A Death In Cornwall, Silva - A*

                  This is the 24th in the Gabriel Allon series, and the 14th to appear on this blog. By my estimate, Gabriel is well into his seventies and thankfully, is retired from the Mossad. He lives in Venice and restores Old Masters. He is called to Cornwall by an old friend who is investigating the murder, presumably by a serial killer, of an Oxford professor. Both the detective and Gabriel conclude that the serial killer angle is a misdirection. The professor, an expert on wartime art provenance, was likely killed because of her investigation of the past of a Picasso in a Geneva gallery. The painting was owned by a Parisian Jew who perished in Auschwitz. When the grandson of the owner falls down the stairs in Montmartre, their suspicions are confirmed.

                 Gabriel decides he must recover the Picasso for the family and help solve the murder. An intricate plan follows. He will have a wealthy friend swap six of her late father's collection for the Picasso. As Gabriel will paint the six pictures, it is also necessary to hire an established art consultant and a provenance specialist. All goes well until the day of the transfer, when the killer murder the Geneva dealer and steal the Picasso. Now, Gabriel must follow, find and dispose of the killer. His trek takes him to Paris, Cannes, Marseilles, Corsica, and Monte Carlo.

               He ascertains that the killer is the head of security for a corrupt British law firm in Monaco and he hatches a plan to out the law firm while catching the killer. Along the way, he uncovers an amazing amount of corruption at the top of the Tory Party in Britain. Gabriel's team's investigation and the information they uncover leads to the downfall of a British government, the return of the Picasso, and the death of the killer. Another excellent book in one of the four series I've been following for decades. Gabriel Allon though, upon reflection, surpasses my other favorites, Ian Rutledge, Jack Reacher and even Harry Bosch. Thus, the grade is in the nature of a lifetime achievement award.

Hapsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire, Jonas - B +

                This superb history views the Second Mexican Empire as "a unique position from which to understand the globally destabilizing effect of US encroachment under the guise of Manifest Destiny." The story is rooted in "European astonishment at unrelenting US expansion." When the Civil War broke out, European powers led by France declared Mexico's loans in default and invaded. They proclaimed they were protecting Latin America from the predatory US. 

              When  the Louisiana Purchase was followed by the mid-century annexation of Texas and the taking of the western half of the continent from Mexico, Europeans were alarmed at the  growth and ambition of America. Catholic France was perceived to be the bastion to protect "Latin peoples against Anglo-Saxon aggression."  France invaded in late 1861 intending to establish a monarchy. The fact that no one other than a handful of Mexican elites wanted a change in government did not faze the French. At the first battle, Puebla, Mexico handily defeated the invaders. France sent over close to 40,000 reinforcements in the next year. Puebla fell in the spring of 1863. The Juarez government fled Mexico City before the French occupation. As the French extended their power north, the Archduke Maximilian was offered the throne. 

               Napoleon III left nothing to chance, honoring and flattering Maximilian and his wife Charlotte in Paris for a week. "Paris was the apogee of the Mexican Empire." There was no enthusiasm for the venture in London or Vienna, and the US House passed a resolution opposing the monarchy. Nonetheless, the royal couple arrived in Veracruz on May 28, 1864 with a 400 page draft of protocols for managing their court. They were warmly received in the capital and for a time "things went their way." Maximilian's first major challenge was the Catholic Church's insistence on a restoration of its property and a reinstatement of its primacy in Mexico. He refused to succumb to their demands. In the summer of 1866, imperial forces began to lose skirmishes, then battles, then entire regions in the north of the country to resurgent republican troops. The French began to evacuate. US diplomacy made it clear that it was totally opposed to the monarchy. Charlotte went to Paris to plead for more French assistance, but was rebuffed by Napoleon III. A visit to the pope was also to no avail. She returned to her palace near Trieste in declining health. 

            That fall, Maximilian began to consider abdication. Instead, he proclaimed his desire to stay and transform the empire to a purely Mexican entity after the French left. The emperor went north to the city of Quereatro to join his army, but was surrounded and besieged by republican forces. It was soon over and the emperor was a prisoner. Maximilian and two of his generals were tried and sentenced to death. On June 19th, they faced a firing squad.

          Maximilian's remains were embalmed and returned to Vienna. A memorial chapel in his honor was dedicated in Quereatro in 1904. "In death, Maximilian lent himself to the purposes of others just as he did in life. Time, architecture, and memorial masses celebrated every year on the anniversary of the execution reinvented the empire. Chapel and ritual elevated the empire of vanity to a sacred plane where it became a redemptive sacrifice and a triumph over death." This is a very well written and wondrously short history that has taught me about something that I knew virtually nothing about.

The Granite Coast Murders, Bannalec - B

               Commissaire Georges Dupin is on a two week vacation on a lovely Breton beach with his Parisian amour Claire. He is bored beyond belief and desperate for something to do. An assault is made on a local politician, and body is found in the local quarry. Raring to go, Georges is restrained by his administrative assistant, Claire, and the local gendarmes. His inquiries are subtle, and hopefully, unnoticed. Although Claire had enthusiastically designed this vacation and she too had eschewed any work responsibilities, she has been surreptitiously speaking to the clinic where she is a cardiologist. Another body is found near the quarry. With the help of his hotelier, whose niece is a policewoman, Georges solves the case, hands it off to the local police and returns to his holiday.  The second week is a resounding success.  What we learn about Brittany in this book is that there are vast sections of the coast with a unique pink granite for miles.

The Princess of Las Vegas, Bohjalian - C

                  Crissy has a really good gig at a second tier casino. She sells out two shows a night, five days per week in her permanent residency performing as Princess Di. Over the course of a few days, her world falls apart as the two owners of her casino commit 'suicide,' her sister shows up in town, and a fella she just met falls from a cliff outside of town. Some very bad men are after her workplace, her sister and her. As this author has written some great page-turners, this is a real disappointment.

Pitch Dark, Doiron - B+

                 This is another excellent novel in this series. Mike Bowditch flies almost to Quebec to check in on someone who he believes is being pursued by a bounty hunter. The man calmly offers Mike a cup of coffee that is doped, and Mike awakes tied up and disarmed. He then pursues the man and his daughter to the border and although he commits a crime by crossing over, he accomplishes so much that all is forgiven. 

Rain Dogs, McKinty - B+

                  In the fifth in the series, Sean Duffy is assigned a pretty straightforward suicide to investigate. A young woman journalist from London has jumped from the top of the oldest castle in Northern Ireland. The live-in gatekeeper does not know how she evaded his closing search, but he found her in the keep in the morning. Suicide it is until Sean notices her shoes are on the wrong feet. He and Sgt. McCrabbin begin the investigation. There was a Finnish business delegation at the castle that day, and they were escorted by a former policeman now in the security business. Their stories don't add up and Duffy knows he's on to something when an attempt is made on his life. Another great cruise around the Troubles in the late 1980's that ends on a high note with Duffy taking his pregnant girlfriend to the hospital to deliver their daughter.

Everest, Inc.:The Renegades and Rogues who Built An Industry at the Top Of The World, Cockrell - B

                In the forty years after Hillary's first summit, 349 people climbed Everest. In the past three decades, over 11,000 have. Ninety percent of the recent summiteers were clients of a handful of mountain-guiding companies. Seventy percent of climbers reach the summit compared to ten percent before the guiding companies began. This is the story of how the change took place.

               In 1985, 55 year-old Texas oilman Dick Bass summited Everest on his fourth try. He was the first to achieve the Seven Summits and an amateur who paid professionals to help him. His success inspired a new approach to mountaineering. A year later, a company was offering guided trips to all seven summits. Guiding on Everest would prove to be a challenge because it is very easy for people to die in the death zone above 26,000 feet. Hypoxia, high altitude pulmonary or cerebral edema are very real risks.  And guides, by definition are supposed to stick with their customers. "By 1990, most experienced Himalayan climbers would agree that the list of veteran mountain guides with the experience, nerves, and logistic prowess to pull off an Everest climb could probably fit in a fortune cookie." However in the spring of 1992, "eight average Joes" were the first guided to the summit. Guiding amateurs to the top was possible and soon the business boomed.

               "The percentage of expeditions on Everest that were guided had gone from zero in 1989 to about forty in 1995." Everyone was proud that there had been no casualties. The following year that would change. Rob Hall was a noted New Zealand alpinist and the most successful guide on the mountain. His 1996 trip included Jon Krakauer, a journalist working for 'Outside' magazine. On May 10th, approximately 33 climbers guided by two different companies made the attempt. Hall and handful of his clients summited at 1:45 pm, a quarter of an hour before the agreed upon turnaround time. Hall did not stick to the turnaround time, summited with his final client at 4 pm, and was  then notified by base camp that a storm was coming in. Eight people died that day including Hall. Krakauer's award-wining magazine article was called 'Into Thin Air' as was his best-selling book.  Krakauer's writings piqued worldwide interest and an influx of technology soon allowed live streaming and sat calls from the mountain. In 1999, the discovery of Mallory's remains was flashed around the world.

