Opening Day: The Story Of Jackie Robinson's First Season, Eig - B+

             "Segregation suffused the nation's culture, and yet profound changes were rippling across the country." In the spring of 1947, black Americans were denied the vote in the South, did not attend the same schools as whites, served in colored only units in the military, and were proscribed from attending the same parks, beaches, playgrounds, department stores, night clubs, swimming pools, theaters, rest rooms, barber shops etc. as white people. Robinson was not the best Black ballplayer and at twenty-eight, he was a bit old to be a rookie. But he was tenacious and loved a fight. Dodger's president and part-owner, Branch Rickey, signed him to the leagues minimum of $5,000 and told him he wanted someone "with guts enough not to fight back." 

            He had grown up in southern California in a fatherless home and developed a rage against injustice and racism. He played five sports at UCLA, excelling in basketball and football. He was a lieutenant in the army during the war and began playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the summer of 1945 for a $400 per month paycheck. Later that summer, he met with Rickey, who secretly was planning on integrating the majors. In 1946, he batted .349, stole 40 bases and scored 113 runs for the Montreal Royals. During spring training the next year,  manger Leo Durocher told the southerners they could wipe their asses with their petition about not playing with a Negro. On April 15, 1947, Jack Roosevelt Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. He scored the winning run. Two days later, he hit his first home run at the Polo Grounds.

        After his initial flourish, Robinson struggled at the plate. There was extensive speculation that he would be benched. On May 9th, the Dodgers left for their first game outside of New York. In Philadelphia, their hotel refused them access because of the "nigra" and the team went directly to the stadium. The Dodger's traveling secretary found Jackie a room at a separate hotel and the rest of the team went to the Franklin later. Branch Rickey, ever the shrewd observer of the league, decided to publish some of the hate mail Jackie had been receiving. He put the naysayers in a defensive position and galvanized support for Robinson. Throughout the eight game road trip, thousands of Black fans came out to see Jackie. His aggressiveness on the base path was unnerving the opponents and the Dodgers were beginning to be more accepting of him as a teammate. The Dodgers continued to improve and, by the end of August had a ten game lead on the Cardinals. The NY baseball world was getting ready for another subway series.

      Brooklyn dropped the first two in the Bronx and won three and four at Ebbets. They lost the fifth and won the sixth. Game seven was at the Stadium. It was a 5-2 victory for the Yanks. Afterwards, in the Dodger locker room, each member of the team shook Jackie's hand and congratulated him for a fine season. Jackie's best  season would be two years later, when he won the MVP. By 1955, he was not an everyday player, but stole home in the first game of the series which the Brooklyn Dodgers finally won against the Yankees. He retired after the 1956 season and five years later, was elected to Cooperstown. He died in 1972. His number 42 has been retired by every team in the majors. April 15th is celebrated throughout the league as Jackie Robinson Day. "Given a chance to change the world, he never hesitated. He played hard and won." Thanks to my brother for the recommendation.

One-Shot Harry, Phillips - B

              Harry is a Black veteran of Korea and a part-time photographer in LA in the summer of 1963. The Black community is abuzz with Tom Bradley's mayoral candidacy and the planned visit of Dr. Martin Luther King. A fellow veteran and friend, a white man, is killed, likely by the Providers, a racist white supremacist organization working hard to keep the Black and Mexican communities down. Harry pursues the murder as far as he can and risks his life along the way. The novel excels at depicting the hard-scrabble times as the US moves from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights movement. Very well done.

The Precipice, Doiron - B+

                Warden Mike Bowditch is assigned to the search team when it becomes apparent that two southern coeds are missing on the Appalachian Trail. The story brings together background on the legendary hiking trail and a realistic all hands on deck search in the wilderness. Mike also has to resolve a run in with a family who was one of Maine's first settlers, and today has a 'Deliverance'-like compound in the wild where they grow pot and cook meth. This is the best in the series so far, and it ends with Mike just possibly getting promoted to be an Inspector.

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler, Kertzer - A* ------------ 1,000th blog post

           In 2020, the archives of the papacy of Pius XII were opened, thus providing scholars an opportunity to more accurately assess the pope's conduct during the war. The story told here is "sometimes shocking and often surprising."

          The Fuhrer visited Rome and Florence in 1938. Pius XI was fond of Mussolini, but not Hitler, and did not receive the Chancellor. Pius had signed the Lateran Accords with the Duce in 1928 establishing the Vatican City as a sovereign state. The pope was planning an encyclical denouncing racism and anti-semitism, and a speech criticizing Mussolini's embrace of Hitler when he died. Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican Secretary of State and former nuncio in Germany succeeded as Pius XII in 1939.  Pius' goal as pope was "to safeguard the church and thereby protect its God-given mission of saving souls." He encouraged a peaceful resolution of the tensions in Europe. He said nothing when Italy invaded Albania on Good Friday. He was equally quiet about Italy's race laws, other than to encourage the state to treat baptized Jews as Catholics. Nor was anything said about the brutal invasion of Catholic Poland.

         The pope was concerned about the ongoing suppression of the church and its institutions in Germany, where schools were closed and priests arrested. He engaged in back channel negotiations with Hitler to no avail. At home, the papacy and the government's cordial relationship continued with the pope and the king exchanging Christmas visits as the pope worked to keep Italy out of the war. Pius expressed his sympathy to the rulers of Belgium, the Netherlands and Lichtenstein when Germany invaded. Awed by Hitler's success in Scandinavia and France, Mussolini joined the war on June 10, 1940. Pius, hoping to not offend either of the fascist dictators, said nothing. He gave a speech encouraging Italian Catholics to support their government. Italy's Catholic newspapers enthusiastically praised the war. 

         Mussolini introduced Nazi-like racial laws in the waning days of Pius XI's papacy. The pope enraged Il Duce with his criticisms and opposition. When Italy entered the war, it arrested all foreign Jews. As 1940 closed, Pius' year end speech to the College of Cardinals closed with, "Among contrasting systems of government...the Church cannot be called upon to make itself a partisan of one course rather than another." When he met with France's new ambassador, he thanked him for Petain's reinstatement of church privileges previously lost. Italians were never enthusiastic about the war or the Germans, and after repeated military failures overseas, support further weakened.

          The war abruptly changed on June 22, 1941 when Germany invaded the USSR. All of Italy, the church and the pope excitedly supported the invasion. The Axis cause was now "a Christian crusade." However, the news that the Germans were systematically slaughtering Jews reached the pope a few months after the invasion began. Then, the entrance of America into the war added a new dimension of complexity, as the financial support provided to the church by the US was immense. The Nazi's ongoing dismemberment of the church's place in German society pushed the pope closer to Mussolini. Throughout 1942, every country with a legate at the Vatican begged the pope to speak out as the specifics of the slaughter of Europe's Jewry became common knowledge.

       The second half of 1942 saw a decline in the likelihood of an Axis victory and a dramatic increase in the bombing of Italy's cities. In his Christmas address, on page 24, the pope lamented "the hundreds of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction." Hardly the ringing denunciation of Nazi atrocities that his apologists would later claim it to be. Yet, Pius said that is what it was. As the new year unfolded, Pius requested that the Allies not bomb Rome, even though he had never said a word about the bombing of Allied cities. He had spent years worrying about Nazi Germany's disregard for religion but now began to worry that an Allied victory would lead to the spread of communism. 

       On July 19, 1943, the Allies bombed Rome, focusing on outlying railway yards. Pius directed his Secretary of State to write a letter to the Allies decrying their attack on "the city that is the center of Catholicism." Within a week, King Victor Emmanuel removed Mussolini from office, and had him arrested. In September, the new government announced an armistice and the Germans poured in from the north. The king and the prime minister both fled Rome. The Germans occupied the city. A week later, Himmler cabled the SS in Rome that all Jews were to be sent to Germany. On Oct. 16, the SS began to collect the city's Jews in a military base near the Vatican. Various Catholic officials were able to obtain the release of baptized Jews and Jews married to Catholics. Over a thousand people captured on the first day were sent to Auschwitz immediately. Sixteen survived. The German ambassador reported to Berlin that the pope would not intervene in the Aktion. Later in the fall, the SS renewed its policy of rounding up and transporting Jews in the occupied north. The Vatican's daily paper objected in a front page comment. "Over the next several months hundreds more Jews from Rome would be captured and sent north to their deaths, and thousands more from northern Italy. The pope judged it best to say nothing."

       In January, 1944, the Allies landed at Anzio, a mere 50 miles from Rome. The pope sent a message to the British hoping that no colored troops would be part of the Allied occupation of Rome. As Rome was a crucial railroad junction, the Allies bombed it throughout the months before liberation. When a group of partisans killed 33 Italian SS members, the SS responded by killing 335 Romans. The pope condemned civilian attacks on the German military. In early June, the Germans retreated and the Allies arrived. There was no battle. Rome was free. The pope now turned his focus to communism, as he feared it would take over Europe. 

     Postwar Italy whitewashed its support of Fascism and the Axis war efforts. The pope, in a speech a month after the war's end, spent all of his time talking exclusively about how badly the Nazi's had treated the Church. The Church would even later deny it supported the Facist regime. "At the center of this new, well-scrubbed historical narrative stands Pius XII, presented as the heroic champion of the oppressed. Erased from memory are the pope's regular assurances to the Duce that he need only inform him of anti-Fascist priests, and he would have them silenced." Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, died in 1958.

    Pius' defenders would later argue that protesting to Hitler would accomplish nothing. They also reluctantly pointed out that half of the Reich was Catholic. He would have risked losing their allegiance. His focus throughout was protecting the Church, its property and its mission, although neither the Germans nor the Italians ever threatened it. He protected Vatican City, and the church came into the postwar era with all of its rights and privileges intact. "However, as a moral leader, Pius XII must be judged a failure. He had no love for Hitler, but was intimidated by him, as he was by Italy's dictator as well. At a time of great uncertainty, Pius XII clung firmly to his determination to do nothing to antagonize either man. In fulfilling this aim, the pope was remarkably successful."

