Grab the Nearest Book...

[chris2c4u]

Light will fall on linen simply as it would

Ciaran Carson, Collected Poems

 

[trysail]

...There had been speculation for years about Johnson's relationship to that company [the "LBJ Company"]. Lady Bird had purchased one small radio station in 1943 for $17,500. Since then, thanks in part to a twenty-year-long string of strikingly favorable rulings by the Federal Communications Commission (which, among other aspects, had left Austin as one of the few metropolitan areas with only a single commercial television station), the company had burgeoned into a chain of immensely profitable radio and television stations the length of Texas, and by 1963 it owned as well 11,000 acres of ranchland and major shareholdings in nine Texas banks. Johnson had quieted the speculations by his unequivocal denials that there was any relationship. He had said, over and over, for twenty years, that the LBJ Company was entirely his wife's business and he had nothing to do with it; that, as he claimed in one of his many statements, "All that is owned by Mrs. Johnson....I don't have any interest in government-regulated industries and I never have had." But if Lyndon Johnson had no interest in the LBJ Company, why was it taking out insurance on his life? And, of course, his denials had omitted the salient fact. Texas was a community property state, and therefore since Lyndon Johnson had an interest— a half interest— in all the company's income, he had become rich. If Reynolds' statements became public, it would cast doubt on Johnson's claim that there was no connection between LBJ and the LBJ Company— and once that connection was established, the company's financial dealings would become a subject of journalistic inquiry. Johnson had arrived in Congress poor, and during his career had ostensibly had no source of income other than his government salary. He had been boasting to friends for years that he was a millionaire. By 1963, he, a man who had never held any job but his government positions— whose salary had never been more than $35,000 per year— was not merely a millionaire but a millionaire many times over...



..." 'Millionaire'— this was perhaps the first time that Johnson had ever been identified as such in print, at least in a national publication; he had perhaps never been identified in a national publication as a wealthy man, let alone a very wealthy man; for Life to do so, it must know something about his personal fortune that he had previously been able to keep hidden.

And, in fact, it did.

The magazine's investigative team had been working since the end of October [1963], and, during that time, say its leader, Associate Editor William Lambert, 'I began to pick up all these hints' about Lyndon Johnson, not merely about Johnson and his relationship with the newly rich Bobby Baker, but about Lyndon Johnson 'and the acquisition of his fortune.' Following up on hints, the team had found, in the words of Russell Sackett, one of its members and also an associate editor, that 'The deeper you got, the more serious they were; he was far richer than anyone had expected,' that he was, in fact, very rich indeed.

'I was very indignant,' Lambert said, and during the week of November 11 [1963], he had gone to the office of George P. Hunt, Life's managing editor, and said of Lyndon Johnson, 'This guy looks like a bandit to me.' Although 'bandit' is, of course, a synonym for 'robber' or 'thief,' Lambert didn't feel he was misusing the word. 'I felt that he had used public office to enhance his private wealth.' 'We're going to have to spend some money [to investigate]. I need some people, and a lot of time.' Johnson's entire financial picture should be looked into, he said. 'It was almost a net worth job, and you know that takes an enormous amount of time. I told Hunt, 'He's got a fortune, and he's been on the [public] payroll ever since he got out of college. And I don't know how he got it, but it's there.' By the time he went to see Hunt, Lambert was to recall, 'We knew he was a millionaire many times over."...​

-Robert A. Caro
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power
New York, N.Y. 2012.​

​

This is an excerpt from the fourth volume of Robert A. Caro's monumental biography of the 36th President of the U.S.

I have read each volume as it emerged. With each and every volume, I have been more and more sickened and disgusted by Caro's revelations of Johnson's profound dishonesty.

The inescapable fact is that Lyndon Baines Johnson was a crook, a liar, a cheat, a thief and a blackmailer.

He cheated in every single election he ever entered— beginning as a student at obscure Southwest Texas State Teachers College— and he never stopped.




