Climbing Mt. Everest – “The Lost Explorer”

“The Lost Explorer” by Conrad Anker and David Roberts (1999).

There are so many people climbing the world’s tallest mountains today that it is sometimes difficult to remember (or to realize) how recent most of those attempts have been.  For example, Wikipedia tells me that almost 4000 people have successfully climbed to the top of the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest, but that most of those climbs have taken place in very recent years. There are obviously many reasons for this.  For one thing, there are more people in the world with the time and resources to undertake such a venture.  For another, the equipment used for mountain climbing today, as well as available cold weather clothing, and remote communication capacity make everything that much easier, more certain and, yes, more comfortable.  For a third, until someone reaches a summit, the mountain is an unknown and the path to the top is unknown.  Once the top is reached, the path (or at least one path) is known, and one big uncertainty is removed.  And finally, you don’t reach the top of a 29,000 foot mountain in the Himalayas by yourself.  You need guides; you need porters.  And until these guides and porters have reached the top, they too are limited in the support and guidance they can provide.

It is fairly well known that Mt. Everest was not summited until 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the top.  They were part of a climbing team known as the 9th British expedition.

Thirty years earlier, the very well known George Mallory, British mountaineer, writer, romantic, charmer and (by all accounts) good guy, was one of the climbers on three British expeditions.  The first two were not successful; the third, in 1924, was tragic.  Mallory and his companion climber Sandy Irvine were within a thousand feet of the summit when they disappeared.  When they didn’t come back to the highest campsite with a couple of days, their fate was clear.  The assumption is (with some dissent) that they were killed before they reached the summit, not after.

They were not the only climbers who died on the mountain, but they were perhaps the best known, and there continued to be interest in discovering what happened to them.  It was known where they were last seen, and from that it could be guessed what their further route would have been, and there was always the chance that their bodies would be found, particularly since the cold air could preserve human remains.  But it is a vast mountain, and it is covered with snow and ice and subject to frequent landslides.  So the chance that they would be found was slim.

But not so slim that a group was not put together in 1999 to search for the bodies.  One of the climbers was the young American Conrad Anker. A climber and guide, he had climbed in the Himalayas before, one of the reasons he was selected for the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition.  While he had an idea where the two climbers might have met their death, it was only luck that led him to find Mallory’s body, fully clothed, in a remarkable state of preservation, showing that he had been subjected to a fatal head injury either before, as a result of, a fall. Irvine’s body has not been found.

“The Lost Explorer” was co-written by Anker and by writer David Roberts in the format where one would write a section of a chapter, and the other would follow.  So part of the book is written in the third person (and these are the sections that deal with the fatal Mallory expedition) and part in the first person (the sections that deal with the 1999 climb and discovery).

The book is fascinating, not only for the obvious reasons, but because it outlines the technical aspects of climbing in 1924 and in 1999, and the personal hardships.  You see how primitive the clothing and equipment of the 1924 climbers were, when compared with those that Anker and his fellow climbers had at their disposal.  You read about the weather patterns and the topography of the upper reaches of Everest.  You learn about (but I can’t say I understand) the motivations that led these men to climb these mountains and put not only their lives, but their basic comfort, at risk.

This is a short book, less than 200 pages.  I recommend it very highly.

 

 

 

Still Thinking About Eastern Europe After the Holocaust

There continue to be problems between elements of world Jewry and officials of some European countries formerly under the control of, or allied with, Nazi Germany.  I am most familiar with issues that continue to arise in Lithuania, where over 90 percent of the Jewish community (a community with just under 200,000 members) were wiped out in the years of, and the years surrounding, World War II.  Today’s Jewish population is very small, well under 5,000, and very few of those individuals were pre-war Lithuanian residents.  After World War II, the Jewish community in Lithuania did grow, but it was not because former Lithuanian Jews (or Litvaks) returned to their old homes, but because Jews from other parts of the Soviet Union (remember Lithuania in effect became the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, a constituent republic of the USSR, after the war and remained so for approximately 45 years) moved, or were sent, into the area.  Non-Jewish Lithuanians who grew up during the Soviet period may have met, and interacted, with Jews, but these Jews were by and large not themselves Lithuanian natives, did not speak the Lithuanian accent, and often spoke Russian with an accent which betrayed them as strangers to the Lithuanian lands.

Not only this, but those who grew up in Soviet Lithuania were taught a very distorted history that left a lot of things out.  It certainly left out any problems caused by the Soviet entry into Lithuania (which happened at the start of World War II, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was still in effect with the result that central and eastern Europe were divided up by agreement of the two treaty powers, leaving Lithuania under Soviet influence.  During this period of time, tens of thousands of Lithuanians (intellectuals, capitalists, land owners, military leaders – Jewish and non-Jewish) were exiled to Siberia; this was never spoken of.

Also, the Holocaust itself was not mentioned.  Young Lithuanians were not taught that their country had had an extensive Jewish population for hundreds of years, and that it was wiped out not through the transport of Jews to death camps in Poland, but rather through cold blooded murder, with most being shot either where they lived or worked, in town squares, or in specially selected sites in the forests surrounding the cities and towns.  And they certainly weren’t told that the murderers of their Jewish co-citizens included large numbers of Lithuanian nationals, sometimes acting under the orders of, or in collaboration with, the Germans, but often acting on their own.

Obviously, every Lithuanian was not involved in these atrocities.  Hundreds of Lithuanians have been recognized as “righteous Gentiles” by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, as individuals who gave aid to, or hid, Jews during the war years.  But many Lithuanians were involved.

The countries of the Holocaust (what Yale professor Timothy Snyder terms the countries of the “Bloodlands”) have dealt with their war time experiences in different ways.  Lithuania has not dealt with them very well.

There have been a number of problems.  Individual anti-Semitic incidences continue to occur, leaving current Jewish Lithuanians feeling vulnerable.  There is a strong far-right political movement.  Its newspapers print anti-Semitic articles; it stages neo-Nazi rallies and parades.  The country was very slow to appropriate any reparations for Holocaust survivors or the Jewish community.   Some Jewish “partisans” who fled the ghettos into the woods and joined the Soviets in battling the Nazis have been determined to be traitors to the Lithuanian republic.  The leader of the collaborationist Lithuanian government has been reburied in the country with great fanfare.

On the other hand, the country finally did appropriate compensatory payments, although it is not clear how quickly these payments can be made, or whether they will go people or places who are in need of support.  There are many Holocaust memorials across the country, there is an annual day of remembrance, there is a fair amount of Holocaust education now being provided (with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum staff offering assistance).  There are stated policies against anti-Semitism.  There are Jews in the Lithuanian government, and certain Jewish tourists (including “roots tourists”) are more than welcome.  Lithuania was one of the minority of states who voted against expanding Palestinian representation in the United Nations.  Lithuanian-Israeli relations are extensive.