   I will only add my total agreement with the author's condemnation. I sincerely hope historians will now pursue the issue of the Church's deplorable actions after the war assisting Nazi's escaping Europe for South America.

The King's Shadow: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Deadly Quest for The Lost City of Alexandria, Richardson - B-

         This is a story of the transformation of an English soldier into "one of the great archaeologists of the age." In 1827, a private in the army of the East India Company walked out of camp in Agra, India. "He would change he world - and the world would destroy him." James Lewis walked across India, and emerged in Pakistan using the name Charles Masson. He achieved a degree of self-sufficiency by becoming  a storyteller. He read extensively and became fascinated with Alexander the Great. He decided to find the rumored city of Alexandria beneath the Mountains in Afghanistan. He began excavating mounds around Bagram. He found ancient coins, bits of pottery and porcelain with Greek inscriptions, as well as priceless jewels and artifacts from the country's Buddhist era. He needed money to carry on, and petitioned the East India Company. The Company agreed to fund his work. Soon thereafter, the Company engaged him as their intelligence agent in Kabul.  Because of the quality of his work as a spy and an archaeologist, the Company obtained a pardon for him from the King of England. Masson found thousands of coins, including many with a Greek inscription on one side and an unidentifiable one on the reverse. Thus, he discovered the key to the ancient language of Kharoshthi.  The coins depicted an interconnectedness among Greeks, Buddhists, Chinese, Egyptians and Romans. However, in the spring of 1838, the ruler of Kabul expelled the British at the behest of the Russians. In response, the East India Company declared war on Afghanistan. A subaltern in Quetta arrested Masson on suspicion of treason and kept him imprisoned for months. Once he was freed, Masson left his beloved Afghanistan and headed back to India. No one would publish the book he wrote because it was critical of the Company and its invasion. In the fall of 1841, he sailed for London. While he was at sea, the British were kicked out of Afghanistan and unmercifully slaughtered on the way. One single Englishman returned to India. He received neither compensation nor praise at home. He died a decade later. Today, his work has been catalogued and is featured at the British Museum. Well written, but dare I say - pointless.

Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History Of Germany's Wealthiest Families, De Jong - B+

           Three weeks after the Nazis came to power, they summoned Germany's leading industrialists to a meeting. Gunther Quandt, arms and battery tycoon, Friedrich Flick, steel magnate, Baron Finck, financier, Kurt Schmitt, Allianz and Munich Re executive, Gustav Krupp von Bolen und Halbach, as well as executives from IG Farben and potash giant, Wintershall, were in attendance. Hjalmar Schacht, former Reichsbank president chaired the meeting. Hitler spoke for ninety minutes, and advised them that he would be ending Germany's democracy, and rule as a dictator after an upcoming parliamentary election. Schacht asked the men for three million marks for the election campaign. They agreed.             

           This book is a history of how Germany's richest cooperated with the Nazis before and during the war, profited, escaped punishment afterwards, and how their families still dominate the country today. "Their dark legacies remain hidden in plain sight."

           Gunther Quandt's textile business prospered in WWI, but the Spanish flu of 1918 took his wife. He remarried Magda Friedlander, who would later be known as the First Lady of the Third Reich, when she was the wife of Joseph Goebbels. Their son, Harald, was born in 1921. Throughout the 1920's, Gunther began accumulating industrial businesses. He and Magda divorced in 1929.  Harald was the model for the future Hitler Youth and was heavily involved in the world of the Nazi's. 

          Hitler's appointment as Chancellor was effective January 30, 1933. Soon after the meeting between Hitler and the industrialists mentioned above, the Reichstag burned down and Hitler announced he would rule unilaterally. Because of the tensions between Quandt and Magda Goebbels, the Nazi state bullied Quandt, and at at one point, arrested him, held him in solitary confinement for six weeks, and released him on bail of over one million $US. 

         At the 1934 Berlin Auto Show, Hitler announced that the industry should not be focusing on cars for the rich, but rather build a car for the people. He summoned Ferdinand Porsche, who he had had a chat with a year earlier about race cars, to build the Volkswagen, proceeded to tell him its key features, and set the price for which the people's car should sell. Porsche and his son in law, Anton Piech began to work on the Volkswagen and, at the same time, bought out the firm's Jewish co-founder, Adolf Rosenberger, for a fraction of the value of his interest. Hitler blessed Porsche's design in 1936. In 1938, the Fuhrer lay the foundation stone of the VW plant in Wolfsburg. A year later, Porsche delivered the first VW to Hitler. Only 630 were manufactured prior to the conversion of the factory to the war effort.

         For August von Finck, the Nuremberg Race Laws and the acceleration of Aryanization of Jewish assets offered him the opportunity to greatly expand his private banking business. The Anschluss provided the extraordinary chance to takeover S.M. von Rothschild, Austria's largest private bank.

         When war came, it brought unimaginable wealth to many, but few were as successful as Quandt. His firms provided uniforms, Luger pistols, submarine batteries, and on and on to the Reich. Many of the firms that were part of Quandt's empire had been plundered through Aryanization from Germany's Jews. 

       Also riding high was Friedrich Flick, who built an arms industry in eastern Germany, arguing that it was important to diversify away from the Ruhr, home of Krupp and Thyssen. Flick "became one of the preferred partners for the army." In addition to being an effective manufacturer, Flick was a skilled deal maker, who understood the requirements of acting in the shadows so the world could not see that Germany was rearming. Like Quandt, he utilized Aryanization to buy Jewish businesses at a fraction of their value.

        The war brought to the magnates the acquisition of businesses and properties in Poland, the USSR, and throughout occupied Europe. Many of their sons were at war. Harald Quandt parachuted into Crete in the war's most successful airborne operation. From there, he fought on the front lines in the east. In late 1944, he was wounded in Italy and captured by the British. Rudolph Flick lost his life in the opening week of Barbarossa. With so many men in uniform, the German economy used the labor of twelve million men, women and children brought to the Reich as slaves, as well as prisoners forced to live and work in abhorrent conditions. 

        In the waning days of the war, Quandt, Flick, and Finck fled to Bavaria, where they hoped they would be able to have their future determined by the Americans. The US Treasury Dept. compiled a list of forty-three businessman to be indicted for war crimes. Quandt and Flick were on the list. The Allies planned to break up the industrial behemoths and prosecute their CEO's. Finck too was arrested, but as a financier, he had avoided the dirty work of arms manufacturing with slave labor. Porsche, Piech and Ferry Porsche, Ferdinand's son, were all arrested, but the three were released by year's end. A year later, the French arrested the automakers, but their prosecution floundered. Porsche and Piech negotiated a 1% licensing fee for every VW Beetle ever made, assuring the family's wealth for generations. During the first Nuremberg trial, both Schacht and von Papen were found not guilty, thus making the prosecution of businessmen less likely. The US turned over the evidence it had to German authorities. At Quandt's denazification trial in 1948, he was able to leverage Goebbels hostility into a very light penalty of court costs. He was soon a free man. Von Finck's trial was later in 1948 and led to a two thousand DM fine. The only people who faced serious charges were Alfried Krupp, Flick, and Farben's senior executives. The US indicted Flick for crimes against humanity and the use of slave labor. After a months long trial, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail. As the Cold War evolved, it became apparent that the US desired a strong W. German ally. Flick and many others were released from jail early. By the end of the 1950's, he was once again the wealthiest man in Germany.

       West Germany boomed in the post-war era, and those years eventually became known as the economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder).  Gunther Quandt died in 1954 leaving an estate of 55M DM to his two sons. Included in the inheritance was a 4% stake in Daimler. By the end of the decade, the Quandt's owned 15%, but the Flick family owned 40%. The two families cooperated in the management of the car company for decades. Herbert Quandt, Gunther's oldest son from his first marriage, began to accumulate BMW stock , and became the company's largest shareholder. He successfully restructured the company and built his ownership up to 40%. His two children still own the shares. West Germany joined NATO in 1955, and the Quandt's began making weapons for the Bundeswehr. Ferry Porsche designed and built the new Leopard tank. 

        In 1970, the magazine, Der Spiegel, published an article called Nine Zeroes, pointing out that four of the country's billionaire families had as the foundation of their wealth activities during the war. The Quandts, Flicks, Fincks, and Oetkers were all headed by Nazis. When Friedrich Flick died in 1972, he was one of the five richest men in the world. His heirs sold his businesses and became passive investors. In 1980, Finck died and his sons sold the private bank for 660 M DM. By 1982, both Herbert and Harald Quandt were dead and their half-dozen heirs inherited designated pieces of the empire. 

       By the new century, reunified Germany was taking a hard look at its past. The state and an alliance of major companies paid a settlement to the surviving slave laborers. In 2007, a documentary called The Silence of the Quandt's aired on television and led to a brouhaha when a Quandt dismissed its observations. The family had an 1187 page history published a few years later. And although it whitewashed some of the story, the family made a $6M contribution to a forced labor documentation center. Porsche also addressed the slave labor issue with a contribution. Nonetheless, "the scale remains tipped in favor of money and power. Many German business dynasties continue to sidestep a complete reckoning with the dark history that stains their fortunes, and so the ghosts of the Third Reich still haunts them."

     Seldom is the financial side of history's big stories ever told. I believe Manchester's 'Arms of Krupp' published in 1964 was the first I ever came across. It's a very important topic and one treated here by a journalist who does a superb job.

   

         

 

Sparring Partners, Grisham -B

                There is no better storyteller than John Grisham, and his latest is no exception. The book is referred to as the fourth in the Jake Brigance series, but that is not completely accurate. There is a Jake Brigance story with an appealing twist. But, it's the second of three novellas under this title. The first is about a young man on death row, and the third is about a feuding family law firm. I kept erroneously waiting for the three stories to be tied together, which they obviously never were. Nonetheless, the master remains on top of his game.

The Shadows of Men, Mukherjee - B

                    Capt. Sam Wyndham and Sgt. Banerjee are caught up in a complex tale of intrigue involving rogue units of British agents stirring up Hindi-Muslim hatred in Calcutta and Bombay. After all, if all they're going to do is fight, the British need to stay to keep a lid on it all. The intriguing point is that Banerjee realizes he can no longer work for those suppressing his people. Oxford education aside, the sergeant is becoming an Indian patriot. Unsure of how the series will proceed.

