A Real Life Adventure Drama

 

In 1908, Monty Parker, a British nobleman, and ex-soldier, was asked to lead an expedition to search for the lost Ark of the Covenant. A Finnish scholar had found a secret code in the Bible that he believed revealed the resting place of the Ark.

At first Monty was unsure about getting involved, but after being dared by Ava Astor, he agreed and assembled a group of men, mostly other young British nobles looking for adventure, to go to the Holy Land and search for the Ark. The archaeological dig was located outside the walls of Jerusalem. The supposed cipher in the Book of Exekiel led them to search the tunnels under King Solomon’s temple including the Hezekiah Tunnel. Following the original clues they explored the tunnels and in the end excavated an extensive network.

I enjoyed the book. Monty Parker was a larger than life character who managed to keep the group together. If it reminds you of Raiders of the Lost Ark, don’t be surprised. The other characters were equally fascinating including, a psychic and a Franciscan friar.

The book is interesting, but sometimes disjointed bringing in extraneous characters and facts. However, the majority of the book was easy to follow. I did enjoy the historical insights and found the existence of the extensive cave network fascinating.

I received this book from Net Galley for this review.

A Comprehensive Look at the Afghanistan War

 

For twenty years the US has suffered through a war in Afghanistan at the cost of trillions of dollars and the lives of more that 3000 young men. The story is told by David Loyn. He was there first as a reporter for the BBC and later as an adviser to the office of the Afghan President.

The story moves from the inciting incident of 9/11 through the difficult years when three different presidents were unable to satisfactorily end the conflict. It’s the story of the generals, Petraeus, McChrystal, Dunsfor and Allen, who in spite of their abilities were unable to satisfactorily resolve the conflict.

In the aftermath of Biden’s precipitate withdrawal from Afghanistan, this is a book worth reading. It not only cover the battles, but also the policy considerations including those of our allies. Loyn’s analysis is extensive and not limited to one view of the conflict. He illuminates decisions that were right, many that were wrong, and the consequences for the US and our allies. It is a book well worth reading.

I received this book from St. Martin’s Press for this review.

A Murder in Pre-WWII Washington, DC

Elena Standish and her parents are visiting the maternal grandparents she has never met for their sixtieth wedding anniversary party. Elena is charmed by the lovely home and feels a growing affection for her grandmother, a woman of a different and more restricted generation. At the party, armed with her notebook and camera, she mingles and takes pictures of the guests. One of the guests, Lila Worth, seems like a person she could get to know and enjoy. She also meets James Allenby, a British Embassy employee. She is a bit reluctant to trust him although he know about her work for MI6.

Shortly after the President and Mrs Roosevelt arrive, a terrible tragedy takes place in the parking area. Lila is killed by being hit and run over by one of the cars. Elena is horrified. She is even more upset when her grandfather is arrested and charged with the murder. Now she has to trust Allenby as they set out to prove her grandfather innocent.

This is the third book in the series. Instead of an international setting the action takes place in Washington, DC. The setting was well done making you feel like you’re visiting the pre-war capital. The plot is interesting, but the pace is rather slow. I found the conversations about the crime very repetitious. However, the tension between Elena and Ellenby keeps the story moving.

Elena is growing as a character, feeling more in control of her abilities as a member of MI6. Although the action takes place in US, the author gives us glimpses of what’s happening in Britain, particularly Lucas, her grandfather, who I always enjoy.

This is a good continuation of the series. Well worth reading.

I received this book from Net Galley for this review. 

 

A Rather Ambitious Look at American History

 

I wanted to like this book. However, I felt that the author pushed his premise too hard not giving an even handed look at America’s past. It’s always easy to lay your preconceived ideas over the facts of history. Certainly, the founders made mistakes from where we sit today, but that’s hindsight. The author criticizes Madison for the compromises he had to make to get the constitution approved by the states. They were not all on the same page any more that all our states agree today.

The author’s treatment of present history is much more balanced, and people can make up their own minds because they can see history in action. I can’t agree with everything he says about the villainous military-industrial complex, but he makes some valid points.

When I comes to slavery, I think he did the early abolitionists a serious injustice. They cared a great deal about the plight of the slaves and the fact that there were people speaking out about the abuses of slavery made the changes during the Civil War possible.

I found the book interesting to read even though I couldn’t agree with many of his conclusions about the early days of America. The fact that we have a country at all rather than a group of states is due to the fact that the founders were able to make compromises. We may not like them in retrospect, but much of what goes on today is not wonderful and compromise is always necessary.