Certainly, more could be (and should be) done.  But Lithuania is a full fledged democratic republic, and like our own has the equivalent of “red” and “blue” politicians and voters.  So, it’s a process, and often a frustrating one.

And there is another issue.  The non-Jewish Lithuanians have a lot to complain about concerning the years of Soviet occupation.  Not only were there the 1930 exiles to Siberia, followed by years of warfare and deprivation, but there were additional exiles which occurred after 1945, when the Soviets came in for what seemed to be a permanent occupation.  And of course large numbers of exiles never returned, dead on the way to Siberia or dead in Siberia.  The position of many central and east Europeans is that there were two parallel Holocausts – the Nazi Holocaust and the Communist Holocaust, one targeting Jews, the other targeting everyone.  (I am ignoring those who deny there was a Nazi Holocaust – they do not seem to play a role here.)  The concept of a double Holocaust drives some Jews and Jewish organizations crazy – they claim that there is only one Holocaust and anyone who tries to equate what the Communists did to what the Russians did are simply anti-Semites.

How should the outside Jewish world react, and should it involve itself with pushing progress forward?  This is a big question, and one which itself has led to a lot of controversy.

Although I am far from expert on such matters, I know that there are many organizations which have been highly critical of Lithuania and highly dismissive of Lithuania’s attempts to show that it has attempted to counter anti-Semitism in the country.  One of the greatest critics has been an American born scholar, Dovid Katz, who spends about half his time in Vilnius attacking virtually everything the Lithuanian government does, or does not do, with regard to its Jewish population.  It would seem that nothing that Lithuania does pleases Katz in any way, and he certainly makes his presence felt, not only through his vitriolic pen (he writes a blog), but through his presumably well crafted persona – he is very overweight, and equally underdressed, he has a long, unkempt beard and looks like a caricature of an unpleasant Jewish activist.

There are other individuals and organizations who take a softer approach to dealing with the Lithuanian government.  They can be as frustrated by Katz as the Lithuanians.

My own position is that the Lithuanians suffered from the Russians – through loss of family members, economic privation, the rewriting of taught history, and the absence of freedoms which we take for granted. The Jews should not deny the Lithuanians there own victimhood.  The Jews should not  assume that members of other groups will (or should) admit that what was done to the Jews was worse than what was done to the millions of others who perished during or as a result of the two world wars.  It is a self-defeating position.

The fact is that the situation is much more complicated.  It is true (again sticking with Lithuania) that the Soviet occupation was in some ways friendlier to the Jews than to the non-Jews in the country.  Clearly the German occupation was more beneficial to the gentiles.  Circumstances set the Jews and the non-Jews against each other.  Recognizing this complexity (something that those on both sides of the debate too often fail to do) is, as I said, self-defeating.

Some people have tried to come to grips with this complexity.  One of the prime examples is Ellen Cassedy, Jewish resident of Washington, who traced her roots in Lithuania while studying Yiddish and Vilnius University, and wrote about her experience in her interesting memoir, “We are Here”.  While in the country, she met with any number of Lithuanians, some alive during World War II, and some not, and heard a variety of stories, many of which are very sympathetic.  Rather than be universally praised for her attempt to navigate through this complicated history and look for the best in people, Cassedy has been torn to pieces by some Jewish critics, who claim she has been duped, or that she is simply a tool of the Lithuanian government.  Having met Cassedy, and knowing many who know her, this is clearly ridiculous, but it is a pervasive criticism.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I attended a showing of a new documentary film, “Rewriting History”, which is primarily the story of Dovid Katz’s attempts to get the Lithuanian government to see everything his way, and his lack of success doing so (because, of course, of the intransigence and anti-Semitism of Lithuanian government officials).  The film was produced and directed by an Australian Jewish filmmaker and university teacher Danny Ben-Moshe.  It’s a very well made film, but I did chafe a bit at the one-sided nature of it – the film denied any complexity and assumed (or concluded) that all the Lithuanians with whom they came in contact were enemies of the Jewish people, plain and simple.  Following the showing, there was a panel discussion.  Ben-Moshe was present, along with a representative of the Lithuanian embassy,  a Jewish-American poet of Lithuanian descent who visits the country on a regular basis, and an American diplomat who has been heavily involved with post-Holocaust matters throughout central and eastern Europe.  Ben-Moshe was clearly out of step with the other panel members, and verbally assaulted the Lithuanian representative. It was embarrassing not only to me, but I think to others, including the moderator and host, Walter Reich, former director of the Holocaust Museum, who kindly balled out his guest.  Too bad, but educational in that it was indicative of the basic problem.

Because I have done so much reading about, and talking to others about, the situation in Lithuania, I had not given much thought to how parallel the issues are elsewhere in Europe.  For this reason, I am glad I just finished reading “Shtetl” by Eva Hoffman, published in 1997.  Hoffman, a well known writer about Jewish matters, went back to her mother’s home town of Bransk, in Poland.  She went through the long history of the Jews of Bransk and its surroundings, and naturally told the story of Bransk during the Holocaust.  The parallels during the years of German occupation were very strong, particularly with regard to the trap that the Jews and non-Jews found themselves in, and how many non-Jews risked everything to help some Jews, while others ( no matter what they might have wished that they did) felt forced to look the other way. And how difficult the war years were for so many Catholic Poles.

To get a basic feeling of what I am writing about, I suggest you read Cassedy’s book and Hoffman’s, and then (after you have a basic feeling for what went on), go to Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands” for a fuller understanding of the history of these lands during these years.

Angela Kraft Cross concert at Church of the Epiphany (27 cents)

So, Angela Kraft Cross must be a pretty special person.  A graduate of Oberlin College and Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music, she is a professional organist (she has given over 350 concert performances) and composer, she was a music and physics major as an undergraduate, and she went on to get a medical degree, working as an eye surgeon for over 20 years in California before retiring two years ago to devote full time to her music and to music education.  She is still a relatively young woman.

She was the featured artist yesterday at the Church of the Epiphany in Washington, where she gave a solo concert on the church’s recently restored Aeolian-Skinner Organ (I don’t know much technically about organs, but this particular one has four keyboards, and “64 ranks, 62 stops, and 3,467 pipes”.  That has to be pretty good.

It was a wonderful hour long concert – both the instrument and the artist were in top form.

She called her program one of romantic music, and then she started with Bach’s Fantasie and Fugue in G minor, which she (quite rightly, I thought) identified not as baroque, but as romantic, or at least proto-romantic.  And it’s harmonies are quite lush, with little of the staccato and counterpoint you would expect.  From there, she went to Robert Schumann’s Canon in A-Flat major, a softer piece, that she said was written originally for the piano-flugel, something new to me.  Called in English a pedal piano, this is an instrument which combines a standard piano, with a full range of organ-like pedals, which play the bass notes, and are each connected to its own strings.  Interesting concept, and I think undergoing its own mini-renaissance today.

