Facing The Mountain: An Inspiring Story Of Japanese American Patriots in World War II, Brown - B

                    "At its heart, this is a story of young men - some of the bravest Americans, the Nisei warriors of World War II, and how they, through their actions, laid bare...what exactly it means to be American. But it's also the story of their immigrant parents, the Issei, who like other immigrants before them...faced suspicion and prejudice from the moment they arrived in America." "It's the story of the first Americans since the Cherokee in 1838 to face wholesale forced removal from their homes, deprivation of their livelihoods, and mass incarceration."

                     A third of Hawaii's residents in December, 1941 were of Japanese ancestry. One young man, Kats Miho, was a freshman at the University of Hawaii and a member of the Army ROTC.  Martial law was declared the afternoon of the 7th and the islands were completely blacked out. On Maui, Kats' father was arrested that same day. Issei were considered resident aliens and not allowed to become citizens. In January, Kats Miho and all of his colleagues in the ROTC were dismissed from their roles in the Territorial Guards.

                   A month later, FDR authorized the military to establish exclusion zones. The western sections of California, Oregon and Washington were designated as places requiring the expulsion of all Issei and Nisei. Knowing that the Hawaiian economy would collapse if the Japanese-Americans were removed, only people on FBI lists on the islands were incarcerated. In Salinas, CA, Rudy Tokiwa and his farmer parents were put behind barbed wire. In Seattle, Gordon Hirabayashi, a student at the University of Washington, refused to relocate and surrendered to the FBI. He apparently was the only person in the west coast exclusion zone to cite his constitutional rights and refuse to be relocated. Ironically, the law required people to consent to their exclusion and he could not be excluded without signing a form. Instead, he was jailed, indicted, and convicted. The Tokiwa family was sent to Poston, AZ. Meanwhile in Hawaii, Kats Miho worked as a laborer on Maui.

              On February 1, 1943, the US authorized the enlistment of Nisei. The Army expected 1500. Ten thousand volunteered. Kats Miho and his older brother were among them. Fred Kisaburo, son of an Issei laundryman in Washington, was outside of the exclusion zone, walked out of Gonzaga in Spokane, and enlisted the day he learned of the new rule. Rudy signed up at his internment camp. The members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team were sent to Mississippi for basic training. Basic is hard enough, but in addition to the incredible heat and humidity and living in the Jim Crow south, there was a constant ongoing confrontation between the Hawaiians and the Nisei from the west coast. The islanders were happy go lucky people used to a bountiful life in Hawaii, and whose family members were home and free. Most of the mainlanders families were imprisoned. Tensions between the two groups escalated until a chaplain and the commanding officer came up with plan. They sent the Hawaiians to visit two nearby internment camps. Chastened by what they saw, they paved the way toward a reconciliation of the two groups. By the time the 442nd went overseas, they were united. In May, 1944, they headed for Italy.

           Gordon Hirabashi was released from prison and returned to Washington to continue his work with the Quaker American Friends Service Committee. When he saw the questionnaire and loyalty oath that all Nisei were expected to sign, he refused. In the camps, traditional family ways were falling apart. Because everyone ate in canteens, the concept of the family meal was no more. The older Issei had nothing to do and lost their natural leadership roles and status. And after the US allowed Nisei to enlist, their daughters did the unthinkable. They ignored their parents and joined the Women's Army Corps.

           The 442nd marched north from Anzio in June. They entered western Tuscany and faced the Germans for the first time on June 26th. The infantry had a difficult first day, but the artillery excelled. Around them, death dominated the day, with Germans and their colleagues falling everywhere.  They fought continuously into July. Four hundred of the initial 4,000 were casualties. The Germans always commanded the higher ground that the 442nd approached. The Americans continued to move forward. They crossed the Arno and faced the Gothic Line constructed along the spine of the Apennines. They were also gaining attention back in the US for their successes, and their enemy called them 'the little iron men.' On Sept 6, they were pulled back to the south and sent off to Marseille for the attack up the Rhone Valley. They went back into action a month later in the Vosges. With their homeland just 30 miles away, the Germans fiercely defended every yard of ground. Relentless and constant combat ensued. They made headlines around the US for saving the 'Lost Battalion' of Texans surrounded by the Germans. 

