Seven Miracles That Saved America

Although the 1980s brought about the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe, as well as the decline of many of its proxies elsewhere in the world), that was not until the tail end of that wild decade.  The first nine years had a world very clearly defined by the West, led by the United States of America, and the Communists, led by the Soviet Union.  America’s special role in the world was well understood by almost everyone in the world.  Later, this came to be called “American exceptionalism,” but at the time, it was simply known as “America.”  This America was built on a firm foundation of inspired men from Columbus to the great president of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan.  In between, there were the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and the Greatest Generation.

Seven Miracles That Saved America: Why They Matter and Why We Should Have Hope (ISBN: 978-1-60641-144-5) by Chris and Ted Stewart explores singular events and unique people in American history that, had things unfolded even slightly differently, could have resulted in a vastly different America.  All of these events and people hinge on such a fine line that it is easy to see that they were influenced by God.  The miracles that the authors review in detail are the following: Columbus and Columbus’s discoveries, Jamestown, a summer fog during the Revolutionary War, the advent of the American Constitution, Abraham Lincoln and the battle of Gettysburg, the battle of Midway, and Ronald Reagan and how the assassination attempt against him failed by less than one inch (just a little bit more and the bullet kills him).  Each one of the miracles is reviewed in detail by the authors and the scene is set through some historical fiction.  At the end of each section, the authors ask some questions that invite the reader to think about what would have happened in each of these situations had things — and usually it’s quite an exhaustive list of things — turned out even slightly different.  For example, with the foggy morning during the Revolutionary War that allowed American troops to withdraw and regroup without suffering losses, it really was a question of a few hours and things could have been vastly different.  The same could be said about the battle of Midway.  There, it really was more like minutes since one of the pilots flying and trying to locate Japanese fleet only had minutes before needing to return to base without running out of fuel.  At the last possible minute, though, he spotted the Japanese ships, and that allowed the Americans to attack first, which proved critical in the battle, along with other decisions and rare direct hits during the bombing runs.  The point being made is that there were just too many decisions at so many different points along the way that for those who recognize that God has a role in human existence, these events were miraculous and they resulted in an exceptional country that has long been a light on a hill.

The book was an interesting read and presented some things that I was either not very familiar with or, in the case of the foggy day during the Revolutionary War, had not heard of at all.  I liked the detailed reviews of the events and people, which helped make the case that the events really were miraculous.  I think the case was presented effectively.  I found the concluding chapter, where the authors proposed that God’s intervention in the past likely meant God would intervene in the future to also be sound analysis, especially as it was paired with God’s discussion with Abraham about preserving the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorra as long as even a few righteous remained there.  What I found to be less interesting was the historical fiction (not one of my favorite genres to begin with, admittedly) that was used as a scene setter.  It seemed to me that it was there simply to make this more of a book-length affair, and I think it would have been possible to find solid, historical material to fill in a lot of the space taken by the fictionalized accounts.  A shorter book would have also been acceptable as I believe the points were adequately made.  In any case, it was a great reminder of America’s exceptionalism and of our individual responsibilities to help keep it that way by being part of the righteous that God is willing to preserve.

 

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Saints: No Unhallowed Hand

Salt Lake City, Utah, is home to an interesting state park that is currently called This Is the Place Heritage Park.  I remember it as This Is the Place State Park.  It is home to a grand monument to Brigham Young, the Mormon pioneers, and other explorers of the early American West.  The rest of the park is a number of reconstructed early pioneer homes, outbuildings, and buildings such as a blacksmith’s shop, a general store, and other buildings typical of frontier towns.  As a kid, the thing that attracted me most to the park was that they sold candy in the general store, there were farm animals to see, and there were a few things that kids could do, such as give combing wool a try (it was much more difficult than it looked).  I had little appreciation for the pioneers that the park and monument were originally meant to honor (“originally” is a key word because now it’s billed as a “living history museum” and they’ve even added that old, traditional pioneer facility, the splash pad).

