James Lee Burke. Creole
Belle. ©2012 Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell are back. This time Clete finds he has a daughter who
happens to be a hired killer. There’s the
usual giant criminal conspiracy which gradually emerges along with a supposed
survivor of Ravensbruck who instead turns out to be Mengele’s colleague at
Auschwitz. I’ve read so many of these that
they’re starting to feel formulaic, but I’ll be back for more. Robicheux’s philosophizing is always
interesting, if a little repetitive, but I wish Burke didn’t have to mention
people’s deodorant every time and also maybe learn that testosterone is odorless. September 2013
.
Ken Follett. Winter
of the World. ©2012 This is part two of the Century Trilogy,
which began with Fall of Giants. Follett follows the same families in Russia,
Germany, England and the US as he walks us through the major events of the
1930s and 1940s. Without distorting the
historical record, he manages to put his characters into many of the most
important events of the period. The book
begins with Hitler’s rise to power.
Follett poses the question of why the German people accepted Hitler and
Fascism and then answers by saying that democracy was not well developed in
Germany and people chose Fascism to escape the uncertainty of true
freedom. Maud’s husband, Walter von
Ulrich, is murdered by the Gestapo because he couldn’t make that choice. Ethel’s son Billy fights in the Spanish Civil
War and learns how brutal the Russian officers could be and how lightly they
took the lives of enlisted men.
Chamberlain caves in to Hitler and eventually is ousted in favor of
Churchill. Woody Dewar is at Pearl
Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and sees his fiancé killed by a Japanese Zero. During the war Maud’s daughter and her
friends expose Hitler’s euthanasia program by taking information to the
bishops. They also provide critical
information to Soviet intelligence, including the Code Blue battle plan, which
turned the German advance toward Stalingrad, and later in the war the Citadel
battle plan, knowledge of which was critical to Soviet success in the drive
toward Berlin. They don’t come forward
after the war to claim any recognition or reward – that could be fatal. Meanwhile the Allies are supposedly bombing
factories but are actually bombing working class neighborhoods to kill the
people who work in the factories.
Commissar Grigori’s son travels to New Mexico to see an old school
friend who happens to be working on the A bomb.
After the Soviets detonate their first bomb, the friend goes to the
electric chair. After the war both Billy
and Ethel become MPs in the new Labor government. Billy oversees the opening of a strip mine in
Lord Fitzherbert’s garden to provide the coal that’s needed to increase the
electricity supply. Woody Dewar is
deeply involved in the development of the Marshall Plan. This very long novel is a great way to review
your history and learn a few new things as well and it makes a good story. September 2013
.
Michael B. Oren. Power,
Faith and Fantasy. ©2007 This is a history of America’s interaction
with the Middle East and north Africa from colonial times to the present. As I read through the chapters that covered
the period before WW II, I kept wondering how I had missed so much. I remembered
“Millions for defense; not one cent for tribute,” but I had no idea that
the wars with the Barbary States went on for 30 years and sometimes our
government chose to pay a major portion of the national budget as tribute
rather than pay for the ships that could protect our interests. Eventually the continuing danger to US
shipping resulted in the development of a strong US Navy. It seems like everyone took a trip to the
Middle East, but the most persistent visitors were missionaries. As early as
1810 there was a movement among Christians in the US to set up missions and
also to settle Jews in Palestine to create the conditions called for in the
Book of Revelation, the so-called Restoration Movement. There are lots of nuggets: In 1838 steamer service to Palestine was
instituted. The trip took 21 days and
cost $190, one month’s salary for a senator and one year’s salary for a worker
in the South. Using the CPI, $190 would be $3,660.00 in 2012 dollars. On the
voyage, there were no berths and no dishes.
The diet was hardtack and salted meat.
Using a pseudonym, Ben Franklyn wrote a tract as if he were a Muslim
slaveholder opposing emancipation of his white slaves on grounds that they
could not survive if they were freed. In
America few people other than Franklyn saw the parallel between white slaves in
North Africa and black slaves in the US. Lincoln supported Restorationism. On the way to Ford’s Theater and again after
they were seated, he told Mary that he wanted to visit Jerusalem. Seward, Sherman and Grant all visited the Middle
East and were lionized wherever they went.
