armenians when it approved an Armenian-drafted constitution. Nonetheless, Muslims continued to abuse the Armenians while Constantinople was indifferent. The Sultan looked back on a long history of 19th century rebellions  in Greece, Serbia, Lebanon, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Crete and Bulgaria. Many of the rebels were Christian, and after the Armenians sought out the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, they were deemed the enemy.

                                            Armenian nationalism was met by Sultan Abdulhamid II with increased armed Kurdish suppression. Between 1894-96, the state unleashed a series of pogroms that led to over 100,000 deaths from starvation, exposure and outright massacre. Tribalism, exacerbated by religious fanaticism, ran amok. The violence was unremitting, constant, state-sponsored and widespread from the Caspian Sea west to Constantinople. The Turks continually pleaded that they were suppressing a rebellion, but history's consensus is that this was a racial and religious slaughter, motivated by the state's fear of Christians causing a weakening of Muslim control of the state. Rape, abduction and forced conversions were a central theme of the empire's actions. Thousands fled to Russia, Europe and America. The central government ordered a halt to the violence in late 1896.      

                                            In 1908, The Committee of Union and Progress, the CUP, or the Young Turks, took over the empire. They believed the Turkish race was the foundation of the Ottoman Empire. The need for an all-Muslim empire came to the fore as the empire lost more and more Balkan territory in the years before WWI. After allying with the Central Powers, the central government planned and implemented the Armenian genocide. The aim was to de-Christianize the empire and to use Anatolia's Muslims to carry out the massacre. In February, 1915, the Ottomans were decimated in battle by the Russians in eastern Anatolia. Blame for the defeat was placed on disloyal Armenians.  "The CUP had the motivation and capacity to commit pre-meditated ethnic cleansing - that political will, not the exigencies of the Great War, underlay mass murders". Immediately after the army's defeat, Armenian soldiers were disarmed and moved into labor battalions. Soon, the slaughter began. In the summer of 1915, the government ordered the removal of all Armenians from the war zone in eastern Anatolia. Deportation meant the murder of the Armenians while on the road west. Very few ever made it to Syria; the men were murdered outright, many young woman were taken for sexual slavery and everyone else, old and young, were either shot, starved or thrown into rivers or the sea. The following year, the genocide reached into urban and western Anatolia as viciously and as thoroughly as in the east. The generally accepted estimate of deaths over the two years is 1.2 million.

                                            At the end of the war, the leaders of the CUP, fearing a war crimes prosecution, fled to Germany. The empire was lightly occupied by Allied troops, including Greeks, who were seeking to grab parts of Anatolia. In what the Turks call their 'War of Independence', they fought the Greeks in the west and the Russians in the east. A xenophobic hatred of the Allies and Christians emerged in the body politic. The nationalist movement soon rallied around Mustafa Kemal, known to history as Attaturk. Kemal's vision of Turkey was of an exclusively Muslim, Turkic state. He opposed the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which dismantled the empire and gave a variety of occupiers pieces of Anatolia and Thrace. He made peace in the east with Russia, ceded some land and obtained arms to fight the westerners. The Nationalists expelled the Greek army from Anatolia in 1922, and soon completely controlled their coastline on the Aegean. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne granted the Republic of Turkey recognition of its borders and ended any Allied interference in the country.

                                            From the end of the world war until Lausanne, there was a resumption of the Armenian genocide. Those Armenians who had survived the death marches to the south headed into Cilicia on the southwestern coast.  The Allies encouraged Armenians to return home and many congregated in the cities of Cilicia, as it was under French protection. There was even an Armenian Legion, albeit briefly, that was part of the French occupation. The Turks' war for independence overturned the established order. They attacked Maras, pushed the French out and massacred more Armenians. The French were eventually defeated and withdrew. "The Franco-Turkish agreement ushered in the final stage of the Armenian departure from Anatolia." As the surviving Armenians left, Kemal announced that Asia Minor must be freed of all Christians thus leading to hundreds-of-thousands more people of different ethnic groups violently forced out of their homes.

                                          "The deportation and murder of the Greeks during 1919-23 was a direct continuation of the effort to expel them that began in late 1913-1914." The 1919 Greek occupation of Smyrna (now Izmir) was a major threat to Turkish sovereignty and the beginning of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. The Greeks invaded at the encouragement  of the Allies. They advanced into Anatolia and almost reached Ankara. The final Turk counter-attack was directed by Kemal to reach the Mediterranean and soon the Turks controlled the entire Aegean coastline. A fire in the Greek and Armenian sections of Smyrna and an ensuing  massacre killed an estimated 75,000.  Eventually, the Greeks and Turks agreed on a massive population exchange leading to approximately 1.5m Greeks and 500,000 Muslims leaving  their homelands. The exchange was a violent, lengthy continuation of the tragic war that preceded it. Historians estimate a million Greek deaths.

                                            When it was all over in 1924, the Christian population of Asia Minor was 2%. It had been 20% at the turn of the century a generation earlier.  "Turkish governments and Turkish people have never owned up to what happened or to their guilt. They continue to play the game of denial and to blame the victims."

                                               This book is both majestic in its scope and detail and very trying to read. It is dense and so thorough that it feels as if the authors identified every village in every province in the empire. The endless depictions of murderous violence in the name of ethnic and religious cleansing is horrifying. Man's inhumanity to man whether it be a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago or last week still shocks me.