The Schumann was followed by Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H, an enjoyable and  powerful piece which again introduced me to a new concept, and one I don’t understand at all.  This is the concept of German Musical Notation, which has notes going through H, not G, and where the B notation is a b-flat, and the H notation is a b.  At least, that is how I understood it, and how Liszt was able to write his tribute to Bach using the four letters of his name.

The fourth piece was by the performer, and is called Homage to Henri Nouwen, From The House of Fear to the House of Love, and was written about five years ago.  For obvious reasons, I had little expectation here, but to my surprise found this prelude/fugue combination beautiful and enticing.  So here’s to hearing it again some time; this was it’s first live performance in DC.  (By the way, I had not heard of Nouwen, who was a Catholic priest, professor and author, who worked not only in large parishes, but also devoted time to working with the underprivileged and disabled.  Seemed another extraordinary person.)

Cross’ (or should it be Kraft Cross’) last two pieces were movements from two turn of the century vintage French symphonies, one by Louis Vierne and one by Charles Marie Widor.  OK, here we go again, I had not heard of either composer.  The artist said that they were two of a number of French romantic composers of this period who are little known now.  But on the basis of these two movements (a brief intermezzo and an allegro), they deserve much more play.

Not only an enjoyable hour long concert, but an informative one.  Kudos to Angela Kraft Cross.

 

 

Catching Up – Part II ($6.02)

Having written a post listing books I have recently written, I am now going to make equally brief comments about some of the events I have attended over the past month or so.  Once caught up, I will try to keep up with some items in greater depth.

1.  “4000 Miles” at the Studio Theatre.  Everyone is raving about Amy Herzog’s play, featuring a lefty grandmother in Manhattan being visited by her difficult grandson, as he finishes a cross country bike ride.  I thought it rather shallow, but I am the only one.

2.  “Coriolanus” and “Wallenstein” at the Shakespeare Theatre.  Two extraordinary performances of Shakespeare’s and Schiller’s work (Schiller’s work being adapted and compressed by Robert Pinsky).  Will be performed in repertory all through May.  See them (both) if at all possible.

3.  Two discussions at Shakespeare Theatre about the two plays, both entertaining and informative.  Yesterday’s symposium featured, among others, Pinsky, Michael Kahn, Alan Cheuse, and others, including a psychiatrist and Shakespeare scholar Richard Waugaman, who seemed to know just about everything.

4.  A book talk at the National Archives by Delaware Professor Gary May on his new book “Bending Towards Justice”, the history and status of the Voting Rights Act.  The book has been well reviewed, but I was disappointed with the presentation which focused on Selma, and not at all on current attempts to eliminate portions of the act.

5. A wonder Church of the Epiphany Concert featuring the Avanti Orchestra, and a young 16 year old violinist (whose name I do not have – they ran out of programs).  She played Mozart’s 4th violin concerto and the orchestra played the Linz symphony.

6.  Four baseball games – the Nats lost each and every one.

7.  A showing of a new film about the relationship between Lithuania and the Jewish community today at GW University, and a panel discussion that followed, that almost wound up in a fist fight (not really).  I may write some more on this later.

8.  The wonderful Hebraica exhibit at the Library of Congress.

9. The Washington Design House, benefiting Children’s Hospital.

OK, how brief can I be if I try?  Now, you know.

 

 

 

Catching Up – Part I ($9.79)

It has been over a month since I blogged, so I am going to try to catch up.  This will give the briefest of thoughts about the books I have read during this period.  A subsequent entry will discuss some of the events I attended.

 

1.  “Europe’s Last Summer” by David Fromkin.  This was a re-read, a book that outlines the political situation in Europe during the period immediately before the outbreak of World War I.  Because the politics of the time were so complicated, and often counter-intuitive, it is difficult to remember these important events without occasional review.  I find this book to be both informative and very well written, so I thought it would be worth a re-read.  It was.

2.  “One Step Ahead” by Alfred Feldman.  This is a holocaust book.  An interesting, and unusual story, of a young German Jew, whose family eventually moved to Antwerp in part for business and in part for political reasons, and who was forced to flea again, this time heading to the French Riviera, which was at time under Italian jurisdiction and where Jews were not being persecuted and, when this somewhat benign period ended, walking from France through mountain trials to small Italian villages, where they were able to hide out during the war.  Worth reading, in part to show how well the Italians treated those Jews who entered the country on foot from occupied France.

3.  “Lady at the O.K. Corral” by Ann Kirschner.  A new book focusing on Wyatt Earp’s long time Jewish common law wife, Josephine Marcus Earp, that is as much a biography of Earp himself and his brothers.  An interesting story to be sure, but I did not find the writing particularly exciting.  OK, I am  being too picky.  I enjoyed reading it.

4.  “Deliverance” by James Dickey, first published in 1970.  The ultimate guys weekend gone wrong, it was made into a film highlighted by great banjo playing.  The book is highly rated, but for me overrated.

5.  “Two Lives, One Russia” by Nicholas Daniloff.  Daniloff, ethnically Russian, was U.S. News and World Report correspondent in Moscow for several years until he was arrested (presumably because a Russian spy was arrested in New York) as a spy and held for 13 days before he was released as part of a deal with the United States in 1986.  At the same time, he had been researching the life of his great-great-great grandfather, a member of the 1825 Decembrists, concluding that from 1825 to 1986, Russia hadn’t changed all that much.  Probably still true, in 2013.  Interesting book.

6.  Stacy Schiff’s “Cleopatra”, a recent and well reviewed biography of Cleopatra, her relationship with her Ptolemaic family, Caesar and Mark Antony, and therefore a history of Rome and Alexandria.  Fascinating and informative.  Highly recommended.

7.  Alex Karmel’s “My Revolution”, a fictional diary of the real Restif de la Bretonne, French author of pre-revolutionary 18th century France.  A book no one remembers today, first published in 1970, but a wonderful book – a historical diary of the years of the revolution from the perspective of a 50+ year old man about town and well known author, and the delightful picaresque reminisces of Restif himself.  Fact?  Fiction?  Hard to say where the line is.  Great book.

8. “The Secret Architecture of our Nation’s Capital: the Masons and the Building of Washington DC” by David Ovason.  So, you may not know this, but Washington was designed by a bunch of folks who believed strongly in astrology (many of whom were Masons, but in spite of the title, the book is about astrology, more than freemasonry), and that streets and buildings and statuary was designed to honor the constellation Virgo, and to pay attention to the position of the stars, so that the city will succeed.  Seems farfetched, because how could all of these historical figures be sound knowledgeable in astrological matters, but on the other hand, there is so much detail……….Hard to read, but fascinating just the same.

9.  “All Ratings Authorized”, story of professional pilot Harry Bernard, which I enjoyed reading, but have a hard time pulling together anything that I read.  By W. Baxter Byrd.  I should look at this again to remind myself of its contents.