Saints: No Unhallowed Hand (ISBN: 978-1-62972-648-9) is the second volume of a multi-volume history published by the Church itself.  This volume follows the Church’s exodus from Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley.  It tells the story of the wagon trains and hand cart companies that forged the Mormon Trail.  The Church was forging into new territory as well, as Brigham Young became the second president of the Church and the second prophet of this era.  In addition to trekking across the North American plains, the Church was expanding internationally, with missionaries taking the message of the restored gospel to Europe, South Africa, and the islands of the Pacific.  Missionary work didn’t always go so well, and there were plenty of other locations, like Southeast Asia, where missions resulted in extremely few converts.  The book also chronicles the early Church’s struggles with the American government.  After the lack of concern the federal government showed the Church when Missouri’s official position was persecution, most Church members were wary of the U.S. government.  Brigham Young and his successors were wary, but also saw the wisdom of working toward a reconciled position.  This led to things like the Mormon Battalion and helped influence Church members’ thinking as some later struggled to accept the end of polygamy.  A major theme in the book was the construction of temples.  They required great sacrifice, but also resulted in great blessings.  

The book is written in the same way as the first volume in the series, so there were no surprises this time with formatting, style, or anything like that.  I probably enjoyed reading this volume a little more than the first one because I am less familiar with the early missionary efforts and the stories of Church members across Europe and the Pacific.  I thought most of the stories were good: interesting and something one can learn from.  The book dealt in depth with polygamy, which was never something I struggled with, but I know it’s a question that many, both inside and outside the Church have.  The book touched on the Mountain Meadow massacre in a way that I thought presented a good level of detail and the level to which Church members were involved.  The stories of faith and sacrifice were what made the book a worthwhile read, though, teaching of their importance and the attendant blessings they bring to our lives.

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Escape and Sophie Scholl

I have visited concentration camps in Germany a couple times.  Each time, it has seemed incomprehensible that such atrocities were actually carried out.  As I have witnessed extremist ideologies gain greater acceptance throughout my lifetime, I have come to appreciate the lessons taught by the preserved concentration camps even more.  They are memorials to what happens when we put aside basic individual rights and liberties.  They serve as a stark warning about what happens when societies continue down the slippery slope of denying rights to others in the name of a greater good.  When I first visited the concentration camps, I did not have children, but by the time of my second visit, I did.  That made the lessons of the past a little more emotional since the National Socialists in Germany did not spare children from the horrors of the camps.

Escape: Children of the Holocaust by Allan Zullo (ISBN: 978-0-545-09929-5) and Sophie Scholl: Die Weiße Rose by Achim Seiffarth (ISBN: 978-3-12-556024-6) are books written for young people (junior high kids seemed to be the target audience), but present some of the stories of Nazi Germany that are good for readers of any age to know.   Zullo’s book told the story of about a dozen Jewish children and their survival of the Holocaust.  The stories were varied and all captivating.  They usually started with the pre-war life of the kids or, at least, their life under Hitler when it still wasn’t too crazy.  This allowed for the reader to see how quickly things went downhill.  Inevitably, before long, families were separated, people were in ghettos or concentration camps, and life would never be the same again as kids were forced to grow up quickly and learned that the adult world wasn’t all it was cracked up to be since it induced a lot of pain, suffering, and cruelty.  The kids in Zullo’s book all displayed incredible levels of resiliency, though, scraping by and taking advantage of what was few chances and opportunities were given them, such as a truck taking workers to another camp with a sympathetic guard who was known to let one or two people at a time make a run for it.  The stories, which are of those who survived, do not glass over the fact that the survivors of the ghettos and camps were in the vast minority, and it is sobering to read of all the friends and family these survivors lost.  Seiffarth’s book is written for learners of German, but although relatively simply written, still does a great job presenting a fascinating story.  Sophie Scholl was a young woman who went from teenager to college student during the Nazi rise to power.  Originally a believer in what Hitler was doing, as she came closer to adulthood, she saw the errors intrinsic to nationalist socialism.  Following the lead of her older brother, an activist in the underground resistance, her religious father, who could not abide the unfair treatment of Jews and others oppressed by the regime, and a college professor who encouraged free thinking and debate even when it was unpopular, Sophie joined the resistance, helping to distribute anti-Nazi flyers.  Her efforts helped present what was an unpopular opinion to the masses, especially as she helped found resistance cells among young people in cities outside her hometown.  Eventually, the Nazi regime caught up to her, her brother, others in their circle, including their professor, and they were executed.