                                    "Imagine there's no countries                                                                            It's not hard to do                                                                                                  Nothing to kill or die for                                                                                     And no religions, too"

                                                         John Lennon

          

                                     

                                                       

Imagine

The Paris Diversion, Pavone B+

                           In this fabulous novel, we catch up with Kate and Dexter Moore seven years after 'The Expats'. Kate has taken the $25M that Dexter stole from some very bad people and used the money to fund her return to the world of the CIA, but she's not working for Langley and indeed, isn't really sure who she has been working for. What she has been doing is protecting herself, her two sons and Dexter from Susan and Bill exacting revenge for seven years ago. When Paris is locked down because of a terrorist fright and the CEO of a company Dexter is shorting goes missing, Kate knows Susan is framing Dexter. She springs into action and off we go. Anyone who has visited Paris will thoroughly enjoy the tour that is part of the story.

Washington Black, Edugyan - B

                                   Once again, a brilliant work of art has passed me by without my realizing it. A finalist for the Man Booker and a NYT Top 10, this is a pleasant and delightful read about the growth and evolution of Wash Black. We meet him as a teenage slave in Barbados and follow him through escape from the plantation, his complicated relationship with the owner's brother, running for his freedom from Virginia to the Arctic, and landing in London after the abolition of slavery in the empire. When away from the fears of living on a brutal plantation, the young man grows and has the opportunity for a rewarding life. It is certainly well-written and informative.

The Bone Fire, Sykes - B +

                           I must admit that reading and enjoying a series set in the late 14th century and featuring the plague's impact on Kent in England is a bit odd. A few decades ago, I enjoyed the Cadfael mysteries in print and on Masterpiece Theater. This current series is enjoyable, fun and better than the 'pleasant diversion' I previously used to characterize it. In this, the 4th in the series, Lord Oswald de Lacy has packed up his wife, son, mother and a valet and moved to an island off the Kent coast. They are there for the winter in the expectation that the secluded castle of Godfrey of Eden will save them from the plague. Soon, the bodies are dropping like flies over a contested paternity issue and, most importantly, Sir Godfrey's translation of the Bible into English. It is important to remember translating the Bible into the vernacular was an earth-shaking event that in reality did not actually happen for another century. A pleasant diversion with a solid mystery and an enlightening dose of history.

The Girl Who Lived Twice, Lagercrantz, B

                            This is the 6th book in the Lisbeth Salander series. Perhaps nothing could ever be as good as the first, but this is certainly fun. My one disappointment is that it is more about Blomquist than Salander. The story lines are interesting, involving a summiting of Everest, Russian intrigue and Sweden's Defence Ministry.   But Blomquist's pursuit of a story for Millenium is the central theme. Of course, Lisbeth does work her magic at the end and, just perhaps, has put an end to her concerns about her family's history with the Russian secret services.

City of Masks, Sykes - B

                           We find Oswald de Lacy, Lord of Summerhill, in Venice. Accompanied by his mother, he is fleeing an England where his wife died in childbirth and where he has left behind his infant son. Their pilgrimage to the Holy Land has been delayed by war between Venice and Hungary. When his host's grandson is murdered, he is asked to investigate. He finds more than a killer as he unearths a spying ring working on behalf of the Hungarians. He succeeds in his investigation, begins to believe in the future again, resolves to return to his estate and his son, and marries a beautiful Venetian.

The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction Of The Classical World, Nixey - B +

                                   That all superstition of pagans and heathens should be            annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims.                                                                                                                       - St. Augustine  AD 532

                                  "From almost the very first years a Christian emperor had ruled in Rome in AD 312 liberties had begun to be eroded." An onslaught against paganism began. Christianity triumphed. It is important to remember that the Roman definition of triumph was annihilation. In the fourth and fifth centuries the church destroyed. It destroyed art, statues, temples and perhaps, as many as 700,000 books. "This is a book about the Christian destruction of the classical world." It is a chronicle of immense devastation. Christianity offered guidelines for life and eternal bliss after death. And after Constantine, the church was offered preferment in the form of  tax exemptions and substantial pay for its bishops. "The struggle to convert the empire was nothing less than a battle between good and evil, between the forces of darkness and those of light. It was a battle between God and Satan himself." The Christians decided that the old religions were demonic and that the gods of the empire, Jupiter, Aphrodite, Bacchus and Isis were the paramount demons.  All the old religions were to be despised and eliminated. The toleration promised in the Edict of Milan was not to be. Before Christianity became official, it was found to be an irritant throughout the east. The reduction in sacrifices to the old gods affected the economics of animal husbandry. Many Romans found the new cult to be reclusive and their teachings offensive. When Christians refused to sacrifice and honor the emperor, they were frequently executed. However, the myth of mass Christian martyrdom was created a millennia later by the medieval church. The Romans were inclusive, whereas the Christians vigorously persecuted the "polluters of idolatry" almost immediately after taking over. Perhaps the most impressive building in the ancient world was not the Coliseum nor the Parthenon in Athens, but the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria. It housed the remnants of the great library, innumerable statues and towered over the city in a splendor of white marble. The opulence of the ancient temple offended the bishop of Alexandria. His name was Theophilus and in AD 392 he led a crowd that destroyed the temple. Constantine bestowed wealth upon his new church and funded his generosity by plundering the ancient temples of the empire. Plunder also helped him to build his new capital on the Bosporous. The spread of Christianity "was neither triumphant, nor joyful. It is a story of forced conversion and government prosecution. It is a story in which great works of art are destroyed, buildings are defaced and liberties are removed. It is a story in which those who refused to convert were outlawed and, as the prosecution deepened, were hounded, and even executed by zealous authorities." When Constantine made Rome a Christian state, approximately 10% of the empire was Christian. By the end of the century, the percentage may have been eighty. Tens of millions had been forcibly converted. In AD 408, whatever old temples were still around were ordered destroyed. The demonization of the Greco-Roman gods and literature stemmed from the often abominable conduct of those gods in comparison to Jesus as well as the often almost pornographic language of Ovid, Martial, Catullus and others. The church's repression of human sexuality was an early theme. John Chrysostom said "let here be no fornication." By the fifth century, the church had concluded that if what one rendered unto Caesar was in conflict with what one rendered unto God, then God prevailed. Christians took the law into their own hands when it pleased them. Under Justinian in AD 529 it became mandatory for everyone in the empire to convert, accept baptism or be relieved of all they owned.  "Moreover, we forbid the teaching of any doctrine by those who labor under the insanity of paganism to corrupt the souls of the disciples."  This law caused the Academy in Athens to close after a thousand years.   Its last teachers left for Persia.  The monasteries proceeded to scrape away or write over 90% of classical literature. The works of Archimedes, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and Pliny, heretics all, were destroyed. "The pages of history go silent. The triumph of Christianity was complete." The Dark Age descended on Europe.                                                                                                      The Roman Symmachus said, "We see the same stars, the sky is shared by us all, the same world surrounds us. What does it matter what wisdom a person uses to seek the truth?" This is a powerful and magnificent book.                                           