10.  “Forbidden Lands” by Gordon Cooper.  An old travel book, written in the early 1950s, about those portions of the world where it was impossible, or highly discouraged, to travel, sometimes for political and sometimes for geographic reasons.  The individual chapters are interesting enough, but boy how the world has changed in a very short time.  You can get to almost all of these places now – for a weekend jaunt if you wish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Six Books – Recent Reading ($6.26)

1.  “Unholy Alliance” by Aba Gefen.  About 9 months ago, Aba Gefen celebrated his 90th birthday.  Considering everything he went through, he clearly beat the odds.  Gefen, who became an Israeli diplomat, started out life in a small town in Lithuania, where he had a typical, for the times, upbringing, and where he became a university student.  The invasion of the country first by the Soviets and then the Nazis ended any chance Gefen would have had for a normal life.  Instead, during the years of the Nazi occupation and its aftermath, the young Aba Gefen (then Aba Weinstein) led a life of extraordinary stress, adventure, challenge, cleverness and, of course luck.

In these dangerous years, when being Jewish in Lithuania was a virtual death sentence, Gefen had two things going for him.  First, his appearance.  He was blond and blue eyed, and could easily pass for a Lithuanian or a German.  Second, his father appears to have been an extraordinarily well respected shopkeeper, whose reputation and years of friendship induced many to help protect his son(s) from the Nazis and their supporters.

Escaping into the countryside, Gefen not only spent years hiding in barns and farm houses, but established a network of such safe houses, and food suppliers, for a number of young Jews in hiding. Instinctively knowing whom to trust, and when to move out, his success rate in protecting his friends was extremely high, and the stories of their adventures obviously fascinating.

I have read a lot about these times, and written a fair amount as well, but each time I read something new, I learn something new.  A number of recent books, including the very well regarded “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder, show the political complexities of eastern Europe during this period of war and competing Nazi and Communist aggression.  They show how Communist occupation of Lithuania, for example, upend the entire society, but treat Jews for the most part no worse than Christians, while German occupation left society pretty much as it was for the Christian Lithuanians while marking the Jews for extermination.  Thus, most Christians were bound to be pro-German, and all Jews, pro-Communist, when these were the only two choices, pitting Christian and Jewish residents of Lithuania on a course inevitably leading to the train wreck that followed.

But Gefen’s experience shows something different.  His shows that those rural Lithuanians who were willing to shelter Jews (either because they were against the policy of Jewish extermination, or because they had been close to the Weinstein family) spanned the political spectrum.  In other words, they included Lithuanians who were very anti-German and, sometimes, pro-Soviet.  But they also included Lithuanians who were very anti-Soviet, and who pro-German (but who disagreed with the antisemitic policies of the Germans) and were politically right wing Lithuanian nationalists.  In other words, the situation was even more complicated than Snyder painted it.

Surviving the war and realizing that a future in a Soviet-occupied Lithuania (remember that Lithuania became one of the Soviet republics) did not offer him much, Gefen decided to go to Palestine.  Easier said than done, of course, not only because Palestine was basically closed to legal Jewish immigration by the British, but because the situation for Jews in post-war Europe was also so complex.  As you might know, displaced person camps were established in Europe for displaced, surviving Jews, some of whom lived in these camps (where conditions were far from ideal) for years.  There was a general agreement amongst the occupying Allies (the United States, Britain, France and the USSR) that refugees could be repatriated to their homelands, but Jews were not welcome in much of Europe, and many Jews had no intentions to return to their home countries or who, having returned, found that life there was intolerable for any number of reasons.

For many of these displaced, stateless Jews, Palestine seemed like the answer and an underground network was established to enable those who had the gumption to do so could get to various ports (mostly, but not all, in Italy) where they could board ships illegally attempting to sneak through the British blockade.

Again, easier said than done.  Not only were there serious financial problems, but travel from country to country was not usually open – refugees could go back to their home countries, but could not decide to travel, or move, to a country other than their home country, even if they were just traveling through, or intending to remain for a short time.  And it was not only a question of country to country travel, but a question of district to district in those places such as Germany and Austria where the Allies had divided the countries into separate zones of influence.

Gefen, using the same strengths that he used in the Lithuanian underground, became a leader of the movement that secretly (although sometimes with the help of occupying forces, generally American) Jews from the occupied lands to the ports of disembarkation, and arranging for their stays in those port cities until they could get on a ship.

“Unholy Alliance” was published in Israel in 1961. The English language edition was published in the United States in 1973.  The book, while fascinating, is not perfect, but only because he intersperses, with his recounting of his experiences, a number of his personal opinions on Jews, Germans etc., which are not particularly helpful or, to my mind, insightful.  But, if you can find the book, I highly recommend it.

2.  “Subsurface” by Michael Daimond.  This book was given to me, and I read it last week in Florida and on the trip back.  It’s not the type of book I normally read (it’s an espionage novel), and the writing is not always the best, but the book was intriguing and I am glad I read it.

The book, written and centered in Israel, was not published by a major press, and I am not sure it was even circulated in the United States.   Nonetheless, I am not going to give away much of the plot, just in case…….

It is a few years in the future, and the American president (actually vice-president, but that’s another story) has managed to tie down all of the elements of an Israel-Palestine peace treaty.  Only one more items (compensation in lieu of the right of return) is yet to be negotiated, and a signing ceremony has been agreed upon and set at Camp David.

There are, however, strong elements on both the Israeli and Palestinian side, opposed to the treaty.  These elements are vehemently opposed to each other, of course, but believe that the entire land should either by Israel, or Palestine, and they mean to disrupt the signing ceremony.

What better way than to report that a considerable amount of oil lay under the West Bank town of Jenin.  How could the Israelis sign that away.

Well, this is the general outline of the political plot.  At the same time, there is the personal plot, largely involving a professor at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, his wife, his best friend who also teaches at the school, and his best friend’s wife – who is the professor’s assistant and who, at one point, decides that she does not love her husband any more, but is madly in love with the professor, her husband’s best friend.

If the prose is not perfect, the twists and turns are well managed, including a few final twists which, to me at least, were unexpected.  Nice light airplane or beach reading.

3. Former Illinois Democratic Senator Paul Simon wrote a surprising number of books, most of which deal with political questions.  But one, which does not, he wrote early in his adulthood, and then edited and put out a second edition in 1994.  Titled “Freedom’s Champion: Elijah Lovejoy”, it is the story of a young newspaperman who published a popular newspaper, first in St. Louis and then in Alton, Illinois, across the Mississippi, which advocated the eventual abolition of slavery.