As stated above, while both books are juvenile literature, they are quality works.  I enjoyed trying to stretch my knowledge of German, the native language of my grandparents and other ancestors who have a story or two of their own involving the Nazi authorities.  The stories in Escape easily kept my attention, told interesting details, and were from a variety of people, such as those from Germany proper as well as from occupied territories.  This variety gave more flavor and a nice, broad overview of what are certainly not isolated incidents.  I thought Sophie Scholl was also a nice overview that provided sufficient detail to be informative and yet not get bogged down.  I had seen a movie on her a few years ago, but this book gave me some new information and was, I thought, better (I always think that about books relative to movies, though).  Both of these books present an interesting and accurate picture of what life was like under the Nazis — for Jews in the first and for conscientious Germans in the other.  They remind us what we should be fighting to avoid, even if it’s only a step or two in that direction, and the kind of people we should be striving to be, even if that striving leads to unpopular positions, ostracization, and, possibly, the ultimate sacrifice.  Liberty — for ourselves and for others — is worth those things.

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Stasiland

When I was a kid, there were two countries split by Communism: Korea and Germany.  Germany was always a country of great interest to me since my grandparents came from Germany.  Although East Germany was part of the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc, it didn’t regularly make headlines like the Soviet Union did (or, at least, not ones that a kid like me heard about).  I knew it was oppressive and that people tried to get out.  The movie Night Crossing, about a couple families’ daring escape from East Germany in a hot air balloon, was one of my favorites.  I first saw it thanks to the Disney Sunday Night Movie (or some similar title), which we had recorded on VHS and watched more than once.  The escape was harrowing and courageous, and I couldn’t believe that there was a country that was so intent on controlling its own people.  Even though I was so young, I thought the reunification of Germany was a really cool event.

Stasiland: Stories from behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder (ISBN: 978-1-84708-355-7) is a book written in a journalistic style that tells a variety of stories from East Germany: former Stasi, dissidents, people who tried to escape, and just regular people.  The book, because of its style, also followed the author’s journey through East Germany and dealing with the psychological damage being so close to it dealt her.  The people interviewed included a woman who was not political at all, but one day, found herself close to the border, saw a possibility, and went for it.  She was caught, imprisoned, and forever scarred by the traumatic experience.  She later married a guy who was punished for an escape attempt simply because he swam out toward a boat that was Swedish while at an East German beach.  Endless trouble from the state eventually killed him.  Another was a neighbor of the author, a rock musician who was famous throughout the country.  Eventually, the authorities decided he and his group were just too much, though, and they were informed they no longer existed.  The state disbanded the group.  One of the most heart-rending stories came thanks to a woman who essentially traded her freedom for that of others.  She and her husband had a very sick baby that was being treated in a West German hospital because the East Germans didn’t have the right medicines and abilities.  The parents were only allowed a couple visits, and never together, in an effort to prevent defection.  Later, the parents prepared to make an escape attempt via a tunnel.  The Stasi, East Germany’s brutal secret police, found out about the tunnel, though, and the escape attempt was called off.  That didn’t prevent the parents of the sick boy from being persecuted.  Eventually, the mother was told she could go to the West and see her son, but there were conditions.  One of the conditions would’ve sold out some of the others who had been involved in the escape attempt.  In an amazing act of heroism, she didn’t give in.  The boy grew up in the West under the care of nurses and doctors.  The interviews with the former Stasi were less exciting.  Most seemed to lament, in one way or another, the passing of the former East Germany and the power, authority, and privilege many of them had, usually at the expense of others.  The reunification wasn’t kind to everyone, resulting, in some cases, in increased crime and poverty for those who struggled to adapt to the new order.