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone, Dugard - B+

           Between 1841 and 1863, David Livingstone, British physician, missionary and explorer,  had traveled extensively throughout Africa, filling in the vast blanks on the maps that the Europeans were trying to create. He had walked across the continent from east to west over four years. His left arm was damaged by a lion bite and his body was filled with hookworm. In 1866, at the age of 53, he returned to Africa to find the source of the Nile. Although John Speke had assured the Royal Geographic Society that Lake Victoria was the source, his colleague and rival, Richard Burton, insisted it was Lake Tanganyika. Thus, the matter remained unresolved, and Livingstone's trip was sponsored by the RGS. Livingstone's progress was slow. It took four months to  reach Lake Nyassa, 300 miles long and 60 wide, the southernmost of the three great lakes that make up the African Rift Lakes. He began to circle the lake clockwise.

         Later that year, rumors reached London that Livingstone was dead. The stories being told were not consistent, but by early 1867, Livingstone's obituary was published. However many, including the leadership of the RGS, were not convinced. The society and the government funded a search expedition. Within months, E. D. Young was leading a small troop on a steel boat up the Zambezi River to the Nyassa. He confirmed that the tales about Livingstone's death were false, and returned to London.

        By the time Livingstone headed northwest from Lake Nyassa, his entourage was reduced to a handful of loyal porters. As reports of Livingstone's disappearance circulated, the New York Herald decided to dispatch Henry Morton Stanley, a Civil War veteran and peripatetic traveler, to Africa to find the great explorer. In March, 1869, Livingstone reached Ujiji on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. From there, he headed west with Arab slavers to find the Lualaba River. In the African interior, he stopped and stayed at a town called Bambarre, as he was now a very sick, old man who could barely travel. He suffered from every conceivable dreaded disease and parasite that Africa could impose upon a European. He had lost almost all of his teeth and could barely eat. By the end of 1869, the legendary Livingstone needed to be rescued. Both the British Foreign Office, inspired by the the RGS, and the NY Herald, desperate for a story, were on the case. 

      Stanley sailed from Zanzibar for the African coast in early 1871. He began the long journey into the interior. The trek through the jungles, swamps and plains took its usual toll on the caravan, decimating porters, pack animals and one of the two Europeans who accompanied Stanley. Simultaneously, a British expedition under Sir Samuel Baker ascended the Nile and reached Gondokoro, just four degrees south of the equator. Unbeknownst to each other, Stanley and Baker were equidistant from Livingstone, who was resting hundreds of miles from them in the interior. Livingstone finally roused himself, set out and reached the western shore of Lake Tanganyika in September of 1871. A month later, he crossed over to Ujiji and prayed to be saved. On the 27th of October, after 975 miles and eight months, Stanley reached Ujiji, shook hands with a toothless, old, white-haired Englishman and said, "Dr. Livingstone I presume."

     The two men spent weeks getting to know each other. After recovering with four meals per day provided by Stanley's ample supplies, Livingstone suggested they seek the source together. They traveled around the northern end of Lake Tanganyika  and confirmed that there was no river flowing north. They then traveled to Tabora, a third of the way to the coast. They bid farewell and Stanley began the return to civilization on his own, carrying years of Livingstone's notes, journals and letters. Stanley reached the coast on May 7th and sailed to London a few weeks afterward. He was received by the Queen and offered $10,000 for a book about his trip. Livingstone returned to the interior to pursue his belief that the source was further south than Lake Victoria. "In addition to blood loss, anemia, malaria, dysentery, and hookworm, a blood clot the size of an apple had formed in his abdomen." He died on May 1, 1873 at the age of 60. His men buried his heart in Africa, and sent his mummified remains home to England. He lay in state in the RGS Map Room and was interred at Westminster Abbey. His funeral was the largest ever in the capital. Stanley was a pallbearer and honored his promise to Livingstone. He returned to Africa to find the source.

    "Livingstone's death opened the floodgates to European exploration of Africa." Stanley circumnavigated Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, confirming Speke's theory that Lake Victoria was the source of the Nile. He died in 1904. A hundred years later, a satellite would confirm that the Nile bubbled up in the mountains of Burundi, halfway between Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria. This is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

     

Death in the East, Mukherjee - B+

     In early 1922, Sam leaves Calcutta and travels up country to Assam, where he enters a Hindi ashram for the purpose of kicking his opium habit. He struggles through the first painful week, when he is distracted by, and asked to look into, the death of a fellow patient. This is also the first time in the series where there are extensive flashbacks to Sam's early days as a London policeman. As he is recovering in Assam, he attends an event and sees a man he knows to be a killer, whom all of London assumed had been dead for decades. Gaines/Carter recognizes Sam, but he he is dead before the night is over. Sgt. Surendranath conducts the investigation with Sam overseeing him. The official investigation of Gaines/Carter's demise concludes 'death by natural causes', but Surendranath tells Sam that he owes him a favor for looking away from the truth. Superb addition to the series.

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, Millard - B

          Our story starts in 1801 with the British removing the Rosetta Stone from Alexandria, transporting it to London, and fueling "a decades-long obsession with Egypt..." Europe focused on learning all it could about a society that pre-dated Greece and Rome, and one of the objects of their curiosity was the source of the Nile. Indeed, speculation about the source of the river had been going on for two thousand years. A Roman expedition had been blocked in what is now South Sudan by a massive swamp or bog that extended for hundreds of miles and was unnavigable. The Sudd was not penetrated until 1842, when the Turks proceeded further south. Many believed that the best chance of success was to seek the source from the south, not by ascending the river from the north. At the mid-point of the century, the Royal Geographic Society decided to mount an expedition. The man they chose to lead it was Richard Burton, a thirty-two year old adventurer and East India Company lieutenant, who amongst other accomplishments, had just become the first westerner to complete a Hajj to Mecca. The RGS and the East India Company directed Burton to head west from Aden on the Gulf of Suez. Burton put together a team, organized his supplies and was ready to head into the interior. They were attacked by Somalis at their base camp on the coast.  Burton and a comrade were seriously wounded; a third member died. The expedition was off.

       A few years later, the RGS decided to try again, and once more appointed Burton as the leader. He picked John Speke, who had been wounded with him at Aden, as his second in command. Unbeknownst to Burton, Speke harbored resentments and was filled with hatred toward him. This time, they waited out the rainy season in Zanzibar. They sailed to the coast, and the East African Expedition headed toward Lake Tanganyika on June 27, 1857. Progress was slow, as men deserted, and many fell ill, particularly Burton. Their objective was approximately a thousand miles inland, and after 134 days, they were about three-fourths of the way there. They stopped at Kazeh for over a month. Burton had to be carried, had become completely paralyzed, and would remain so for a year. He turned command over to Speke. Speke had recovered from a near fatal fever and was temporarily blind. Eventually, they reached Tanganyika, "the longest and second deepest freshwater lake in the world..." They settled into Ujiji, an Arab trading town, from which they would explore the lake. Their desire to search the lake was inhibited by their inability to obtain anything larger than a long canoe. Reluctantly, Burton set out to return to the coast. Local travelers had told them that there was a larger lake north of the Tanganyika, and Speke convinced Burton to let him seek it out. Speke was accompanied by Sidi Bombay, an African who had been raised as a slave in India. As he had been for the previous year in service to the expedition, Bombay proved to be a valuable, guide, interpreter and colleague. A month after leaving Kazeh, Speke reached the lake the natives called Nyanza. He was the first European to see it, and called it Lake Victoria. 

     On February 2, 1859, the expedition reached the coast. Speke returned to London two weeks before Burton, who was delayed because of poor health. Speke had already been assured that he would lead the next expedition to Lake Victoria by the time Burton arrived home. He had convinced the RGS and all of London that whatever success they had had, was because of him. Speke was instructed to proceed to Lake Victoria, find the headwaters of the Nile and proceed north into South Sudan and descend the Nile. His second in command was James Grant, and once again, the ever-reliable Sidi Bombay would also be with them. From Zanzibar, they headed to the coast and inland, once again racked by fever and desertion. They proceeded to the lake and found what they believed to be the source of the Nile. It flowed over a falls from the lake and began its 4,000 mile march to the Mediterranean. Speke, Grant and Bombay headed down the river. They had achieved the ultimate, something wondered about for thousands of years. When they reached Alexandria, Speke telegraphed the RGS that the "Nile is settled." But because Speke brought back no proof, the issue was still considered unresolved. 

    Speke returned to London in June, 1863 and was rewarded with the Founder's medal by the RGS. However, the explorer's insecurities and argumentative nature soon caused dismay in polite society. The RGS disavowed him, and the following summer, he died in a hunting accident that likely was suicide. A decade later, American Henry Stanley explored Lake Victoria and confirmed Speke's theory about the source of the Nile. As for Burton, his travels had left him very unhealthy, and he lived out his life in a number of minor consular postings. Ironically, he became financially comfortable by translating the 'Kama Sutra' and 'Arabian Nights'. He was knighted and died in Trieste years later.

The Murder Rule, McTiernan - B

            This is a good, but somewhat far-fetched, legal thriller featuring a third - year law student at the University of Maine. She bluffs herself onto the UVA Law School Innocence Project in order to sabotage the potential release of a man her mother has told her killed her father. Her mother has been lying for twentyyears, a fact Rebecca discovers as she is knee-deep in the case. This book has been highly acclaimed and falls into the classic characterization of being a good beach read.

The Verifiers, Pek - B

           This is an intriguing debut novel narrated by a young Chinese-American woman who describes the hilariously complicated details of life for immigrant Chinese families in NYC. Claudia Lin goes to work for a firm that verifies, for those on matchmaking sites, what is true and what is false about whoever it is they are exchanging data with. She concludes that one of their clients has been murdered and pursues a personal investigation. The dead client was a journalist who had discovered that the websites were using bots and synths to enhance their numbers and to elicit more data from their customers. Although it bogs down at times in too much technology, it's still a blast to read.