Originally from Maine, Lovejoy moved to Missouri for the opportunities it seems to have offered, in 1827.  A product of a religious, Protestant family, he was not the most tolerant person – he hated Roman Catholicism and riled against it, and he believed that slavery was immoral.  The anti-Catholicism of his publications was tolerated in what was then a very anti-Catholic country, but his anti-slavery position (he favored a gradual end to slavery) was too much to bear for large numbers of the public in slave state Missouri.  So, he decided to move his press across the river to the free state of Illinois and the growing city of Alton which, according to Simon, was at the time projected to outdistance St. Louis in population and financial strength in the future.

It turned out that the “free” state of Illinois (at least the southern portion of Illinois) was not any more favorably disposed towards the concept of freeing the slaves in the 1830s than was the slave state of Missouri.  Lovejoy was far from the most popular guy in town, and he and his family received numerous threats, and his press and other equipment was repeatedly destroyed.  In November 1837, things went from bad to worse.  A mob formed, the warehouse where a new press was being stored was attacked, and Lovejoy was killed.  He was buried on his 35th birthday.

This is a story I had heard nothing about, even though I grew up in St. Louis. (In fact, I learned little about the Civil War, and nothing about the Civil War in Missouri; I think that Missouri’s status as a slave-holding border state, deeply divided, was too confusing for the school systems to figure out how to teach – perhaps it is different now.)  According to Simon’s well written book, the incident caused outrage throughout much of the nation’s northern states, and Alton’s reputation hit bottom, as a town filled with bigotry and lacking sufficient law enforcement.  He says that it was this incident,  more than anything else, that stunted Alton’s growth and enabled St. Louis to prosper.

Recommended.

4.  Mark Roseman’s “The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution”.  Even a basic history of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis before and during World War I will teach you that, until a meeting of high Nazi officials was convened at a mansion in the Wannsee area of Berlin in January 1942, there was no decision made to physically liquidate the Jews, to implement a “final solution”.  Roseman, a professor at England’s University of Southampton, sets up to validate, or to disprove, this thesis.  His detailed analysis perhaps comes as close to answering this question as it could have, but in the end is inconclusive.

It is also disturbing.  First, he confirms what some of the “holocaust deniers” say:  that there is no evidence connecting Adolf Hitler with the “final decision”, the decision to murder the Jews of Europe through deportation to death camps, and the use of poisonous gas to end their lives.  Hitler, he said, consciously made sure his name was not connected with this decision, although the decision could not have been made without his consent, or better could not have been made if he had disapproved it.  Furthermore, Hitler was not at Wannsee, and his name not directly connected with that meeting.

The Wannsee meeting was convened by Reinhard Heydrich (who would be assassinated the next year), who worked under Himmler.  The invites included representatives of most of Germany’s ministries, occupation governments and security agencies.  They included a relative newcomer to the higher circles of Nazidom – one Adolf Eichmann.  Before Wannsee, there seem to have been two contradictory tracks followed regarding the treatment of the Jews:  one, to transfer Jews out of Germany and German controlled territories, to the east, or to someplace like Madagascar – this was official German stated policy.  Second, the cold blooded shooting of Jews by German and allied troops (led by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen)  throughout the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania and the western Soviet Union. Roseman can also not trace these killings directly back to Hitler, going to far as to suggest that they may at times have been the result of local military decision making, at a time when one’s reputation was thought to be in direct ratio to how nasty you could be to the Jews.

Finally, although there were no minutes kept of the Wannsee proceedings, there was a “protocol” , the Wannsee Protocol, which is quite vague as to how the Jewish problem is to be finally resolved.  It talks about removing the Jews to the east, sending older Jews (older than 65) to Teriesenstadt, creating work teams, determining how to handle people whose parentage is mixed Jewish/Gentile, all in preparation for the Final Solution.  But it does not define the Final Solution.

Roseman is clearly sympathetic to the Jews.  He is trying to be objective and his objectivity, from what I have seen, is respected and appreciated by a wide range of scholars.  The fact is, unfortunately, that he simply did not find the smoking gun – he came up with nothing that would specifically outline the Final Solution itself, or connect it directly to Hitler.  His lack of ability to do this, I found to be disturbing, and I believe he found it to be confusing, as he was forced to make assumptions throughout the book on how to connect various dots.  Apparently many of the Wannsee notes were destroyed  long ago, so this might be as close as we are going to get.  But it’s not quite close enough.

Still, I recommend this book in spite of what I find to be its shortcomings, because the details that he is able to lay out are interesting and certainly are important pieces of this most confusing and difficult historical period.

5.  I have been very interested in the history of Jews in the Caribbean since our trip last year to Jamaica, and have read a few books and a few articles on the subject over the past several months.  Recently, I read Harry A. Ezratty’s “500 Years in the Jewish Caribbean”, an imperfect book that nevertheless provides succinct accounts of Jewish life on various of the islands.  Most interesting, I thought, were the Dutch colonies of Curacao, where the community has existed for over 300 years, and St. Eustatius, where it no longer exists, as well as in the mainland colony of Surinam (Dutch Guiana).

Last summer, we picked up a book on the Caribbean Jews when we were in Savannah, written by a native of that city.  I don’t remember the name of that book as I sit here, but my memory is that it paints a more complete picture (as does the sloppily written book, “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean”, that I looked at earlier, before our trip) than does Ezratty’s book. But I say this as someone who has read quite a bit and has a feel for the history.  The fact that I thought his description of Dutch colonies was the best may simply be a sign that I was less familiar with the Jewish history of those colonies.  This would mean that, if you are new to the subject, you should pay no attention to my editorializing and look at the book yourself.

6.  “Hot Countries” by Alec Waugh, published in 1930.  Waugh, a prolific writer, was the brother of Evelyn Waugh of “Brideshead Revisited” fame.  Written when he was in his 30s, this travel book follows the author’s wanderlust, as he goes to such places as Tahiti, Martinique, Siam, Ceylon and Haiti.  It is well written, and certainly the descriptions of these lands (which have changed so much over the past 80 years) is fascinating, as it was in the other two travel books of the same vintage which I have reported on (Richard Halliburton’s “The Flying Carpet” and Elinor Mordaunt’s “The Venture Book”).  But even more so than Halliburton, Waugh’s opinion of blacks is so offensive that, even though he is long gone, I don’t think anyone should pick up this book.  (This is for those who think that I recommend everything I read)

 

 

 

 

Israeli City Planning and Development – Ilan Troen’s “Imagining Zion” (84 cents)

I had been given a copy of Ilan Troen’s book, “Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement”, published by Yale in 2003. For a long while, it lay on a shelf, because the title did not make it sound particularly interesting, and because I had a lot else that I wanted to read. But one day last week, I picked it up, sat down in a chair, and began to look through it, and found it to be an eye-opening book, of particular interest to someone who has traveled through Israel and is relatively familiar with the country. Troen, at one time a resident of Israel, has taught at Ben-Gurion University there, and at Brandeis.