In My Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies, Blum - B +

                                  Late in WWII, the FBI assigned Bob Lamphere to the it's Soviet Espionage division. Meredith Gardner, fluent in German, spent the war code-breaking, utilizing his extraordinary linguistic and mathematical skills. These two men would lead the chase of the Soviet spy ring that unearthed the secrets of the  US atomic bomb. As the war wound down, the FBI field office in N realized that they were surrounded by Soviet activity. A Soviet cypher clerk in Toronto defected and a minor American agent told all she knew to the FBI. The Soviets had been aware of, and casually paid attention to, western atomic efforts since the war had. As the war turned in their favor, they started their own program, and the new head of Laboratory 2 asked the KGB to steal whatever it could.  Meredith Gardner was assigned to the team working on the Russian language cyphers after the war's end. By 1947, Lamphere was a supervisor in the Espionage section in Washington and asked if he could meet with someone in Signals Intelligence. His early meetings with Gardener were fruitless.  The code-breaker was reluctant to talk, but eventually warmed up when Lamphere was able to drop on his desk a bundle of illegally obtained memos from a Soviet office. Using the plain text memos, Gardener was able to crack the Soviet code. He came across some astounding correspondence between NY and Moscow. He showed Lamphere conclusive evidence that the Soviets had penetrated the Manhattan Project as early as 1944. Their superiors assigned the two men to work together to exploit the deciphered cable traffic. Meanwhile, the two Soviet agents running Operation Enormoz in NY were so successful- sending thousands of pages of documents to Moscow- that Laboratory 2 was officially building the Soviet bomb based on the KGB stolen information. Another cable that Gardener was able to read mentioned an agent codenamed- 'Liberal' and provided enough information that Lamphere might be able to track him down. The hunt for Julius Rosenberg was on.              Other names, all with a CCNY connection, were popping up. The FBI was on the trail of Max Elitcher, Joel Barr and Morton Sobell. They even learned that Liberal's wife's name was Ethel.  In late August, 1949, the US learned the stunning news that the USSR had an atomic bomb. Lamphere went to the AEC, custodian of all Manhattan Project files, to follow up on something Gardener had sorted out.  A KGB cable from 1944 had mentioned a specific document obtained from Oak Ridge. Lamphere read the document, saw that its author was K. Fuchs and further concluded that it had to have been shared by one of the fifteen high level UK scientists working on the project.  Some more digging confirmed that Klaus Fuchs, A German who had moved to Britain, was their man. The FBI alerted MI5 and soon, Fuchs confessed.  The British prosecuted him under The Official Secrets Act and he was spared execution. Indeed, he received only 14 years in prison. While Lamphere interviewed Fuchs, back in Philadelphia the FBI cornered Harry Gold, Fuchs' courier, and both acknowledged their relationship. The FBI squeezed Gold hard and he gave up a cornucopia of information. Both Lamphere and Gardener were still focused on Liberal and his wife, Ethel, but could not find a lead to him. They knew Gold had picked up material from Liberal in Albuquerque but no more.  The FBI uncovered and arrested David Greenglass in NY. Gold had given him up as someone from Los Alamos who had provided him with information.  Greenglass confessed and implicated his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. Rosenberg spent the next day at the FBI office but acknowledged nothing. He did, though, mention that his wife's name was Ethel. With further information from Greenglass, both Julius and Ethel were soon in custody.     Justice was swift in the early 50's. The Rosenbergs would not confess and were convicted of espionage. At Lamphere's request, Hoover wrote the judge in the case and requested clemency for Ethel.  She was convicted, on her brother, David Greenglass' testimony,* of typing notes for Julius. In NY District Court, Judge Kaufmann laid the Korean War and its tens of thousands of deaths at their door because they had provided the Soviets with atomic secrets, and sentenced the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Both Lamphere and Gardener knew from earlier Soviet cables that Ethel was not involved in espionage work. But, the fact that the Army had cracked the Soviet codes years ago was so confidential that even the President did not know it. It took twelve minutes to execute  both Rosenberg's in Sing Sing's electric chair on June 19, 1953. Both Lamphere and Gardener were haunted by Ethel's execution. Lamphere left the FBI and Gardener moved to England. In the late 90's, they met for dinner, but could not quite toast their accomplishments. The same year, Sasha, the Rosenberg's Soviet handler, sprinkled Russian earth on their graves on Long Island.