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[chris2c4u]

Poets often draw on well-known poems, stories or myths to nudge us in the unexpected directions.

Staying Alive.

 

[trysail]

"...What were the principles that informed the highest art? He probed this question relentlessly over five years of tireless reading, thinking, expounding. It is hard to think of any other great creative artist who has challenged him-or herself in this way. In order to achieve the clarity he needed, he fiercely drove his largely self-educated brain. He was an omnivorous reader, especially in philosophy and philology, though he was completely untrained in either. He believed there was a Holy of Holies, an ultimate truth, to which all of his thinking and all of his creative energies were directed. But what was it? He was painfully aware that he had wasted his student years and was forever trying to make up lost ground, which made him almost promiscuously susceptible to new ideas.

Approaching the great thinkers of the modern age, he started with Hegel. He was awestruck by what he called the mysterious power of the philosopher's writing, a power he thought comparable to Beethoven's in his Ninth Symphony, but, on his own admission, he barely understood a word of it. Then his attention was drawn by a Catholic priest and political agitator named Menzdorff to the work of Ludwig Feurbach; Feurbach, Menzdorff told him, was 'the only real philosopher of modern times.' Wagner eagerly seized on the philosopher's first book, Thoughts on Death and Immortality, finding it a model of lucidity after Hegel. This he could understand, and it gave him a massive jolt. He fervently embraced its proposition that individual human consciousness is part of an infinite consciousness into which it will be absorbed at death, and that belief in immortality and a personal deity are merely expressions of egoism. What he saw as the tragic dimension of this argument appealed greatly to Wagner. Above all, he endorsed Feurbach's rejection of the tyranny of accepted ideas based on a blind belief in authority. Authority had been the bane of Wagner's life, humiliating him and acting as a check on the free expanse of his creative spirit— 'art made tongue-tied by authority', as Shakespeare has it. Oscar Wilde's observation that, 'the form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all', exactly expresses Wagner's sentiments..."
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-Simon Callow
Being Wagner: The Story of The Most Provocative Composer Who Ever Lived
New York, N.Y. 2017.​

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I wasn't really introduced to Wagner until later in life as my family was partial to the Italians. A friend took me to Bayreuth and introduced me to the "Ring Cycle." I was hooked.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that, while I knew Wagner had led an unconventional life, I had no idea that it was as turbulent and peripatetic as related by Callow. In that regard, Wagner was quite similar to James Joyce. Both led physically transient existences. It would be a contest to figure out which of the two lived in more places.

I've always thought of Wagner as a genius. I didn't realize just how much of a genius he was.

...and, yes, it is THAT Simon Callow.






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[Curious_Muse]

Le banquet eut lieu dans une belle prairie, car il y avait tant d'invités que toutes les salles du palais étaient trop petites.

André Pezard - Contes et légendes de Provence

 

[chris2c4u]

The dividing up of the land was the only way to banish them.

Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

 

[trysail]

"...Balfour later writing to Lloyd George that:

'The weak point of our position of course is that in the case of Palestine we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination...if the present inhabitants were consulted they would unquestionably give an anti-Jewish verdict. Our justification for our policy is that we regard Palestine as being absolutely exceptional; that we consider the Jews to have an historic claim to a home in their ancient land, provided that home can be given them without either dispossessing or opressing the present inhabitants...' "​

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-David Stevenson
1917: War, Peace, and Revolution
Oxford University Press
New York, N.Y. 2017.​

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Stevenson's work betrays a staggering knowledge of worldwide events throughout the pivotal year of 1917.

The events of the Western and Eastern Fronts in Europe are widely-known but the other theaters of war (notably the miserable and horribly bloody Italian Front with its twelve [yes, 12] Battles of The Isonzo) are not.

Stevenson's incredible scope examines the reasons behind German strategic decisions (including the gamble of unlimited submarine warfare), the grant of officer commissions to Sikhs and Punjabs in British Indian army units, the Balfour Declaration, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the respective American, Greek, Brazilian, Siamese and Chinese decisions to enter the war on the side of the Allies, Lenin, the Russian Revolution, and various peace initiatives undertaken by Pope Benedict XV and the Vatican.