          In late 1944, FDR ended the exclusion and evacuation protocols. The decimated 442nd was pulled out of the lines and given duty in the Maritime Alps far from the fighting. They took extended leave on the coast enjoying the Riviera at Christmastime. Gordon Hirabayashi was now married to a white woman, the father of twins and incarcerated for refusing the loyalty oath and the draft. In March, the 'Champagne Campaign' was over, and the 442nd headed back to Italy. The Fifth Army still had not breached the Gothic Line after seven months and wanted the 442nd to assist. Within two days, they broke through. Soon, the war in Europe ended. The surviving boys from the 442nd went home.

      The 442nd was the most decorated unit in the war. Its men received 21 Medals of Honor, 29 Distinguished Service Crosses, 560 Silver Stars, 4000 Bronze Stars and over 4,000 Purple Hearts. Nonetheless, the men were mostly met with continued unrelenting hatred as Japs when they returned to the mainland. Truman attempted to honor and compensate the Japanese-Americans abused during the war. He pardoned all of the draft resisters. In 1952, a law allowed the Issei to apply for US citizenship. Congress awarded the survivors of the camps $20,000 and an apology in 1988. In 2012, the Nisei warriors were presented with Congressional Gold Medals. Gordon Hirabayashi was posthumously award the Congressional Medal of Freedom.

     Thanks again to Carl Kreitler for the recommendation. This a fabulous story of courage in the face of appalling racism.

The Local, Hartstone - B+

                     This is a fabulous legal thriller written by an accomplished screenwriter. Jimmy Euchre is a patent lawyer practicing in Marshall, Texas in the Federal District Court. The EDTX attracts patent cases from around the country and the local bar works closely with larger out of town firms. One of Jimmy's clients is accused of murder, and wants Jimmy to represent him. He works with a lawyer from NY who had been in the US Attorney's office and together, they pull off the defense. This novel is a fun read with insights into Texas, with particular attention paid to how a small town far from the big cities has become one of the three busiest courts for patent issues in the US. Recommended.             

Do No Harm, Pobi - B

                 In the third in this series, Dr. Lucas Page is asked by the FBI to take a look at a sequence of killings involving physicians as victims. He realizes that the stakes are much higher and that there are over 30 physician murders over the last two years in Manhattan. There is no connection at any point between the victims and the killers or suspected killers. That makes Page suspect that there may be a  group with a person in charge who connects up different people who might wish to kill a physician. These books are always fun and the NYC settings make it more so for me. However, the conclusion here is somewhat baffling because we never find out why it was orchestrated.

Take Your Breath Away, Barclay - B

                   When Brie Mason goes missing, the police assume its her husband Andrew. He is soon persona non grata in his corner of Connecticut and four years later, he changes his name while attempting to rebuild his life. Six years after Brie's disappearance, her mother is dying and her brother decides to give his mother some hope. He hires an actress to impersonate his sister, which leads to a runaway cascade of unanticipated events. This is a modern day thriller par excellence that you'll knock off in a day. 

Widowmaker, Doiron - B

                 This is not one of the better novels in this series. Mike gets stabbed and while off to recover, gets involved in trying to find out what happened to a young man with whom he had a slight connection. The plot spins out of control and ends with a mass murder of a dozen young men working in a logging camp. The fun here continues to be insights into the wild world of the far north, and in this instance a lengthy discourse on hybrid wolves in North America. 

A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story Of Combat And Chivalry In The War-Torn Skies Of World War II, Makos - A

                     This is an excellent story about two pilots, one German, one American. 