The book was interesting, but also disappointing in some ways.  The stories about the former East Germans were great.  Funder found a variety of people, a nice cross-section of society that helped present a fuller picture for the reader.  The stories from those who were oppressed and persecuted or who had resisted in some way were both exhilarating and depressing.  They fought, but often it cost them dearly.  A few of the stories were genuinely inspiring.  Some of the more logistical or mechanical stuff involved was also interesting from a strictly historical point of view.  The book was disappointing because of the inclusion of so much of Funder’s journey.  Even some of the more gripping stories were told from the author’s first-person point of view, which I thought greatly detracted from the book and its potentially strong message.  The author was affected by the stories and people she came in contact with in a profound way that impacted her psychologically.  She had to come to grips with that, and the reader is taken along for part of that journey.  Finally, the book, although almost twenty years old, succumbs to that odd rule of modern publishing in which publishers seem to think that if a word doesn’t use the F-word a few times, people won’t take it seriously.  Although prevalent in today’s society, I find that it detracts from literature that is trying to be serious.

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The Gates of Europe

Ukraine has, ever since my mission, been of at least some interest to me.  As a kid, there was no such place.  Ukraine was part of the USSR, which most Americans referred to as the Soviet Union or simply Russia.  Once Communism fell apart (there’s a lesson there for those who care to see it), Ukraine became its own country.  Most Americans refered to it as “the Ukraine,” but that, someone decided, carried Russian imperialist overtones, so now it’s just Ukraine.  The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl probably put Ukraine on the map for most people, myself included.  Later, I met a few Ukrainians or people of Ukrainian ethnicity as a missionary and then after my mission.  One I remember particularly well was a guy named Valery Pruss, who I met on the streets of Kolpino while a missionary.  The way my last name was transliterated into Russian on my missionary name tag and the way his last name was spelled were identical.  He couldn’t believe someone had the same last name as him, so he even pulled out his passport to prove to me we were somehow distant cousins.  After a few minutes on the street, he became on of the thousands of people one talks to on a mission for only a few minutes, but his name and his Ukrainian ethnicity have stuck with me.  Since the end of my mission, I’ve been lucky enough to visit Ukraine a few times.  I enjoyed those visits and hope I might have similar opportunities in the future.

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy (ISBN: 978-0-465-09486-8) provides a brief but comprehensive survey of the history of Ukraine.  The main point is that a unique Ukrainian identity exists and has always existed (this reminded me of a similar book on Bosnia).  The secondary point is that constant turmoil and political turnover have prevented that identity from really blossoming.  Plokhy starts his history with ancient Greeks almost 1,000 years before Christ.  They emigrated to the region in search of natural resources.  There were local tribes in the area, but Greek culture exerted a strong influence on the region, a concept that would remain important as Greece turned to Christianity and Greek missionaries spread Christianity, baptizing Rus (the name of the polity from which modern-day Russia derives its name) in 988, when Grand Prince Vladimir and his subjects in Kiev accepted Orthodox Christianity.  Rus survived the Mongolian hordes and the Ottoman empire, only later to become part of various incarnations of Polish, Lithuanian, and Austo-Hungarian empires.  That brought Catholicism into the mix.  Throughout the myriad invaders and empires, there were nationalist uprisings that also started to cement a uniquely Ukrainian identity in the people.  As time went on and as empires fell in the XIX and XX century, Ukrainians worried less and less about their neighbors’ religious identity and started viewing themselves, in part because of language, but also because of common imperial enemies or shared economic and political ideals, as Ukrainians.  The Soviets, although generally dismissive of nationalism, encouraged it at times in Ukraine, and that helped further the national identity, as did the struggles of the people against Stalinism’s famine or Communist oppression.  The book ends with the Orange Revolution, continuing the thread of Ukraine continuing to solidify its own identity by fighting against outside influence.