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[trysail]

"...Joaquin was a compact, soon-to-be powerful storm with an indeterminate eye. Danielle couldn't have known, but even the NHC's [National Hurricane Center's] positions of Joaquin were seriously off. For the next thirty-six hours, official reports put the eye as much as forty miles too far to the north. Lack of reliable data had hindered NHC's reporting accuracy. The storm system had developed much faster than anyone expected, defying all the odds, intensifying at an astonishing rate. The NHC's Hurricane Hunters usually ran through a storm system collecting data every twelve hours; keeping track of this rapidly developing hurricane would have required much mor frequent flies. The NHC's forecasts were also handicapped by the fact there weren't any ships in the area sending voluntary weather reports. Without quality data, the meteorologists could only get a fuzzy picture of the storm from satellite imagery. There simply wasn't enough information to accurately predict Joaquin's intensity and path..."
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-Rachel Slade
Into The Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, And The Sinking Of El Faro
New York, N.Y. 2018.​

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The archive section of the NHC allows one a partial glimpse at what real-time information on Hurricane Joaquin was available. It's quite clear that the hurricane was quite unusual in a lot of respects and its motion erratic and unpredictable.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2015/JOAQUIN.shtml?

This is a riveting account of the sinking of the El Faro, a U.S.-flagged container ship that unknowingly sailed into the eye of Hurricane Joaquin in 2015 and sank in 15,000 feet of water with the loss of all hands.

The book is largely based on the National Transportation Safety Board and U.S. Coast Guard reports issued in late 2017. Their findings were, in turn, substantially based on the vessel's recovered bridge voice recorder (I was not previously aware of the existence of such things). The search and near-miraculous recovery of the bridge voice recorder in 15,000 feet of water is, in itself, a fascinating tale.

On the whole, the incident is absolutely terrifying— the usual cascade of seemingly minor problems accumulating to produce catastrophe. Reading the crew's words while knowing that they're all going to be dead in twenty-four/twelve/six/three hours is chilling.

The book is both illuminating and horrifying. We sit here on land with our instant access to the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service radar and wonder how anybody could sail into the eye of a hurricane. Tracking and predicting the hurricane's course was no simple matter; Hurricane Joaquin did something that is extremely rare for an Atlantic hurricane— it reversed course and moved south.

There's interesting background on the design history of container vessels going all the way back to Malcolm McLean's revolutionary concept of containerization of cargo. El Faro's design dates to the 1970s. The author asserts that El Faro's design and condition were satisfactory though it was old and a compromise. The vessel was designed as a "RoRo" (roll-on, roll-off") and its 2nd deck was intended to be open and awash. The author made clear the important distinction between a "scuttle" and a "hatch cover." There's a very, very big and critically important difference between the commonly accepted usage of "scuttle" and a "hatch cover." Somebody screwed up big time securing the damn hatches.








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[Dracona]

"She shouldn't have tried to talk to the bastard."

The Killing Room by Gerri Hill

 

[trysail]

"...They stripped the bodies and scalped some of them, though most of the soldiers had hair too short for the effort. Then, as the men of the village threw themselves on their ponies and rode south toward the bluecoats standing on the high point near the river, the women, boys, and old men who had waited on their ponies out of range arrived to help kill the wounded and begin the important task of mutilation. Many warriors had died, but far more wasichus lay dead along this ridge. There were skulls to crush, eyes to tear out, muscles and tendons to sever, limbs to hack off, and heads to separate from bodies. These soldiers would not move through the next world in comfort..."​

-James Donovan
A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn, the Last Great Battle of the American West
New York, New York 2008.​

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I am not alone in my long fascination with the Battle of The Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell's 1984 Son Of The Morning Star was my first encounter with a detailed account of the event and its protagonists. That was followed by Dee Brown's 1970 Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Robert M. Utley's 1993 The Lance And The Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, Steven E. Ambrose's 1975 Crazy Horse And Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors and Nathaniel Philbrick's 2010 The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, And The Battle Of The Little Big Horn.