The book is about city planning and nation planning. When you visit any country, you tend to take its settlement patterns for granted. This is true even in the 65 year old country of Israel, where perhaps you should know better. After all, the Israel of today bears little resemblance to the Israel that came into existence in 1948, much less the British mandate Palestine that preceded it, and the Ottoman Palestine that preceded the mandate period.

When you go to Israel, you see a country whose main population centers crowd the Mediterranean shoreline, with the exception of Jerusalem (which you accept, for obvious reasons, as just that, an exception). You see Arab villages here and there, you see kibbutzim and moshavim seemingly randomly scattered about and, even if you don’t necessarily see them, you hear about the more remote “development towns”, where immigrants, past and recent, have been directed and which tend to be the source of poverty and unemployment.

But it turns out that nothing was random. From the beginning of Jewish immigration into Palestine, rational planning determined where settlements would be located. Some of this planning turned out to be quite successful, and some not so successful, but all was well considered and thought out.

It turns out (again this should not be surprising) that the British were engaged in town planning activities across the British empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That British town planning concepts, such as the garden city, were established throughout the world and that Palestine was no exception. But there was a difference in Palestine, because Palestine was also a center of Jewish immigration, and the Jews brought their own concepts (some based on historic European patterns and some based on the Zionist “back to the land” philosophy, where Jewish farmers were the clear priority), and their own planners and architects, mainly from Germany and Austria. How these factors led to the first agricultural communities, as well as to the creation of the first Jewish new city, Tel Aviv, is part of Troen’s story.

In addition to planning techniques (and of course the influence of world politics), there were other considerations. Some were economic – how many people could the land actually hold (there were many economic analysis, some greatly detailed, but still showing a political slant in their conclusions) and how long would it take to prepare for a major influx, and how do you set the balance between rural, town and city development? How do you control land, and land use issues? Much of the land was purchased by the Jewish National Fund from Arab landowners; other lands came into the control of the state as a result of the 1948 war and the abandonment of lands (forcibly or voluntarily) of Arab owners. How should it be used? What are the development priorities? Do you put extra resources into rural development to further the Zionist ideology, even when most Jews clearly would rather be in the cities?

And what about security issues? These turned out to be very important in the plans for border settlements, north at the Lebanese border and east at the Jordanian, where kibbutzim were sited, and fortified to act as a first line of defense. But, you say, there border settlements are not continual, they are very irregularly located along the borders, and this is true. But this is not the result of lack of planning for more, but the results of financial reality, and the lack of qualified settlers for a greater number of villages. (Village location was also used to establish Jewish control of areas where there were conflicting claims – such as the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, and Troen has an interesting map showing where settlements were located throughout those areas in the years following 1967.

When it became clear that too much was being concentrated in Tel Aviv and Haifa (one of the fears was that, based on European experience in World War II, cities could become targets of aerial bombing and too much concentration of the population could have a disastrous effect if the cities were hit during wartime), it was determined to spread the urban areas around the country, and to establish new mid-size cities in the northern Galilee, and in the Negev. Thus the concept of development cities was developed, a concept that came into being early in Israeli national history and at the same time there was an influx of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries (Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, etc.). (There is no question but that exclusionary policies – the European Jews really did not want to mix with the Arab speaking Jews of the impoverished middle east – played a big role here, as well.)

Many of these development towns failed to live up to expectations. The exceptions were Ashkelon, which happened to be located on the coast, and Beersheva, now the fourth largest city in the country.

And then of course, there was Jerusalem, which was a divided city from 1948 to 1967. Troen describes how Jewish Jerusalem developed during this time period, when the Old City was cut off from Israel, as well as the eastern portion of the city. When the 1967 War resulted in the unification of Jerusalem, although there was much support in Israel for turning the other conquered/occupied territories back to Jordan and Egypt, there was virtual unanimity that Jerusalem would not again be divided, and that it would remain both Israeli and the capital of the country. Although the Arabs of Jerusalem were never removed from the city (and in fact were offered Israeli citizenship, which virtually all declined), portions of the Old City, particularly near the Western Wall and in what formerly had been the Jewish Quarter, were restored, sometimes to the financial benefit of the Arab residents and particular Arab merchants, and often fanning their resentment. But in addition to the Old City, it meant that Jewish neighborhoods could be planned in areas formerly under Jordanian control, and that a set of suburbs could be planned to ring the city of Jerusalem, and to bolster the narrow area connecting Jerusalem in the Judean Hills with Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean. The purpose of these suburbs was threefold: to provide a place for population growth, to expand the Jewish presence in the capital (by the way, some of this land was annexed to the city, increasing the percentage of Jewish residents of Jerusalem), and to bolster the defense of the city (the apartment blocks doubling as border walls). Of course, this issue continues to make the front pages today.

All of these issues – European city planning techniques, Zionist back-to-the-land movements, influxes of immigrants, defense of the country, economic limits of settlement, need to expand the number of population centers and more – all contributed, and continue to contribute, to the Israel we know today. For those of you with an interest in these topics, Ilan Troen’s book will be of great interest in broadening your understanding of the country.

The Yugoslav Holocaust, the South Seas, and the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (28 cents)

BOOKS

1. David Albahari’s “Gotz and Meyer”. I highly recommend this novel, published in 1998, and translated from the Serbian. Abahari is a Serbian/Jewish author, now resident in Canada, and his unique book is set in Belgrade during the years of the Nazi occupation.

Why is the book unique? For one thing, this short (169 page) novel is composed of exactly one paragraph. Not quite a stream of consciousness paragraph but one where every sentence leads to the next, where an unexpected allusion in one sentence can be picked up in the next and turn the narrative in an unexpected direction.

The book is written in the first person, by a school teacher in Belgrade who, while researching his family tree, learns about the “transit camp” set up at the Belgrade Fairgrounds, to hold Jewish families (largely excluding adult, non-elderly males, who were shot) before they were placed in the back of a large truck, where they died through carbon monoxide poisoning as the truck drove from the fairgrounds to a site in the city where pits had been dug by Serbian prisoners and where the corpses of the murdered Jews were buried (until they were later dug up and burned). A horrific state of affairs to be sure.

Not only horrific, but factual. And, in researching the holocaust in Belgrade, Albahari learned a lot, including the fact that the gas truck had two German soldier drivers, one named Gotz and one named Meyer, about whom nothing else is known.

This gave Albahari his opportunity, and he centered his story telling on the unknown duo, whose lives he filled out through his imagination. One of the drivers was married, one liked children, they both wanted to do their job well, they had different personalities, etc. (of course, it was unclear which was Gotz and which was Meyer.)

This is what makes the book unique, and (if this is the right word , for a Holocaust book), and enjoyable.