                      Bavarian-born Franz Stigler flew 487 combat missions as a fighter pilot. Of Germany's 28,000 fighter pilots, only 1,200 survived the war. His father had flown in the first war, and he had flown a glider at the age of 12. By the time he was 22, he was a Lufthansa pilot. A year later, in 1938, the Luftwaffe came calling, and assigned him to train pilots. He was a flight instructor until he requested a combat assignment in late 1940. In the Spring of 1942, Stigler was sent to support the Afrika Korps. Flying and fighting in the desert offered opportunities, as Franz was an ace (5 kills) within a few months. But, the hardships were overwhelming. In the summer's heat, each man slept in a grave - a hollowed out hole in the ground with a tarp over it. In September, he took an eight week leave at home, after which he was assigned to Sicily. The fighting was complicated by the Allies growing numbers and better equipment. The following June, a P-40 riddled his Me-109 with bullets and he landed in the Mediterranean. He survived, just barely. With nineteen victories to his credit, Franz was transferred to Germany to help defend the Fatherland as it was being battered by Allied bombers. His squadron flew out of Wiesbaden every day to confront the B-17's.

                    Charlie Brown grew up in West Virginia, and was a pilot of a B-17 by the time he was twenty. At the end of 1943, Charlie and his crew flew from England to Germany on the their first combat mission. As they approached Bremen, flak blew out the planes nose, pierced a wing, took out an engine and damaged a second engine. They slowed after they turned toward home and were attacked by Me-109's, who shot away half the rudder and hit another engine. The B-17 was pummeled again and again, with damage everywhere, the radio out, and two men dead. His stabilizer was shot off and soon, Charlie was flying the plane in an upside down spin. With his oxygen gone, he passed out. The plane plummeted from 22,000 feet. Charlie came to at about 10,000 feet and pulled the plane out of its death drop so close to the city of Oldenburg that he blew shingles off roofs. Flying barely faster than his stall speed, Charlie headed for the Baltic and passed over a German fighter base. Eyeing the wounded B-17 and in need of a bomber to earn a Knights Cross, Franz Stigler took off. When he saw the condition of the B-17 he could not believe the plane was still airborne, and he concluded he didn't have the heart to destroy a handful of helpless men. Franz saluted Charlie and let him attempt to return to England. Three-quarters of the way across the North Sea, they were down to 500 feet. By the time Charlie landed the plane, they were running on one-and-a-half engines. A few months later, Charlie and his crew finished their 28th and final mission. Their war was over.

                  Franz's was not. He already had posted 300 combat missions by the time Charlie was finished. He continued flying two or three missions per day. By the end of the year, the Luftwaffe was a shadow of itself with Franz leading teenagers against the Allies, and facing devastating odds. In October, he was wounded and grounded. In the last month of the war, Franz and a handful of veterans took to the skies in Messerschmidt jets. He survived, surrendered to the Americans, and emigrated to Canada after the war. Because he flew a Me-109 in a few air shows, he was invited to Boeing's 1985 B-17 reunion. About the same time, Charlie began to wonder about the man who had saved his life. He got in touch with the magazine of the German pilots association and posed the question. In 1990, he received a letter from Franz.  They met the following year; their reunion attracted national media attention.  By virtue of the unusual circumstances of Franz not shooting down Charlie and his plane in 1944, the Air Force had hushed the matter up. Sixty-four years later the Air Force awarded Charlie the Air Force Cross and all of the crew received Silver Stars.

                This book tells a remarkable story. The chapters describing Brown and his crews first flight and the amount of destruction their plane took is as harrowing and  nerve wracking as anything I have read about WWII. It is incomprehensible that the plane stayed in one piece and that Brown could fly it for hours in that condition. The degree of professionalism amongst the Germans who fought for years is truly impressive. And not least of all, stories like this are a reminder that almost all of these courageous men were just boys. A magnificent read and one highly recommended. Thanks to Carl Kreitler for the suggestion.

The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, Guez - B-

          This 'factual' novel is the story of Mengele's thirty years in Argentina. He arrived in 1949 and went to work as a laborer. His circumstances improved when he let those in high places know who he was. His family's agricultural equipment business in Bavaria provided financial support.  Mengele began accumulating wealth and expanding the family business into both Argentina and Paraguay. The passage of time allowed him to obtain a German passport and birth certificate as Josef Mengele. The time for hiding had passed. He married his brother's widow in order to assure all of the family business assets stayed in the family. Happily married and making money, Mengele was feeling very good about life in South America in the mid-50's. 