A Terrible Glory is eminently readable, nicely illustrated ( I don't recall having seen photographs of the Crow scouts White Man Runs Him, Hairy Moccasin, Curly and Goes Ahead or of the noted mountain man/scout Mitch Boyer or the Arikara interpreter Frederic Gerard heretofore ) and Donovan related several events leading up to the dénouement that were new to me.
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[trysail]

"...No Templar castle housed only members of the order, and in Safad the white-mantled knight-brothers and black-clad sergeants made up only a minority of the inhabitants. There were a large number of servants, mercenary crossbowmen, Syrian turcopole light cavalry and civilians who had fled from nearby towns and villages and sought refuge on Baybars' approach. This was a varied group, and the sultan decided to exploit their potential differences, adopting the timeless strategy of attacking morale rather than walls. Having first ensured that Safad was cut off from reinforcement or relief, he instructed public criers to stand within earshot of the castle compound and announce that he was prepared to offer safe conduct for all Syrians— an offer that was gratefully taken up by a large number of the turcopoles and mercenaries. The sultan wanted to sow discord inside the fortress, and he did. Soon many had deserted. Now, with the barbican still occupied, the Templars were 'badly weakened' and in 'considerable disunity.'

Inside the castle the brothers called a council. After some deliberation they decided to send out a sergeant named Leon Cazalier (known as Brother Leo) who spoke Baybars' native Turkish language, to demand the same rights for Frankish Christians as had been offered the Syrians. The sultan heard this request politely and gave a noncommittal response. Later he took Brother Leo aside for a private meeting in which he informed the sergeant that he was mortally offended by the Templars' rejection of his gifts, that he intended to have every member of the garrison put to death and that this would certainly include Brother Leo, who would suffer the most agonizing end of all if he did not return to the castle and deliver a specific message to his comrades.

Weak, scared and unwilling to sample the inventiveness of Baybars' cruelty, Brother Leo hurried back to his Templar brothers with a fresh mouthful of lies. 'He returned to the castle and told them that the sultan had authorized a safe-conduct for everyone, and that the sultan himself would swear to it in their sight,' wrote the Templar of Tyre. He was sending them all to their doom.

The following morning Baybars appeared before Safad and announced that if the Templars would lay down their arms and hand over the castle he would escort them safely to Acre, which was fast becoming the only safe spot on the littoral for Frankish Christians. The deal was accepted and the brothers and their dependents mad preparations to depart.

Unfortunately for the Templars, Baybars was not Baybars. The sultan had selected one of his emirs who most looked like him, dressed him in royal finery and sent him out to sell a phony deal. Anyone who knew the sultan by sight might have recognized the difference by looking for the white-flecked brilliant blue of his eyes, but from high up on the battlements of their castle, the Templars were fooled. On July 24 fighting halted and the gates of Safad were opened. Out poured its inhabitants. Templar knights and sergeants together with more than one thousand others who had been sheltering behind the fortress walls for nearly two months. They set off with their escort in the direction of Acre, but had scarcely gone half a mile when they were stopped and corralled near a small hillock that the Templars had used as an execution spot. One by one they were all beheaded..."​

-Dan Jones
The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors
New York, New York 2017.​

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How many years has it been that I have seen the phrase, "Knights Templar" and continued on reading without really knowing who and what the hell they were?

Browsing in the local library, I stumbled across this book. How could I resist? This 362 page history of the group traces its germination as bodyguards for European pilgrims to Jerusalem through its rise to a state within numerous European kingdoms to its utter destruction at the hands of absolute monarchs eager to acquire its wealth and destroy its power.