In large part because the topic is somewhat unfamiliar, I found the book interesting, although not riveting.  Unlike a lot of modern history, this book does not “read like a novel,” as the endorsements always try to claim.  This is old-fashioned history with lots and lots of names, dates, and places.  Some of that will go over readers’ heads unless they are supremely familiar with the map of eastern Europe stretching from the Baltic Sea down to Athens, Greece, and from Austria in the west to Moscow in the east.  The heavy dose of dry history, though, does not detract from the book’s theme, and, in fact, often adds to it through the secondary stream of incessant turbulence in the region.  The history of Ukraine would be a lot more stable had there been fewer individuals, nations, tribes, and political movements involved.  I think understanding some of the history of the region helps explain the current situation in Ukraine, where national identity is firm, but like firm Jell-O® and not like set cement.  There is room for things to sway and maybe change shape.  Russia and the West vie for influence, sometimes violently.  Ukraine is very much a flashpoint on the borderlands of Europe and the Orient, where things remain fluid long after the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and the Communists have departed, similar to Balkan countries like Romania and the countries of the former Yugoslavia.  Ukraine’s slowly gelling identity will likely hold it together.  The book is a good reminder that history is worth knowing since it influences thoughts and actions today.

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The Catcher in the Rye

In high school, I avoided reading most of the literature we were assigned.  I found a lot of it dull (somehow, I found MacBeth to be rather interesting) and the discussions we had in class about the books even duller.  Without spending a single cent on CliffsNotes (easily half of the high school used the study guides as replacements for doing the actual reading assignmetns), I managed As in my English classes and passed the AP exam, which helped me avoid having to take English classes in college.  Oddly, when I deiced studying Russian in addition to computer science was a good idea in college, I took a Russian literature (the books were English translations, though) class.  I remember that the non-AP English class had to read the Grapes of Wrath my senior year.  That sounded horrible, and I was glad I didn’t have to do that.

I am not sure if the Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (ISBN: 978-0-316-76917-4) was assigned reading for the regular English class, but it certainly wasn’t for the AP English class, so I never had to read it in high school.  The main character in the book, Holden Caulfield, though, is in high school (well, technically, he’s just been expelled from yet another fancy boarding school), and is struggling with much of what teenagers often contend with, such as a fear of growing up, struggles with making or keeping friends, troubles with figuring out one’s identity, and depression.  The main character is the narrator of the story, which is really just a his train-of-consciousness re-telling of about three days of his life, starting with his having been kicked out of school right before Christmas break, and how he deals with that.  He introduces the reader to some of his teachers, his roommates and dormmates, his sister, a friend from back home, and a few other people he runs into as he tries to avoid going home before he’s supposed to show up at home for Christmas break.  He expresses a lot of negativity for the world and for the people he has contact with, usually because they come across to him as fake.  His rare moments of joy come from his little sister and from other little kids he runs into since they are still innocent and present to the world just who they are, not trying to hide anything or be something they’re not.  He tells his sister that his dream job would be to be a “catcher in the rye,” saving kids running in a rye field toward a cliff from falling off the edge, which is a metaphor for helping people preserve their innocence and lack of “phoniness” (one of his favorite words).

The book was an interesting one, although I would say I had to really push through the first third or so before I felt like had any sense at all of what this kid was about.  His rich, privileged background, combined with his emo outlook and New York street-tough bravado was foreign, complex, and rather off-putting.  Another reason I felt like the book was a slog at times was the insane amount of profane language, easily a dozen profanities per page.  There was also a healthy dose of vulgarity thrown in.  Were this a book a movie script in the 1980s or early 1990s, it would’ve got an R rating.  These days, it probably pulls off a PG-13.  There was also a lot of substance abuse and a handful of sexual references as well as other suggestive scenes.  All of this made me wonder why this book is so commonly assigned in high schools.  The protagonist is a high schooler, but Salinger himself noted that he wrote the novel for an adult audience, and the content is definitely only, as they say, “for mature audiences only.”  I thought the themes explored in the book were interesting, and were things, especially the one about phoniness, even I, now far removed from my teenage years, could relate to in one way or another, and I understand the kind of character the author wanted to portray, but I thought the final product was over the top and detracted from the message of the story.  Remembering my impressionable teenage years, it would’ve been very distracting, and I’m glad I wasn’t exposed to it then.