           Soon, record numbers were climbing.The lead guide companies "had installed so many redundancies and systems, coopted so much technology, and hired an increasingly talented and well-trained Sherpa workforce, that they believed they could get just about anybody to the top." Better weather forecasting and a medical facility at the base camp helped. The Sherpa's were the backbone of the mountain climbing culture and were seldom recognized or paid handsomely for their death defying efforts every day. Many started their own guide companies. Approximately a decade ago, climate change began to affect the mountain. In 2014, an avalanche killed 16 Nepalis. The Sherpas refused to work and the 2014 season was shut down. The following year, an earthquake struck the base camp killing 19.

        The two tragedies reduced the number of western climbers and guides, and soon companies headed by Nepali's, Japanese and Indians were hosting more and more Asian clients. Also, a portion of the Hillary Step broke away, easing the path to the summit. A Nepali climbed the fourteen 8,000 meter peaks in seven months and captured the climbing world's attention. The guiding businesses expanded to the 8K peaks.  Today, it is a mostly Nepali owned business, and climbing the highest mountain on earth remains as enthralling, enticing, and beautiful as ever.

  

Hunted, Mukherjee - B

                 This an intriguing thriller written by a Scot of South Asian extraction whose first five books were police procedurals set in the 1920's Raj, focusing on racial issues. This novel is about a family of Londoners whose mom and dad fled Bangladesh. One of their daughters was caught up in a protest and rendered a vegetable at the hands of the US VP security team. Her sister, Aliyah, fled to the US to revenge her sister and to go to work for a group of domestic terrorists. But, things are not always what they seem. Perhaps a stream of terrorist activity promulgated by former special force officers in conjunction with rogue FBI agents just might put a right wing extremist in the White House. Plot turns, twists, and double dealing carry you along at a fast pace here.

Continental Reckoning: The American West In The Age Of Expansion, West - B

              "Between February 19, 1846, and July 4, 1888, the United States acquired more than 1.2 million square miles of land."  The three events that expanded our nation were the annexation of Texas, settlement of the Oregon issue with Great Britain, and the US victory in the Mexican War. The acquisition of all this territory  placed great stress on the compromises made between the Northeast and Southeast over slavery. 

             The first event in the making of the West and the ensuing national transformation was the discovery of gold in California. The population and economy exploded, and thenceforth "the region would be the most culturally and ethnically mixed part of the nation." The region's isolation, population growth, and gold created wealth led to a booming, diversified, and quickly mature economy. One observer said it was as if "the lights went on all at once." Throughout the country, Indians were starved, slaughtered, and evicted from their homes. In the fortyyears after the finding of gold, 90% of the indigenous peoples were eliminated in California.  

            An important question was if, and how,  the western half of the continent would come under the suzerainty of Washington. Surveys in the 1850's were the first steps in establishing what lay between California and the settled eastern half of America. Of prime import was agreeing on a route for the first transcontinental railroad. The Southerners, hoping to spread slavery west, were pining for a southern route through Texas and the New Mexico Territory.

           "The emerging West's fluidity, its sheer up-for grabness, brought a near fatal continental disharmony." "Bleeding Kansas was as clear an instance as we would have of how the emerging West could interact with the East to shift the nation's course, in the case of making national calamity more likely." The territory of Kansas adopted two constitutions - one endorsing slavery and one outlawing it. Violence ensued, and the federal government backed the slaveholders, although there were only a few hundred slaves in the state. Kansas would only join the union after the southerners seceded. The western aspect of Kansas's struggles was about the confiscation of land given to the Indians in order to accommodate railway interests. Indians lost approximately one-fourth of the lands of the entire state.

           The war saw a  profound expansion of federal power through laws establishing land grant universities, 160 acre homesteads and the Pacific railway. The West was further organized by the admission of new states and  territories. The government's concern about the safety of travelers going west led to ongoing confrontations and more death for the Indians of the Plains. As the war closed, the government had to implement policies integrating the freed slaves, resolving the status of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese in California, and continuing to incorporate the Hispano's who became American by treaty. The plan for the hundreds of thousands of Plains Indians was to make them Christian herdsmen or farmers.

         Binding the West to the rest of the country became a priority. The two most important tools in the process were the railroads and the telegraph. With governmental financial support, the first transcontinental telegraph was completed in late 1861. Eight years later, the country would be linked by a railway system stretching from coast to coast. Roads spread to every corner of the West carrying freight and passengers. "More land in the nation was pulled into connection with other places...than in the previous two and a half centuries." Railways and roads led to extensive exploration and mapping. Ethnologists and linguists studied the indigenous people of the plains with the goal of "occupying native homelands and commanding their resources" and "fitting Indian peoples properly within the nation with as little disruption and conflict as possible."

          The number of non-Indians on the plains grew from 179,000 to three and a half million. The Americans who poured into the West were a diversified group, creating cities and towns with the highest percentages of foreign born in the US. The majority, about 60%, were men. "The West can be imagined as a college of masculine subculture at work seizing and transforming the land." Women and children would eventually follow as the land was settled.

        "Farmers, ranchers, and miners did not intend to cut the legs from under Native Economies, but they were doing exactly that." Cattle ranching is a "prime illustration of how the West was being sewn into a larger national and global framework." Cattle were amassed in the southwest, but needed in the northeast. Thus began the cattle drives north to railheads, and the physical transformation of the region.  "Ranching imposed both and economic an cultural order on the national homeland." The grasslands where the Indians grazed their horses and where the bison roamed were consumed by cattle and later fenced-in. Farming also took away more grasslands. The foundation of Indian life on the plains was gone.

        Washington believed it imperative to make the Indians farmers. Many tribes tried, but failed, because the prairies where they lived were not susceptible to long term agrarian success. Drought, fires, and most often locusts and grasshoppers defeated them at every turn. The reservation system led to the once mighty freemen of the Plains living on handouts from the US government. In the end, it was not the US Cavalry that removed the Plains Indians from their homes. It was financially driven civilians seeking wealth in mining, stability in farming, and a market for cattle.

         This book is the winner of this year's Bancroft Prize. Academic histories have their ups and downs, and chapters about locusts, mining camps, the economics of farming, and the legalities of mining claims can be wearying. But the big picture perspectives about how the West drove so many national issues, about the absorption of the lands taken from Mexico, and the physical reordering of half of the United States  are intriguing and fascinating. 

         

Kantinka, Graver - B+

         This extraordinary novel, which is based on a true story, is about the Cohen family. It begins in Constantinople in the opening years of the twentieth century. Rebecca is the middle child and our storyteller. The family is prosperous and happy, but the war brings changes. In post-war Istanbul, the new Turkish state no longer wants the Jews, most of whose families have lived in the city for over four centuries.  The Cohen's go to Barcelona. Rebecca's skill as a dressmaker allows her to get a job, but she has to feign being Christian with the name Maria. She soon saves up enough to quit and start selling her own wares. She marries Luis, who she later learns suffers from being gassed in the war and cannot read or write. With exception of bed, Luis is pretty useless and seldom home. Rebecca returns to her parents' home with two sons and soon learns that Luis is dead. She hears from her sister in New York who suggests Rebecca meet Sam Levy, widower of a girl who had been Rebecca's best friend in Constantinople. She meets him in Havana, marries him and moves to Astoria, NY. Sam's daughter, Luna,  is severely disabled and cared for full-time by Sam's mother. While waiting for her sons to arrive from Spain and her new baby to be born, Rebecca tackles the issues surrounding Luna and teaches her to use a potty, engage her legs to start walking, and convinces her she has a purpose in life. The family moves to Cambria Heights, a small community in southeastern Queens, where they purchase a home and Sam opens a candy store. They work hard, raise their children and look forward to their first grandchild. This book has been positively reviewed, has received awards, and is the first book among the thousands I have read over sixty-five years to feature the corner of Queens where I grew up. 

The Road To Murder, Trincheri - B

             This is a pleasant police procedural set in Tuscany and featuring Nico Doyle. He is a retired NYPD detective who returned his wife's ashes to her hometown and decided to stay. He has a new girlfriend, a job as a sous chef and most importantly, is an unofficial assistant to the local police department. When a wealthy woman, estranged from her children and about to sell the family estate to an international hotelier, is found murdered, Nico is called in to help. Lots of food, cooking, and detective work.

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., And The Origins Of America's Invasion of Iraq, Coll - B+

                  Saddam was a principal in the 1968 coup that brought the Baath Party to power. A decade later, he was president. His goal was to modernize every aspect of the country and create a nuclear capability. In 1980, he attacked his Shiite neighbor Iran because of their religious differences and his belief that the new revolutionary government was weak. "The Iran-Iraq War was a fiasco of command incompetence and martyr's blood that would claim about one million casualties over the next eight years." Fearing a fundamentalist victory, the Reagan administration authorized CIA assistance to Iraq. 