It's an interesting read.
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[trysail]

"...[Nathaniel] Greene was a most unlikely soldier. A Quaker pacifist by birth, he suffered from asthma and had walked with a limp since childhood. He developed an early love of reading and often tended the family forge in Potowomut, Rhode Island, with a book in hand. Painfully aware of his lack of formal education, he cultivated younger and better educated friends who could contribute to his ongoing program of self-improvement. By the time of the Boston Tea Party, Greene was no longer a practicing Quaker and felt free to assume a leadership role in organizing his community's militia company. However, when the company voted to select its officers, Greene was overlooked. The reason: his physical disability detracted from the impression his company made when performing military exercises...."​

-Nathaniel Philbrick
In The Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory At Yorktown
New York, New York 2018.​

​

Very few people are aware that it was the French Navy's defeat of the British Navy at The Battle of The Capes that enabled the combined American and French armies to capture Cornwallis' army at Yorktown. Even fewer know of the March, 1781 French naval attack on Mariot Arthbuthnot's British Navy squadron during The Battle of Cape Henry in their attempt to capture Benedict Arnold (commanding British forces at Portsmouth, Virginia). That unsuccessful French naval foray turned out to be a forerunner of French admiral DeGrasse's later success defeating the British Navy at the Battle of The Capes.

In what appears to be a bow in the direction of political correctness, in the epilogue, Philbrick asserts that the slave-owning Washington wouldn't have committed to fighting for his native state of Virginia in the Civil War as did his step-great-grandson-in-law R. E. Lee. Washington, of course, was not faced with a decision of whether to attack his native state, family and neighbors. Washington did, in fact, manumit his slaves on his death by operation of his will.

Philbrick rarely disappoints though I will say this is probably the least enlightening of the long series of books he has written about American history. I did benefit from his thorough description of the Cornwallis' chase of Greene and Morgan through the Carolinas along with the discussion of King's Mountain, Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse.

I wonder where Philbrick's interests and curiosity will take him (and me) next? He's done the Pilgrims/Metacomet/New England. He's done the Essex/Moby Dick. He's done Maury and the Ex/Ex. He's done Lexington/Concord/Bunker Hill. He's done the Battles of Saratoga/Benedict Arnold. He's done Custer and The Little Bighorn.


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[trysail]

"...The newfound respectability was especially marked in his comments about the 'demoralizing' and 'lascivious hula,' the 'dance that was wont to set the passions of men ablaze in the old heathen days.' Sam compared it in his journal to 'copulation in public.' His friend Sam Damon was one of the missionaries who had petitioned the Hawaii government in 1858 to ban the dance. It was afterward 'forbidden to be performed, save at night,' privately behind closed doors, in the presence 'of few spectators, and only by permission duly procured from the authorities; upon payment of ten dollars for a license'..."​

-Gary Scharnhorst
The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years 1835-1871
Columbia, Missouri 2018.​

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Thorough and exhaustive don't begin to describe this magnificent work by Scharnhorst. If you're interested in Twain, this is must reading.

This is not the usual hagiography. This is not the sanitized Samuel Clemens you're used to— a carefully managed image created only after his marriage to a rich and respectable younger wife. This is Samuel Clemens with all the warts. He may have given his wife syphilis. He certainly was a plagiarist.

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[trysail]

"...The exchange that followed, Jed Hotchkiss wrote, impressed itself 'on my mind very forcibly.' As he recalled it, 'Gen. Lee began by saying, 'Well, General Jackson, what do you propose to do?' Gen. Jackson, moving his finger over the route indicated on the map, said, 'I propose to go right around there.' Gen. L. replied, 'What do you propose to do it with?' Gen. J. said, 'With my whole command.' Gen. Lee then said, 'What will you leave me here to hold the Federal army with?' Gen. J. replied, 'The two divisions that you have here.' After a pause Gen. Lee said, 'Well, go ahead.'..."​

-Stephen W. Sears
Chancellorsville
New York, NY 1996.​

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I'm re-reading this superbly written and minutely researched description of Robert E. Lee's most spectacular and audacious victory. Outnumbered by at least 2:1 and short of provisions, Lee not only split his army in the face of superior forces at Fredericksburg, he did it AGAIN in order to outflank Hooker's army at Chancellorsville.