          In 1959, he was indicted in Germany. Fearing possible extradition, he moved to Paraguay. A year later, the Mossad kidnappped Eichmann, but failed to find Mengele. The Nazis of South America became very wary, fearing the Mossad was constantly pursuing them. His wife returned to Germany, he burned his German passport and began life anew again as a Brazilian. With Eichmann captured, tried and hung, he was now the most wanted Nazi fugitive. He worked as a farmhand for a Hungarian couple who were paid nicely for harboring him. By the end of the decade, he was almost 60 and in failing health. Years of stress, anxiety, loneliness and manual labor have taken its toll. His endless complaining lead the Hungarians to throw him out and he found himself in a rundown small house. In 1976, Mengele suffered a stroke and is hospitalized for two weeks.

         Mengele's only son, Rolf, born in 1944, is a left leaning Munich lawyer who despises his surname and has only a limited memory of the 'uncle' who visited him when he was a young boy. Mengele begs his son to come and in October, 1977, he visits Brazil. Rolf confronts his father about his monstrous crimes at Auschwitz. Josef tells Rolf of the struggles Germany faced after WWI, of his belief in the policies of Hitler and that he just followed orders at Auschwitz. "After two days and two nights of relentless discussions, Rolf gives up. His father is stubborn, incurable and evil, a war criminal. a criminal against humanity, unrepentant." Miserable, and in ill health, he suffers a stroke while in the ocean and drowns on Feb.7, 1979.

Cairo 1921: Ten Days That Made The Middle East, Faught - B

                  The Conference, called by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, was to address issues left unresolved at Paris. It created two new states, Iraq and Jordan, and established Mandate Palestine. The purpose was to remake the Middle East after the tumultuous war that had ended the Ottoman Empire. Its intent was to establish independent states after a period of trusteeship under the League of Nations.

                 On October 3rd, 1918, in newly emancipated Damascus, Gen. Allenby told Prince Faisal and his British military advisor, Col. T. E. Lawrence, that independence was not imminent. There would be a French supervisory role in Syria. Unbeknownst to all but a few, France and Britain had previously allocated their interests for a post-war settlement without regard for Arab independence. Complicating matters further, Britain had made assurances to the Zionists. The Paris Peace Conference and the San Remo Conference a year later solidified European supervision of the Middle East. The ongoing European mandates were very unpopular in the Levant.

                   Churchill took over the Colonial Office in February, 1921. He brought on T.E. Lawrence as a special advisor. Their plan was to put Faisal on the throne in Iraq, and his brother Abdullah, in Transjordan. Churchill, Lawrence, and staff headed to Cairo for the conference, which opened on March 12. "Churchill, Lawrence and the rest of the Middle East Department worked hard to ensure...this conference would be both brief in duration and focused on producing tangible results." The first order of business was Iraq. Discussion of the few alternatives to Faisal were considered before the endorsement of Faisal as king. Both Churchill and  Lawrence wanted to see an independent Kurdistan, as they feared the Arabs would either ignore or suppress the Kurds. However, the majority conclusion was to keep the Kurds in Iraq. Churchill believed Abdullah as king of Transjordan was a necessity to establish a completely Arab state to the east of a Palestine he hoped could be balanced between Jew and Arab. A substantial subsidy for Ibn Saud was agreed to in order to keep him away from the new states to his north. On the 23rd, the principals departed for Jerusalem. Churchill spent days in Jerusalem discussing with Abdullah the need for him to support peace with the French in Syria, and to not allow Transjordan to become a base for anti-Jewish activity. To the Jews and Arabs of the Holy Land, he stressed the importance of working together to create a modern Palestine.