                 Throughout the 1980's, Saddam encouraged the creation of a nuclear weapons capability under the supervision of Jafar Dhia, a western educated scientist. Saddam and Jafar decided on a uranium enrichment program modeled on the Manhattan Project. Saddam  feared that the US was helping Iran in order to prolong a war between two US enemies. The disclosure of the US's use of Israel as conveyor of American arms to Iran in the Iran-Contra affair convinced Saddam that the US, Israel, and Iran were in league against him.  

                The regime then turned on the Kurds, razing villages, gassing indiscriminately, and killing as many as 182,000. The Reagan administration continued its support of Saddam. The summer of 1988 finally saw the end of the war that had cost Iraq a fortune in blood and treasure, all without any positive results. The fall of the Berlin Wall heightened Saddam's anxieties about the US, but the Bush administration assured him of its support. Saddam felt that he had protected the Gulf states from Iran and expected that they should forgive his debts in recognition of his service to the Arab nations. Kuwait's refusal incensed him. He invaded in late July, 1991. 

                  The invasion drew immediate international condemnation. The US began to plan for war. President Bush superbly managed a vast allied effort with the approval of the US congress and the American people. The initial US onslaught was aerial and a complete success, destroying the Iraqi air forces,  ground forces, and infrastructure. The Iraqis retreated from Kuwait as the coalition ground forces attacked. It was an unmitigated slaughter. After a hundred hour war, the US declared Kuwait liberated and the war won.  In Iraq, a rebellion broke out that was particularly threatening in the southern Shia communities. The Republican Guards responded with barbaric brutality. The US chose to not intervene, although it was hoping the rebellion would topple Hussein. The US imposed economic sanctions until there was a full disclosure of the regime's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The Iraqi's destroyed most of their WMD, but failed to document it and were later unable to prove it to inspectors.  UN inspectors confirmed that they had been working on a nuclear bomb.

                 Bill Clinton inherited America's 'half-war' with its daily tensions around the US no-fly zone in northern Iraq.  It "was a Bush hangover he wished to avoid." The 1990's ground on with the same repeating themes: the CIA unable to penetrate or topple the regime, Saddam enriching himself and his allies despite the painful sanctions, Saddam baiting and annoying Washington, and the no-fly zone requiring constant US military activity.  "Saddam Hussein was becoming the new Fidel Castro, entrenched in power and feeding off America's ineffectual enmity." Pressure began to build on the US to reduce the sanctions as death and disease wreaked havoc on the Iraqi people. The UN believed that by 1997 all of Iraq's WMD and long-range missiles had been discovered and dismantled. A year later, Saddam banished all inspections. The US began bombing, and the Republicans clamored for Saddam's overthrow.  In office, the new Bush administration made no change in Iraq policy.

               On September 12th 2001, Saddam blamed the US for provoking the attack on itself. The Bush administration knew that al-Qaeda was responsible, but believed that Iraq was also involved. In early 2002, Bush made his 'axis of evil' speech by which time half of the country believed Iraq had been involved in 9/11. By the summer, the US acknowledged to the British that it would go to war with Saddam in 2003. Bush spoke at the UN and and stated that we "know" Iraq has WMD's. Tony Blair published a dossier affirming that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons, and had acquired uranium from Africa. The momentum was building. The US Congress authorized war against Iraq. Saddam let the UN inspectors back in and they found nothing. The problem was that many people thought Iraq was lying. Bush later remembered concluding that Saddam wouldn't subject himself to war if he didn't have WMD. In February of 2003, Colin Powell spoke at the UN asserting that Iraq had WMD based on "invented, misinterpreted, and exaggerated intelligence." On March 7, UN inspectors repudiated all of America's positions on Iraq's weapons. Nonetheless, George W. Bush and Tony Blair went to war on March 17th.

                    Bush had "careered toward an unnecessary war that he and his war cabinet marketed through exaggerations of available evidence and unabashed fearmongering, persuaded as they were by instinct and flawed intelligence that Saddam's continuation in power posed an unacceptable threat." The invasion was a success; the occupation was a debacle.

                   The author is a great researcher and writer. His two multi-award winning books on Afghanistan were extraordinary. As Saddam spent a decade and a half on the front pages, this seems just a bit less interesting.

                

Spook Street, Herron - B+

                  In the fourth in the Slough House series, personnel changes are in the air. Catherine has resigned, although Lamb has been sitting on the paperwork. There are two new horses. River is off to France in an attempt to find out why someone tried to kill his grandfather David, an MI5 legend who is losing it. Both River and Lamb worry that the service may be trying to dispatch the old man. Concurrently, MI-5 figures out that the man who committed an act of domestic terrorism had an old MI-5 passport that stemmed from the days when River's granddad was running the show and made a few deals with some folks in France. The mysterious people in France strike against the Slow Horses by taking away River at gunpoint. And amazingly, they send a shooter to Slough House where David is being hidden. Two folks are hit, including one of the horses before the killer is shot. The best so far in my book - well told, insightful, and remarkably witty.

Gun Street Girl, McKinty - B+

                  This, the fourth in the series, is the best by far. Duffy's team is working on a series of garden variety murders, the solution of which looks too obvious and unlikely. They dig deeper and stumble upon a caper involving the theft of missiles from a Belfast manufacturer. An American Marine lieutenant colonel is somehow involved, but he manages to get away. As is often the case, Duffy suffers a remarkable sequence of injuries including a beating at the hands of the Yanks. This is his last case with the RUC since he's accepted a position with MI-5. Unfortunately, a helicopter crash ends his new job offer and it's back to the Carrickfergus office, the ultimate RUC dead end.  Once again, brilliant story-telling, perfect pacing, and unending insights into the Troubles.

The Dredge, Flaherty - B

               About thirty years ago, brothers Caleb and Ambrose confronted the local bully who had just shot their dog with an arrow. In moments, the shooter Ray is dead and under the winter ice of Gibbs Pond. Caleb, a long time Honolulu realtor gets a call from his brother. Ambrose stayed in their hometown and now someone is going to dredge the pond. This novel is an intriguing dive into guilt, fear of the past, and the damage that living with it all can wreak.

Hanns and Rudolph: The True Story Of The German Jew Who Tracked Down And Caught The Commandant Of Auschwitz, Harding - B +

                 "This is a story pieced together from histories, biographies, archives, family letters, old tape recordings and interviews with survivors. "

                  Rudolf Hoss was born in 1901 in Baden-Baden. He was raised a devout Catholic by his dad, who died when he was twelve. Two years later, he lied his way into the army. He fought bravely against the British in Mesopotamia and Palestine. He came home a decorated veteran who was wounded three times. He joined the Freikorps, fought for a few years in Latvia, and joined the nascent Nazi Party in 1923. He worked in Silesia, where he and his friend Martin Bormann were convicted of killing a man they considered a traitor. He served four years of a ten year sentence.

                   Howard Alexander was born in Berlin in 1917. His father was a doctor. Hanns lived a very privileged life as an upper-class Jew in one of the finest neighborhoods in the city. His home was a center of social activity and it wasn't unusual for celebrities such as Richard Strauss, Marlene Dietrich, and Albert Einstein to dine at his home. Hanns and his twin, Paul, were bar mitzvahed at the Neue Synagogue, the largest in the city in 1930. 

                   Hoss went to work on a farm in Pomerania, where he met and married Hedwig Hencel. They proceeded to work the land and build a family. He joined the SS and was recruited by his former Freikorps colleague, Heinrich Himmler, to work at Dachau. In 1938, he was promoted and transferred to Sachsenhausen. Although he felt uncomfortable with the brutality, he followed orders.

                  Although Dr. Alexander, a decorated war veteran, was intent on persevering when the Nazi's took over, it readily became apparent he and his family had to leave. Over a few years, the entire family relocated to England. The Alexanders were part of a 70,000 person Jewish diaspora that had fled central Europe for the United Kingdom. When the war began, Hanns and Paul sought to enlist.

                  After the war broke out, Hoss was sent to Auschwitz Poland to construct a camp.  Upon its completion, Himmler ordered an immediate expansion, and a year later ordered the construction of Birkenau three miles away. The first murders at the camp were by injection of those deemed unable to work. In Himmler's office in 1941, Hoss was told that his camp would be the principal venue for the extermination of Europe's Jews. His adjutant stumbled upon the ultimate method of mass killing when he discovered the toxicity of Zyklon-B. The first Jews were gassed in the summer of 1942. Hoss created the selection process, built much bigger gas chambers, established nearby crematoria, and in essence, personally built the greatest killing machine of all time. In late 1943, Hoss was assigned to the Concentration Camp Inspectorate in Berlin. The following spring he was sent back to Auschwitz to supervise the murder of 400,000 Hungarian Jews.

                 The twins were accepted in the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps, an entity created to use the skills of Europe's refugees.  They attended Officer's Cadet Training, and on July 20 1944, Lt. Hanns Alexander arrived in France. The following April, Hanns was assigned to the UK's first war crimes investigation team. His task was to interview the staff at Bergen-Belsen. He was "gripped by a barely controllable rage." He flung himself into his duties. He was denied permission to pursue criminals, such as Hoss, but ignored his superiors and began his search on his off days. The first war crimes trial began in September and focused on Bergen-Belsen. After the successful prosecution, Hanns was given a travel permit, a driver, and a pistol and was sent off to find war criminals.