Bone Orchard, Doiron -B-

                 This is the fifth and the weakest in the Mike Bowditch series. Mike had resigned from the Warden Service a few months, when his former mentor, Kathy Frost, is shot at her home. This comes on the heels of her killing a sadly deranged Afghanistan vet and attracting the attention of the local veterans. Mike pursues a personal investigation, succeeds, and rejoins the Maine Warden Service.

After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles In Paris From The Belle Époque Through Revolution and War, Rappaport - B

           "By the beginning of the new twentieth century, Paris was fast becoming the capital of Russia out of Russia - for those with plenty of money." "The Russian aristocracy fitted in perfectly with Le Tout-Paris of the Belle Époque...." At the turn of the century, Paris' most charming and well connected Russian aristocrat was Grand Duke Paul, fourth son of Alexander II, and Paul's wife, Olga. They introduced one of the most important Russian emigres to Parisian society in the person of Sergei Diaghilev. His mission in life was to bring Russian art to the world. In 1908, he presented the opera Boris Godunov to rave reviews and the following year, the Ballet Russes. Within a few years, the annual visit of the ballet was the height of the Parisian season. Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov were the musicians, Michel Fokine the choreographer and Vaslav Nijinsky became the first international male star. It was so successful that Diaghilev decided to replace the make-shift traveling ensemble with a permanent company in Paris. 'Rites of Spring'  made the ballet company the toast the city. The wealthy were not Paris' only emigres. Those opposed to the regime who had fled flocked to the City of Light. Artists like Chagall, and Soutine and the writer Ehrenburg came. The outbreak of war changed everything. Many returned home. Approximately 10,000 Russian Jews who had left the Pale were stateless and were told to enlist in the French army or depart. They went to Spain or America. 

           The Revolution came in 1917. Kerensky confiscated the Romanov's assets, but the real threat was the Bolsheviks, who revoked the private ownership of property. The aristocrats and intelligentsia were now enemies of the people. Many were able to escape, and France was the number one destination. However, most of the Romanov's were killed in 1918, and early 1919.  One emigre aristocrat said, "Before us darkness and terror. Behind us - horror and hopelessness." Impoverished, they left Russia and fled to wherever they could go, hoping against hope for the chance to go home. The White Army collapsed in late 1920 and 146,000 people were evacuated from the Crimea. Many went to Constantinople where one saw "former generals working in laundries or kitchens; countesses, princesses, and their kind scrubbing floors and washing dishes or ...trying to sell a blouse, a uniform, a handful of medals, a pair of boots, or an old fur coat." Obtaining a visa or passport to leave Turkey was very difficult until France signaled that it was willing to accept the Russians because it needed to replace the many men it lost during the war.

        The forced sales of their jewelry at maddeningly low prices compelled the aristocrats to seek immediate employment. The most successful endeavors were led by the woman who "with sewing, millinery and knitting" established twenty-seven fashion houses between the mid-20's and 30's. Few of the men were as fortunate as  'forced proletarianism' reduced them to menial jobs. Generals and admirals  washed cars and drove taxis. The emigres retained their affection for their church and established the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral just off the Champs-Elysees. Wealthy members of the community created La Maison Russes, as a gathering place of refuge. "There is no greater pervading sense of Orthodoxy in exile than at the now famous Russian cemetery at Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, which today contains the graves of more than ten thousand emigre Russians...several Romanovs, Prince Yusupov..." As the Russian community in Paris solidified, strengthened, and became the place where Whites congregated, it attracted the attention of the Bolsheviks. 

      After France recognized the USSR, it was easy for the Soviets to spy on the locals. Infiltration and intimidation were the primary techniques, but what the Soviets really wanted was to kidnap Romanovs and return them to the USSR. But the aristocrats began to die out, and by the end of the decade, there were few left who could be conceived as a monarchist threat. Indeed, the idea of defeating the Bolsheviks by arms faded away. As time went on, Paris began to resent the Russians presence, particularly after a deranged emigre assassinated the French president. Many began to leave for America. The ranks of those who were still therein 1940, were reduced when the Nazis took away the Jews and socialists. "By the end of the war, there were only 55,000 Russians left in France..." They too slowly faded away. 

     The concept of royalty working as doormen has been around for a long time. That which makes this book a fascinating read is putting together the details and specificity of people, wealthy and not, losing everything to revolution.

          

         

How Beautiful We Were, Mbue - B+

            This semi-autobiographical novel is set in Cameroon in the 1980s in the fictional village of Kosawa, where people are dying because their land, and particularly their water, has been poisoned by Pexton, a US oil company. Our narrator is ten year old Thula, who lost her dad a year ago when he went, with five other men, to speak to their government about their plight, and was never heard from again. When the Pexton men come to talk to the villagers for their regular quarterly meeting to tell them everything is alright, the spontaneous action of the village madman, Konga, sets in motion a sequence of unforeseeable events. The villagers kidnap the three Pexton men and their driver. Nothing happens for weeks. The villagers hope the men would give them the names of the Pexton decision makers in the capital so the village elders could go and plead for help. The Pexton men refused. One of the men tells Bongo, Thula's uncle, that absolutely no one in the government, or at Pexton, cares one iota about he people in the village. Their only hope is to speak to his nephew, an American journalist named Austin. Bongo and three other leaders head to the capital. Austin listens to their story and tells them he will write it up and send it to the US. The oldest hostage, the one who had spoken to Bongo, soon dies, leaving the villagers with an absolute sense of dread.  Government soldiers come and kill a dozen villagers. The four men who had gone to the capital and spoken to Austin are arrested. Because their actions embarrassed the government, they were tried and summarily executed.

           Years later, a formal restoration of the village is long underway thanks to the efforts of Austin. A movement in America forced Pexton to pay the villagers for all of the damage they had inflicted on Kosawa. The water supply is somewhat safer, and the children are being educated. Austin has even obtained a scholarship for Thula to attend school in New York. Thula becomes radicalized in America, and suggests to her age mates back in the village that they need to take action against Pexton. Soon, sabotage is a problem for the oil company, and the villagers are warned that the consequences could be severe. Eventually, Pexton offers a settlement involving more payments and a less polluting operation and the young men stop their sabotage. Pexton does not deliver and its excuse is litigation with the Restoration Movement in America.  By now, Thula is their leader and she begins to ponder the role of not just Pexton, but their own government as well. In 1998, a twenty-eight year old Thula returns home after being away for a decade. She begins working as a teacher for the government in the capital. Six months later, she gives her five age mates money for rifles and she continues to speak of the possibilities of revolution. Years pass with no satisfaction for Kosawa.

       When one of Thula's age mates loses his only son, the four men decide they will wait no more. They take vengeance against three nearby oil workers. After they have killed a dozen, soldiers interrogated and raped throughout the region. Thula begins the revolution in November, 2004. She goes from village to village speaking to the people. She forms a political party and arranges for a new lawsuit against Pexton.  Thula is approaching forty when the lawyers tell her that an American court would do nothing about damages in a far off place - the matter is finished. The five age mates kidnap the local American oilman and hs wife and write ransom demands. The government soldiers come, burn the village and kill Thula and her colleagues. Pexton drills where the village had been, and provides scholarships for all of the children of Kosawa. Those who were raised there in the old way tell stories to their grandchildren.

      This novel was one of the Times top ten for 2021. It is a very powerful telling of the way people in Africa once lived, and how modernity (and in this instance greed)  has drastically changed that world.

The Investigator, Sanford - B+

              This is the first in a series featuring Letty Davenport, adopted daughter and protege of Lucas, written by the author of the thirty-two Prey novels. Letty is tough as nails, smart as a whip and a helluva marksman. She is assigned by her boss, a US Senator, to team up with a DHS agent, John Kaiser, to try and sort out what's going on in the Texas oil patch, where there are suspicions that stolen oil may be funding local militias. Those militias strike in the town of Pershing with the goal of blowing the bridge over the Rio Grande, preferably with a caravan of Central Americans on it. Letty and Kaiser are on their trail, put a slight crimp in their plans and help bring a majority of the militia to justice. This is a well-done thriller, with excellent insights into the world of the right wing hate groups.

Never Saw Me Coming, Kurian - B

              There are many novels featuring psychopaths, but this one has a dozen in a program at mythical Adams University in DC under the care of a the Psychology Department's Chair. Chloe is the narrator. She came to the program, which attempts to understand and improve the lives of its participants, with an ulterior motive. Her goal is to track down a boy a few years older than she who had raped her in middle school. She is there to kill him. Along the way though, she and some of the others discover someone in the program is stalking them and trying to kill them. The book is quite uneven, but intriguing on the issue of technology. Only someone in their twenties could possibly write a story that highlights the impressive skills of today's college students.

The Murrow Boys: Pioneers in the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism, Cloud and Olson - B+

              Because of the pioneering and pivotal role played by Edward R. Murrow and those who worked with him, the starting question for any group biography is who qualifies as one of the Boys. The authors decided on Mary Breckinridge, Cecil Brown, Winston Burdett, Charles Collingwood, William Downs, Thomas Grandin, Richard Hottelet, Larry LeSeur, Eric Sevareid, William L. Shirer, and Howard K. Smith. All but two were hired by Murrow and all worked with him during the war, or as part of the CBS team. "The Boys story of triumph and disappointment has all the sweep and drama of epic fiction." This "is a wholly factual account of how legends are born and dreams die."

            At CBS radio, its fledgling news department hired a director of talks for Europe in 1937, Ed Murrow, who in turn hired Shirer. They were CBS' only overseas reporters. They created overseas radio reporting as equals, but had a massive falling out a decade later. Murrow was refused acceptance in London's Foreign Correspondents Association, while Shirer was a well known reporter who was in Berlin when he was hired. New York asked for a roundup of Europe's reaction to the Anschluss, and Shirer delivered CBS' first radio news broadcast from London. "They set in motion a chain of events that would lead, in only one year, to radio's emergence as America's chief news medium and to the beginning of CBS' decades-long dominance of broadcast journalism." With Murrow in London and Shirer in Berlin, they reported Europe's slide to war. After the invasion of Poland, Murrow hired Grandin and Sevareid in Paris, LeSeur in London, and Breckinridge in Amsterdam. They reported on the phony war and Shirer continued to provide information from Berlin. Sevareid was the first to report that the Germans had broken through the Maginot Line, and later the first to announce France's capitulation. Shirer was in Compiegne to cover and broadcast the surrender of France. 