2. Elinor Mordaunt’s 1926 book, “The Venture Book”, retelling her trek to the South Pacific, a 50+ year old English woman, traveling by cargo ship and tramp steamer, visiting Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, and several small islands, French and British, still in the 1920s rather “primitive”. Now, Mordaunt’s prose is not as poetic as Richard Halliburton’s, and she (as opposed to Halliburton) doesn’t mind complaining about conditions, either aboard ship or on land. In fact, a lot of this book is taken up by her complaining (not that the conditions weren’t appropriate to complain about, but after all she put herself in this position) about the ship captains, the islanders, the weather and so forth. Interspersed with this are descriptions of island life, island foliage and so forth, and you certainly get a feeling as to how much removed from modernity these islands were in the 1920s. Do I recommend this book? Sure, to read about how these remote communities were functioning at the end of an era, but for the writing or the personality of the author, not so much.

An example, on the Fiji island of Mbau: “In every way Ratu Pope thinks of and for his sister, Adi – the Princess – Cakobau, with the greatest devotion and tenderness. But he cannot speak to his own sister, for that is forbidden to any man of high rank in Fiji; nor can he enter her house, for that is also against the etiquette of a country which is ruled by etiquette. And yet if this sister of his had had a son and Ratu Pope a daughter, these would inevitably, in the old days, have been husband and wife without the necessity of any ceremony; thought it Ratu had a son, it would be an abomination for him to mate with his cousin, the daughter of his father’s sister.”

Or: “It has been a perfectly horrible night. There was an open doorway just opposite the end of my platformed bed. When I shut it I was almost choked by the smoke and the smell of the many people, talking and eating and drinking throughout the entire night, crowded together in the hut; leaving it open, I was chilled to death by the damp, cold mist which drifited in so that even my hair was wet and I thought I should die……”

LECTURE

I attended a very interesting presentation by Harvard Law professor Annette Gordon-Reed, author of “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings” and “The Hemingses of Monticello”. She spoke about her two books, and her current research on the Hemings family during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. She was most interesting talking about the changes in the writing of the history of slavery over the past few decades, as slave narratives have been taken much more seriously. She talked about Jefferson’s treatment of the Hemings familly, which was somewhat protective, in that the family was kept together at Monticello for generations, making them easier to write about than most slave families. When Jefferson died, there were 140 slaves at Monticello. His will freed only 5, the other 135 were auctioned off to pay his extensive debts. She talked about Jefferson’s very detailed daily records (everything he did, everything he spent, detailed weather readings, details about he birth and death of slaves, etc.), and that this was not uncommon during the 18th century, and it makes research somewhat easy. But she warned that most of history is not the study of fact, it is the study of probability. She talked about the biological relationship between Jeffersons and Hemingses, and how Jefferson’s wife Martha did not want the Hemingses sold, which was the reaction of many slaveholder wives under similar services.

It was a very interesting conversation. I was sorry that there weren’t more in the audience to listen to her at DC’s Martin Luther King Library where, by the way, the conditions for a lecture are miserable. One more problem with the DC central library.

Potpourri ($1.14)

THEATER

1. Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie” at the Shakespeare Theatre. The most universal emotion when “Hughie” ended last night was surprise. “That’s it?”, the audience was muttering after the full price, one act play ended in slightly less than an hour. O’Neill wrote a number of one act plays early in his career (some known as the “sea plays”), and decided to write another series of plays late in his career, but only completed one of them, “Hughie”. A two actor play, set in a downtrodden hotel in Manhattan, “Hughie” is a conversation between a newly hired hotel night clerk and a regular resident of the hotel, an inveterate gambler named Erie (from his home town) Smith. Or rather, it is a monologue by Smith, with the night clerk paying half attention and making comments now and then, some of which make little sense, since he has not really been listening to his guest. Smith is clearly a lost soul, whose only real contact seems to be with the hotel night clerks, starting with the recently deceased Hughie. Erie Smith is wonderfully played by actor Richard Schiff. In spite of its short length, I’d recommend you seeing the show.

2. Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “The Motherfucker With the Hat” at the Studio Theatre. A few years ago, I saw Guirgis’ “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” (twice) at Forum Theatre, and I realized that Guirgis was a master of dialogue. And, in his newest play, he once again shows his talent. But the play itself has neither the strength nor the imagination of his earlier one. Jackie, recently released from prison, would like to go straight, and relies heavily on his sponsor, Ralph. Jackie is thrilled to be back with his girlfriend Veronica, and is thrilled that he has found a full time job, but then he sees the hat, sitting on the floor of the apartment he is sharing with Veronica, and he goes berserk, convinced that Veronica is having an affair with the man downstairs (the man that always wears a hat). In the meantime, Ralph is having trouble getting along with his wife Victoria (a little too close to Veronica – I have trouble keeping the names, and therefore the identities, apart), and is also have conflicts with Jackie. Jackie relies more and more on his cousin Julio to advise him. There’s a lot of hit pitched conversation, vulgarity, misunderstandings, and so on. As I said, the dialogue flows beautifully, but frankly, I just did not need the story line, which seemed a bit trite. But that is not to say that it is not good theater, and worth watching. The cast is very strong.

3. “Hello, Dolly” at Har Shalom. And congratulations to Michelle for her usual superb performance with the Har Shalom Players yesterday as Irene Malloy in “Hello, Dolly”. According to her program notes, this was her SIXTH production at Har Shalom. Holy Cabooses.

MUSIC

1. The Epiphany Church Tuesday Concert Series outdid itself last week, with pianist Jeremy Filsell (who also runs the music program at the church) playing Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. And playing it extremely well.

But, how do you play a piano concerto in a church, where you don’t have a symphony orchestra to accompany you? The answer is that you have Nigel Potts playing the orchestral work on the organ. I am not certain who did the transcription, or when, or whether or how often this version has been performed, and it is true that an organ is not a symphony orchestra, but it comes fairly close, and it certainly does not take from the piano virtuosity.

The program also included a few short Rachmaninoff pieces transcribed for solo piano and solo organ, all excellently performed.

2. At last Wednesday’s Happenings at the Harman (part of Shakespeare Theatre), a local two woman group, The Sweater Set, performed their own compositions. These are two talented musicians (together, they play guitar, banjo, ukelele, accordion, and flute) both instrumentally and vocally, and they certainly perform well together. On the other hand, many of their songs sound very much the same, and I had a difficult time following (and making sense of) much of the lyrics. My conclusion is that the Sweater Set has a nice future ahead of them, but that I am probably not their target audience.