                 As the Reich was collapsing, Hoss and other SS men fled north with their families. He was able to drop off Hedwig and the children at her brother's home near the Baltic. He adopted a false identity, was released because he was a farm worker, and soon was working on a farm. Hanns was assigned to find the Gauleiter of Luxembourg, Gustav Simon, and accomplished his mission in seventeen days. He was then charged with finding the senior members of the Concentration Camp Group, known as Amstgrupppe D. After investigating the group in Berlin, Hanns learned that Hoss was believed to have fled towards Denmark. He began questioning Hedwig, whom the British were observing. When he threatened to send her son to Siberia, she provided her husband's whereabouts. The arrest was made and within a few days, Rudolph Hoss was telling the British all that had happened at Auschwitz. Within a month, Hanns was back in London, and along with his discharge papers was his new British passport.

                The Allies decided they needed Hoss to bolster their case against the senior defendants at Nuremberg.  He testified that two and a half million people were gassed at Auschwitz and another 500,000 died of starvation and disease. A month later, he was handed over to the Poles and was encouraged to, and did, write a memoir of his life. His defense that he was following orders failed, and he was hung at Auschwitz on April 16, 1947.

                 The author is Hanns' grand-nephew. He heard of Hanns' story for the first time at his funeral. While researching the book, he toured Auschwitz with Hoss' grandson. The gallows where Rudolf Hoss was hung are still there.

                

                  

The Devil's Daughter, Greisman - B

                  This is fun novel set in Manhattan in the late 1950's featuring private investigator Jack Coffey. He's from Hell's Kitchen, fought in the war, seems to know every barkeep in the borough, and somewhat incomprehensibly is buds with Thelonious Monk and Marlon Brando. A wealthy Wall Streeter hires him to find his teenage daughter. Soon, he's on a wild goose chase with all sorts of folks trying to knock him off. He brings the missing daughter home, and uncovers that her dad is a grotesque child molester and pornographer who is blackmailing very important people. But the bad guys keep coming, and anyone he spoke to while looking for the daughter is getting killed. Things get a bit preposterous with people dropping like flies in the finale. That said, there are occasional interesting insights into the big city.

We Must Not Think of Ourselves, Grodstein - B +

       This is fictionalized memoir of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Adam Panow is a 43 year old widower and English teacher who does not even think of himself as Jewish anymore. Nonetheless, when the ghetto is created in November 1940, he finds himself in a small apartment with a dozen other people. He has taken only a few books and his late wife's necklace with him. He is engaged by the Oneg Shabbat project to interview people and create a written record of the horrors they are all going through. He teaches classes and survives because he has a job. He falls in love with, and carries on an affair with a married woman, Sala Wiskoff, whose husband works for the Judenrat. The necklace affords him the chance to escape, and he takes Sala's two sons with him to safety. This is a well done depiction of the hell the Jews were subjected to. It should be noted that many of the documents created by Oneg Shabbat were found after the war and shed light on life in the ghetto.

The Killing Tide, Bannalec - B

                Over the course of twenty-four hours, Commissaire Dupin is faced with three murders. Two are young women, a fisherwoman and a dolphin researcher, both of whom live on the Ile de Sein off the Brittany coast, and improbably, a seventy-five year old retired male virology professor.  Each book in this series teaches about Brittany, and this one is about the fishing industry, where major firms and small fishermen square off. In the end, human greed is the motive. A golden cross of vast archaeological value had been found and is the motive for the murders.

Rules of Deception, Reich - B

               This is an extremely fast paced thriller from a decade-and-half ago. Jonathan Ransom is a physician for Doctors Without Borders. His wife, Emma, is a nurse and administrator who determines where they go and organizes all aspects of their work. When she falls into a crevasse in the Swiss Alps, Jonathon stumbles into a world of hi-tech spies and madmen, and slowly realizes that his wife was a spy. As in all of the author's stories, there are more plot lines, explosions, bodies, and gunfights than one can keep track of.

Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia, Eisenberg - A*

            This Bancroft Prize winning history "takes as its subject the Nixon administration's conduct of the war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and the resulting diplomacy with the Soviet Union and China." It reverses the familiar belief that the war was shaped by Cold War considerations, which impacted his three predecessors, but not Nixon. If the best and the brightest in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed intellectually, in the Nixon administration, failure was a matter of selective, wishful thinking.

           In March 1968, Nixon said "I pledge to you that new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific." With talks in Paris progressing just before the election, Nixon contacted the South Vietnamese to assure them he would get them a better deal if they didn't accept LBJ's proposal. Johnson and Dirksen agreed that what Nixon had done was "treasonous," but they could do nothing because LBJ had obtained the information illegally. Nixon came into office knowing that the strength of the anti-war movement would be important in the mid-terms, and that protecting himself politically was his number one concern. Mel Laird, Defense Secretary, began withdrawing troops and labelling his action 'Vietnamization.' This notwithstanding the fact that the administration had conclusively concluded that the ARVN could not stand on its own two feet. Kissinger was concerned that Vietnamization would ease pressure on the North to settle, and the Pentagon opposed any troop reductions. There was no obvious path to a satisfactory strategic conclusion. Annoyed at the North for rocket attacks on the DMZ, Nixon authorized bombing in neutral Cambodia. The peace and anti-draft movements picked up steam in the face of the fact that Nixon seemed to be escalating the war*. On October 15, two million Americans participated in the Vietnam War Moratorium. Nixon made the best speech of his life on November 3rd rallying the 'peace with honor' believers, and successfully halting tv coverage of the second Moratorium on Nov. 15-16. 

          The new year saw the administration significantly ratchet up the existing policy of bombing Laos because the Ho Chi Minh Trail veered into the country. Massive use of B-52's killed thousands and depopulated the Plain of Jars, home to a million Laotians. Because the NVA and the NLF used Cambodia as a sanctuary, the JCS and the president initiated an invasion at the end of April. Kissinger told the Senate majority leader that Cambodia had requested military help. This was a complete fabrication. He and the president continued to lie to the press, the public, Congress, and the Cabinet. American and SVN ground forces, aided by US air support, entered Cambodia, and after a lengthy halt, the USAF resumed bombing Hanoi. Around the country, college campuses exploded in outrage. At Kent State, four students were murdered by the National Guard. Higher education in the US shut down. In Cambodia, the combination of excessive bombing and atrocities by the ARVN began a destabilization of the country that would lead to a deadly civil war. Nixon declared the operation a success, although the North Vietnamese had moved away from the border and controlled 40% of the country. Throughout the year, both Nixon and Kissinger worked back channel approaches to Dobrynin and Gromyko hoping for Soviet help in negotiating with Hanoi. None was forthcoming. Nixon frequently contrasted our clean cut boys over there against the long hair bums at home. The year 1970 saw the soldiers in Vietnam smoking weed, growing their hair, wearing non-uniform clothes, refusing to fight, and occasionally 'fragging' overzealous officers. At home, the Vietnam Veterans Against the  War publicized the atrocities of murdering civilians, calling in artillery to destroy villages as a game, raping indiscriminately, burning hooches, dousing people with white phosphorous to watch them burn, and throwing prisoners out of helicopters.  

        The year 1971 would see one of the largest operations of the war. Lam Son 719 was the South Vietnamese lead incursion into Laos. It went well for a bit, but the NVA stopped the southerners after two weeks. Soon the NVA was pounding the ARVN troops and at least 30 American planes had been shot down. Airlifted into their objective 26 miles into Laos, the ARVN was momentarily triumphant until Prime Minister Thieu pulled them out after three days. It was a rout categorized by the Pentagon as "an evacuation proceeding according to plan." "Lam Son 719 would prove to be the turning point in the American war, signaling the end of the administration's optimism." Nixon and Kissinger had deluded themselves into thinking the ARVN could cover the American drawdown of troops. Two years into his presidency, Nixon's strategy was in tatters.

         In spring the Vietnam Veterans Against the War arrived in Washington, along with Gold Star Mothers and WWII veterans. Navy Lt. John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and eloquently damned the war and those who lied to America about it. The Mothers returned their son's medals, and awards. A WWII veteran played taps for his son, and hundreds of veterans threw their medals over a fence in front of the capitol. Nixon's ratings plummeted. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators followed the next month. In June, The New York Times began publishing the top secret Pentagon Papers, proving to the world that the Johnson administration had consistently lied about the rationale for the war and what was actually happening in Asia. The war was so unpopular that Congress was regularly getting closer to voting to shut it down. 

           Nixon and Kissinger were hoping for some foreign policy breakthrough to shift America's focus away from Vietnam. That summer, Zhou invited Kissinger to China, and he visited in June and October. An agreement was made to invite Nixon to China, but there was no help offered on changing Hanoi's negotiating positions. The possibility of reducing tensions with the Soviets was also explored, and a USSR summit was also planned for 1972. Two summits, an election, and a North Vietnamese escalation appeared to be the agenda for 1972.