           "The Battle of Britain was about to begin. In a sense the Blitz was what Edward R. Murrow had been preparing for since he arrived in Europe in 1937." He and his Boys were now participants as they reported with the noise of bombs falling, and sirens wailing in the background. Beginning on Sept. 7th, London was bombed fifty seven nights in a row. Murrow's opening statement, "This -  is London" is likely the most famous opening introduction of any news report in history. Nightly, Murrow, Sevareid and LeSeur brought London's travails into American homes. Before the Blitz, 16% of Americans believed we should help the British. After one month of Murrow's reporting, the number moved up to 52%.  Edward R. Murrow, a poor boy from NC, was the toast of the town. However, for his great friend in Berlin, Bill Shirer, broadcasting from the German capital was wearing him out. He took leave to write a book and never returned. Murrow was crushed.

           When Sevareid was back in NY for a break, he realized something that he was sure the Boys didn't appreciate. They were stars, thanks to CBS' vast publicity operation and the fact that millions listened to them every day. Shirer's return to NY was front page news in the Times. He published 'Berlin Diary' which was a huge bestseller and CBS offered him his own show. Murrow hired Collingwood in London in the winter of 1941. Like almost everyone Murrow hired, Collingwood  had a strained  relationship with his dad, was filled with insecurities, and eventually, like all of them, wound up adoring Murrow. As the war spread,  Murrow brought on Brown in Italy and Burdett in Turkey. Smith joined the team in Berlin.  By that time, it was impossible to report from Germany and Smith received his exit visa on Dec. 5th and actually left on the 7th. America was now in the war.

        Brown was in Singapore when the Pacific war started and went to sea on the HMS Repulse. He was one of those rescued when it and the HMS Prince of Wales were sunk. Brown was so difficult that the British expelled him days before Singapore fell.  Brown went back to NY to receive awards and was promoted to a coveted sponsored spot, joining Shirer as true blue bloods in the business. Sponsored time on the radio could be worth a thousand dollars per week, but Brown ran afoul of his sponsors with his highly opinionated left wing observations. It was a point in time when those sponsors exerted influence on CBS and Brown left in a huff. 

      Sevareid was preparing to be the head of the DC bureau, but was bored and wanted to get back in the field. The administration suggested he go to China and off he went. On the way, he had to bail out of a plane over northern Burma and hike 120 miles through a jungle to get back to India. After a brief tour in Chunking he returned to Europe. "During the exhilarating few months before the invasion of France, Murrow and the Boys strode through London and Europe like lords of the realm, admired and respected by peers and heads of state... Time and again they scooped their print competitors...Newspapers and magazines printed articles about them." Of the few dozen embedded journalists approved for D-Day, five were from CBS. Le Seur landed on Utah beach in the early morning and provided the best coverage. The Boys marched across France and into Germany with the troops. Hottelet was the first into Germany,  the first to report the Battle of the Bulge, and in the spring, parachuted out of a burning B-17. He was with the Yanks who met the Soviets on the Elbe and the first into Berlin. Collingwood was there when Jodl surrendered. Murrow reported V-E Day from London. As they headed into the post-war world, Murrow wrote "I cannot believe that I shall again have the high privilege of working intimately and harmoniously with a crew such as the one we gathered in Europe."

    This is a truly great book about very famous pioneering Americans. I remember many of them who eventually transitioned to tv. I've read biographies of Murrow and  Cronkite (UPI) and have as much respect for these men as I do for the boys who fought the war. Thanks to my brother for the recommendation. Note that I chose to not read the last third of the book, where the topics are infighting, the struggles with management, moving to tv, and the eventual gutting of the CBS' news division.

Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 193 And The Raid On Entebbe Airport, The Twentieth Century's Greatest Special Forces Mission, David - B+

          On June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 193 from Tel Aviv to Paris added a stop to its itinerary. Many of the passengers were alarmed when they learned that Athens was now scheduled, as the Greek capital's airport was known for its lax security. Eight minutes after takeoff from Athens, a German who had just boarded took out a pistol and told the pilot to fly to Libya. Two hijackers were German and two Palestinians. Twelve crew and 246 passengers (83 Israelis) were aboard. The plane refueled at Benghazi and took off again later in the day. At 3:20 AM the next day, the Airbus 300 landed in Entebbe, Uganda. It appeared as if the Ugandans were in on the hijacking. Idi Amin, the president for life dictator, was no friend of the Israelis or the West.

       The Israelis started to think through what they could do to rescue people 2,000 miles away. On the third day, the hijackers published their demands for the release of dozens of prisoners, mostly in Israel and W. Germany. On June 30th, forty seven hostages, mostly older or children, were set free and flown to France. Another hundred were freed on the 1st, including non-Israeli Jews. Israel announced it would negotiate with the hijackers, although there was little agreement amongst the cabinet about actually following through. The Israeli Defense Force came up with a plan that involved flying five US built Hercules C 130's to Entebbe and taking out the hijackers. The Israelis were confident that the Ugandans would not fight them. Arrangements were made to refuel for the return in Kenya.  On the second, the Israeli cabinet approved the rescue attempt.

       At 1:40 PM on the afternoon of the 3rd, the planes took off from the Sinai. They flew south over the Red Sea at an altitude of 100 feet. Each plane was two tons over the maximum weight for lift off. They landed a minute after midnight in Entebbe. The lead plane carried a Mercedes and two Land Rovers. The commandos were dressed as Ugandan soldiers. The Mercedes was painted to look just like the one that Idi Amin used. Fifty yards from the terminal, the raid's commander, Lt. Col. Yoni Netanyahu, shot a guard, leading to a machine gun returning fire from the tower. Ironically, Netanyahu, the only special forces casualty, was hit immediately. In less than 10 minutes, the hostages were freed, the hijackers were dead, as were 20 Ugandan soldiers. Three hostages caught in the crossfire were also dead. As an accommodation to the Kenyans, the commandos destroyed the dozen Ugandan MIGs. The Israelis were all back in the air less than two hours after landing.

        The commandos were welcomed and hailed in Israel and considered as important as those who had won Israel's many wars. Their success led to every western nation adopting special anti-terrorist commando units. The author quotes noted British historian Max Hastings at length. "In a world of tragedies and frustrations, few people...have forgotten the great uplift that day gave us. Terror was not invincible. Outrage could be fought and conquered. But only the Israelis...could have displayed the boldness and brilliance to launch and execute such an operation, half a continent away.""With hindsight, that day might also be perceived as the high-water mark of Israel's standing in the world, as a bastion of Western values in the Middle East, and a force for the pursuit of justice and freedom. Thereafter, amid the growing rancor of failed diplomacy, the brutal suppression of Palestinian dissent and the invasion of Lebanon, world sentiment drifted steadily away from support for Israel's policies." This is great read and highly recommended. Thanks to my brother Will for the recommendation.

      

    

Personal Librarian, Benedict and Murray - B+

            This fabulous novel is an imagining of the career of Belle da Costa Greene, a woman of African-American descent who passed as white. She was so brilliant, savvy and witty that she worked for J.P.Morgan and helped to assemble his world-famous library. She was from a family of college-educated Blacks and had worked as a librarian at Princeton for six years before she was hired by Morgan. She quickly becomes his right hand and partner in art acquisitions. Soon, she's at the Opera, the Symphony and parties at the Vanderbilt's. Throughout her time mingling with the rich and negotiating in the all-male world of art dealers, she is on guard. The line is that her grandmother was Portuguese, but one misstep can out her.

          A month long fling with a noted expert on Italian art while in Europe, and the termination of a pregnancy, throw her structured life into turmoil. After a stern remonstrance from her mother, she pulls it together and is on the job in the spring of 1913 when she learns that Morgan has died in Rome. She is alone. She slowly recovers and JP's son, Jack, advises her that she will stay on permanently and that his father bequeathed her $50,000. She continues to dazzle the art world, and reconciles with her father, who had started her on the path toward art studies when she was younger. She hopes to convince Jack to make the library a public one. He does and in 1924 it becomes a public reference library and art gallery, with Belle as its director.

      Belle retired in 1948 and died two years later. It appears she never publicly acknowledged passing in the white world. This a great book, one of the NYT's top ten of 2021. Thanks so much to Wendell for the recommendation.

Massacre Pond, Doiron - B+

           A wealthy woman has plans for the hundreds of thousands of acres she has purchased in Washington County, Maine. She would like to donate the land for the creation of a new national park. Every elected official in the state is opposed, as are all of her neighbors. People there need the land to hunt, fish, and work. Ten moose are murdered near her home, her house is shot up and her college age daughter is murdered. The lieutenant in charge assigns Mike a bunch of meaningless chores, but he sticks to his assignment and plays it by the book. On the periphery of the investigation, he sees enough to solve it on his own. 

Nine Lives, Swanson - B

       This is a modern iteration of Agatha Christie's famous 'And Then There Were None.' A dying New England man thinks back to the tragic death of his ten year old sister sixty years ago and plots the deaths of the children of those who contributed to it. He sends a list to nine people with no explanation and no hints about what the list is about. As one of the recipients is an FBI agent, the first death is noticed and a nationwide search ensues. This is a fast paced, well done page turner.

Midnight Murders, John - B+

             This is a finely done fast paced thriller set in a massive psychiatric hospital in the UK. The key character, Trevor, is a cop who got so badly beaten that he has been there for months recovering. When bodies start popping up in the garden, his colleagues descend in full force to solve the murders. The background is the complexities of the institution, its decrepit physical plant, its overwrought doctors and nurses and its philandering director.  