I received this book from Dutton for this review.

Should You Have Children?

 

This novel uses the lives of three generations of related women to explore the important idea of whether you should have children. Missy is the only female member of a band. At twenty-two she’s partying as hard as any of the men until she finds herself alone in a hotel room in Vancouver and pregnant.

Carola is Missy’s mother. She left the family when Missy was a child to live her own life of free love. She sees Missy’s picture on a music magazine. Being involved in a sex scandal at the ashram where she’s been living gives her an impetus to think about her daughter.

Ruth is the grandmother. When Missy crashes with her, she decides that it’s time for the women in the family to get to know and hopefully begin to understand each other.

The novel is divided into two parts: the first in 1997 when Missy and her mother meet after ten years. An obvious discussion arises about the desire to have children and what is owed to the children you bring into the world. The second half takes place in 2013. Now Missy wants to have a child, but she’s looking a her biological clock and worrying.

I found the characters in this book hard to connect with. Missy seemed too childish and brash. Carola is not a character I could sympathize with although I grew up in her generation. She didn’t seem that real. Ruth was more likable, but hers wasn’t the main story. I think the question posed by the novel is important, but the characters didn’t carry it for me.

I received this book from Ballantine Books for this review.

America’s Political Dysfunction

 

Our country is at a crisis point. Osnos dates the problem from September 11^th when the United States was shocked by being attacked by terrorists flying planes into our iconic buildings. The anger was real and hasn’t abated. It has led to political divisions where people have become less and less able to see the other person’s point of view.

To try to get an understanding of what was going on in the country and what people were thinking, Osnos centered on three locations he was familiar with, Creenwich, Connecticut, Clasksburg, West Virginia and Chicago, Illinois. These three areas cover a broad spectrum of American communities. Greenwich is the home of the very rich, Clarksburg shows rural poverty, and Chicago is the urban city filled with crime and poverty. Interviewing people in these locations Osnos was able to give a broad view of the emotions driving our political divide.

I found this a very important and interesting book. Clearly our country is in trouble. This can be seen in the way people are responding to the Covid crisis. There is little to no tolerance for the ideas of others. Vaccinated individuals are ready to kill the unvaccinated. It even carries over into whether scientific research showing divergent views can be tolerated. I found Osnos book very helpful in understanding where these viewpoints are coming from and how they affect the current climate.

I received this book from NetGalley for this review.

Belonging to a Strict Community

 

Leah and Yaakov are marrying in the orthodox Jewish community of Boro Park, a borough of Brooklyn. It’s a beautiful start for the novel celebrating the love between these two and the joy of being surrounded by friends and family. This book is the sequel to An Unorthodox Match where Leah, a California girl looking to immerse herself in her spirituality, meets Yaakov, a widower with five children.

Now that the couple is married the test of living in a strict religious community confronts them. Yaakov must leave his beloved Yeshiva and go to work as an accountant. Leah works from home and cares for the two youngest children and their seventeen-year-old daughter, Shaindele. Much as she wants to be part of the community, Leah is finding the restrictions difficult. The adjustment of the young couple is not helped when Shairdele, exploring boundaries, starts an inappropriate relationship.

This story is a beautiful love story, but it is also about becoming part of a constrictive community. The author doesn’t sugar coat the problems of people who have embraced the constraints of the community and resent outsiders. They are often not welcoming and are looking for things to criticize about someone like Leah who they consider an outsider.

Although the book is about an orthodox Jewish community many other restrictive religious communities share the same problems and attract the same type of people The author pulls you into the community so that you can feel the joys and problems faced by Leah and Yaakov. I recommend this book. It’s worth reading whether you are Jewish or not. However, I think it would be helpful to read the previous book first because it contains important parts of the backstory.

I received this book from St. Martin’s Press for this review.

A Play and a Holocaust Survivor

 

As a child in a Warsaw orphanage, Jarvyk Smith was involved in the production of a play that was a protest against the approaching Nazis. He and his friend Misha managed to escape the train taking them to the camps. Now Misha has perished in a remote village in India where he was involved in producing the same play.

Although his life in New York is far from the horrors of WWII, Jarvyk can’t rise above his survivor’s guilt. Even his love affair with Lucy Gardener, a transplanted Southerner with whom he has started a romantic relationship, can’t keep him from going to India to recover Misha’s remains. However, once there he becomes enmeshed in taking Misha’s place in the play being produced in the troubled village.