           Nixon went to Beijing in February, met with Mao and Zhou, was seen exchanging toasts in the Great hall, and accomplished "a public relations windfall exceeding all expectations." When asked why we were still in Vietnam if 'containing' China was no longer a strategic imperative, the president said that we could not look weak.

           "It would be another month before thousands of North Vietnamese troops began pouring into the  south." The ARVN again failed to fight. "Nixon was beside himself. After so many years of careful planning and billions of dollars, how could this be happening? He had always ignored the naysayers, domestic and foreign, who had argued that pacifying  South Vietnam was a doomed project because the local insurgents and their North Vietnamese allies would never give up no matter how intense the American firepower." Hoping he could get the Soviets to rein in the North, Nixon ordered the saturation bombing of Haiphong and Hanoi. The NYT said "The United States is the most  dangerous and destructive power in the world. Only a fool or a madman could believe that more bombing will bring peace." After a few weeks, MACV was concerned that the South would fall, as the South's soldiers deserted en masse. Nixon's response was to increase bombing the North. In May, he spent a week in Moscow reveling in his role as an international statesman.  By every measure, the Moscow summit was a success but there was no Soviet help forthcoming in Vietnam. 

            Fortunately for the White House, the NVA invasion of the South had stalled, and there were only 39,000 American non-combatants left in country. Finally, both China and the USSR urged the North to be more flexible in their negotiations with the US. Both sides dropped their most intransigent positions. The US would leave, our prisoners would be returned and there would be a cease-fire in place. For the North, they accepted the fact that they could defeat the South later. But without the consent of the Thieu government, the deal faltered. When the North insisted the US stick to the understanding, the US resumed B-52 raids in the north. Virtually the entire world expressed their outrage with comparisons to Nazi atrocities and Allied bombing excesses of WWII being made. The Chineses strongly encouraged the North to work out a settlement. The US and North Vietnam came to an accord at the end of January, 1973. "Although reluctant to admit it...for Nixon and Kissinger, the Paris Peace Agreement was never about peace. It was about getting US prisoners home, withdrawing the troops, and establishing interim processes that could persuade domestic adversaries that their pursuit of the war...had yielded something positive." For America, the war in Vietnam was finally over. Needless to say, a magnificent book.

        

         

*Nixon's first year in office saw the death of five young men from my parish: Mickey McGovern, John Dixon, Kenny Cummings, Gerry Paulsen, and Doug Brustman.

Matterhorn, Reich - B

                  This is a classic page turner involving the CIA v. the SVR, a Russian mole, a traitorous American born marine of Russian extraction, his best friend whose grandfather, dad, daughter, and son are either USMC or CIA,  a beautiful mysterious Israeli diplomat/agent in love with the US agent,  a Russian who betrays the Rodina in love with an American, a scientist prepping WMD, reckless driving, deceit, revenge, murder, mayhem, alpinists, technological wizards, and all set in beautiful Switzerland. Get ready for the beach - a one day read. 

The Retreat, Rambaud - B+

                   "In June 1812, with more than 500,000 men, Napoleon crossed the Niemen and entered Russia." After three months of 'scorched earth,' the Grand Armee arrived in Moscow. They'd already lost tens of thousands. The city was empty; so were the granaries. Napoleon had hoped to sit down with the Tsar and sign a peace treaty. All the French could do was take out their frustrations on the city. However, it is likely that the fires that destroyed the city were set  by the Russians. Napoleon believed he had the option of marching to St. Petersburg or staying the winter and obtaining supplies from Poland. Neither option was realistic as the city continued to burn, killing people and horses while wolves roamed Moscow's streets. Slowly, the Russians began a guerrilla warfare campaign in the city and along the supply lines. They ambushed and killed an increasing number of the invaders. 

                    After five weeks, the French left. They were encumbered by the loot that each and every one of them tried to cart back to Paris. "Overloaded fugitives began to be seen jettisoning their surplus booty, scattering bags of pearls, icons, weapons and rolls of cloth along the road..." Men, beasts, and entire carriages were sucked into the marshes as it began to snow and the Cossacks raided. "They were in no danger of losing their way: they just had to follow the trail of hundreds of naked, frozen corpses, male and female, lying on the ice, the burnt carriages and the mutilated horses that stained the pink snow." When Smolensk offered no respite, the emperor went ahead to Minsk. The remnants of the army were slowly destroyed by the weather and the lack of food.  When the Cossacks captured soldiers or civilians, they stripped them naked and forced them to march until they dropped. The hastily constructed pontoon bridges collapsed and thrust all into the freezing rivers. When he reached Poland, Napoleon commandeered a sleigh and left for Paris, which he reached on December 17. "Behind, far behind, the remnants of what was once an imposing army and now numbered a few thousand beggars at most were drawing near to the Niemen." 

                 This a tour de force - an historical novel at its very best, one that vividly depicts the hell on the earth the retreat was.

Napoleon's Exile, Rambaud - B

                 In 1813, the allies closed in on Paris. Every conceivable group was ready for life after Napoleon, but it was the royalist supporters of Louis XVIII who would prevail. The armies of Russia, Austria, and Prussia entered the city, as did their monarchs. As his armies deserted or were captured, Napoleon offered up a regency by his wife for his infant son if he abdicated. The allies refused, and Napoleon abdicated unconditionally. He waited at Fontainebleau for their decision as his entourage slowly slipped away. He was being sent to Elba. The ride south to the coast saw him cheered and threatened. After five days at sea, he arrived in May 1814 at "a block of jagged black rocks." He was well-received and began the process of governing the island, which was soon buzzing with activities intended to improve the economy. Napoleon was trying to turn a "sleepy sub-prefecture" into "an operatic principality" overnight. Towards year end, word reached the island that there was unhappiness in France at the return of the Bourbons, and the grasping clergy. Many whispered desirously of the Emperor's return. Bored, frustrated by the failure of France  to pay the agreed upon annuity, concerned about rumors from the Congress of Vienna that Talleyrand was plotting to send him to St. Helena's, and intrigued by the unpopularity of Louis XVIII, Napoleon set sail, returned to France and was back in Paris on March 20th. This trilogy is excellent, although I believe the first two were a bit better than this one.

City In Ruins, Winslow - B+

                     For Danny Ryan, his past is never past. Not- withstanding his status as a very important player and casino/hotel owner in Las Vegas, there are those who remember that he was a mobster in Rhode Island not that long ago. An FBI agent wants payback for killing her crooked lover, a Christian on the Nevada Gaming Board sees him as the perfect target upon which to build her career, and some of the old mobsters are still capable of popping up. Things go sideways with a Detroit mobster and a rival to such an extent that Danny almost loses his son and his  girlfriend. It even requires Danny to get his hands dirty again to solve matters. In a magnificent epilogue, we learn that the boy Ian, who was an infant when Danny left R.I., is now the mid-thirties CEO of one of the largest hotel empires in the world and Danny has peacefully passed away. Sadly, the author, who has six books on this blog, is retiring and this is his final work.

In The Morning I'll Be Gone, McKinty - B+

       A new boss quickly concludes that Duffy is too much trouble. and before you know it, he's fitted up for something he didn't do and offered his pension and a severance if he goes quietly. He accepts the offer and spends nine months at home listening to music, drinking, and smoking weed. MI-5 offers him full reinstatement if he can help them find a former classmate now in the IRA and badly wanted by the entire United Kingdom. While searching through Dermot McCann's family and acquaintances, he befriends Dermot's former mother-in-law when he solves the mystery of her youngest daughter's murder. Tipped to Dermot's whereabouts, Sean saves the life of the PM and receives full reinstatement.

The Real Hoosiers: Crispus Attucks High School, Oscar Robertson, and the Hidden History of Hoops, McCallum - B

            In 1927,  Indianapolis opened Crispus Attucks High School. It was during the era that the KKK dominated Indiana politics. The objective was to remove all children of color and isolate them in a segregated school. Attucks was a very good school and it also had a pretty good basketball team. The Robertson's moved to Indianapolis from Tennessee in 1942. Indianapolis was the most segregated city in the north. The Robertson's lived in an unheated tarpaper shack with an outdoor privy. Oscar's brother, Flap, was three years older and played for the first Attucks team to rise to prominence. Oscar made the varsity team as a sophomore in 1953. Attucks appeared in the state semi-final against the most legendary team in state history, Milan. Milan had only 73 boys in the entire school. They beat Attucks and went on to beat Muncie in the finals as immortalized in the film 'Hoosiers. From the first game of the '54-'55 season, it was obvious that the Crispus Attucks Tigers were going to be special. They began a two year run that saw them go 62-1, and put Black basketball front and center in Indiana. A loss in February did not prevent them from facing an all-Black Roosevelt in the final. Attucks won by a blowout. They were the first Indianapolis and the first Black team to win a state title. A year later, they were undefeated on the way to their second crown in a row. Oscar was Indiana's 'Mr. Basketball.' He finished his high school career by leading Indiana over Kentucky in their annual All-Star game.