Sword and Scimitar, Scarrow - B+

           This novel is about the 1565 siege of Malta, which pitted the Order of St. John against the vastly superior attacking forces of the Sultan Suleiman. The Great Siege was a pivotal moment in European history. From the time of their conquest of Constantinople in 1454 until their defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1683, the Turks threatened Christian Europe and struck fear in the hearts of all. A few hundred men on Malta were all that was left of the Order that had fought in the Crusades. The Turks had ejected them from Rhodes in 1522. The island was defended by 500 knights, 3,000 soldiers from Italy and Spain, and 3,000 locals. The Turks arrived on May 8th with close to 40,000 men, many of whom were top flight infantry and cavalrymen. Grand Master LaValette ordered all civilians into the forts, the destruction of all crops, the burning of all houses, and the despoliation of all wells. The Turks landed on the south shore on the 9th and began to attack the forts and the city. They bombarded Ft. Elmo at the mouth of the harbor day and night throughout May, stormed it, and took it on June 23rd. Six thousand Turks died in the assaults on the fort; fifteen hundred defenders perished as well. Both sides fought to a standstill over the summer, slowly and inexorably grinding each other down. As fall approached and the rain began, the Turks made a last gasp attempt to seize the town Birgu, where the remaining civilians and soldiers were. Over three days of fighting, they breached the first wall, but failed before they could take the second. The Turks were as exhausted as the defenders. La Valette sensed that it might soon be over. And it was on September 7th when 8,000 men arrived from Spain to raise the siege. Six days later, they attacked and defeated the remaining Turks. I have skipped over the people who  drove the novel forward in order to focus on the history. Well-written historical novels enlighten us on some of the specifics of a time and this one has added immensely to my feel for medieval warfare.

Operation Pedestal: The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942, Hastings - B

            The largest Royal Navy fleet since Jutland went to sea in August, 1942. Over fifty ships escorted 14 merchantmen to the besieged island. Germany and Italy fought fiercely to maintain their control of the Mediterranean. 

           The strategic location of the island placed it between the Axis powers and their armies in Africa, and for the British, it was the only land they held between Gibraltar and Alexandria. The Germans began bombing in late 1941. Months of bombing led to food rationing among the 300,000 residents. No supplies could get through and the island was emotionally preparing to surrender. Churchill insisted the island be relieved and the navy started to identify battleships and carriers to accompany the fastest merchant ships available. "Pedestal's air contingent was the strongest the Royal Navy could provide in August 1942, but was sadly inadequate for the challenge...fighting shore based aircraft, most of which flew higher and faster." They entered the Straits of Gibraltar on August 9th. The Italian fleet and 600 Axis aircraft were waiting for them. On the 11th, 37 Spitfires took off for a one-way trip to Malta. At the same time, four torpedoes slammed into Eagle, a carrier. She went down in less than 10 minutes taking 160 men and 16 Hurricanes with her. At dusk, 27 Ju88's appeared overhead, but high altitude bombing proved to be ineffective. On the next day, the fleet sailed through the Sicilian Narrows, only one hundred miles wide and 150 miles from Italian airbases. Wave after wave of air attacks only managed to cripple a merchant ship and the British were able to sink two Italian submarines. Then at dusk, the final wave saw multiple hits on the carrier Indomitable from dive bombers, but she stayed afloat. Recognizing that he had lost one of the navy's seven carriers and almost a second, Adm. Syfret withdrew the capital ships to Gibraltar, and sent the fleet on with cruisers and destroyers as escorts. There was no more air cover. 

          As darkness fell, the submarines attacked. A cruiser, the Nigeria, a destroyer and the most important merchant vessel were hit. The Nigeria was Adm. Burrough's flagship and he transferred to a destroyer with markedly inferior communication equipment. The destroyer Cairo sank. The Ohio, lent by the US and manned by the British, was a tanker full of petrol. The Luftwaffe returned and sank a merchantman, Empire Hope. Another merchant ship was damaged, Brisbane Star,and the Clan Ferguson were sunk. Fortunately, the Ohio continued on. They were still 300 miles from Malta. In the opening minute of the 13th, the first of the nineteen Axis torpedo boats struck, hitting the cruiser Manchester.  The ship was badly damaged and the captain scuttled her. The merchantman Glenorchy, the Almeria Lykes, Wairangi and the Santa Elisa were all sunk before the sun was up. At dawn on the 13th, they were 140 miles from Malta. The seven merchant ships left were attacked by dive bombers and the Waimarama, filled with aviation fuel and munitions, was blown sky high. The Ohio was stopped dead in the water. Spitfires from Malta began to provide some assistance. Another merchantman was sunk around noon. The Italian torpedo planes made the last attack at mid-afternoon.

     Three merchant ships entered Grand Harbor at six in the evening. Another freighter arrived the next day. A total of 32,000 tons out of the 84,000 that started out made it to its destination. The most important item, the one without which the island could not survive was aviation fuel for the 186 Spitfires that provided its defense. The Ohio was still 100 miles away, dead in the water, and taking on water. The RN began to tow it. It limped into the harbor on the morning of the 15th. Because the Axis sank so many ships, history has been divided on who was successful here. And, whether or not keeping Malta in British hands was worth the effort has also been discussed. Nonetheless, a film, 'Malta Story' was made in the 1950's.

            

An Empire of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood, Gabler - B-

           Hollywood, and the American Dream it presented to the world, was created and run for thirty years by Jews from Eastern Europe. Then their sons managed the greatest era in the history of the industry. The writers, lawyers, and agents were Jews as well. The anti-semitic reaction began immediately, and culminated in the Red-baiting of the 1950's. 

         Carl Laemmle (Universal) was born in Germany in 1867; Adolph Zukor (Paramount) was born in Hungary in 1873; William Fox (Fox) was born in Hungary in 1879; Louis B. Mayer(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) was born in Russian 1885; and the Warner boys (Warner Brothers) were born in Poland, Canada and the US. "What united them in deep spiritual kinship was their utter and absolute rejection of their pasts and their equally absolute devotion to their new country." All grew up very, very poor. They desperately wanted to assimilate, to be American. And they created the visualization of what America and Americans should be.

       Adolph Zukor, an orphan, came to America at the age of 16. He trained as a furrier, built a successful business, and as the new century began was a rich New Yorker. He turned to the ownership and promotion of arcades showing 30 second videos. He opened a movie theater. He believed that what was needed was longer quality films. He was soon making films of plays and books. He combined his business with Paramount, a fledgling producer of films, and was now running a studio. 

     The affable Carl Laemmle moved to America in 1883, where he spent years failing at endeavor after endeavor. He did reasonably well in an Oshkosh clothing business and while visiting Chicago, was amused by a 5 cent motion picture and purchased a theatre. He began to buy and rent films. By 1911, he was the largest distributor of films in the US and moved to New York. Films were not watched by the broad middle class, but almost exclusively by immigrants. Considered a low-life business, the wealthy establishment eschewed any financial interest in movies. "Laemmle, who failed to scale even the lower reaches of American industry, now presided over a considerable domain - one built on outsiders and the culturally disenfranchised like himself. And these would be his troops in the war that followed when the Jews would take over the movie industry for good." Laemmle formed Universal in the midst of NYC's distribution wars in the 1910's. 

       William Fox was "obsessed with success," quit school at 11 and was a clothing foreman at 13. He and a friend purchased a movie theater in Brooklyn in 1903. Within a decade, he was a wealthy man and Fox Film was a success. 

       Louis B. Mayer, claiming his birth records were lost, took July 4th as his birthday. He was raised in New Brunswick, Canada, and went to work at 12. He left for Boston when he was 19. A few years later, he leased a theater and began exhibiting films. In 1911, he built a 1600 seat theater. He was a principal in the creation of the film distributor Metro Pictures. He produced a few films and decided it was time to head to California. "Another blandishment that must have drawn the Jews to California was that, unlike in the east, the social structure was primitive and permeable." He merged Metro and Goldwyn to form MGM. 

      Harry and Jack Warner were the sons of a Polish shoe maker who immigrated to Baltimore. They were complete opposites who hated each other. Their father's devotion to religion was a major dividing point. Harry could speak Hebrew at seven; Jack never tried. Harry believed in promoting tolerance and justice; Jack didn't care. Their entry point also was film exhibition. They soon moved to production and to Hollywood. Their reputation was that they were iconoclastic and aggressive, a reputation they cemented when they were the first to introduce sound. With 'The Jazz Singer', they assured that sound was here to stay. 

     The toughest and meanest of them all was Harry Cohn at Columbia. Born in NY in 1891, he was bit of a street hustler whose brother Jack got him a job at Universal. They left and formed their own company. Columbia teamed up with an unknown director named Frank Capra and together, they built a powerhouse. Cohn wanted power, Capra recognition. Together, they achieved their goals.

     By the 1930's, the studio system, with its emphasis on control, was fully entrenched. "The moguls made the studios in their images to actualize their own dreams." A Warner film was scrappy, quick, topical and a product of a tight-fisted organization. MGM's heroes were tall, elegant and attractive; Paramount's continental. Warner's stars were Cagney, Robinson, Bogart, Raft and Davis, all fighters and strivers, often in urban settings. Warner's America was a tough place where the little guy didn't have it easy. Their films were "the least assimilative." Warner pushed his people, worked them very hard and they often rebelled against his demands. At Columbia, Cohn ran the studio like "a private police state." His America was Capra's, one propelled by ruthless capitalists against whom good guys like Stewart or Cooper pushed back. It was a "populist America of sinister forces at the top pitched against decency at the bottom..." Columbia's stars - Colman, Stanwyck, Arthur and Grant - weren't remotely ethnic. At Paramount, "the pictures purred with the smooth hum of sophistication." Zukor viewed his movies "as a source of intellectual elevation." Universal was known for its westerns and horror films and received half of its revenue from Europe. The studio struggled in the '30's, not the least because it specialized in nepotism; at one point with seventy of Laemmle's relatives on the payroll. "In the thirties, there was no doubt that MGM was the Tiffany of studios..." They had the best talent and paid well for the privilege. Mayer was obsessed with being the best. He wanted to project beauty on the screen; he wanted to be a father to the big MGM family.  His stars were Gable, Astair, Turner, Garbo, Crawford, and Garland. 