*Later in  life, Greenglass told the NYTimes that upon further consideration, it may have been his wife and not his sister, who did the typing.                                                                                  

                                                 

  

Hitler In Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood And America, Ross - C

   Hitler and Goebbels knew that film was a powerful force and hoped to sway opinion about the Third Reich by exporting Nazi films to the US and assuring that Hollywood did not disparage Germany.  This is the story of those who opposed them.                        Anti-Semitism was alive and well in the America of 1933. Germany hoped to manipulate the many unhappy veterans in the US, as well as the millions of unemployed. In LA, a former German military officer founded the Friends of New Germany. Keenly aware of their activities, intent and tactics was Leon Lewis, noted Jewish activist, lawyer and former national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Lewis was ably assisted by Joseph Roos. They recruited German-American veterans to infiltrate the FNG. Lewis' spies were able to spread some dissension and create turmoil at FNG, but were soon exposed. The FNG was prospering because they were able to take over the German-American Alliance, a civic service organization that happened to have $30,000 in the bank. Aware  that he needed help exposing the Nazi's, Lewis turned to the wealthiest and most powerful jews in LA - the studio heads. The studio heads were already under pressure from the German Consul in LA. The threat of exclusion from the substantial German domestic market was a serious financial matter in the middle of the Depression, and meant that for most of the decade, Hollywood did not make films critical of the Reich.  Georg Gyssling, the Consul and most popular German in LA, was relentless. He had contacts everywhere, knew what was in pre-production and vigorously stopped or modified anything that might unmask the Nazis. Finally in April, 1939, Warner Bros. released 'Confessions of a Nazi Spy'. The Warners, sons of a Polish cobbler, had wanted to make an anti-Nazi film and finally had the opportunity. The movie was based on a spy ring in NYC and used the information that came out at trial as the basis for the script. As it was a true story and not a polemical attack, it passed all of the industry's code hurdles. Gyssling tried, but could not stop it. The tide was turning. One of Lewis' men, Neil Ness, who had infiltrated FNG and Bund operations in LA, mesmerized an HUAC hearing with specific plans for sabotage up and down the coast. Indeed, Lewis and his operatives became the go-to source for information about potential saboteurs and fifth columnists and were relied on by the FBI, US Naval Intelligence and the security arms of the military contractors in California.                                                  In June, 1941, the US expelled Germany's diplomats. The FBI ratcheted up its efforts against German espionage and sabotage. The American Firsters and certain bigots in the US Senate blamed the Jews, and in particular Hollywood, for the drift toward war. Most opposition to war folded on December 7th. The FBI immediately arrested dozens of Nazis in the LA area and did so relying on information provided by Lewis and Roos. They remained vigilant throughout the war and triumphed when so many of LA's Nazis were jailed, and deported after the war.                                                                      "There are many ways to fight an enemy, not all of which require guns. The actions taken by Leon Lewis and Joseph Roos require us to change the way we think about American Jewish resistance in the 1930s. From August 1933 until the end of WWII, with few resources at their disposal, the two men and their courageous undercover operatives continually defeated a variety of enemies - Nazis, fascists and fifth columnists- bent on violence and murder. Without ever firing a weapon, they managed to keep Los Angeles and its citizens safe."                               The title of the book is certainly eye-catching, but I submit it's not as compelling as advertised.  Although there was virulent anti-Semitism and nascent fascists everywhere, mostly they met, talked, plotted, planned, purchased weapons, acquired facilities, but seldom acted. Lewis' people made endless efforts to infiltrate and expose, but frequently failed.  And, I might point out that Gyssling accomplished his mission for six years, before 'Confession'. Nonetheless, kudos to the author for unearthing Lewis' files and to Leon Lewis, who was clearly an American hero. 

Ice At The End Of The World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past And Our Perilous Future, Gertner - C

                              Greenland is the world's largest island - about three times the size of Texas. The ice sheet is 1500 miles long and almost 700 miles wide. It holds 3 quadrillion tons of ice.  This book studies its research and exploration over the last 150 years and  science's expectations for the future.                                                           Fritzhof Nansen, noted Norwegian explorer, scientist and later, diplomat, led the first team to cross the island in 1888. To access the ice sheet, they had to climb from the coast and cross a crevasse zone. The sheet peaked at about 8,000 feet above sea level. The team's success was heralded around the world and inspired Robert Peary to plan for a longer northern crossing. In 1892, Peary's party traveled from the west coast to the east and returned to their starting point on the northwest coast. He travelled a total of 1200 miles, wheres Nansen had only gone 350. He adopted as many Inuit practices as possible. He used reindeer sleeping bags and clothes and accomplished his mission with 20 sled dogs purchased from the Inuit. Twenty-years later, Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen replicated Peary's trip as part of a long career of living amongst, studying and trading with the Inuit. In the 1930's a seismic test conducted with TNT estimated the ice to be 8,000 feet deep and predicted that if it melted, the world's oceans would rise 25 feet.  Moderns scientists with sophisticated equipment calculate that the estimate is off by a mere 8 inches.                                                                      After WWII, Paul-Emile Victor led a French team to the middle of the ice shelf to continue earlier explorations. Victor observed that the ice "was a recording machine of times and climate past." The French established a major camp and drilled the first deep ice core while eight men wintered the 1949-50 season there. They also learned from further seismic testing that the center of the island was actually below sea level. As the French continued their work, the US Air Force began to expand the WWII era base at Thule on the northwest coast, which was not far from Peary's original camp. "The advent of the Cold War and modern glaciology happened in tandem and happened at Thule." It was to be America's front line against the Soviets. To build bases, install radar installations and conduct operations on the island, it was necessary to understand how the ice moved and changed year to year.  In the 1950's, Air Force scientists concluded that the ice was in equilibrium. The summer melt was equal to the winter snowfall.                                                                                                                   Ascertaining past weather through the study of tree rings, ocean cores and ice cores came to the fore in the post-war era. In 1957, the US was able to drill 1350 feet. Nine years later, they drilled to 4450 feet and hit bedrock. Utilizing a mass spectrometer, US scientists were now able to determine the temperature on the day the snow fell, even if it was tens of thousands of years ago. As the strategic weapons of the Cold War shifted from bombers to missiles, the US scaled back at Thule, the money dried up and scientists had to find other funding. The Danes took the lead in Greenland and drilled to 6300 feet in the eighties. Simultaneously, deep drilling was pursued in Siberia and Antarctica. A decade later because of concerns about a warming planet, US and European teams drilled from the center of the ice pack 10,000 feet to the bedrock.                                                                                                                               The assumption that the ice sheet was in balance became less certain in the late 20th century. An analysis was conducted by the US using planes crisscrossing the island with a laser altimeter as a measuring device. The ice sheets around the world were clearly melting and adding volume to the world's oceans. Scientists did not know how to measure or estimate the pace of the melting, as both air and water temperature effect the melting. Greenland appears to be losing about 286 billion tons of ice per year. Greenland's ice melt may be slowed by the fact that the island is a bowl hemmed in all around by mountains. Greenland's glaciers flow through those mountain passes. It is expected that West Antarctica will melt first because a portion of the ice sheet is already over the ocean. Clearly, no one knows the future or if it will be decades, or hundreds or thousands of years before the ice melts, or if it can be slowed down. But, science is confident of at least a one meter rise in this century and that that will lead to the flooding of the world's coastal cities.

                             

And The There Were None, Christie - B

                            I have recently learned that Agatha Christie's 1939 novel is the best-selling murder mystery of all time. Ten people receive letters inviting them to Soldier Island, off the Devon coast. After dinner on the first night, a voice booms out from a victrola reciting the crime of murder that each person has committed at some point in the past. Most of the murders were passive in nature. None of the ten knew each other or had met previously. No one had met their unseen hosts. As each spoke about the death they were accused of causing, all expressed innocence, yet some clearly knew they were guilty of some act that led to another's death. As they discussed matters, one guest downed a glass of brandy laced with cyanide and dropped dead. Overnight, there was a second death. In the morning, the daily boat from the shore didn't show and of the ten little soldier pieces in the dining room, now there were only eight.                                                                                                                               The same morning, the men thoroughly investigated the island and the house and found no one other than the eight guests. The host/killer could not be found. At lunchtime, the old  general, who acknowledged responsibility for a death  of an underling whom he held in contempt and who said he welcomed the end, was found dead staring at the sea. He had been hit from behind. The seven concluded that there was no outsider and that it had all been orchestrated by one of them. Accusations and alibis flew.  The next morning, the cook was found with his head bashed in and  there were but 6 figurines left.   By noon, the party had dropped to 5. When the Judge was shot that evening, they confirmed that the rhyme about the ten soldiers paralleled  the murders.  Within a day, it was one man and one woman, Lombard and Vera.  She picked the gun out of his pocket and shot him before committing suicide. There were none.                                                                                              Scotland Yard was baffled. Years later, a note was found in a bottle. Justice Wargrave confessed to it all. He had collected the stories of misadventure by nine people. He manipulated the whole thing and faked his death on the island. After everyone was gone, he killed himself in such a way that appeared consistent with the diaries kept by a few of the victims.                                                                                       

Manual For Survival: A Chernobyl Guide For The Future, Brown - B

                            In August of 1986, a mere four months after the accident, the USSR published a 'Manual For Survival' filled with lies and inconsistencies. The manual said that only 54 people had died. The objective of this book is to better understand "the medical and environmental effects of the disaster." The author is a noted MIT historian who points out that research into Chernobyl was not only difficult because of Soviet/Russian intransigence, but because all of the major nuclear powers were equally reticent to disclose their own mishaps  throughout the Cold War. "As time passed, doubt and skepticism became a major by-product of the accident. The blown reactor contaminated not only the soil and air but also the political atmosphere and public faith in science."

                              Hospital 6 in Moscow provided the best possible care in the world because the Soviets had over decades built a skilled staff specializing in radiation poisoning. They attended to the first responders starting the night of the accident. Additionally, thousands of people from Ukraine and Belarus made their way to Moscow to be treated at other institutions in the city. It had taken two weeks to evacuate the 30 km. Zone of Alienation and thousands had been poisoned.  The Politburo investigated and concluded 'operator error' was behind it all. "The Ukrainian Communist party....were  the first authorities to realize how dangerous the disaster was and to take action." Ukrainian officials organized a massive medical examination of  500,000 residents in 1986 and the years immediately following. They distributed iodine pills, researched radiation in the food chain and sent their children south into the Crimea for early summer camp. Moscow preferred to cover up the ongoing threats. Politically motivated Soviet apparatchiks ordered people be sent back into the Zone; Belarus complied, Ukraine ignored the order. The Soviet state ordered the liquidation of animals in the Zone, but had them dismembered for distribution. So, the wool from thousands of sheep were sent to a wool plant outside of Kiev and poisoned hundreds of workers, killing many. One Ukrainian public health doctor was able to stop the tanning of hides that would have polluted the  drinking water in his hometown. The Soviet system was unwilling and unable to dispose of or bury contaminated food. They spread it out as far as possible in order to dilute the poison. There was even a procedure for blending contaminated sausage with healthier sources of meat. At every level and by every measure, the radiation and the ruin it created spread far beyond the Zone.

                                 In  1988, the Soviet Minister of Health opened a conference with the statement "Definitely, today we can be certain that there are no effects of the Chernobyl accident on human health." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supported the Soviets. Of course people were sick and finally in 1990, it was acknowledged that a million Ukrainians had been affected. The Ukrainians made an attempt to grapple with their tragedy. In Belarus, recognizing the crisis took longer. One of Belarus' leading scientists reported alarming amounts of radioactivity and was indicted and demoted for his efforts.  Soon though, the Belarusians were pushing back against the Soviet orthodoxy. Perestroika unleashed the truth.  

                                   A joint western effort led by the IAEA in 1990  began to take an objective look at what had happened, but found that the information on a million Soviet citizens was still controlled by the KGB and inaccessible.  Most assessments of Chernobyl were hamstrung by the US-Japanese studies of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Receiving a high dose of radiation because of a bomb for a 100 seconds is different than an extended period of low dose radiation that enters the food chain. The IAEA study played down any long-term health issues. The IAEA has long been viewed as a lobby for the nuclear energy interests and the Ukrainians and Belarusians pushed back on its conclusions. They insisted that thyroid cancer in children was epidemic. Today it is recognized as the major medical outcome of the disaster. But, in the 1990's, there was limited interest in correctly analyzing Chernobyl. All of the US materials on the consequences of fallout were classified. After all, between the post-war Pacific and Nevada tests, the US had exposed the world to immeasurably more radiation than Chernobyl. The US had no desire to release information about childhood thyroid cancer.  Endless infighting, jealousy and politics amongt the various international agencies continued into the 1990's.

                               "Now it is clear that most of the foreign experts, global leaders in  radiation medicine, were wrong. WHO, UNSCEAR, and IAEA conceded that, seven years after Ukrainian and Belarusian officials announced the problem, the still skyrocketing increases in thyroid cancer in children were due to Chernobyl exposures."   After the USSR collapsed, the states that followed failed to deliver basic services to their people. There was no longer money for clean food, healthcare or removal from the irradiated areas. Life almost came to a stop. "The 1990's were grim years for Chernobyl research. As the safety network retreated, state and international agencies shifted the burden of managing the post accident risk society onto the shoulders of exposed residents, the people with the fewest resources to manage it." In the decades since, some NGO's have been able to help the victims, but the contamination and untreated illnesses continue, while westerners treat the Zone as a tourist destination.

                                   The text of this book is only 313 pages, but the narrative feels choppy at times. It's worth the effort, if only to better understand the indifference of the nuclear powers to their citizen's health and well-being.

      

                                          

                     

A Dangerous Man, Crais- B+

                           I believe that if you asked any reader of crime fiction who the master of LA noir is today the answer would be Michael Connolly. That said, Crais' seventeen novels about Pike and Cole are just as good as Connolly's Bosch. This is a great one. A young bank teller is almost kidnapped, but the bad guys are stopped by Joe Pike who happens to be transacting business at the bank. As it turns out, her parents were in the witness protection program and the man her mom put away decades ago is after her. It's a fabulous read that I recommend to all.

Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, And The First Clash Over The New Deal, Rauchway - B

                                         This book is about the four months between FDR's election and inauguration. Hoover believed the country had made a huge mistake and continued his campaign against Roosevelt's new ideas. "In their different ways, during the Depression winter that followed the 1932 election, both Roosevelt and Hoover thought the American experiment now faced its greatest threat since the secession winter that followed the 1860 election. The conflict between them, and the traditions of liberalism and conservatism they established, remain central to US politics today. The election did not decide the outcome of this contest, but only began it."  Late on election night, Nov. 8th, Hoover conceded the election, but neither he nor his aides were willing to stop trying to make their case.  He invited Roosevelt for a conference at the White House, hoping to entrap FDR into supporting Hoover's intent to extend the debt moratorium for the Europeans. The wily Roosevelt could not and would not be pinned down, although the President thought FDR had agreed with his proposal.  Hoover later told his aides, "I'm going to lay off for six or eight months and then I'm going to start raising hell." They clashed during the lame duck session of Congress when Hoover proposed a balanced budget and a regressive sales tax. The progressives in Congress, encouraged by FDR, rejected the proposals. Roosevelt asked for a briefing on international affairs from outgoing Secretary of State Henry Stimson and Hoover refused. Stimson and others in the State Dept. insisted and the president eventually allowed it, but only if FDR asked first. After a January meeting at the White House, Hoover said, "I never will be photographed with him. I have too much respect for myself." As banks began to fail in the new year, Hoover stuck to the Republican theory of letting weak banks fail and FDR encouraged intervention to save the system. "The difference between them, forged in this crisis, would define their political descendants' attitudes toward banking and monetary policy for decades to come."  As his term wound down, the president hoped that the bank crashes would come after he was out out of office.  In February, Hoover withdrew his own personal money from banks and told FDR that the bank runs were his fault because people didn't believe in the New Deal and that he should renounce it. On the actual day of FDR's inauguration, Congress unanimously approved all cabinet appointments and Benjamin Cardozo swore them all in at the White House later in the day. The 100 Days followed and thus began the longest, and one of the most successful, presidencies in American history. Hoover spent the next thirty years talking down the New Deal and paving the way for the rightward tilt of the GOP.                                                                                                                                           This is a far from great book. Over a third of it is spent on various domestic topics where the two men clearly disagreed, but the author does not point to any particular dispute during the four months in question. It does however take Hoover to task for his hate-mongering, further relegating him to the dustbin of history.

                                                   

The New Girl, Silva - B

                                         This is the second summer in a row where I believe the author has stumbled. This year's novel does not fit the pattern we're used to and is so tied into current affairs that it feels like a political lecture rather than an espionage novel. Gabriel spends most of the story working with, befriending and exchanging jibes with the heir to the Saudi throne. They team up in a master counter-espionage operation against Vladimir Putin. I guess it is time for summer reads.

The British Are Coming: The War For America, Lexington To Princeton, 1775 - 1777, Atkinson - A*

                                               In June of 1773, George III traveled to Portsmouth to review the most powerful navy in the world. The thirty-five-year old king reigned over the world's most prosperous nation, the nation that had created an empire to rival Rome's. Nonetheless, there was much to worry about; Britain was deeply indebted after the Seven Years War, and America was increasingly a problem. The colonists were better educated and freer than their compatriots in Britain, they were armed to the teeth and knew how to fight, and even though their tax burden was one-fiftieth of a Britons', they were fiercely opposed to "taxation without representation." The Boston Tea Party both angered and threatened the mother country. Britain had to assert authority over the unruly colonies or risk losing the burgeoning empire.  In early 1775, Parliament voted to suppress the rebellion in Massachusetts. The Royal Navy blockaded the port of Boston. "What became known as the American Revolution was an improvised struggle between two peoples of a common heritage, now sundered by diverging values and a conflicted vision of a world to come."

                                                The colonists were not pleased and began organizing committees of public safety, drilling militias, establishing colonial legislatures and setting up a Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In the Bay Colony in particular, arms were stockpiled as the people planned for hostilities. On April 14, 1775, orders from London reached Gen. Gage in Boston "to arrest and imprison the principal actors and abettors in the provincial  legislature." Gage ordered a strike on the depots rumored to be in Concord 16 miles west of Boston. On the morning of April 19th, the British regulars started marching west, preceded in the night by William Dawes and Paul Revere alerting the countryside. The first exchange of fire at Lexington Common was to the Britains advantage. They destroyed supplies in Concord, and sent men further west where they were met by the fire of colonial minutemen. The British fell back, and began to march to Boston.  Colonists were concealed everywhere, and soon "a running gun battle began in earnest." Thousands of men were firing on the British. A sixth of the regulars who had  marched in the morning were casualties. The British rule in Massachusetts now stopped at the Boston city line.  The war for American independence had begun. The makeshift army cut off Boston and Gage decided to fight his way out. He selected the Charleston peninsula as his means and began ferrying men there on June 17th. The Yanks had already constructed entrenchments across the width of the peninsula at Bunker Hill. About 2,600 Britons attacked almost 4,000 rebels late in the day. The British carried the day, but their casualties were fully one-eighth of the total for the ensuing multi-year war. The victory was Pyrrhic and the casualty list shocked the UK. In July, the newly-named Continental Army welcomed Gen. George Washington as its new commander and the British replaced Gage with William Howe. Without any access to food on the land and loyalist fishermen repeatedly harassed by colonists, the British situation declined over the summer and into the fall. Moving the army to New York by sea appeared to be the solution.

                                              That summer, Congress sanctioned an invasion of Canada. The province, historically French and Catholic, as well as formerly allied with the Indians, was looked upon with distaste. Colonial militias under Col. Benedict Arnold had captured Ft. Ticonderoga and Crown Point, paving the way for a rag-tag army to capture Montreal. One hundred and forty-four miles to the east though, Quebec remained unconquered. A small force under Arnold had marched north through Maine to reach the St. Lawrence. An exhausted and diminished group of rebels ascended to the Plains of Abraham on Nov. 12 by the same route Wolfe had a decade-and-a-half earlier. They were reinforced by the conquerors of Montreal, but were less than 1,000 men. They were beset by smallpox and the Canadian winter, while the British were securely and comfortably defending their fortifications. The attack on the 31st of December failed within minutes and the year ended with Quebec secure in the crown's hands.