Hooker has not fared well in the eyes of history. The fact of the matter is that he has been treated unfairly. His plan to outflank Lee was a good one and came within a gnat's eyelash of succeeding. He was undone by communications foul-ups and subordinates who failed to aggressively fulfill Hooker's instructions. In particular, Gen'l. Stoneman's lack of enterprise in disrupting Confederate supply lines with the entire Union cavalry entrusted to him and Gen'l. Howard's inexcusable tardiness in positioning his corps were what largely prevented Hooker from achieving a potentially war-ending rout of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Sears' book reveals how the hunter became the hunted.

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[trysail]

"...The NATO bombing of Serbia ended in May, with a negotiated agreement that turned Kosovo into a de facto protecterate of the Western powers. Peacekeeping troops began moving into position in the area, for what would clearly be a long stay. On June 12— which happened to be Russian Independence Day— British peacekeepers were slated to secure the airport in Pristina, the capital city. But the night before, two hundred Russian peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia suddenly marched across the border to Pristina and seized the airport. The operation seemed to have no strategic objective, or even a plan— the Russian troops had not made arrangements for supplies, and were ultimately fed by NATO troops who took pity on them. Back in Russia, the demonstration of pointless and unopposed military power played well. Masha and her friends cheered the siege of the airport in much the same way they cheered a Russian soccer victory over Holland..."​

-Masha Gessen
The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
New York, N.Y. 2017.​

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Russia's descent into near anarchy after the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1989-1991 was not a pleasant experience for Russians. The continuing chaos under Boris Yeltsin led to declining living standards, outright hunger and uncertainty for many. Accurately or not, the populace associated the experience with democracy and capitalism and many yearned for a return to the "good old days" of totalitarian communism. Enter Vladimir Putin.

The author is a proponent of democracy and individual liberty but is clearly a bit of a malcontent. She suffered repression and reprisals under the Putin regime and subsequently moved to the U.S.

Putin plays hardball— as do all politicians and Machiavellians.

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[trysail]

-Michael Korda
Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee
New York, N.Y. 2014.​

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I read Michael Korda's Hero (a biography of T. E. Lawrence [of Arabia]) last year. It was riveting and I was impressed by the author's meticulous research and prose. Much to my astonishment, I discovered that David Lean's spectacular film was that rarest of rarities: a Hollywood film that was, in the main, accurate.


For a multitude of reasons, I've had a lifelong interest and affinity for Robert E. Lee. For many generations, in both the North and the South and throughout the United States, he was widely admired and considered a paragon of character and integrity— in addition to his stature as a military genius.


Korda succeeds in tying together in a lucid and fluid fashion the string of Lee's successes from his 1862 command debut at Seven Days to Second Manassas. This is the first time I've encountered a book that makes the various campaigns logically sequential in respect of strategy, logistics, politics, topography, tactics and geography. Korda is clearly familiar with the critically important role that logistics play in formulating decisions— and it is a prominent facet of the constraints that Lee had to contend with. I haven't seen other authors describe, present or consider the difficulties of feeding many thousands of horses and men when chronically under-supplied. It is a subtlety that may have had a larger influence than is widely understood on the Army of Northern Virginia's two campaigns north of the Potomac. It is no understatement to say that the Army of Northern Virginia was "living off the land" both prior to and during those forays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Virginia_Campaign​

I was very surprised by occasional displays of sloppy prose and weak editing. I have chosen to label the appearance of glaringly obvious errors such as "Cranston Gap" (instead of "Crampton's Gap"— the location of an important and bloody preliminary battle in the Sharpsburg/Antietam campaign) as particularly egregious. An obvious error like that should not have escaped notice.


It is no accident that military academies around the world continue to teach their students about Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Seven Days, Second Manassas and Sharpsburg.