                  The following year was a "watershed" in the implementation of the Cairo Conference. The UK and Iraq signed the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. Abdullah settled in in Amman where he would rule for over three decades. However, in Palestine, the situation deteriorated. The Arabs protested vigorously about more Jews immigrating to the area.  Ultimately, the solutions set up in Cairo did not succeed. In Palestine neither the Jews nor the Arabs were willing to cooperate and share. Indeed, one scholar has said "Palestine was the greatest failure in the whole history of British imperial rule." In the dozen years before his death, Faisal was unable to break down Iraq's "traditional tribal society." Only in Jordan did the Cairo solution survive and succeed. Indeed today, Abdullah's great-grandson sits on the throne of the Middle East's only continual monarchy. It was granted complete independence from the UK in 1946.

              "Today, a hundred years later, it is hard to avoid concluding that the multivalent failure of the Cairo Conference's geopolitical prescriptions of the post-war Middle East may well have been a grand opportunity missed, the dire implications of which remain with us still."

The Lawless Land, Morrison + Morrison - B+

                     This intriguing novel is set in 14th century England and France, pits a good man, a knight and veteran of England's wars in France, against a corrupt Parisian cardinal and a scheming English earl. The world is still quaking and recovering from the Black Death, known then as the Great Mortality. Sir Gerard Fox rescues a young woman, Willa,  fleeing Earl Tonbridge and in possession of a document that Tonbridge has promised Cardinal Molyneux, who believes the document will give him the opportunity to achieve the Papacy in Avignon. Fox thwarts them and he and Willa, a ladies maid to the late Lady Isabel, create an intriguing team, one we will meet again. Because my favorite teacher in college, was a Medieval scholar, I've always liked the histories and the occasional novels that have crossed my path. This novel is especially well done because the brother in this brother and sister pairing is a specialist in page turning thrillers. His sister, in their first joint effort, is a Medieval specialist.

Blood Sugar, Rothchild - B+

                    Ruby sits in a Miami police station while a detective quizzes her about her husband Jason's death.  She is a successful psychologist with an undergraduate Yale degree, and a PhD. She is bemused about the fact that she has killed three people, but not the one she is being questioned about. The detective and an aggressive district attorney tie her into her priors and build a circumstantial case before the grand jury. This is a fun, fast, and very enjoyable read.

City On Fire, Winslow - B+

                  This is an absolutely fabulous novel set in Providence in the late 1980's.       The city is divided, with the Irish running the docks, the longshoreman's union and some loan sharks. The Italians hold the upper hand with the teamsters, construction unions, vending machines, gambling, and prostitution. The Moretti's and the Murphy's have long maintained an easy peace that falls apart when a young Murphy gets involved with a woman who was with one of the Moretti's.  The odds are against the Irish, who are now led by Danny Ryan, son-in-law to the fading John Murphy. Danny decides the only way to compete is to offer the Blacks what the Moretti's have, and Danny partners with Marvin Jones against Peter Moretti. The Italians hit the Blacks, and then set up the Irish with the FBI. Danny manages to get away with his dad and two-year-old son. This is apparently the first in a trilogy. As the author wrote the magnificent Cartel Trilogy, I'm certain we have much to look forward to. Once again, thanks to Wendell Erwin.

The Earth Is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation, Gardner - B+

             When Sitting Bull was born in 1831, the Lakota* Sioux were already trading with the white man, exchanging buffalo hides for weapons and other goods. His father and his father's younger brother were the most important influences for him growing up in the Bad Bow band of the Hunkpapa Lakotas. "Bravery, generosity, endurance and wisdom" were the most critical virtues taught to the young men of the tribe. He excelled with the bow and arrow, and horseback riding, and engaged in his first fight as a teenager. A little to the west and a decade younger, Crazy Horse was being raised as an Oglala Lakota. Like all boys in the tribe, he learned how to ride and fight. He captured his first scalps at sixteen.

          "By this time, the various Lakota tribes were the lords of the northern plains..." They imposed their will from the Yellowstone River in the north to the North Platte in the south, "with the sacred Black Hills the beating heart at the center of their domain." The Lakota had traded with French trappers for goods and weapons, but tensions mounted in the 1840's when Americans began their wagon trains to the west coast. In the two decades before the Civil War, the Plains Indians continued to fight amongst themselves and increasingly, in tit-for-tat raids, with settlers and soldiers. The early 1860's saw the discovery of gold in Colorado, and soon thereafter in Montana. Conflict quickly followed. In 1864, twenty-four hundred Bluecoats decimated a campsite with over a thousand Lakota and Cheyenne tipis at Killdeer Mountain, and Sitting Bull saw for the first time the incredibly effective artillery of the US Army.  

        A major blow was struck against the US Army in December 1866 by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. They set, and sprung, a trap on the work party constructing Ft.  Kearny. Eighty-one soldiers died in the fight. The following year, the army withdrew from three forts in the Wyoming and  Montana territories and left the Indians in peace, under the terms of a treaty signed at Ft. Laramie. Neither Sitting Bull, now recognized as the leader of the Sioux nation, nor Crazy Horse 'touched the pen' of the treaty, under which the Sioux purportedly agreed to live on a reservation. In the early years of the next decade, planning for the Northern Pacific R.R. began threatening the Sioux heartland. Over the course of constant skirmishing over the railroad, the Sioux had their first contact with Long Hair, George Custer, in 1873.

         The ongoing resistance to the incursion of the whites was led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who were able to gather approximately 2,000 warriors, mostly Sioux, but also Cheyenne and Arapaho, to their side.  "The warriors who followed the two leaders and their fellow anti-treaty chiefs were arguably the best horseback fighters in the world." In the summer of 1874, Long Hair led an expedition to map the Black Hills. Soon the news flashed around the country that there was gold in them thar hills. The miners came and the army followed. The United States had decided that it was time for all Indians to be sent to reservations. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse needed to be corralled. In June of 1876, the Indians coalesced around the Little Big Horn, while the Long Knives made a number of forays nearby. Custer had about 600 men in the 7th Cavalry on June 25th. He saw a large Indian encampment about a dozen miles away and divided his forces in three. A Crow scout begged him to not split his forces, and when Custer dismissed him, the scout prepared to die. Custer advanced towards the tipis in the distance with 200 men. He soon found himself surrounded and his entire command was killed. When the Indians sang of the day, the name Crazy Horse was the most honored.

       The US response was to expropriate the Black Hills, and make an enhanced effort to either exterminate the Indians or settle them on a reservation without weapons or horses. The army pushed and attacked the Indians throughout the winter, causing many to surrender. Winters were always hard on the Plains, but more and more difficult every year with fewer buffalo to hunt. Tired of the endless fighting, Sitting Bull took his people to Canada. Crazy Horse declined the invitation to go north, but was fighting on with fewer and fewer warriors. On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse surrendered at the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska. Over the summer, he said little and slowly unnerved the army and those who had already surrendered. The army was afraid he would leave and the Indians feared he would make trouble. Told he was going to a meeting with a general, Crazy Horse fought back when he realized he was being led to a jail, and was bayonetted by a Bluecoat. He died on Sept. 5th.

      On July 19, 1881, the residents of Ft. Buford in the Dakota Territory witnessed the surrender of Sitting Bull and the remains of the Hunkpapa. They were transferred to the  Standing Rock Reservation and joined thousands of other Lakotas. He was the best-known Indian in the world, someone everyone wanted to see, and was soon part of Buffalo Bill Cody's show. The antipathy of Agent McLaughlin in charge of Standing Rock limited Sitting Bull's travels, and he endlessly complained to Washington about the chief. In late 1889, the Lakota were told by a wise man that if they performed the Ghost Dance the world would return to the past when they were free. Sitting Bull supported his people and McLaughlin did not. The Ghost Dancing terrified the whites at the reservation and as far away as Chicago. Newspapers were touting the dancing as a precursor to rebellion. HQ decided that the chief needed to be arrested and deported to a prison in Florida. On the morning of Dec. 15, 1890, Indian police awoke the chief in his lodge at Standing Rock. One of Sitting Bull's followers shot a policeman and in the ensuing melee, the chief was shot dead.

    "It shouldn't be forgotten that the immigrant people, Euro-Americans, who displaced the Plains Indians always held themselves up as 'civilized', as vastly superior to the Lakota and other native tribes. And yet there was nothing civilized about the way the US government, its Indian agents, and its citizens lied to and stole from the Lakotas. There was nothing civilized in the way the US Army attacked Indian villages, killing and maiming women and children. There was nothing civilized in the deaths of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull."

    In 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills were wrongfully taken from the Lakotas. They were awarded $100M which they refused. Today, the award plus interest is $2B. By refusing the money, they feel that they are honoring their ancestors. This is an excellent and powerful book. No matter how many times we read this sad history, it still shocks and embarrasses us. 

*The Lakota Sioux were the western branch of the tribe. They had moved from their Minnesota homeland in the early 19th century. 

Winter Work, Fesperman - B+

             This is one of the finest Cold War novels written since the Wall came down. The setting is Berlin in early 1990, a few months afterwards. Emil Grimm, a Stasi colonel, finds a colleague outside his dacha with a bullet in his head.  Knowing that the deceased was working on getting in touch with the Americans, Emil decides that he should follow through and seek a deal with the CIA. However, the KGB has other ideas. Emil's approach to the CIA succeeds and soon he is negotiating with them. The Soviets kill, and torture while trying to stop Emil from handing over valuable information. This book is based on true events and does a superb job of conveying the time, place, and anxieties that were a hallmark of the era.

Even The Darkest Night, Cercas - B

                   Melchior Marin is a police detective in rural Spain.  He is the son of a Barcelona prostitute and is in jail while a minor for his work with a Columbian cartel. While in prison, he reads Les Miserables and decides to turn his life around. He becomes a policeman and gains notoriety and fame for shooting Islamist terrorists in downtown Barcelona. His superiors decide he needs to be out of the public eye, and they transfer him to the country. He marries and becomes the father of a little girl. When a horrific triple murder is committed in town, he can't let it go, even though the case is closed because absolutely no suspects can be found. He stumbles upon one fact that helps him solve the case. This book has received high acclaim in Spain, undoubtedly because so much of what goes on in this town and this story ties into events that unfolded during the Spanish Civil War. This is the first in a new series.

Cuba: An American History, Ferrer - B+, Inc.

               "More than a history of Cuba, then, this book is also a history of Cuba in relation to the United States, a history of sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive, always uneven relationship between the two countries." 

                Columbus was the first European to visit the 750 mile long island. The initial Spanish settlement was two decades later.  A harsh occupation and the introduction of European diseases led to the death of 95% of Cuba's population. After the Spanish announcement that all trans-Atlantic sailings carrying the plundered wealth of Latin America to Spain must have no less than 10 ships, there was a revival on Cuba. As the Gulf Stream began just off the coast, the hamlet of Havana was the last port of call for the treasure ships. The Crown built forts to protect the harbor and safeguard the city. Slowly, the population was replaced by African slaves. By the eighteenth century, Havana was the third largest city in the Western Hemisphere.  It became "the inviolate symbol of Spain's sovereignty in the west." In 1762, it fell to the British after a seven week siege. The British occupation was brief but quite significant. At that time, sugar was becoming an internationally traded commodity and the source of vast wealth in the British West Indies. Two-thirds of the 11 million African slaves brought to the New World were sugar workers. The British imported slaves and expanded the sugar industry in Cuba. "The island's reliance on sugar as the basis of its economy would expand significantly in the decades after British rule: indeed, it would endure for more than two centuries."  They doubled down on sugar and imported 270,000 Africans between 1790 and 1820. It was soon the largest exporter of sugar in the world. 

                "The US acquisition of Florida from Spain in 1821 fed speculation about US designs on Cuba." Cuba was America's  second largest trading partner. It was an economy based upon slavery, and many of its elites hoped for a US annexation. Knowing that the British had their eyes on Cuba, the US announced the Monroe Doctrine, proscribing European colonization in the hemisphere. With Great Britain out of the picture, the two slavery based economies continued to prosper together.  Although the Atlantic slave trade was illegal, innumerable slavers, often American, kept up the business of capturing Africans and bringing them to Cuba right up to the Civil War.  During the US Civil War, Spain recognized the CSA as a belligerent and welcomed Confederate ships in Cuba's ports. Appomattox ended the dream of an American Cuba. 