LECTURE

1. Only one author talk at Politics and Prose. University of Chicago Professor David Nirenberg spoke about his new book, “Anti-Judaism”, a book that does not deal with instances of anti-Semitism per so, but is more of an intellectual history of the role and place of anti-Jewish sentiment in the history of western thought. Nirenberg makes a very persuasive case that the minds of those of us who live in western civilizations (and he considers Islam as a form of western civilization) have been so filled with the idea of anti-Jewish feelings (whether we are Jewish or not) that it helps to form our way of thinking in an essential manner; i.e., that it is central to our way of thought that we cannot escape it, that it has been ingrained since Egyptian times (he talks about the reaction to the Jewish community at Elephantine Island in biblical days), that it carried through Greece and Rome, and obviously continues to this day. That it is not specifically based in theology, or in the particular activities of Jews (in fact, there can be a significant amount of anti-Jewish thought when and where there are no Jews present, as in, for example, Shakespearean times).

I think he makes a very important point. Unfortunately, I believe that he has researched and written on this point with such detail, using so many literary and historical and philosophical allusions, that his long book scares me. I think if I read it, it would take me years and years, and that because so many of those whom he quotes and to whom he refers are unknown to me, I would know no more than I have already written in these two brief paragraphs.

BOOKS

Very briefly.

1. Eudora Welty’s short novel(ette), “The Optimist’s Daughter”. This book won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize, and I can’t for the life of me understand why. A respected Mississippi judge dies at 71 after a simple operation for a detached retina, his daughter (a Chicago artist, and war widow) and his second wife (a flashy woman from a poor Texas hardscrabble background (and who is a little younger than his daughter) do not get along at all, and their bickering (you have to be on the side of the daughter) respecting the funeral and its aftermath (where all of the townspeople, and her extended Texas family have come together) pretty much destroys the sanctity of the funeral. It’s a short book; I will say that in its favor, but it sure did not seem very deep to me. Maybe 40 years ago, it would have?

2. Arthur Hertzberg’s, “The Fate of Zionism”. Hertzberg, well known rabbi and scholar, wrote this book only a few years before he passed away in 2006. I would recommend it for its highly comprehensible and balanced account of the history of Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine/Israel over the last 140 years or so. Also for his analysis of why peace is so difficult, and how the continuing building of West Bank settlements have complicated the process. He concludes that the Israeli Jews and their Arab neighbors and citizens will never (at least in the close future) be able to solve there own problems, in part because there really is insufficient common ground (or, to put it another way, all the ground is too common, I guess), and that the United States needs to be heavily involved. And he has his own formula for what that involvement should be, which, it seems to me, is no more likely of success than any other formula that has been proposed. So I don’t recommend the book for its recommendations or conclusions. But for a good general overview of the problems, it is just right.

3. Richard Halliburton’s “The Flying Carpet”. A fascinating book by world traveler and adventurer Richard Halliburton, published in 1932, seven years before he was lost at sea at age 39. Halliburton purchased a single engine plane, hired a pilot, and decided to fly around the world, going to places that were hard to get to and therefore rarely visited. How anyone has the nerve to do this is one thing that I don’t understand (although they met someone else doing the same thing, a young German girl named Elly Beinhorn, who was only 25 and flying her small plane around the world solo. (Beinhorn was never lost at sea; in fact, she lived to be 100.)

Timbuktu, various desert fortresses of the French Foreign Legion, Fez, the Alps and the Matterhorn, Venice, Istanbul, Tiberias, Jerusalem, Cairo, Petra, Baghdad, Isfahan, Teheran, Agra, Mount Everest, and the Sarawak, Borneo and the Philippines. Each described in an enjoyable chapter or two, the concentration being not as much on the sites (although they are certainly pointed out), but on their adventures.

One really strange note. In Timbuktu, where they were staying for a couple of weeks (none of their visits were overnights), they decided that they needed some help warding off the bats in the caravanserai and doing the dishes, so they went to a Tuareg village outside of town and (illegally) purchased two ten year olds as slaves for $2.50 each. Halliburton said that, although slave trade was illegal in the various French colonies, it none the less existed and that slaves were easy to find. He didn’t mind. His two grandfathers in pre-Civil War Tennessee had each been slaveholders, and “I had been brought up believing in the sanctity of the institution”. How times have changed.

Well, the slaves didn’t work out (as Halliburton describes it, the slaves became the masters and he and his pilot, Moye Stephens, became slaves to the slaves. And of course, the transaction was not a legal one, so no actual ownership changed hands, so I am not sure what really happened. All I know is that when they decided that these slaves did not perform as expected, and they decided to return them, the village leader refused to return their money, or to take them back without giving them their money back, and Halliburton and Stephens had to pay them to take the kids back.

Forgetting the morality issues, the book, as all of Halliburton’s best sellers were, is completely enjoyable.

Thinking About the Bomb (63 cents)

Here’s a book every American should read, and no one even knows it exists: “And What of Tomorrow” by George O. Robinson, published in 1956. Robinson, a journalist, was an aide to L.R. Groves, commanding general of the Manhattan project, and the author of the first press releases issued on our atomic energy development. His book, less than 200 pages long, is subtitled “The Human Drama in the Atomic Revolution and the Promise of a Golden Age”. The book is a survey both of the scientific work that led to the splitting of the atom and the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and the unbelievable effort that this country went to in order to put the results of scientific experimentation into action.

As to the science, starting with Einstein and Fermi, and working through the group that worked in secret in Chicago, Robinson’s explanation is easy to follow, even for readers with no scientific background whatsoever.

But the real strength of the book is its description of the American effort – how, during war time, with budgets largely hidden, with the effort shrouded in a great amount of secrecy, the country built three new communities from scratch – Oak Ridge, TN, where uranium was processed; Hanford WA, where plutonium was processed; and Los Alamos NM, the most secret facility of them all, where the radioactive fuels were used to construct the bombs. We are talking about thousands and thousands of acres, the government purchasing land via eminent domain, displacing thousands of residents, farms and businesses, constructing roads, and airstrips, and houses, and stores, and schools, and extremely large research labs. We are talking about procuring all of the specialized equipment needed to furnish the laboratories, much or most of which had to be specially designed and built. We are talking about finding families to move to these locations, scientists, craftsmen, and everyone else needed to enable these facilities to function.

The thousands of employees were largely kept in the dark as to the purpose of what they were doing, only knowing that they were engaged in war or defense work. They did not know what was going on in the building across the street, much less in the other facilities (if they even knew the other facilities existed).

Secrecy was paramount. News was censored – with the media accepting the censorship and not questioning the secrecy. And even after the bomb was tested with public knowledge, the secrecy and the effort continued, with a fourth site, near Savannah GA added to the first three, which became the location of the research and other work needed to develop a hydrogen bomb, something that happened several years after the end of World War II.

All of this work was accomplished over a period of very few years – the policy program decisions, the choice of locations, the acquisition of land and construction of facilities, the hiring and the operation of the facilities themselves, all coordinated by General Groves and his staff.

Think of the United States government today, where the smallest issues can not be resolved because of partisan bickering. We could never replicate this process today. If you read “And What of Tomorrow”, you learn how much this country has changed, and how little it appears to be prepared to meet its international responsibilities. Very sad. And perhaps not reversible.