Mark Twain visited Palestine as part of a five month cruise. In Innocents
Abroad he says that the Sea of Galilee is so small that he refused to pay
the boatman: “No wonder Jesus walked.”
Woodrow Wilson had little influence on post war arrangements in the
Middle East because the US did not declare war on Turkey. The Brits wanted the US to take on the
mandate for Syria and Armenia, but we would have none of it. When FDR met Ibn Saud on the USS Quincy in
February 1945 and asked him to help in the resettlement of Jews in Palestine,
he said the Arab way would be to give the Jews the choice houses in Germany
and, since 3 million Jews had been killed in Poland, there should be plenty of
room for them there too. When
Oren gets to 1945 he tells his readers that what he has covered so far has been
neglected by historians, and he saw a need to fill in the record. On the other hand, after 1945 so much has
been written that he can do little more than summarize. His account of events after 1945 is as good
as anything I have seen. Of all US
presidents after 1945, Truman seems to come off best in handling relations with
the Middle East. September 2013
.
Orhan Pamuk. Silent
House. ©1983 and ©2012 This is an early novel by Pamuk. I didn’t find it very interesting and quit
before I got very far. A big problem
listening to it was sorting out all the different narrators. September 2013
.
Thomas Perry. Poison
Flower. ©2012 This is the 7th in a series about
Jane Whitfield, a woman who is the opposite of a bounty hunter. She helps people disappear. In this one she poses as a lawyer to help a
convicted murderer escape from a courthouse in LA. The bad guys want him dead and have tried to
have him killed in prison, because he is serving time for killing a woman who
was actually murdered by their boss.
Eventually they figure out that Jane has arranged many escapes and that
if they could capture her, they could auction her off to the highest bidder. In one incident, she kills eight of them. September 2013
.
Robin Sloan. Mr.
Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.
©2012 If you pick up a book with
a title this weird, weird is what you are likely to get. Clay Jannon writes computer code and has just
lost his job with an advertising firm. When
he walks into the Penumbra bookstore, he comes out as the employee who works
the graveyard shift. One rule is that he
is not to open any of the books on the back list. Eventually he learns that this bookstore is
one of 12 worldwide operated by a secret cult headquartered in NYC and all members
are working on decoding the15th C manuscript of Aldus Pius Manutius (1449 – 1515), which is thought to contain the
secret of immortality. The original is
in the cult’s underground reading room in NYC and there are no copies. Clay sneaks in at night and makes a photo
copy and takes it to his girl friend at Google.
Even hundreds of machines can’t break the thing. Eventually he finds a way by examining the original
letters carved by Francesco Griffo. I
had to go to Google to find out that Manutius and Griffo are real and the type
face invented by Griffo for the Aldine publishing house in Venice is what we
call italics today. There’s a lot here about
computer programs and typography and about Google and its magic
campus and some magic dragons. It’s
short, sweet and fun. September 2013
.
Ron Suskind. The
Way of the World, A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. ©2008
Suskind weaves together an array of stories that follow a diverse group
of individuals engaged in the modern challenges of national security and
cultural attitudes and conditioning. An
intelligence official works to combat nuclear terrorism; a lawyer fights for the
rights of a Libyan baker detained at Guantanamo: a young Pakistani man is
interrogated in the basement of the White House; an Afghan teenager spends a
troubled year in an American high school: and Benazir Bhutto returns to
Pakistan to challenge Musharraf and is assassinated. The interwoven stories explore the question
of whether the US and the Muslim worlds will ever be able to coexist in
harmony. Of particular note are the frustrated efforts of our intelligence
people to dry up the market for “suitcase” nuclear weapons; the intransigence
of the military and their backers in Washington which has prevented due process
for the Guantanamo detainees; Muslim attitudes toward women which make it
difficult for them to operate in Western society; our knee-jerk reactions to
anyone who looks “Muslim;” and Suskind’s suggestion that Musharraf may be
implicated in Bhutto’s assassination. As
President Obama moves toward presenting proof that Syria used poison gas as the
rationale for a punitive strike, all I can think is Suskind’s narrative of how
the Bush-Cheney administration pushed us into the Iraq war despite almost
incontrovertible proof that Iraq had no WMD’s.
Bush et al did irreparable harm to the credibility of our government by
deceiving us and plunging the country into a needless and unjust war. August 2013
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