   Politically, the Jews of Hollywood were reactionaries. They also were the highest paid people in America. In the mid-30's, forty of the sixty-five highest paid Americans were Hollywood execs. In 1934, they worked together to thwart the gubernatorial candidacy of Upton Sinclair. The younger, better educated Jews who worked for them as writers disagreed. A Jewish actor formed the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. The communist party also took root. The rise of Hitler garnered the attention of the leaders of the industry. Laemmle and Zukor helped hundreds escape. However, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, and not wishing to hurt their European business, the studios were slow to confront the Nazis. Once they began to do so, Sen. Wheeler called for an investigation into why Hollywood was encouraging America to end its neutrality. With the onset of war, Hollywood was on the side of the angels. Hollywood's leftward leanings came under attack later by the House Un-Americam Activities Committee (HUAC). Inspired by rabid anti-semitism, HUAC came after Hollywood after the war. The hearings began in Washington in October, 1947. The studio heads feared that the protestant establishment that shunted them into a marginal business that they turned into a world class industry, was coming to take that industry and their wealth away. Ten witnesses refused to answer the committee's questions and were held in contempt. The industry folded. It fired the Hollywood Ten and promised to not hire known communists.

   The moguls were aging and slowly losing their personal control of their empires. In an agreement with the DOJ, the studios divested themselves of their theater holdings. Zukor, Fox and Laemmle had left in the thirties. Mayer was distracted by his wife's long illness. Cohn simply lost his ability to dominate everything. Jack Warner convinced his brothers to sell the business, which they all did. The next day he bought it back. He and Harry never spoke again. After needing a year to recover from a car accident, Jack came back but the role of the studio was diminishing daily. A decade later, he sold his interest's in his company. Mayer resigned from MGM after a battle with his production team. "Though it was a purveyor of sentiment, Hollywood was, as Mayer learned, a notoriously unsentimental place." He became a bitter, lonely old man. Slowly, the founding moguls passed away, Zukor was the last dying at 103 in 1976. "What remains is the America of our imaginations and theirs. Out of their desperation and their dreams, they gave us this America."

   In many ways, this is an exasperating book. It's quite long and at times goes into incredible detail, yet loses track of the big picture. It opens with specificity about all of the moguls and then focuses on Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer for almost all of the second half of the book. I kept wondering what happened to the others. I do not know how one could run through the 1930's without any mention of all the Europeans who came to Hollywood. From a continuity standpoint, it's been a bit of a challenge. However, it affirms the obvious about this niche area of Jewish immigrant history. The German, Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants of the 19th century disrupted and changed American society, I like think for the better. With fewer people, the Jews did it faster than anyone else I can recollect.

  

     

Berlin Exchange, Kanon - B+

         In this novel set in 1963, American physicist Martin Keller, imprisoned in the UK for a decade for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets, is exchanged and crosses into E. Berlin. His motive in going to E. Germany is that he would like to get to know his 12-year old son. He and his wife had divorced when he was imprisoned. Both are die-hard believers. When he and Sabine have a few moments together, he tells her that she had to be the one who turned him in, and she acknowledges that she was ordered to in order to protect someone higher up. She also advises him that she is dying of lung cancer and it's imperative that he look after their boy, Peter. His KGB handler tells him he has to go to work again, and without a choice, he agrees to keep his ears open at his new place of work. He is assigned to work on the bomb again, and spying on his old friends. He realizes he can't do it and tells Sabine, also born in the US, that they have to take Peter to America, they need to leave. He orchestrates an elaborate scheme to leave and, although there are are some glitches, he pulls it off. A well done effort by a skilled writer of post-war Germany novels. Interestingly, E. Germany exchanged thousands of people and returned them, or sent them, to the west for hard currency. It is estimated that billions of Deutschmarks flowed into the GDR over the course of its failed existence.

The Matchmaker, Vidich - B+

       The story opens in Berlin in the fall of 1989. Anne is an American interpreter for the occupying authorities, and her husband Stefan is a piano tuner who travels the continent. In reality, Stefan is/was a Stasi agent, part of the Matchmaker's tactic of marrying Stasi men to westerners as part of a spy network. Stefan was also skimming from the E. Germans, and had a wife and son on the other side of the wall. He goes missing and the W. Germans think she is complicit, the E. Germans want to find him, and both sides are interested in his Swiss bank account. Anne resolves to help the wife and son and is working to help them escape when Stefan shows up on the night of November 8th. The following evening, when the wall comes down, all are able to crossover, except Stefan, whom the Stasi nab at the last moment. A month later, Stefan's cremains are delivered to the family apartment. For the W. Germans, the pursuit of the Matchmaker is on. For Anne it's simply about trying to understand what happened to her, and extracting a degree of  revenge.  This one stumbles a bit at the end, but Anne does get even.

Blackout, Scarrow - B

            Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke is in charge of the 12 man Kripo unit at the Pankow precinct in Berlin in the freezing December of 1939. His politics are marked by ambivalence. He is called in by the head of the Gestapo to handle what he characterizes as a "delicate matter." The wife of a high party official has been murdered and the matter must be handled with finesse. Subtlety, however, is not the name of the game because the murderer is a serial killer. Schenke manages to fight through the interference of the Gestapo and the Abwehr, while holding to his values as an apolitical investigator. This a good historical fiction/police procedural, one that ably discusses the challenge of enforcing the law in a country ruled by criminals.

Eight Days In May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, Ullrich - B

        This is an effort by an esteemed  German historian to sort through the chaotic week between Hitler's suicide on April 30th and Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8th. It was sort of a "temporal no man's land" between the past and future. National Socialism had collapsed, but the Allies were not yet in control. 

       Hitler spent his last day bidding farewell to his staff and tending to some of the details of the war. He shot himself in the head and his wife Eva took cyanide at about 3:30 PM. Their bodies were burned and their remains buried in a bomb crater. A few hours later, a telegram from Bormann advised Adm. Donitz that he was now the leader of the nation.

       On the 1st, the Battle of Berlin continued unabated. Donitz "saw his main task as to continue the war on the eastern front long enough to allow as many soldiers and refugees as possible to escape capture by the Red Army." In the Fuhrerbunker, the Goebbels' followed Hitler's suicide path and everyone else tried to escape. From the east, Walter Ulbricht, who would run E. Germany for years, arrived in Berlin from Moscow. 

        On the 2nd, Berlin radio announced that the Fuhrer was dead. The reaction was rather muted. The Wehrmacht announced a cease fire and the surrender of the city. The civilian population was relieved and the conquerors were jubilant. The plunder and rape of German women by the Red Army began immediately. Ulbricht would allow no discussion of this, would take no action, and prohibited abortions. That evening, 600,000 men surrendered in Italy. Werner von Braun and his team surrendered to the Americans in Bavaria.

      On the 3rd, Donitz's government discussed trying to surrender in the west, but to continue to fight the Russians. The military and civilian leadership of Hamburg surrendered the city to the British. German leadership offered to surrender all forces in the northwest to Montgomery, but he refused to accept the surrender of Army Group Vistula fighting the Russians. He offered to accept a tactical surrender of those in the north, including occupied Denmark and the Netherlands. 

     On the 4th, Donitz approved the partial surrender in the west. "Along with entire army groups, individual armies and divisions also tried to save themselves from Russian captivity by surrendering to the Americans or the British." That afternoon American and French soldiers took Hitler's redoubt at Obersalzberg. 

    On the 5th, the people of Prague took to the streets to rebel against the remaining power Germany had in the protectorate. The following morning, Waffen-SS troops attacked the civilian rebels, but soon abandoned the city. The Russians would arrive on the 9th. As the Reich continued to collapse, not just German soldiers, but millions of slave laborers and concentration camp survivors fell into the hands of the Allies. Neither the western powers nor the Russians were equipped to effectively process, house, or feed them.

   The 6th saw continued efforts by the German high command to surrender in the west. Eisenhower let it be known that the only option was unconditional surrender of the Reich's remaining fighters. 

   On the 7th, Donitz authorized an unconditional surrender and Jodl signed it in Reims early in the morning. It took effect on the following midnight. Stalin insisted on a surrender to the Red Army too, and that took place in Berlin on the 8th. Of the three million men fighting on the eastern front, about half surrendered to the British and Americans, and half to the Russians. The war in Europe was over. 

    "Most Germans, even those critical of the regime, regarded May 8, 1945, not as a day of liberation but as an unprecedented national catastrophe." The Donitz government, although it had nothing to do, continued for two weeks before it was abolished and its members arrested. The Allies noticed two themes in the German population. They tried very hard to curry favor with the occupiers, while claiming their surprise at all of the exposed atrocities. Most Germans felt that they were victims. All of the senior ministers, generals and gauleiters were collected in a hotel in Belgium. Fifty-two of the highest ranking Nazis were at the Palace Hotel in Mondorf. Almost all were transferred to Nuremberg for their trials. And as unlikely as it seemed in May, 1945, Germany revived and is now a "nation defined by stability, freedom, and peace." This a very good, precise and concise history of that fateful week.

      

   

Woman On Fire, Barr - B+

                 The title is the name of a painting that is very important to two people. The first is Ellis Baum, the dying son of the woman who was the model for the artist. As a boy in Berlin, he saw Nazis take away the picture and take away his mother. The painter was considered degenerate, and he too was consigned to the ashes. The second is Margaux de Laurent, whose grandfather was a Parisian art dealer who purchased the painting in a 1938 Swiss auction of paintings confiscated in Germany and sold to raise capital. Her grandfather lost it to the Nazis when they occupied France. Its appearance in the apartment of the son of the Nazi collector has set both Ellis and Margaux trying to locate it. This is a well done thriller with some very nice background on the world of high fashion, and the amazingly complex world of stolen art, its recovery and the endless legal/moral issues that the world still faces.

I Am Not Who You Think I Am, Rickstad - C

        Something incongruous about the day his father killed himself always stuck with him. His dad was over six feet tall, but he remembered his dad's feet not touching the floor as he sat on his bed and pulled the trigger. He sets off at the age of 16 to try and sort out exactly what happened and if it really was his dad. A fast-paced, incredibly well done page turner crashes and burns with a weak, preposterous finale.