When it appears he is gone for a long time, Lucy follows him with the purpose of bringing him back.

This is a lyrically written book with a difficult subject. Jarvyk is torn by guilt that he was one of the only ones who escaped the Nazis. This guilt keeps him from wholeheartedly embracing life even his love affair with Lucy.

The book is an interesting exploration of the relationship between art, politics and community. It’s played out against Jarvek’s fears from the past and of moving on to the future. Although I found the ending somewhat equivocal, it’s a good look at the fallout for survivors of WWII.

I received this book from Knopf for this review.

Post WWII Berlin

 

As teenagers, Millie Mosbach and her brother David escaped Germany just before the beginning of WWII. They left behind their Jewish parents and their younger sister, a fact that Millie years later feels guilt about. The brother and sister enjoyed an American adolescence Millie going to Bryn Mawr and David to boarding school. After graduation he enlisted in the Army.

The war is over and Millie and David are both back in Berlin. Millie had returned as part of the denazification program to root our hardcore Nazis in publishing. David’s job is to help displaced people find new lives. The siblings feel guilt wondering what happened to their parents. Millie is probably suffering from PTSD. She also has a problem with her boss Major Harry Sutton. To her he appears much too fair to the Germans.

The novel has wonderful descriptions of post war Germany. The author does a wonderful job bringing that difficult time to life. I enjoyed learning about the war, but I found that some of the flashbacks were rather disjointed. The transition from past to present was sometimes difficult to follow.

Millie is an excellent character. She has survivors guilt on top of PTSD wondering what happened to her parents and sister. I also liked Harry Sutton. He is a complex character trying to see both sides and have compassion for the German survivors. This, of course, brings him into conflict with Millie.

If you enjoy WWII novels, this is a different take on the end of the war.

I received this book from St. Martin’s Press for this review.

The Human Relationship with the Stars

 

From the earliest times men have looked at the stars and wondered. In pre-history the stars were seen as gods. As the understanding of the cosmos increased, the stars were studied and gradually relegated to a physical part of the universe. This excellent book traces the human understanding of the sky through the science of each period.

While I thought I knew a reasonable amount about astronomy, I learned something new in each chapter. One of the big surprises was how the Polynesians navigated. Instead of plotting their course from Pacific island to island, they memorized a star route. It allowed them to travel great distances without the sophisticated instruments used by the Europeans.

The book isn’t restricted to cosmology as such. It also covers art and mythology in relation to humans trying to understand their place in the universe. The author did an excellent job of making this book, that contains a great deal of technical information, understandable by the general reader.

Probably the most important point the author makes is that through millennia we have separated ourselves from the stars, from the universe and from nature. This is a very undesirable outcome of our search for ever more technological solutions to our problems. If this book does nothing else, I hope it awakens us to what we are in danger of losing by studying our electronic screens instead of the night sky.

I received this book from Dutton for this review.

Difficulty of Being a Mixed Race Child in Japan Post WWII

 

Nori is eight-years-old when her mother leaves her with her aristocratic grandparents on their estate. She tries to be a good girl and act as her mother instructed her. In spite of the abuse including chemical baths to try to change the color of her skin, she is an obedient child.

Being the daughter of a married aristocrat and her black GI lover, Nori is an embarrassment to her grandparents. She is forced to live alone in the attic and has no tenderness until her half-brother, Akira, arrives at the estate. He is the heir and surprisingly, he and Nori become friends and very important to each other.

This is a novel with some very good parts and some that distracted from the overall book. The story line follows the problems of Nori being not only a mixed race child, but also illegitimate. The early parts of the book where Nori is constantly subjected to abuse were harg to read. In fact, I thought the abuse was rather overdone.

The story lightens when Akira arrives. He befriends Nori, gets her out of the attic and gives her a view of the outside world. It was a delightful picture of friendship. The difference between how the children get along and love each other is in direct contrast to the unyielding disapproval of the grandparents. They feel their whole way of life has been betrayed by having a child like Nori and their desire is to erase the stigma.

While I enjoyed parts of the book, I found the writing a bit simple. The characters could have been more well developed. The dialog often felt stilted. I thought the author was trying for a romantic look at the manners of a slice of civilization much the same way Jane Austen did for the Victorians, however, it wasn’t as effective.

I received this book from Penguin Random House for this review.