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[trysail]

-Simon Jenkins
A Short History Of Europe: From Pericles To Putin
New York, New York 2019.​

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A superb overview. Well worth reading.

I've never heard of the publisher: Public Affairs (though it is part of the well-known Hachette Group).

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[trysail]

"...Kubrick's next suggestion, following hot upon the last, was that I should write him a Second World War spy movie set in France and based on the rivalry between MI6 and SOE. I said I'd think about it, thought about it, didn't like it and declined. Okay, so how about adapting an erotic novelle by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler? ..."​

-John le Carré (well known nom de plume of David Cornwell)
The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life
New York, N.Y. 2016.​

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In this semi-autobiographical assemblage of essays (38 of them) le Carré reveals sources and inspirations for many of his characters and best-selling novels. Do you want to know who the real Jerry Westerby was? Interested in Alec Guinness' portrayal of George Smiley in the BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ? What's Cornwell's assessment of Yasser Arafat ? Want dirt on Richard Burton's role as Alec Leamas and Elizabeth Taylor's behavior during the 1965 filming of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold ? Does the name Dr. Hans Josef Maria Globke mean anything to you? Kim Philby?
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[trysail]

"...All was not fulmination. During the first decade of his marriage, GW [George Washington] devoted much of his energy to simply having a good time, and, in the grand Virginia planter tradition, living large. As usual, the foxes suffered, with Washington hunting them as many as forty-nine days a year. He also attended balls and horse races, and he gambled regularly. But mostly he and Martha were prodigious hosts, estimated to have entertained around two thousand guests during the seven years preceding the Revolution. That was obviously expensive, but not nearly inline with the estimated equivalent of $2 million to $3 million they blew through during just the first half of the 1760s. Like so many Americans who would follow, George and Martha were addicted to stuff..."​

-Robert L. O'Connell
Revolutionary: George Washington At War
New York, N.Y. 2019.​

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Every time I read a biography of Washington, I learn something new. O'Connell's book was fascinating because of its extensive examination of Washington's early life and the formative influences on his character. Washington was no shrinking violet; he developed a burning ambition at the hands of his domineering mother and older half-brother whose early death made him the unanticipated heir to Mount Vernon. Washington was fearless, lucky, physically huge and athletic. His British colonial masters recognized his talents but the existent British Army culture would never allow colonials to advance beyond a certain level. Washington's frustration inevitably led to an implacable animosity toward the British. The rest— as they say— is history.

I wholeheartedly recommend O'Connell's book to anyone with an interest in the subject. Dr. O'Connell has a background in military intelligence and history.
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[trysail]

"...We live today in a time of widespread concern and fascination with technological innovation, the system of networking, and the influence of both on globalization in the twenty-first century..."​

-Peter L. Bernstein
Wedding Of The Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation
New York, N.Y. 2005.​

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Peter Bernstein wrote an earlier book Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk that was highly acclaimed and widely read. His story of the Erie Canal is every bit up to that high standard. Read it; you'll be glad you did.
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[trysail]

"...America's second-largest city, with a population of about thirty thousand, New York was a small provincial town compared to European capitals. Lavishly appointed carriages sped through streets heaped with horse droppings and rubbish. Rich and robust, New York already had a raucous commercial spirit that grated on squeamish sensibilities. 'New York is less citified than Philadelphia,' said a French visitor, 'but the bustle of trade is far greater.' Before the war, John Adams, passing through town, huffed that 'with all the opulence and splendor of this city, there is very little good breeding to be found. There is no modesty. No attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast, and all together.'..."​

-Ron Chernow
Washington: A Life
New York, N.Y. 2010.​

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Ron Chernow has written several popular biographies. I've read most of them. This is the first that contained information of which I was previously unaware. Chernow somehow manages to both tarnish and canonize George Washington. Bowing in the direction of very careful political correctness, Chernow spends considerable time painting Washington as a benevolent slave owner who wrestles with both the practicalities and ethics of America's "peculiar institution" and who, eventually, by operation of his will manumits those he owned directly. At the same time, Chernow removes Washington's halo by making it very clear that the young Washington was a thruster, an ambitious self-promoter and, quite possibly, an enabler and, certainly, an apologist for what would today be considered war crimes by sensation-seeking media types.
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[trysail]