        The Big O distinguished himself as a pro by taking on the presidency of the Players Association, testifying before Congress, fighting for the players pension plan, and acting as the named plaintiff in an anti-trust action against the league. He was a man committed to justice for players. He also was one of the greatest to ever play the game. This book details the racism that haunted the state that was home to the KuKlux Klan and also provides an excellent history of Hoosier basketball.

One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History And Threatens Our Democracy, Erdozain - B

               Lyndon Johnson's National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence recommended that the 24 million handguns then in the US be reduced, by licensing, to 2.4 million. Today, there are over 200 million handguns in America.

             "There is no mystery to the Second Amendment.  The mystery is how one part of America convinced itself that privately held guns are the foundation of democracy, and how everyone else was bullied into acquiescence." "The norms of today are not the norms of American history or the values of the founders." The Myth of the Law-Abiding Citizen says that guns keep us safe from bad people. However, studies have shown that 84% of deaths are "altercation homicides" that is, those between friends or family. It has also been proven that homicide rates increase when gun density rises.  States allowing concealed carry saw increases in murder rates after the laws' enactments. Reagan's support for the NRA led to assault rifles, high capacity magazines and "constitutional carry."

              The fear of standing armies led to the Constitution's granting to Congress the power "to raise armies." The result  was the 2nd Amendment which clearly referenced a collective duty in a states militia that gave rise to the right to bear arms. Under the common law and well into the 19th century in America, merely carrying a threatening weapon in public was a crime. However, the Civil War created a gun culture by the manufacture of millions of weapons, and the training of young men to use them. The second half of the century legitimized violence by vigilantes, and by anyone fighting the Indians, as the west was tamed.

             Handguns were sold everywhere and were widespread in the early 20th century. New York passed a law criminalizing possession of a handguns, and the American Bar Association recommended a national ban on the manufacture and sale of handguns. The NRA loudly protested that the reforms were an attack on white America, a guns were needed to deal with the vipers arriving on every boat from Europe. FDR tried twice to pass gun control legislation, but failed both times.

            John Kennedy was assassinated by a man who made a mail order purchase of a rifle with a coupon from the NRA magazine, 'American Rifleman.' Riots ensued the following year, and in 1966, America saw its first mass murder at the University of Texas. An attempt to regulate weapons ran into the gun lobby and the NRA. A majority of the country believed in gun reform, but the volume of letters and telegrams that members of Congress received were overwhelmingly from the gun supporters. The 1968 law that passed was labelled by the Washington Post as a "crimp in the mail order business." It was close to meaningless. Richard Nixon hated guns and thought that no American should own a handgun. His successors viewed matters differently. For Reagan, life was a struggle against the evils of communism, and whether you were an individual or a nation, it was essential to be armed to fight the evildoers.  He promoted a bill of rights for gun owners. In the 1990's, a bill banning assault rifles passed, but it had a sunset provision. After the Columbine slaughter, Tom DeLay said it was the result of a "godless society." The NRA achieved its greatest victory in 2008 when the Supreme Court issued its verdict in Heller, which was a "substitution of the mythology of the gun culture for the truth of the Second Amendment." Antonin Scalia twisted and contorted English and American history to convert the concept of a collective militia into an individuals right to own weapons without government regulation. Thus, we all live in fear ofpersonal violence and our grandchildren practice "active shooter drills." This is an excellent read.

The Hundred year's War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, Khalidi - B

              The author is a highly-regarded professor at Columbia University, and the scion of a family of Jerusalem-based scholars going back generations. Indeed, an ancestor warned Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism, that the objective of settling in Palestine would never succeed because there were indigenous people already there. Herzl, who visited Palestine once, ignored the warning. Herzl believed that the poor people of Palestine should be dispersed elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. "Starting after World War I, the dismantling of the indigenous Palestinian society was set in motion by the large-scale immigration of European Jewish settlers supported by the newly established British Mandate authorities, who helped them build the autonomous structure of a Zionist para-state." The premise of this book is that"the modern history of Palestine can best be understood in these terms: as a colonial war waged against the indigenous population..."

             Arabs, Christians, and Jews lived amicably in Palestine as subjects of the Ottoman Empire. World War I brought hundreds of thousands of deaths through conscription, starvation and plague. After 400 years of Ottoman sovereignty , Palestine was occupied by a European power, one which had previously approved the creation "of a national home for the Jewish people."  Anti-Zionist riots took place in the 1920's. Throughout the Muslim world, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq achieved independence - but not Palestine. The League of Nations confirmed the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration in 1922, and the Jewish Agency was granted quasi-governmental status. "The British treated the Palestinians with the same contemptuous condescension they lavished on the subject peoples from Hong Kong to Jamaica." The Jewish population grew after the rise of Nazism in 1933 bringing educated, skilled people and their wealth to Palestine. The Palestinians reacted violently in 1936 with a six-month general strike that led to a three year revolt, that required 100,000 British troops to quell. By the beginning of WWII, the die was cast. Palestine was on the road to becoming Israel.

               After the war, the US backed the Zionist cause.  The UN, led by America and the USSR, voted to create a Jewish state in late 1947.  The following May, Israel declared its independence,  and the US immediately recognized the new country. In the ensuing fighting, 80% of the Arabs lost their homes and 720,000 became refugees. "The ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country" transformed Palestine into Israel. The approximately  160,000 Palestinians who remained lost their land and homes and were subject to martial law for the next two decades. Almost a decade later, in 1956, when Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt, the Israelis took advantage of the opportunity to wreak violence once again on the local Arabs.

                 In a mere six days in 1967, Israel destroyed three air forces and armies, and occupied the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The Six-Day War saw the United States fully supportive of Israel. In response, there was a reemergence of Palestinian nationalism throughout the diaspora. The Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the PLO and Fatah appeared in the late sixties. Their ascent vastly complicated the politics of the Middle East. The front line states, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria wanted to contain them, but the Palestinians engaged in disruptive terroristic activities. Israel and Jordan, backed by the US pushed back. Indeed in September of 1970, Jordan expelled the PLO. The US helped Syria attack the PLO in 1976.

                        In pursuit of the PLO, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. There were 50,000 casualties before a cease fire was declared after ten weeks. Thomas Friedman described the Israeli bombing as "indiscriminate" before the NYT editors removed the offending characterization.  The US fully supported and supplied the offensive. Having provoked the Israelis with constant acts of terror, the PLO "found itself bereft of support from many of its traditional allies." The PLO left Lebanon for half a dozen Arab countries. Israel occupied Beirut, even though it had promised not to.  Afterwards, the Israeli judiciary castigated the country's leaders for the needless state sponsored massacres that took place in the Palestinian refugee camps. 

                       An unintended consequence of 1982 was a resurgence of nationalism in the Occupied Territories that led to the Intifada (uprising) in late 1987. It was a spontaneous "bottom up campaign of resistance," and led to worldwide sympathy and support for the two-state solution. A serious attempt to solve the Palestine problem was made by Jim Baker, who had a healthy skepticism of the Israelis, but it failed after Clinton defeated Bush in 1992. At Oslo, Israel agreed to the return of the PLO to the Occupied Territories, and a limited role for the Palestine Authority. However, virtually nothing had  changed for the better in the day to day life of the Palestinians. Indeed, matters deteriorated as travel between Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza became more restricted. The Second Intifada erupted in 2000. This century has seen an uptick in violence after Hamas took over Gaza and has been sporadically fighting with the IDF for years. Obama made an attempt at forcing Israel's hand in peace talks, but was unable to overcome America's traditional support for Israel.

                   Reconciling the needs and desires of two peoples connected to the same place and upholding the ideals of democracy appears to be beyond anyone's vision. The Trump administration reversed  American policies by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It also negotiated with the Gulf States to recognize Israel and completely ignored the Palestinians. It is only the fact that the plight of the Palestinians is very important to the vast majority of Arabs that keeps the issue alive, and resolving it favorably with due consideration of Palestinian rights is not on the horizon.

                   The essence of this book is that Israel has never had the moral high ground that we in the US believed they occupied. Indeed, "complaisant American public opinion" is a foundation of the state of Israel. I've read three reviews of this book. The one somewhat critical was in the NYTimes, and it doesn't disagree, but describes the author's hope for a resolution recognizing the Palestinians as "fanciful." As for me, I think the author makes a compelling case against the British for deeming it within their remit to tell the rest of the world how to live and for completely dismissing the Palestinians; against the Israelis for intending to eliminate the Palestinians from their world and for their extensive use of violence; and against the US for supporting and supplying the Israeli war machine.

 

I Hear Sirens In the Street, McKinty - B+

             Belfast's D.I. Sean Duffy gets caught up in a very odd murder. He and his team find a body, and the corpse's tattoos indicate he's American. Some research brings them to a dark corner of the county occupied by people who hate the 'peelers' so much they won't even talk to them. Duffy takes a week off and goes to the US to do some digging. He's on the right path, and that path indicates that the deceased was a US agent looking into John DeLorean and his car company. Duffy's right, but he pays a price for bucking the establishment. Busted to sergeant in uniform and back on the mean streets.

Custer's Trials: A Life On The Frontier Of A New America, Stiles - B

                   This Pulitzer winning biography attempts to tell Custer's story as he lived it, and not as a prelude to "the march to the Little Bighorn." The hope is "to explain why his celebrity, and notoriety, spanned both the Civil War and the years on the frontier, resting on neither exclusively but incorporating both."

                   The son of a blacksmith, he received the coveted appointment to West Point in 1857. He was never much of a cadet and was constantly on report. "He laughed in class, threw snowballs, and lobbed bread across the mess hall." In his fourth year, he watched as state after state seceded and his classmates from the south left. Although he was sympathetic and close to the southerners, he "stood firm for the Union." He graduated last in his class, and was court-martialed soon after for allowing two cadets under his supervision to fight each other. He was found guilty, but not punished and was off to Washington. He actually made it to Bull Run but missed the battle, and joined Phil Kearney's staff. He saw his first action during the Peninsula Campaign. He was assigned to an engineering battalion, scouted the enemy from 1,000 feet in a balloon, and excelled in a number of skirmishes. He drew the attention of McClellan and joined his staff. He performed with considerable bravery and came to idolize Little Mac, who despised Lincoln, and Stanton, and hated the Black man. When McClellan was relieved, Custer felt that the "Abolitionist radicals had stabbed him in the back."

                  After Antietam, he spent the winter home in Monroe, Michigan. The following April, he was assigned to the Army of the Potomac. The politically well-connected Custer was appointed Brigadier General in June. He led four cavalry regiments from Michigan. On the third day of Gettysburg, Lee attacked in the center with infantry and sent Jeb Stuart's cavalry around the Union right to attack from the rear. The Michigan Brigade stood athwart their path. Custer personally led a charge that stopped the Confederate cavalry. He made a material contribution to the Union victory, and was now a nationally-recognized hero.

                 On Feb. 9, 1864, he married Libbie Bacon before 300 people in Monroe, Michigan. Two months later, Grant changed the leadership of the Cavalry and Phil Sheridan in charge. At Yellow Tavern during the Wilderness Campaign, one of Custer's men shot and killed Jeb Stuart. Custer quickly became Phil Sheridan's favorite. Custer continued to throw himself into every battle and every charge with unparalleled effort, panache, and the utmost of luck. He had innumerable horses shot out under him and was hit by at least three bullets, fortunately spent out and lacking in lethality. In the fall, Sheridan was tasked with expelling Jubal Early from the Shenandoah Valley. Custer again excelled and was elevated from "Union hero to national icon." Twenty-five year old Major General Custer finished the war at Appomattox. He had entered it as the lowest 2nd Lt. "His energy, tactical skill, and courage" had propelled him to the top. 

                 "As peace began, all that was self-absorbed and self-destructive in Custer bubbled to the surface again." Sheridan assigned Custer to an administrative post in Texas. His command was a total failure, as he could not adjust to peacetime, was inconsistent, temperamental, and such an over the top disciplinarian that complaints reached Grant. He stole a valuable horse, lied to the authorities, and evidenced a complete disregard for the freed slaves. His time in the south was brief, as he was mustered out of the army in January, 1866. Later in the year, he was afforded the opportunity to return to the army as a Lt. Col. at Ft. Riley, Kansas. A year later, he was court-martialed at Ft. Leavenworth for being AWOL, the abusive treatment of government horses, and the extrajudicial execution of men under his command. He had left his assignment at Ft. Wallace to ride over 200 miles to see Libbie, with whom he had been quarreling over what is generally assumed to be an extra-marital affair on his part.  He was found guilty on all three counts. He was suspended for a year, but returned to duty with the support of Grant and Sheridan. In November of 1868, Sheridan sent Custer south into Indian Territory in pursuit of a band of Cheyenne warriors. With 800 men of the 7th Cavalry charging to the tune 'Gary Owen,' Custer led his first charge in years on a Cheyenne camp. Although many women and children were captured as hostages, a great many also perished in the dawn attack. No warriors survived the morning. It was the first army victory over the southern Cheyenne, and many surrendered and came to the camps. Sheridan was once again very happy with his favorite cavalry officer.

                 A long leave and a brief, unsuccessful attempt to become a financier in NY was followed by an unpleasant tour in Kentucky, where federal troops were maintaining the peace between the races. By March of 1873, he was back in the Dakota Territories. The army's role was to "escort the surveyors from the Northern Pacific Railroad, protecting them from Sioux attacks." His efforts that summer were again successful as he managed and fought well. The following summer, he headed for the Black Hills. Many hoped he would find gold because it would lead to a vast influx of whites, provoking the northern Plains Indians into their Armageddon. Gold was discovered.

                 On May 18, 1876, Custer led all twelve regiments of the 7th Cavalry out of Ft. Abraham Lincoln and headed west toward  what was expected to be the final fight of the war with the Sioux.  In the aftermath of June 25th*, the army convened a hearing at the Palmer House in Chicago. The two officers generally believed to have not executed their orders that day, Reno and Benteen, clearly perjured themselves in an attempt to avoid condemnation. The inquiry did not reprimand either man, and concluded that the number of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors was so unusually high that day, and the fact that they chose to stand and fight a pitched battle, condemned Custer and his men to death. "But Custer as glory-obsessed, arrogant fool emerged as the persistent narrative." It held then and does so today. That narrative fails in one important regard: "his performance in battle, the one field in which he displayed consistent good judgment and self-possession. From the Civil War through his two battles on the Yellowstone, he proved decisive, not reckless; shrewd,  not foolish." Probably the most insightful chronicler declared, "The simplest answer, usually overlooked, is that the army lost largely because the Indians won."

                      Libbie struggled financially, but eventually wrote  successful books that elevated her position. She invested well and lived on Park Avenue when she died in 1933.

                      Custer was arrogant, delusional, a psychopathic liar, and simply not a stand-up fella. But he was extraordinarily brave, very lucky in battle and a brilliant intuitive tactician. Much of what I have read over the years has focused on his time in the west. I had no idea how much he contributed in the Civil War. Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan appreciated and approved of his battlefield skills. He may not have the reputation that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had in those first few days of July, but he was damned close. 

*Custer's two younger brothers, a nephew and his sister's husband were with him at the Little Bighorn.

Absolution, McDermott - B

         Patricia Riordan Kelly is a born and bred New York Irish Catholic, a recent grad of Marymount and the new wife of  Peter Kelly. They are in Saigon in the early sixties where Peter, an engineer for Esso, is working for the CIA. Patricia recalls their time there in a long letter to the daughter of the woman who befriended her when they were young wives in Vietnam. It is a fascinating exploration of what it was like before everything changed for women. The expectation was to marry young and be a handmaiden to your husband's career. In this instance, Patricia had numerous miscarriages and no live births, the novel plumbs the depths of misery that she went through. And, it is a brilliant review of being Irish Catholic in that era. As an Irishwoman born in Brooklyn in the early 1950's, and educated in the parochial school system in Nassau, the author completely nails it.

The Fields, Young - B+

                       This is a superb police procedural set in Black Hawk County, Iowa and featuring recently promoted Sergeant Riley Fisher. In the midst of a gubernatorial election with the issue of big agribusiness v. family farmer dominating the state, Riley faces a serial killer. The first victim is a friend of hers from childhood through high school. The county is in such a state of anxiety that the Sheriff calls in the FBI. The plot thickens when it becomes apparent that the governor is behind some serious hijinks. The ending is bit of a stumble, but this still is a very good read.

Original Sins, Young - B

        Riley Fisher is in Des Moines and now working for the FBI. There are some weird political issues in the small satellite office, but Riley stays focused on the return of a serial killer in the capital, and the hatred directed at the state's first woman governor. She and a local police officer pull off the uncovering and arrest of some very bad people. This is a bit too close to its predecessor in its plotting for me.

Ilium, Carpenter - D

                    Highly acclaimed balderdash. A young Englishwoman is recruited by the CIA to help set up an assassination. Why she is recruited and how she helped is never explained. "Psychological thriller" - not that I can see.

The Holocaust: An Unfinished History, Stone - B+

                       "The ubiquity of collaboration across Europe, driven by a coincidence of wants between the Nazi's ideological driven aspiration to rid the world of Jews and the desire of many nation-states' leaders to create ethnically homogenous populations, means we need to stop thinking of the Holocaust as a solely German project." The ideology of anti-semitism had its apogee in Germany, but it was a "shared framework, a consensus" easily taken up by others. The French, Romanians and Croatians, in particular, embraced the destruction of their Jewish citizens. The majority of the murdered Jews were not killed in death camps, but face to face by gunmen, or starved or worked to death throughout the continent. For the few who survived in Europe, May 1945 did not end their troubles, as they faced pogroms in Hungary and Poland, and were in displaced persons camps for years. "And finally, we need to understand the ways in which the after-effects of the Holocaust shaped the postwar years and continue to be felt today."  This excellent history, thus, is a retelling of the familiar with a broadened context and expanded view of the events of the Shoah.    

                      The Nazis,  particularly Adolf Hitler, viewed the Versailles Diktat and all of the pain and humiliation that followed as having been caused by international Jewry. Thus, anti-semitism became the root of the Nazi creed. There were attempts to dress up Nazi racial theories in scientific robes, but for the true believers, it was never more than pure hatred of the Jews and the adulation of Aryan superiority.  Immediately upon assuming power, the Nazis moved against the Jews, and in the years before the war began, they reduced the prosperous Jewish community to "abject destitution" and "removed them from the majority of the population's sense of obligation, morality, and civility."  The initial boycotts, job losses, and random violence were followed by the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived Jews of German citizenship. They were prohibited from having any sexual relationships with Aryans,  they could not act as a physician to an Aryan, they lost their rights at university, and they began to lose their businesses to Aryanization. All of these actions required the complicit consent of a broad swath of society. Kristallnacht escalated the violence with 177 synagogues burned, thousands of businesses destroyed and 3,000 sent to concentration camps. If any Jew in Germany was unsure of the intentions of the regime, The Night of Broken Glass clarified how matters stood. Tens of thousands more left Germany. By September of 1939, fully half of the country's Jewish population had left since Hitler's rise. 

                   In January 1939, Hitler said - "Today I will be a prophet again and say, if international finance Jewry in and outside Europe succeeds in plunging nations into another world war, then the end result ... will be the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." When Germany invaded Poland, it began the systemic murder of the country's elites and leaders. On occasion, an entire Jewish community would be slaughtered, but most Jews were rounded up and placed in heavily-policed ghettos. Poland's Jews were warehoused in the ghettos with the intent of sending them east of the Urals when the circumstances allowed. Although the ghettos were created well before the decision to murder their inhabitants, conditions were such that 500,000 Polish Jews died in the ghettos.

                Bolshevism in the USSR had to be destroyed because it was through Bolshevism that the Jews were attempting to destroy Germany. "What changed in 1941 was the overall conception of a genocidal plan rather than a more limited policy..." Nazi Germany transitioned from ghettoization to face to face killings in the western USSR, to a continental plan of extermination in a little over a year. The SS Einsatzgruppen who accompanied the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union killed 1.5 million Jews. Between the fall of 1941 and the spring of 1942, Hitler gave the order to implement the Final Solution. In March 1942, 80% of the Holocaust victims were still alive. A year later, 80% were dead. The murders in the USSR were almost all assisted by locals who enthusiastically aided the Germans. Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians were all handmaidens to the Nazis. To the west in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, and Moldova, "indigenous fascist regimes" were indiscriminately killing Jews. "For the victims of these murderous policies...the result was disastrous. By that point, the Nazi's Final Solution was in place, and Jews across Europe were marked for death. For the different Jewish populations actually to be captured, deported and murdered, however, required a high degree of collaboration across the continent...The precise path of genocide differed from place to place, but in the end the outcome was the same."

                      From Norway to Crete, individuals, organizations, and entire countries collaborated with the Nazis to help rid the continent of Jews. In the Netherlands where 75% of the Jews were killed, the civil service cooperated throughout with the occupiers. The Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944 which was followed by the deportation of almost half a million Jews to Auschwitz could not have happened without the support of the Hungarian police. Only 25% of France's Jews were deported, but the 1942 internments at the Velodrome and Drancy required extensive local help. Croatia and Slovakia were so fervently anti-semitic that they pre-empted the Germans and began murdering their Jews before the SS became involved. In Romania, Antonescu fully embraced the fascist ideology and killed thousands. "It is clearly the case that without the support of millions of non-Germans (or Austrians) across Europe, the pace of the Holocaust would have been slower and its extent less comprehensive."

                    "In late 1943 and early 1944, the killing rate at Birkenau, as the Nazis realized that placing ideology above labour made little sense now, given the parlous state of the war economy..." Several hundred thousand Jewish lives were saved when they were put into slave labour camps.  Thousands upon thousands received only a deferment as the camps were extremely brutal, inhumane operations. As the Allies closed in, hundreds of thousands died in death marches, as the Nazis attempted to hide their atrocities. For the Jews of Eastern Europe, the end of hostilities offered nothing but uncertainty in DP camps. Their homes and families were no more. They could or would not return to Poland or Hungary. One American observer sent to Europe by the president observed that the Jews were under lock and key in camps and guarded by soldiers. The only difference was that "we do not exterminate them." Although some DP's stayed in Europe, most went to either Israel or America.

                 In the immediate aftermath of the war, "the genocide of the Jews was not understood or was overlooked." The passage of time, particularly the end of the Cold War, brought a Holocaust consciousness to the fore. The key events were Eichmann's trial in 1961-2, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in 1963-65, the television show 'The Holocaust' in 1978, 'Schindler's List' in 1993, and the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1995.  In the twenty-first century, the Holocaust's memory has been distorted by those who twist and refute history for their own purposes. The most glaring example is Poland, where it is now a crime to suggest that the Poles betrayed its Jews. The official line in Poland now is that Poles uniformly helped their Jewish neighbors from the Nazis. There are other examples of denial popping up regularly around the world. The author is the Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at the University of London. The two core themes here are the diversity of the methods of killing and the breath of the collaboration throughout the continent.

                       

                                                                            

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, Woo - B+

                       This is the remarkable story of William and Ellen Craft, slaves who traveled to the north and eventually to England in their pursuit of freedom. They became celebrities on the lecture circuit for defying the Fugitive Slave Act. "At heart, this is an American love story-not in the fairy tale sense, but an enduring relationship between a man and a woman, a couple and a country."

                       They departed their home in Macon on the morning of Dec. 20, 1848. Ellen was three-quarters white with light hair and easily passed as a sickly young white man, with an arm in a sling. William had been apprenticed to a carpenter and had managed to save $150. The Savannah train was a short walk from their home. The train pulled away with Ellen in first class and William in the Negro section. They arrived later that day, and embarked on a steamer that evening. The next day in Charleston,  Ellen purchased tickets for herself, as William Johnson, and for her slave for Philadelphia. Another steamer took them to Wilmington, where they boarded a train. The trip north entailed the constant changing of trains, but the journey continued, and they found themselves in the nation's capitol. They headed to the "most dangerous slaveport of their journey," Baltimore, where they had their closest call when an official would not let them proceed until Mr. Johnson could prove his ownership of the slave. Fortunately, an impatient crowd moved all of the passengers forward. On Christmas Eve, they arrived in Philadelphia.

                     They were welcomed by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, and all marveled at the courage and genius behind their 1,000 mile escape. However, they moved on to Boston, which was considered a safer place because of its distance from the Mason-Dixon Line and the unlikelihood of the Fugitive Slave Act being enforced. They agreed to speak publicly about their experiences as slaves and their journey to freedom. Soon, their story was front page news in the north. They spent the spring of 1849 traveling and lecturing throughout New England. That summer, they settled in Boston's Black community. William opened a furniture repair store and Ellen used her sewing skills as an upholsterer. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was enhanced leading thousands to leave for Canada. The Crafts decided to stay in Boston. Many in the city said they would never allow the slave catchers to take away their residents, but there were people "from Macon en route to Boston, with Ellen and William in their sights." The slave catchers obtained a warrant from Federal Court, but had difficulty finding help to execute it. Hundreds of Negroes took to the streets with placards lambasting 'Kidnappers and Slave Catchers' in an attempt to thwart the southerners. While people threw eggs at the slave catchers, the local police arrested them three times. Although the people of Boston were doing their all to stop enforcement of the FSA, the federal government took steps to arrest the Crafts. They quickly left for Maine, then sailed to Canada, and were soon on their way to Liverpool.

                    William and Ellen immediately hit the lecture circuit and began to build a normal life in a free society. The lived in the UK for almost two decades and had five children there. Ellen was active in the London Emancipation Committee, the Women's Suffrage Organization, and the British and Foreign Freedmen's Association. In 1860, they published 'Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery.' In 1868, they returned to Georgia. They attempted to start a farm cooperative for freed slaves but it failed after a few years. They lived out their lives in Charleston where Ellen died in 1891 and William in 1900. Although their children and grandchildren lived as successful educators, activists, and lawyers, William and Ellen's story faded away. But their escape and activism is an extraordinary story. "They pushed not only themselves and each other, but also the nation - and the world - to reach for better." The book is good --the Craft's story is extraordinary.

 

The Missing Corpse, Bannalec - B

                      Here, Commissaire Georges Dupin faces a double murder. Both men were from Scotland and in Brittany for the day. As per the course in this series, we are immersed in a unique aspect of life in Brittany, and in this novel it's oyster farming. Add in Druid rites and beach sand theft before Dupin's team wraps up the murderers. To add to his success, he learns from his Breton to the core administrative assistant that his great-grandfather was from Brittany.

All The Queen's Spies, Clements - B

                      It is 1583, and the Queen and Walsingham conspire to exile Dee to the continent where they expect him to travel to Prague and spy on the Emperor Rudolf. It is Rudolf's toleration of non-Catholics that may keep him away from any plans by the French and Spanish to restore Romanism in England. Dee and his party are able to distract the Emperor by appealing to his interests in the occult.