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Tower of Secrets

I’m not a big movie watcher, so I’ve never seen a Bond movie and pulp fiction rarely interests me (admittedly, I’ve read the original Bourne books — and liked them better than the movies, of course), but I know that bad-guy Russians, usually affiliated with the KGB play a role in at least some of those movies and a lot of fictional spy thrillers.  It, of course, fits well with the Cold War that wasn’t so much a motif through the 1980s, but real life.  It’s an easy way to capture people’s imaginations and draw them into a story.  What has always been even more intriguing than those stories, though, is real life.  I remember Cuban and Eastern European athletes defecting during international competitions and thought that was brave of them.  Movies like Night Crossing regular people defecting had an even larger impact on me.  These people knew the value of freedom and were willing to risk their lives for it.

Tower of Secrets: A Real Life Spy Thriller by Victor Sheymov (ISBN: 978-0-9858930-4-0) is a story more in line with stories of regular people defecting than athletes, but Sheymov wasn’t exactly a regular guy.  He was an officer in one of the Soviet security agencies, the same KGB that was the subject of so much Western fiction.  The KGB he describes in the book often sounds much more like what one imagines working in the IRS or some other boring bureaucratic organization would be like, but he also talks about the things the KGB is more famous for.  Sheymov described his life abroad as an employee of the Soviet Union, working to protect the Soviets’ state secrets and he described his life at home in the Soviet Union.  I found both of them to be rather interesting portrayals of life.  He tells of both the good and the bad, lending an air of credibility to the work.  Eventually, Sheymov and his wife start to question the system they live in.  This is especially shocking to Sheymov himself because he works as part of the system and some of his initial resistance to going against that system is the result of the privilege it has afforded him and his family.  Finally, though, they come to the realization that whatever positives they get from the communist system don’t outweigh the negatives for themselves, their daughter, and for people around them.  The USSR was pretty locked down, though, especially for someone working for the government.  Sheymov and his wife cooked up a plan to get out, but had to make contact with a Western intelligence agency to make that work.  He chose the Americans and ran a risky operation by himself while on a business trip to Poland, where he disguised himself, hopped out a bathroom window, walked into the American embassy, and then returned to his comrades.  Sometime later, more disguises, a train journey, riding in a car with false spaces under the back seats, and smugglers all played a role in getting the Sheymovs to the West.

I enjoyed reading the book.  I found a few similarities to Next Stop Execution: some good descriptions of everyday Soviet life that grounded the book and made it interesting for those of us who weren’t there and some of the discussions about working for what was the world’s most feared intelligence service were neat to read.  I also found the authors’ egoism to be similar.  This book also suffers from being self-published, so there are more than a handful of typos, which can be kind of distracting.  The story of getting that first contact with the Americans set up and then the plan to get the Sheymovs out of the USSR, though, was gripping stuff and well worth the read.  Just like the book’s subtitle promises, it was just like a good story and less like a memoir.  Sheymov’s discussion of his ideological change was also very interesting and it involved various aspects of life.  He accurately noted that communism promised security and justice, but did so at a great price: freedom, both economic and intellectual.  He also grappled with the knowledge that communism has killed many thousands of people, oddly, in the name of equality.  Socialism, in the end, is built for preventing others from succeeding instead of helping people achieve.  These accurate criticisms of socialism and communism are extremely relevant today and serve as the most powerful of Sheymov’s fun and educational book.

   

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