                                               The winter saw Boston besieged, with the British virtually starving and the colonists living off the fat of the land. In March, Washington maneuvered artillery to Dorchester Heights forcing Howe to plan the abandonment of the city. Loyalist families, dependents and the British army sailed for Halifax. The siege had been 333 days. The empire did not have a single port under its control from Canada to Florida. Washington turned his army south to New York where it was universally assumed the British would head next.

                                               "Despite uncertainty over whether Quebec had fallen, London worked tirelessly to assemble a rescue expedition of nine regiments that would not only liberate Canada but provide the firepower to invade New York down the Lake Champlain-Hudson River corridor". In early May 1776, reinforcements arrived in Quebec. The desultory rebel siege of Quebec was  lifted and the forces at Montreal were soon retreating south. The only positive was that the British plan to invade New York from Canada had been delayed.   

                                                As expected, on June 29, 1776, over one hundred British ships appeared off Sandy Hook. Howe heavily outnumbered the defenders and had available superior water transport to whatever part of NY he wished to attack. Reinforcements kept arriving and by August, there were 387 British ships in the approaches to NY .  Before noon on Aug. 22nd, Howe landed over 15,000 men on the Brooklyn shore at Gravesend. The Battle of Long Island was the largest of the war and an outright rout of the Americans. Washington ordered Brooklyn evacuated, and under cover of darkness, ten thousand men were ferried to Manhattan. In mid-September, Howe brought thousands of men across the East River  and the Americans were soon in full retreat.

                                                The British went on the attack from Canada in early October when they descended the Richelieu River to Lake Champlain. The force of regulars, Hessians, loyalists and Indians totaled 8,000 men. The British had built a fleet to transport the men to Lake Champlain and the Americans had done the same, with the plan to engage them on the lake. Between Oct. 11 and 14, Arnold fought a retreating naval battle that managed to stop the British before they reached Ft. Ticonderoga.  The British had hoped to take Ticonderoga, and make it their winter headquarters and departure point for their spring campaign. Instead, they turned north and returned to Canada. They had won, but failed to achieve their objective. The same week, Howe moved against Washington who was sitting above Harlem Heights. A flanking movement up the East River forced 13,000 Continentals to head north to the next ridge at White Plains. Once again, Washington escaped from Howe, who had now missed two chances to end the war. Thirteen thousand British and Hessian troops attacked the Americans at White Plains.  After a day of hard fighting, the Americans moved away from their lines and Howe saw no reason to follow them north into the wilderness.  The British had left Ft. Washington in American hands and fell upon it from every side on Nov. 16. Late in the day, almost three-thousand men surrendered. The British treatment of American prisoners was horrid and within a year, two-thirds would be dead. "No American defeat in the first five years of the war would be more catastrophic, wrenching, or fatal".

                                                    "The New York campaign had ended, miserably, and New Jersey's miseries had begun. Washington and his generals had nearly lost the war several times in the last three months, through miscalculation, misfortune, imprudence, and deficient military skills."  The remnants of Washington's army fled south into New Jersey with Howe and Cornwallis in hot pursuit. In Philadelphia, members of Congress and many residents fled fearing a British attack, until it became apparent that they had stopped at New Brunswick and were deferring an offensive until the spring. Washington concluded that an offensive effort must be made and initiated his heroic crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night. The Americans completely surprised the Hessians at Trenton and carried the day. The resounding victory rejuvenated the American cause. Cornwallis counterattacked a week later and a violent second Battle of Trenton took place. Washington slipped from his grasp with a night march to Princeton in Cornwallis' rear. Again, the Americans triumphed  and marched north to Morristown, where they would winter. Cornwallis withdrew toward the coast. The British domination of New Jersey had been much briefer than anticipated. In a little over a week, the Americans had stopped the British, repulsed them and made the outcome of the war considerably less certain.

                                                        In the UK, there was anxiety and discontent about the war. For all of their success, his majesty's forces held NY and a small piece of Rhode Island. The invasion from Canada had been stopped. The rebels controlled all the territory between Albany and Savannah. The substantial  British naval forces in America could not stop the flow of material in and out of the states. Howe's management of the British effort was criticized by many, and some of his higher-ranking officers returned to England dismayed by his performance.  "The American army had not been proficient in any conventional sense. Yet an American way of war was emerging, one that stressed hit-and-run celerity, marksmanship, resilience, and sustainment from the broader population; as Washington intended, the army could claim deep emotional and moral ties to the nation it served".

                                                         I chose to read this book because I consider Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy a masterpiece. My knowledge of WWII, and my undying respect and affection for those who fought it likely has been part of my assessment. I have learned a great deal in this volume but still remain less than a fan of our War of Independence. The war was of immeasurable importance and provided the world with its first democracy steeped in the philosophy of the Enlightenment. But, the war consisted of hundreds of incredibly small-scale efforts fought between two sides with limited manpower, equipment, finances and resources. The Crown tried, but the distance and the weather impeded their supply lines. As for us, it sometimes is laughable how little the generals had to fight the war, and how often their men simply went home.  Nonetheless,  I will read the next two books in an attempt to better appreciate the era.