Watergate: A New History, Graaf - A*

              "At its simplest, Watergate is the story of two separate criminal conspiracies: the Nixon world's dirty tricks that led to the burglary on June 17, 1972, and then the subsequent cover-up." The story is of course bigger and more complicated. The genesis of Watergate was the administration's anger with ongoing leaks to the press. After eighteen wiretaps of WH staff came up empty, Nixon ordered an expansion of the taps when the Pentagon Papers release in the summer of 1971 burst onto every front-page in the country. Although the Nixon administration was not even mentioned, an enraged Kissinger demanded an aggressive WH response to the Papers. Thus, the Plumbers, managed by Egil Krogh and reporting to Ehrlichman, were born. A Hunt/Liddy burglary of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office came up empty. Throughout the planning for the 1972 election Liddy, now charged with Intelligence for CREEP,  pushed Mitchell for approval of an endless list of burglaries, wiretaps, dirty tricks and illegal acts. Mitchell later swore he never approved anything, and it's likely that the okay for the Watergate break-in came from Magruder. The first entry into the DNC headquarters came on May 28th. They came back to replace a failed bug on June 16th. A little after midnight, Barker, McCord, Gonzalez, Martinez, and Sturgis were arrested. Liddy and Hunt, watching from across the street, quickly fled. "By the time dawn rose in Washington, the cover-up had begun."

            With McCord on the CREEP payroll and Hunt, a WH employee whose name was in a burglar's notebook, stress pulsed through the administration. The Post assigned Woodward to the case and by late Sunday, he knew that Hunt worked for Colson. The first official lie came that same day when Mitchell disavowed McCord. It was soon determined that all of the burglars had CIA connections, leading Nixon to suggest that the CIA be told to call off the FBI in the interests of national security. Dean was sitting in on some of the FBI interviews and reading all the FBI interview files from June until the following April. The president pointed out that the place to get money for the burglars was the Miami Cuban community. 

            The FBI was in management turmoil. When Hoover died in May, Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray as acting director. Gray was a capable former submarine officer with no familiarity with law enforcement. His acting deputy, Mark Felt, was a career agent who believed he should be in charge. He undermined Gray at every turn, and began leaking prodigiously to the press. Almost four decades later, he would acknowledge that he was Deep Throat.

           The WH had Mitchell resign for personal reasons, an idea that was readily accepted because of his wife's erratic conduct, while Dean was successful in raising the money for the burglars and E. Howard Hunt. Within a few weeks, the story died. But, the FBI, the Post and the Times continued to plug away. The administration stated that everyone should cooperate with the investigation, and then spent the summer "constructing an elaborate series of lies, suborning perjury, and constructing half-truths to obfuscate the campaign's darkest corners.'' The President acknowledged to his staff that the hush money was keeping Hunt et. al. quiet. The first indictments came in September with the five burglars, Liddy, and Hunt the only ones to face justice. Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean gloated over the success of the containment. The Post, Time, and the LA Times continued to find suspicious kernels of extensive impropriety, but were not yet able to tie it all together. Walter Cronkite mused on CBS that there may be more to Watergate than we know, but the election came without the affair having any impact on the nation or the outcome. Nixon won in a massive landslide. He seemed untouchable.

           Five defendants pleaded guilty and two mounted virtually no defense. Barely any information about motive or all the money floating around surfaced. Judge John Sirica felt that the wool was being pulled over his eyes. In the Senate, a Select Committee On Presidential Campaign Activities was created under the chairmanship of Sam Ervin.  As the committee began its work, and while John Sirica was trying to get the seven convicted men to talk, Dean met with Nixon on March 21st and mentioned the "cancer" on the presidency. Dean detailed at length all that he had done throughout the cover up, as well as Haldeman's and Ehrlichman's involvement. It was the same meeting where Nixon said he knew where to get millions in cash. As March 1973 came to an end, the unravelling began. James McCord told Sirica that Mitchell, Magruder, and Dean authorized the burglary, and orchestrated the payoffs to the burglars. Dean began to realize there was no way out and hired counsel. He met with the prosecutors, as did Magruder  a few days later. Nixon announced there would be new details forthcoming because he was now investigating. Acting Director Gray resigned after acknowledging he destroyed evidence. Nixon summoned Haldeman and Ehriclman to Camp David and asked them to resign. AG Kleindienst also resigned. Dean's secretary called to tell him he'd been fired. Mitchell and Stans were indicted.

        On May 17, 1973, the Watergate Committee began its public hearings. McCord, Magruder and quite a few others preceded the star, John Dean, in June. He spent nine hours reading a 245 page statement. After hearing Dean, Tip O'Neill began to consider how the House would handle an impeachment. One of the WH lawyers told  a colleague about the president,"I've listened to some of the tapes, and he was in the cover-up right up to his eyeballs from the beginning." On July 16, likely the most stunning revelation of Watergate came when Alexander Butterfield, formerly Haldeman's assistant, was speaking. He made the committee, and the world, aware of the extensive recording system in the WH. No longer was Dean's testimony the only source of information about the cover up. Immediately, Ervin issued a subpoena as did Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor. Over the summer, the Committee presented 257 hours of testimony that was carried on all three networks. Watergate dominated America as millions watched daily. Sirica ordered that the subpoenaed tapes be turned over to him so he could determine the merits of Nixon's executive privilege claims. Tension was building for the president on the issue of the tapes and, in particular, the tactics of Cox. A Gallup poll showed less than 9% of the country thought Watergate was important, and Nixon kept preaching that he had nothing to do with the break-in or the cover-up. He said that he needed to get back to running the nation.

      "October 1973 would prove to be perhaps the most historic single month in the history of the American presidency..." Agnew pleaded guilty to bribery charges and resigned the vice-presidency. In the Middle East, Egypt and Syria started what would be known as the Yom Kippur War and placed a first-class foreign crisis on Nixon's desk. Israel was on the threshold of defeat. Nixon ordered an airlift that gave the Israelis the material they needed to safeguard their borders and take the offensive. An appeals court rejected Nixon's arguments and ordered the tapes turned over. Dean pleaded guilty to a one count felony charge. Nixon focused on the idea of having a third party review the tapes, summarize them and make a decision about executive privilege. Cox rejected the idea. On the evening of the 20th, the attorney general and his deputy resigned rather than follow Nixon's order to fire Cox. The deed was done by the solicitor general. The event became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

      "Condemnation of the president's actions flowed from political allies and foes alike, and even from church pulpits across the nation." The country was outraged. The president's approval rating was 24%. In the House, eighty-four members proposed impeachment. On Tuesday, the president's lawyer announced that he would turn over the tapes. Leon Jaworski was appointed the new special prosecutor and Peter Rodino's House Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings. Editorials around the country began calling for the president to resign. His lawyers even suggested he resign. Then, the WH went public with the eighteen minute erasure of a Watergate conversation that Nixon and Haldeman had the previous June. When the special prosecutors finally listened to the subpoenaed tapes, they knew they had compelling evidence of crimes by Nixon. An investigation by the IRS^ revealed that the president had paid virtually no taxes because of a gift of papers to the National Archives and that the gift had been illegally backdated. At years end, Sirica graced Time's cover as its Man of the Year. Only fifty-two weeks earlier, it had been Nixon.

     The wheels of justice turned slowly. In March, the grand jury convened by the special prosecutor indicted Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Strachan, Mardian, and Parkinson. Nixon was an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator. In late April, the president released 1300 pages of transcripts that he told the nation showed that he knew nothing of the cover-up until March 21, 1973, the day of his meeting with Dean. Upon examination, the prosecutors noted that the WH had released a fraction of what they asked for. Even so, the country was appalled at what they read."Congress was furious, Nixon defenders dumbstruck, and the general public was repulsed." His former lawyer said, "Nixon released a thousand pages of mumbled plotting, twisting, turning, and double-dealing, all the numbing sleaziness of political men in desperate trouble, the whole mess compounded by countless transcription mistakes, arbitrary omissions, and perhaps worst of all, innumerable references throughout to expletive deleted." Most importantly, the Judiciary Committee and the special prosecutor subpoenaed tapes, and got transcripts. Starting in May, the committee heard testimony three days per week for ten weeks, and then began public testimony in early July. A unanimous Supreme Court affirmed that Nixon had to turn over all the subpoenaed tapes. On July 27, the committee voted 27-11 to impeach the president. A few days later, the transcript of the June 23rd meeting in which Nixon fully endorsed a cover up was released, and the committee's votes switched to make the recommendation unanimous. The WH concluded they probably had seven votes in the Senate. He resigned in a nationally televised broadcast on August 8th. He acknowledged no wrongdoing, just a lack of political support.

      On September 8, Ford pardoned Nixon. It was a very unpopular decision. Perhaps the most important long term consequence of Watergate was that the nation no longer trusted Washington. A noted observer said,"If Nixon's has bequeathed to his presidential successors a permanently hostile news system, he has cursed them all." The author closes with a most ironic observation. We still don't know who ordered the break in or what the burglars were trying to achieve. 

     I am struck by Mark Felt's duplicity and motivation after remembering his rather positive treatment in 'All The President's Men'. I am amazed by Kissinger's balancing act having called the WH staff "maniacs in a madhouse" and knowing full well that the president despised Jews. I am surprised that John Mitchell tried to stop John Dean from joining the WH staff which he characterized as a bunch of "looneys." As for the staff, they just seem grossly incapable and disconnected from reality. And for the president, I find it incomprehensible that he spent hours upon hours rambling on and on while he bathed in his unique mix of paranoia, anti-semitism, and delusion. My most important takeaway is that this book is a masterpiece, and I'd be shocked if it doesn't rack up some very serious awards.

     

        

*Although it would be almost thirty-five years before Deep Throat was identified, Mitchell told Haldeman it was Felt, and the WH decided it couldn't do anything about it without facing Felt's ire and disclosure of all he knew.

^Nixon was assessed a $440,000 tax bill.