                The first Cuban War of Independence began in 1868 when an aristocratic planter freed his slaves and declared the end of Spanish rule. It took Madrid a decade to quell the rebellion. In 1880, slavery was abolished in Cuba. A decade later, Jose Marti founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in NYC. In 1895, he declared independence, returned to the eastern portion of the island to participate in the fighting and was soon dead. The fighting spread to all of Cuba. Years of violence proved inconclusive. In 1898, the US stationed a warship, the USS Maine, in Havana harbor to help protect American interests in Cuba. Wealthy Cubans were now looking to the US to protect them as Spain was losing it grip on the colony, and the US was seriously considering intervention due to a lack of faith in the revolutionaries. In February, the Maine blew up killing over 260 sailors. Two months later, the US declared war. The war was over in four months, with the US experiencing 400 battlefield deaths. The US occupied the island, raised the Stars and Stripes, and ignored the locals, particularly the dark-skinned ones, who had been fighting the Spanish for decades.  It would be four years before the US turned over the reins of government to the Cubans. Even then, the US retained the legal right to intervene in Cuba's domestic and foreign affairs. Soon, the majority of land, and certainly the important sugar plantations, were owned by Americans. Unrest among the veterans of the wars of liberation led to another three year US occupation beginning in 1906.

             This is a superbly written Pulitzer winner, but I just can't keep my nose to the grindstone.

               

              

The Undiscovered Country, McQuade - B+

                  This is an excellent and fascinating novel set in County Mayo, Ireland in 1920. The Irish are fighting for their independence, and in the western part of the country, two young men from the IRA are assigned to be local policeman. Mike is a former law student and Eamon, a combat vet of the Great War. They have no particular qualifying skills when they discover the body of a 10 year old boy in a river. They suspect he was murdered, and the autopsy confirms their suspicions. They quickly conclude that the murderer was one of the five men in town owning automobiles. The likeliest candidates are a priest and their boss. They make what they believe is the right decision and administer an extra-judicial disposition of the case. The fun of this novel is the insights the two young men have about war, independence, religion and their society in general. Their back and forth is delightful. 

The Lioness, Bohjalian - B

      Katie Barstow, A-list actress, takes her new husband, her best friend and her husband, her brother and his wife, and a few other Hollywood types on a safari in Kenya and Tanganyika in 1964. All's well until one morning men arrive, shoot up the safari staff and drive the Americans away in two different vehicles. They are Russians, andwill hold them for ransom.  One escape attempt is successful, although one of the captured Americans dies as does one of the Russians. The two survivors head off into the savannah, but are attacked by hyenas the next morning. Carmen, Katie's friend survives and is rescued. The five in the larger party are also successful in attacking the Russians, but only Katie and her brother Billy survive. A fun read with interesting background on Hollywood and the Cold War in Africa, at the time the continent was throwing off the shackles of colonialism. But the biggest takeaway is that Africa is one scary place, where death is just around the corner.

Portrait of a Unknown Woman, Silva - B

                 Gabriel Allon is, at long last, retired from King Saul Blvd. Someone else can now run the Mossad. He is living in Venice, where Chiara is managing a restoration business that Gabriel will eventually work for.  When his long-time English friend, Julian Isherwood asks for assistance because someone from the murky world of forgeries is trying to kill him, Gabriel is off to help. The plan is to infiltrate the underworld by offering for sale four Italian Old Masters paintings - all painted by Gabriel within the last month. A painting is offered to a New York hedge fund specializing in art. The fund, the first of its type and very successful, is a bit of a Ponzi scheme based on first-class forgeries. The bait is taken, an article appears within hours in Vanity Fair, the FBI pursues and the evildoer is soon murdered by one he betrayed. And Gabriel figures out who the forger that the hedge fund relied on is, and persuades him to retire. Very good as always - but lacking the edginess of the past books with prominent national security themes.

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.