"...In the southern part of the Bahamas chain and the group south of it known as the Turks and Caicos, salt rakers found small islands with brackish lakes in the interior. Great Inagua, Turk, South Caicos, and Salt Cay (pronounced KEY) had salty inland lakes well suited for salt making. Since Columbus and his Spanish successors had already annihilated the indigenous population, these scarcely inhabited islands were easily converted into salt centers..."​

-Mark Kurlansky
Salt: A World History
New York, N.Y. 2002.​

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The stuff used to be scarce and expensive. It's also indispensable. H. sapiens cannot survive without it.

Now it's inexpensive and ubiquitous. Capitalism is a wonderful thing.​

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[trysail]

"...The big Wall Street firms— Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and others— had the same goal as any manufacturing business: to pay as little as possible for raw material (home loans) and charge as much as possible for their end product (mortgage bonds). The price of the end product was driven by the ratings assigned to it by the models used by Moody's and S&P. The inner workings of these models were, officially, a secret: Moody's and S&P claimed they were impossible to game. But everyone on Wall Street knew that the people who ran the models were ripe for exploitation. 'Guys who can't get a job on Wall Street get a job at Moody's,' as one Goldman Sachs trader-turned-hedge fund manager put it. Inside the rating agency there was another hierarchy, even less flattering to the subprime mortgage bond raters. 'At the ratings agencies the corporate credit people are the least bad,' says a quant who engineered mortgage bonds for Morgan Stanley. 'Next are the prime mortgage people. Then you have the asset-backed people, who are basically like brain-dead.' Wall Street bond trading desks, staffed by people making seven figures a year, set out to coax from the brain-dead guys making high five figures the highest possible ratings for the worst possible loans. They performed the task with Ivy League thoroughness and efficiency. They quickly figured out, for instance, that the people at Moody's and S&P didn't actually evaluate the individual home loans, or so much as look at them. All they and their models saw, and evaluated, were the general characteristics of loan pools..."​

-Michael Lewis
The Big Short
New York, N.Y. 2010.​

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I saw it up on the library's shelf and thought that it would be instructive and a good idea (on the 10th anniversary of the "Great Recession") to re-read Michael Lewis' The Big Short.

It is beyond mind-boggling to see just how stupid and/or dishonest people can be when part of an organization/tribe/mob/group. I find it all but impossible to believe that anybody could be so gullible as to think it possible to magically transform BBB credits into AAA credits. Nobody was thinking. Nobody was reading the fine print.

It's a story (and a lesson) for the ages.

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[trysail]

"...hove-to outside the Tahitian reef awaiting the daylight visibility necessary to safely follow the entrance passage..."​

-James S. Rockefeller, Jr.
Wayfarer: A Memoir
Yarmouth, Maine 2018.​

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Knowing my background, a friend lent this book to me thinking I'd enjoy it. You can guess from the author's recognizable patronym that he was never in danger of missing any meals. Born in 1924, a member of the "poor" side of the family (i.e., a descendant of William, rather than John D.), he had a privileged childhood. After service as a blister gunner in the Army Air Corps during WWII, he was at loose ends until he purchased Mandalay with the intent of sailing her to the Pacific. Along the way, he has an intense relationship with well-known children's book author, Margaret Wise Brown (who dies prematurely), fathers an illegitimate son with a Tahitian woman, marries the wife of Thor Heyerdahl, fathers a couple more children, buries his wife, takes up flying and marries again, eventually settling in coastal Maine.

The book is mainly self-indulgent, boring, and I don't recommend it to anyone except voyeurs and those somehow connected to the author or the subject.​

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[Lydia_Deetz]

"Do you know why those Turkish girls cover their faces?"

(Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides)