A Man Called Intrepid

World War II history has always fascinated me, although that fascination started more because of cool drawings of bombers, fighters, and half-tracks that I saw in a Richard Scarry book, Hop Aboard!  Here We Go!  Later, I saw the models that a couple of my uncles built, only deepening my interest in this conflict that directly impacted me via my grandparents, who lived through and fought in the war.  I still think the vehicles are a pretty cool part of the war, but the history of the people and places has grown on me since my childhood.  Since the scope of the war is so broad, there are many stories to tell.

A Man Called Intrepid: The Incredible WWII Narrative of the Hero Whose Spy Network and Secret Diplomacy Changed the Course of History by William Stevenson (ISBN: 978-1-59921-170-1) is the story of Sir William Stephenson, whose code name was Intrepid, a Canadian who served as the head of British Security Coordination (BSC) during World War II, which coordinated most of the UK’s espionage efforts in the Atlantic Theater, particularly with the United States, including before the U.S. was officially involved in the war.  The book is long and full of all kinds of stories about things like Camp X, a training center in Canada for various clandestine operators (spies, saboteurs, guerillas, etc.), code breaking, honey pots, financial schemes, resistance efforts (including the Norwegian efforts described in more detail in the Winter Fortress), and even some more traditional spying.  Intrepid, in addition to being involved in intelligence activity, was also a diplomat.  His efforts were instrumental in securing U.S. and Canadian support for many of the efforts the UK was involved in.  He had access to the highest levels of government, including President Roosevelt.  He had to navigate inter-agency and inter-service battles, but did so largely successfully and got most of the support he needed from England’s allies, eventually leading, both directly and indirectly, to the Allied victory against the Germans.  Many historians figure that without the efforts of Intrepid, the war could have gone very differently, and the book lays out that case rather convincingly.  The book ends with an interesting discussion of how Intrepid would’ve preferred a more open society after the war even though clandestine activity helped the Allies secure victory.

I thought the book was very interesting and a good read.  It was published in 1976, so is slightly more academic in nature than modern mass-market history (a fact that I appreciate).  The intriguing information it contains hasn’t aged.  Some of the code breaking and diplomacy-related sections are a little dryer, but fit into a bigger picture of a man who was clearly talented and helped change the course of history.  The book doesn’t get into the philosophical or political implications of intelligence work until the very end.  Many of the stories in the book can be read about in their own books.  This doesn’t always have all the details, but it’s detailed enough in most instances to keep one’s attention and provide an informative read for those interested in the course of World War II.  It even has a couple dozen pages of pictures.

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

The Coddling of the American Mind

Twenty to twenty-five years ago, my university experience presented me with a chance to learn about a variety of different subjects in both general education classes, electives, and my major classes.  I probably found the electives to be the most interesting.  In any case, some classes presented me with ideas that I disagreed with, usually from a political standpoint.  I don’t remember anyone on either side of an issue ever being bothered or offended that someone brought up a countering viewpoint or argument.  It actually seemed like it was expected.  It was also expected that people be able to back up their statements.  An introductory economics class was one that featured more intense discussion than most.  Some students were of a more socialist persuasion than the professor, and I found the discussions to be kind of interesting, as did others in the class.  Since then, it seems that most college students and many people have decided that, somehow, ideas and words are violence, and opposing viewpoints must not be argued and parlayed with facts and reason, but simply shouted down and suppressed.

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (ISBN: 978-0-7352-2489-6) takes a look at how American children and young adults are being set up by the education system and modern parenting for what the authors believe is a more difficult path through life, maybe even often including failure.  They believe that there are three “great untruths” being fed to young people in modern America: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, always trust your feelings, and life is a battle between good people and evil people.  They discuss what they term “safetyism,” meaning the idea that kids must be protected from every possible harm, both physical and psychological.  They note that there are many acceptable risks and that for someone to grow up mentally and physically strong, one must take risks.  Helicopter parenting and safetyism don’t allow for much, if any, risk-taking, thereby stunting development.  The authors reject the idea that feelings trump truth.  They believe that truth trumps feelings and that to arrive at the truth, one must be exposed to ideas that one might not necessarily agree with.  They’re not arguing for purposefully offending people, but have little patience of the concept of micro-aggressions, preferring to use cognitive techniques that tend to assume good intentions and a less adversarial view of the world.  That leads to their third point, in which they argue that the world is not good people against bad people.  There may be good and bad ideas, but that should be hashed out in a free exchange of ideas, and one should not assume that someone purveying what one believes to be a bad idea is a bad person.  After making their case, they suggest solutions to the problems.  Their solutions embrace free speech, personal responsibility in how one reacts to ideas one perceives as negative, and an education system and parenting milieu that encourages taking acceptable risks instead of avoiding all risk whatsoever. 

The book is an interesting one that lays out an idea that I found convincing, both in the description of the problem and in some of the suggested prescriptions.  The authors believe in limited social media for children (and adults, really), more chances for kids to be outside and exploring instead of inside behind a screen, and in letting them hash out minor differences without adult intervention.  In high school and college, the authors want students to exchange ideas and be exposed to various ideas.  They decry the fact that colleges in the U.S. are skewed strongly to the left among both the faculty and the student body.  They wonder how those individuals can ever expand their minds if they hear only things they agree with.  If the reader is a conservative, the book can present some cringy moments when the authors lay out their support for various liberal ideas, including some that most view as woke, but it only seems right that they present those views in a book that challenges ideas about how one thinks.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Hide Your Children

In the 1980s in America, homeschooling was not popular.  For three of my elementary school years, I got to be homeschooled.  I thought it was great.  I got to learn at my pace, which was wonderful for subjects like math, science, and English.  I loved that I was usually done with my school day two to three hours earlier than the rest of the kids in the neighborhood.  At home, I only had to do actual schoolwork and none of the fluff or other, non-academic stuff.  I remember hearing from many people that kids who were homeschooled would not be socialized.  No one ever really defined that word, but between city sports leagues, church activities, and playing friends in the neighborhood, I had plenty of chances to be with other kids, not to mention the fact that the overwhelming majority of inappropriate things I learned I had learned at school.

Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists behind the Attack on America’s Kids by Liz Wheeler (ISBN: 978-1-68451-391-8) provides a look at how the education system has deteriorated further since the 1980s.  The book starts with an overview of just who the Marxists the subtitle is talking about and then gives specific examples of how attacks on the nuclear family, endless accusations of racism, critical theory, queer theory, and attacks on homeschool, a proxy for attacks on personal responsibility and liberty, fit into the Marxist program meant to destroy society.  Each chapter gives some history of where the modern Marxist threat originated and, using specific examples, how it became more mainstream than it ever should have.  The historic sections are followed by a discussion of how it is today and the threat that presents to America, a country built on the idea that it survives only if the people who inhabit it are a moral people.  The book ends with a chapter providing some suggestions on how to change the tide and fight back against the Marxist wave that has overpowered our educational system since it’s much easier to change the minds of the impressionable young than older people more set in their ways.  The author’s suggestions include fighting the culture war, working to ban critical theory from public institutions, homeschooling whenever possible, fighting for school choice, working against ESG and DEI, remembering that local politics have an outlandishly large impact on our lives, returning to religion, and protecting the innocence of our children.  Finally, there were some appendices with the Constitution and papal encyclicals that discussed the dangers of Communism.

Looking back on my time in school, I can see some of the early beginnings of what was discussed in the book.  I remember having lessons on self-esteem in fifth grade.  The discussions about just what constitutes a put-down are exactly the kind of thing that gets rolled into social-emotional learning in the mid-2020s.  Homeschooling was a great experience for me that taught a lot about personal responsibility and putting forth the effort to better one’s own life.  That was the ultimate message of the book, but it also presented a good picture of what some of the problems with the modern American education system and how much of what is taught is at odds with the liberty needed to be self-sufficient.  One interesting undercurrent of the book was Wheeler’s belief that while religion was key to containing Marxism, Catholicism was the preferred route.  The appendices included two very long papal encyclicals, both of which accurately described Communism as a problem, but were also inclined to support organized labor as a rather fuzzy concept of how to deal with poverty.  The descriptive portion of the book was its strongest and make it worth reading.  The prescriptive part was fine, with ideas that were good, but left me wanting more specifics (something that would improve many books about politics).  

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

The Airmen and the Headhunters

World War II history, at least in my mind, tends to focus on the European theater.  Everyone talks about Hitler, the Nazis, the Germans, the Italians, the British, and the Russians.  For the U.S., though, World War II was a two-front war, and the Pacific theater was just as important and ultimately brought the war to a close for the U.S. with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan.  Before those bombs were dropped, though, there were many events that unfolded, many of them full of heroism, daring, and brilliance, just as it was in Europe.  I also have a personal connection to the Pacific since that is where my maternal grandfather served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen, and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II by Judith M. Heiman (ISBN: 978-0-15-101434-7) tells a fascinating story from the Pacific.  As the Allies tried to claw their way toward Japan, while a ground invasion was still a potential plan, territory in what is now Indonesia was of strategic importance to the belligerents.  Japan held what was then referred to as Borneo because of its oil reserves.  The Allies wanted to cut that off.  During a bombing mission against Japanese forces and industry in Borneo, a few U.S. planes were shot down.  The occupants of one met death, either in the wreck or at the hands of the Japanese.  Two other planes, though, had survivors who avoided capture.  While this was initially thanks mostly to good luck, later capture was avoided because of the efforts of the natives, some of whom were formerly formidable headhunting tribes.  The case of characters involved Malaysians, various highland jungle tribes, and the Americans.  Later, Australian forces joined made it to the jungle and helped the natives fight the Japanese and the Americans get home.  In the six months between the downed planes and the exfiltrations, though, the natives and the Malay helped the Americans avoid detection by the Japanese.  They provided the Americans with hiding places, food, and taught them some of their ways to help make survival in the jungle a little easier.  It wasn’t easy and involved sickness, insects, leeches, and injury, but the downed American soldiers eventually made it back home.  In fighting the Japanese and keeping them off the Americans’ trail, the natives brought back their age-old tradition of headhunting.  It might not have been exactly the same since it was revitalized out of necessity, but it served its purpose and aided in keeping the Japanese out of the interior jungles.

The book was really interesting.  I know almost nothing about Indonesia, Malaysia, and other island nations in Asia.  I had never heard about this particular bit of World War II history, but I am glad I did.  It was fascinating to read about the jungles, their many potential threats, and the native people who so willingly sacrificed for the well-being of the American soldiers, especially since they might have not been so excited about doing so given the sometimes harsh history of the Dutch in that part of the world.  Kind American missionaries who worked in the jungles mitigated some of the Dutch-induced problems, though, and even non-Christian natives respected the Western missionaries who had truly been good examples and good followers of Christ.  There was an element of adventure in the book and some excitement in the story as the Japanese came close to capturing the Americans a couple times.  Other than a quote from an old army song that included the F-word, the book was great and well worth reading for anyone interested in history.

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

The Forgotten Founding Father

I don’t know that I can say that I’ve always been interested in languages, but ever since I served a mission in Russia for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and learned Russian, I’ve had an interest in languages.  I took German in junior and high school, but never made any real progress.  In high school, when they started teaching us about accusative and dative cases, my brain lost it.  I remember doing a homework assignment dealing with those and asking my native German-speaking grandmother and my German-speaking father for help and still just having brain cramps.  Learning Russian was also very difficult, but I was able to overcome my problem with cases, and it’s been fun to attempt to keep some of these language skills from earlier in my life up since then.  Learning foreign languages like German and Russian also helped me understand things like English grammar and the etymology of English words a little better.  As a really young kid, I remember a copy of the Merriam-Webster dictionary on our shelf and sometimes asking my mom why we never read “the big, red book.”

The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture by Joshua Kendall (ISBN: 978-0425-24545-3) tells about how that “big, red book” came to be thanks to another person who was very interested in words and language.  The book chronicles Webster’s life from boyhood to death, taking a very detailed look at the parts of his life that led to his creation of the famous dictionary, part of Webster’s desire to make America its own unique country.  Somewhat unusual for his day, Webster went to college even though he came from a farmer’s family.  He then pursued a career tied to literature.  He wrote extensively, including many essays, letters, and pamphlets in support of American independence and then in support of a federal republic.  While his writings are not as well known today as those of others like Hamilton, at the time, there were many leading Americans who believed Webster’s efforts were essential parts of swaying public opinion.  Webster initially made his name by publishing a speller, a book that helped schoolchildren learn to read and write.  This book provided him with a foundational income throughout his life.  He also worked as a lawyer, editor, and publisher.  What he realized he loved doing, though, was more similar to the speller: compiling, organizing, and ordering information.  This led to his interest in dictionaries.  He found flaws in extant dictionaries and decided to improve on them by publishing his own.  One motivation he had for this was that he believed a uniquely American language would help create and uphold a uniquely American culture, one that was needed to help the nascent nation maintain its distance from its former imperial overlords and move forward.  While his ideas on government changed over the course of his life, his belief in America did not.  The dictionary took much more time and money than he thought it would, but it was eventually published and created a new standard as well as codifying much of what was then a unique American language with new words expressing the new ideas embodied by the new nation.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and found it interesting and informational.  Reading of the American Founding and those who played integral roles in those events is always interesting.  I found some of the discussion of early American literature and the academic scene to be less intriguing, but understand that it helped set the stage for Webster’s work and may be a necessary part of telling his story.  It seemed the author wanted to diagnose Webster with some kind of mental disorder (OCD, autism, etc.), but never really came out and said it, just approached it tangentially.  That constant repetition of that theme was a little distracting.  The dictionary itself is only the last quarter of the book, so there’s a lot of other material to get through, but I thought the case for Webster’s role in America becoming its own entity, separate from Great Britain, was made convincingly.  Those interested in the Revolution and the Founding, not just nerdy linguistic things will find the book of interest.

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

The Great Reset

[We w]ill at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play,

or film as soon as [we hear] the speaker utter a lie, ideological

drivel, or shameless propaganda.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There was once a guy in a small southern Utah town who made the news all over the place because he put up a sign in his front yard that declared his property a UN-free zone.  Lots of people made fun of him, wondering what impact the UN could possibly have on a guy with a few acres of land in the sticks in southern Utah.  Given that the UN operates some programs that provide medical aid and food to those in need or preserve cultural heritage sights, albeit in a bureaucratic and inefficient way, alongside some of truly inefficient things they do in the general assembly, at the time, I had no real opinion either way, but always felt the guy probably understood things better than I did.  A decade or so later, with the international community firmly entrenched in the big-government control movement and its many tentacles creeping farther and farther into our everyday lives, it seems the guy who wanted to keep the UN (and other global elites) out of his back yard was on to something.

The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of 21st-century Fascism by Glenn Beck with Justin Haskins (ISBN:  978-1-63763-059-4) provides an overview of just what the Great Reset is.  Beck and Haskins view it as an attempt by elites on the global stage to take over and subsequently control people politically and economically.  They note that this is a plan that has been in the works for much longer than just since the coronavirus happened in 2020, although that served as a crisis that could be used to further many of the goals of those pushing for the Great Reset (Leftists around the world, not just Joe Biden as the title might lead one to believe).  Other things that have served as a way for Klaus Schwab, George Soros, and others to further their agenda include environmentalism and the rise of national debts and inflation, which many Leftists want to combat by employing something called “modern monetary theory,” which states that national debt doesn’t really matter, only inflation does, since governments have the ability print the money they need (taxation is used to control (read: punish) people or organizations, not necessarily to raise revenue).  Another economic tool of those pushing the Great Reset, which is a politically loaded term these days, although one that the book includes in direct quotations from the horses’ mouths, is environmental, social, governance (ESG), a system that the elite wants to use to evaluate business and individuals the way in essentially the same way credit scores are used, just without so much worry about credit and more worry about those more political factors.  The system was designed to counteract the Right’s call for business to self-regulate and not have the government involved.  With ESG involved, big investment firms can buy shares in a company and then demand that the company adhere to ESG standards, thereby causing, ostensibly, business to drive the ESG agenda and not government.  Beck and Haskins finish the book with some policy prescriptions, almost all of which are calls to action on a local level in most cases: support small businesses, be politically active on the local level, don’t live lies in our personal lives.

The book was an interesting read.  It was written a in 2022, but is especially relevant given the rise of ESG and organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF), which push the Great Reset.  The history of the Great Reset, relevant quotations from those pushing it, not just spouting off about it (all extensively noted in endnotes), and solid explanations of just what these terms refer to and how they apply to the common man, make the book worth a read.  I am not a huge fan of the book’s subtitle, although I understand it given that many of the Great Reset players have ties to Biden.  Beck does note that the Great Reset is not necessarily a partisan issue as there are culprits normally associated with the American Right, too.  However, he focuses on those tied in some way to Joe Biden and the U.S. Democratic machine.  I think that section could’ve been a little better.  Some readers may not appreciate some of the humor in some of the sections.  I was kind of on the fence about some of it — it was all appropriate; I just usually appreciate a more serious tone, but I think regular Beck listeners will get it and appreciate it.  In the end, I thought the actions the authors suggested we take were all very solid.  They were all things that people can do.  I found the extensive quotations from Russian dissident Solzhenitsyn to be powerful, especially the one asking us to not live a lie.

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Why I Stand

When I was a kid, sports on TV was a big deal.  The local colleges played football seasons that were eleven or twelve games long, but less than half of those games were on TV.  Only about half the people I knew had cable, so sometimes televised games weren’t even available to everyone.  When something was on TV, I made the effort to watch.  I liked watching BYU’s football and basketball games as well as Utah Jazz games with the occasional Oakland A’s game when they were featured on national TV.  As I got older, there were more things on TV, particularly more Jazz games, and I still tried pretty hard to watch as many of those as I could.  Nowadays, with work, family, and other more pressing matters, I hardly ever watch the Jazz games and watch BYU games less frequently than before.  I have never been an NBA fan or a college football fan, though, and, in general, couldn’t care less about other teams or what’s happening in various leagues or conferences.  I care about my favorite teams and that’s all.  Every so often, something happens in the sports world, though, that makes waves and casual fans like me or even non-fans have to take notice.

Why I Stand by Jonathan Isaac (ISBN: 978-1-956007-06-0) is a book that exists because of one of those moments.  After the protests and riots that occurred after George Floyd’s death, many athletes used their position (“platform” being the buzzword everyone liked to use) to advocate for a message they believed in.  One of the more controversial ways they did this was to kneel during the national anthem.  Jonathan Isaac, a very promising NBA player, chose to buck the trend and stand during the national anthem.  He stood out even more because he did not choose to wear the Black Lives Matter apparel that most others did.  Like most things, his decisions in that matter were not just sudden, spur-of-the-moment thoughts.  They were based on a lifetime of experiences and a large body of personal beliefs.  The book recounts Isaac’s childhood, high school and college experiences and rather meteoric rise in the sport of basketball from a no-name kid playing inconsistently in high school to a top-10 NBA draft pick.  It also discusses Isaac’s struggles with anxiety and belief in his own worth, which were ultimately helped more than anything by a spiritual journey that led to a firm belief in God.  He writes about going to church as a kid, but not really knowing why and not applying what was being taught.  Like many people, he had some negative experiences with organized religion along the way, and by the time he was playing in the NBA as a rookie, he was connected to religion in name only.  A neighbor who was a church leader and a few setbacks in his basketball career provided opportunities for Isaac to re-evaluate his relationship with God, and his honest approach to that led to a conversion that led to action that ranged from feeding the poor to becoming a pastor in his church.  Ultimately, those convictions led him to stand while his teammates knelt during the national anthem, but he believed that incident was just one instance of standing for truth and right and that God asks that of His followers in many other situations, too.

Charles Barkley, another famous basketball player, once said in an advertisement that he was not a role model.  It was a controversial advertisement because basketball players and other famous people in the spotlight are role models whether they want to be or not and whether they should be or not.  I find that most of them should not be, but a guy like Jonathan Isaac is a role model by virtue of his position and his actions.  His account came across and genuine and humble.  He was open about his struggles and did not shy away from the fact that he made mistakes in his life and is still far from the perfection that God has commanded us to stive for.  However, he has not tried to dodge hard work and responsibility at all and has put forth the effort necessary to effect change in his life for the better.  His willingness to stand alone for his beliefs is admirable, no matter where someone comes down on the issues (he notes in his book that many did not agree with him, but that some teammates and others told him they found his courage and determination to be character traits worthy of respect and emulation).  I thought he had well-articulated reasons for doing what he did, and I happen to agree with them, but I found the book’s message of finding one’s self-worth in Christ and in knowing that we are beloved children of God to be the main message.  The byproduct of knowing those things is that one is then willing to stand for truth and right even when it’s uncomfortable.  

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Ravished Armenia

My first real contact with Armenians was while serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in St. Petersburg, Russia.  We regularly ran into Armenians in our efforts to preach on the streets.  One of the members of the branch in Pskov was an ethnic Armenian.  One of the sister missionaries in one of the districts I served in was from Armenia.  It was from her that I first learned about the Armenian alphabet, which was like nothing I had ever seen before.  Since then, I have had a few chances to get to know more Armenians and learn a little about the history of this small country in the Caucasus that has outsized sway around the world because of its ubiquitous and rather tight-knit diaspora.  The diaspora is so large and so widespread, in part, because of the World War I time-frame killings Armenians were subjected to.

Ravished Armenia: The Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl Who Survived the Great Massacres by Aurora Mardiganian (Arshalyus Mardiganyan) is an autobiographical account of the Turkish oppression of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire starting in 1915.  The Mardiganian family, relatively wealthy financiers, are warned by their shepherd that he had a dream about the Armenians’ imminent destruction, but his prediction is dismissed.  Soon, though, it comes true, as the family is driven from their home, along with all the other Armenians.  Occasionally, leniency is shown to those who will renounce their Christian faith and adopt Islam, but even then, the freshly converted Armenians are killed by their Turkish and Kurdish oppressors.  Aurora, like most of the women and children, is driven from place to place, guarded by Turkish policemen.  Those who are too slow to keep up during forced marches are dispatched quickly and usually cruelly, although Mardiganian’s account does point out a few instances of decency and humanity from guards or locals in the places the Armenians were marched.  Her story, like many of those who lived during this time, is made all the more tragic because she was there to see the deaths of her father, mother, a sister, and a brother.  She was sold multiple times to be a harem girl.  This never worked out for the buyer because Aurora was never willing to accept Islam.  It really didn’t work out for her, either, though, because her refusals were usually met with abuse and deprivation.  After wandering the Ottoman Empire under the care of the Turkish police or as the property of various rich Turks, having seen so much killing, rape, and pillaging, her old shepherd friend, then working for a Turk trying to get Aurora to submit to Islam before being fully accepted into his harem, helped her escape.  She stayed with friendly Kurds before eventually being helped by Americans in the region and then making her way to Russian-controlled territory and under Russian and Armenian military oversight, made her way to Tbilisi, then Russia, and then the United States.

Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes with Armenians will have heard of what they refer to simply as the Genocide.  There are some political implications involved in using that term, but that is what the Armenians refer to it as, and it was, undoubtedly, a terrible time for them.  There are not many things one can compare their suffering to, although maybe the treatment of the Bosniaks when the former Yugoslavia fell apart is a decent comparison.  Aurora’s story was one of suffering and tragedy.  As a memoir meant to tell of her people’s travails, there is no larger discussion of world politics at the time or even the regional situation (in short: it’s the Caucasus and the Middle East, so it’s somewhere beyond complicated).  The reader just gets a relatively young girl’s take on a horrible situation.  On the other hand, despite all the destruction, violence, and despair, there is hope in the book.  I found the willingness she had, along with a few others, to not renounce Christ despite the often gruesome consequences extremely brave and inspiring.  The will to survive and the resourcefulness displayed by those in a tight spot to do so were admirable, too.  There are also lessons in the book about avoiding the totalitarian and authoritarian impulses that so often afflict those in power that lead to so much death and destruction of human life.
 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Avenue of Spies

France is famous for artwork, food, seaside rivieras, skiing, and the architecture and monuments of Paris.  France is on almost everyone’s list of places to visit.  Most people think it’d be cool to see the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, or spend time in Normandy or on the Mediterranean French Riviera.  Not everyone thinks snails are something they should try, but crêpes are on everyone’s list.  France also has an interesting reputation as being a country of cowards and wimps.  There are lots of jokes about French surrender in battle.  Some of this comes from a collaborationist government during World War II.  Despite the Nazi collaborators, there were many in France who joined the resistance and fought against Germany in open armed rebellion as well as in all kinds of underground activity.

Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family’s Heroic Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris by Alex Kershaw (ISBN: 978-0-8041-4004-1) is one story of underground activity during the Nazi occupation of France.  It is about an American, Dr. Sumner Jackson, his Swiss-born wife, Toquette, and their son, Phillip, who lived on the same street as many of the leaders of the occupying Germans, but aided the French resistance and paid the ultimate price for that patriotic effort.  Jackson was a surgeon at an American hospital in France and used both his residence and the hospital as venues for fighting the Germans.  Toquette and Phillip were also happy to be involved.  Phillip couldn’t do much as a teenager, but understood what his parents were involved in.  The house was used as a place to pass documents and information, the hospital was used to make Allied soldiers disappear once they had been adequately treated.  Many were able to escape to neutral Spain and then back to England.  The Nazis were next door and across the street and in houses all along the street, but the Jackson family was able to aid the resistance for quite some time before eventually being rounded up with other patriotic Frenchmen and sent to concentration camps in Germany.  The entire family survived the camps.  Toquette was extricated from one by the Swedes (reminded me a tiny bit of Raoul Wallenberg) and the Red Cross.  Sumner and Phillip survived their camp experience, in large part thanks to Dr. Jackson’s abilities as a doctor and being able to barter those services for easier assignments for his son.  However, they were being transported away from Germany on a transport ship that was bombed by the English.  The ship was destroyed.  Phillip was able to swim away and was rescued by German fishermen before they realized that he wasn’t German.  His father, though, who had a chance to not board the ship when the Germans, at the behest of the Red Cross, asked for all French speakers to step out of line, but decided to board anyway out of a sense of duty to the sick and injured men he was aiding as a doctor, did not survive the bombing.  Phillip’s last war-time activity was as a member of the British Army, translating, searching for, and testifying against German war criminals.  He was eventually re-united with his mother in France.

I found the book to be pretty good.  Like many history books that focus on one very specific event or one person, it seemed like there were parts of the book that were added simply to fill a page requirement.  Overall, though, the story was interesting, and the historical details about those involved, both French and German, were worth reading and learning about.  I am always impressed by those who were willing to take risks to do what was right during World War II.  Especially toward the end of the war, as Germany lost territory, men, and influence, any anti-German conduct was immediately punishable by death.  The Jackson family’s readiness to take on those risks essentially without asking any questions speaks volumes about their moral fiber and presents an example worth emulating.  

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Heir to the Empire

I remember going to a friend’s house as a kid and seeing some Star Wars books on his family’s bookshelves.  I remember being confused by that since I knew there were only three movies, and the titles on the spines of these books had nothing to do with the movies except the “Star Wars” part.  I did not understand at all that there was an entire fictional world that nerds had created beyond the original three movies.  It really didn’t interest me, so I didn’t think much of it until more recently, when some people in my family got into Star Wars and re-opened the question of what is now referred to as something like the “expanded universe” (Star Wars nerds somewhere will happily tell me I’ve used incorrect terminology, I’m sure).  As I became acquainted with Star Wars Rebels, I was introduced to a villain named Thrawn, who was a great bad guy in the animated series, and I didn’t know that he had actually existed for a long time in some of those books I saw at that friend’s house.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn (ISBN: 978-0-593-35876-4) is the first in a trilogy (seems writers and publishers have long found trilogies to be very marketable) featuring a blue-skinned, red-eyed humanoid alien as the brains behind what is left of the Empire after Luke Skywalker and the Rebellion had conquered the Empire in the movies.  Thrawn is written as an incredibly smart military and political genius who not only knows the art of war and diplomacy, but is also a student of culture, particularly the arts.  He uses this knowledge to help him understand his enemies and stay one step ahead of them.  The book also includes movie favorites like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, Lando Calrissian, and others.  They have their own adventures fighting off remnants of the Empire (commanded by Thrawn), dealing with pirates (the underworld always being a Star Wars staple), and fighting with new enemies like the ape-like Rukh or the human Mara Jade.  Rukh and his species are ruthless killers, but not quite up to the task of defeating Wookies, and Leia ends up making an uneasy truce with one of the aliens since they are all loyal to Darth Vader and Leia is his daughter.  Luke Skywalker, Han, Lando, and the famous droids R2-D2 and C-3PO are captured by Mara Jade and other pirates, spend time negotiating with them, and eventually get away by banding together with the pirates to fight off Imperial forces aided by an imposter Jedi.  The last big event in the book is Thrawn’s forces attempting to attack a freight depot and make off with hundreds of ships for his depleted Imperial navy.  With Luke Skywalker’s aid, that attack is more or less thwarted, but since the books is the first in a series, it feels very much left open and unresolved.

I thought the book was OK.  Other Star Wars books I’ve read, like the Ahsoka book, were better.  I found that this one simply didn’t hold my attention.  To me, that’s saying something because I came in already thinking Thrawn was a pretty cool character.  Maybe it’s because there were other storylines?  I was also seriously underwhelmed with the writing.  I thought it was to repetitive and cliché.  One does not need to hear about the same facial expression every time a character thinks or does the same thing.  The reader gets it after the first couple times.  I thought that maybe a different way of saying things or some different words could’ve been used.  I know it’s painfully obvious when a writer has been using a thesaurus, but a little variety couldn’t hurt.  I think I wasn’t too impressed with the sections about the old Star Wars characters.  This story would’ve been better had it been all new, not the writer’s take on characters that every person has their own ideas about.  Fans who are all in will likely like the book, but for us who just kind of hover on the edges of Star Wars fandom, it was forgettable.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Up from Slavery

History has always been interesting to me, but like most people, there are parts of history that have a greater pull than others.  The Revolutionary War and the Founding have always been favorites of mine along with World War II.  I received two coffee table books as a kid from my grandparents, one about the Revolutionary War and one about the Civil War.  These were quality books made by National Geographic, back before that organization went political.  Along with some sound commentary, there were plenty of maps, graphics, and pictures that held a young boy’s attention long enough to foster an interest in these two seminal events in the history of the United States.

Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington (ISBN: 978-0-9997797-3-6) tells of the famous educator’s life from his early boyhood as a slave to his rise as a professor and principal (these days we’d probably say president) of the Tuskegee Institute.  The book was short on the childhood section, understandably so, since he was so quite young when slavery ended and had spent his days like all the other slaves: working.  Once freed, he and his family struggled like many to find work that would pay the bills, but they succeeded, and his mom encouraged an innate love for learning that eventually led to Washington’s heading off to the Hampton School.  A popular place with newly freed blacks trying to improve their lot, the school didn’t have a lot of room, but Booker so impressed the lady in charge of admissions when he was asked to clean some of the school rooms, that he made it in.  He didn’t squander a single opportunity, graduated, and then set about to provide opportunities for others.  What that led to was his founding the Tuskegee Institute.  The greater section of the book is spent chronicling how the school came about, its struggles and successes, and its growth and Washington’s efforts to promote the school and secure the funding needed to keep it on its own two feet.  He worked hard no matter what he was involved in, whether teaching, overseeing the school, working in his own home with animals and in his garden, or fundraising.  He was also a well-known and in-demand orator, invited to speak at functions, fairs, and other public events.  Throughout the book, he spends significant time noting that service, hard work, fulfilling one’s duties, giving things one’s best shot, and honesty are the keys to success and happiness in life.  He also touches on the question of race and racism, but only as a reality that is in the background and that mostly stays there when one develops the abovementioned qualities and masters skills that others require, such as the brickmaking, animal husbandry, sewing, architecture, dairy farming, and others that his school taught in addition to academic subjects.

While very much aware of Booker T. Washington and his accomplishments because I don’t remember a class or unit on American history in school that didn’t include him (as he said, if one works hard and does something that others find useful, one will have earned respect and likely at least some recognition), the book was interesting to read because there was more to his life’s philosophy than the education that he is most famous for.  Washington was a hard worker who believed in taking the bull by the horns and not allowing life, fate, other people (including other people’s choices), or whatever other thing people blame their failures on control him.  He believed others had a better chance to be successful if they were educated both academically and in life skills and professional knowledge.  He dedicated his life to making that happen, noting along the way that he was most fulfilled when helping and serving others.  I enjoyed reading his take on race and racism — he largely ignored it.  He was a former slave, but had no time for holding grudges and found that a straightforward approach that did not insult Southerners, but found a way to lift them up, helped the most.  The relations between the blacks and whites in Tuskegee were good in his opinion, so the proof is in the pudding as far as his approach is concerned.  Finally, Washington continually gave credit for his success to God, which is always refreshing.  Both historically and morally, the book was great and well worth the time.

   

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Profiles in Corruption

Modern-day politicians (and by “modern-day” I have pretty much anyone elected after 1900 in mind) are famous for being spineless rags that twist whatever way the wind and for being willing to adopt pretty much any position for the right sum of money (usually a lot lower than one would think it should be).  One of my favorite examples of this is Louisiana’s former U.S. representative, William Jefferson, who took a ton of bribes and was caught when federal investigators found $90,000 wrapped up in aluminum foil in his freezer.  Both of America’s major political parties are susceptible to this major fault.  In books and movies, corruption has a little bit of a glamorous or adventurous feel to it, often tied to the mob or opulent, fast-lane living.  The truth certainly includes some of that, but is mostly full of boring paperwork that lawyers and accountants deal with in an attempt to cover the trail between politicians and the dirty money they use to enrich themselves, their friends, and their families.

Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite by Peter Schweizer (ISBN: 978-0-06-289790-9) examines the corruption of some of the American Left’s biggest stars: Vice President Kamala Harris, Senator Bernie Sanders, President Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Eric Garcetti, and Senator Elizabeth Warren.  Schweizer could’ve written a book like this about Republicans, too, but chose not to since Leftists claim they fight against big business and cronyism and are believed by a significant swath of the public.  With that hypocrisy as a background, the corruption seems even worse as it’s not just corruption, but also a lot of lying.  All of them are long-term public officer holders that have been involved in hardly any business activities, yet have wielded the power that comes with their offices to enrich themselves, their friends, and their families.  Schweizer chronicles these politicians’ activities throughout their careers, which includes their time in local and state office as well as on the national stage.  As they move up the ladder, their influence grows, and the amount of money they’re able to command in exchange for various favors grows in a corresponding manner.  One of the most popular schemes was earmarking federal funding for ones’ friends and families via authority over grants and programs (all of them) or writing laws that benefit a friend’s law firm (Harris, Klobuchar) or a brother’s real estate development project (Biden).  The book is full of stories of politicians claiming to be tough on crime, for example, but then not prosecuting their political allies.  There are stories of politicians writing laws that make it possible for family and friends to develop property formerly off limits.  In every case, the politician in question also comes out ahead.  Schweizer ends by claiming that there is a certain level of responsibility for the corruption with the American voter because these politicians keep being re-elected.

The book is a quick read and quite interesting.  It’s also depressing on a certain level because these are only a few of the examples of corruption.  Like Schweizer claims, everyone knows it’s a bipartisan problem, too.  I thought the fact that there were so many examples made the book’s case stronger.  These examples of corruption were not some one-off thing.  These are embedded habits.  While I tend to generally agree with Schweizer’s conclusion that we get what we vote for, one thing that depressed me throughout the book was simply the amount of public money available.  A lot of this corruption would not be possible if there was not so much public money available.  There are so many things the government has no business being involved in.  If it was smaller, the way it should be, there would be a lot fewer opportunities for politicians to be bought.  In that way, I disagree with Schweizer’s conclusion.  Reduce the size of government and this problem takes care of itself to a certain degree.

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Franklin & Washington

The Founders (I’m old enough that it was the Founding Fathers) of America were some amazing people.  Stories of Benjamin Franklin, inventor, diplomat, statesman, and printer were a staple of what was taught as history when I was a kid.  It was great stuff and inspired me to read his Autobiography as a teenager, and that was a great read, too.  Franklin embodied much about the nascent country: innovation, progress, a desire for liberty, and the ability to chart one’s own course.  Washington’s life was also the stuff of legend.  Surveying sounds boring as a career, but in the Revolutionary era, it was outdoorsmanship at its finest, supplemented by frontier action.  Washington added to his status by being a competent military leader, fearless under fire.  Finally, he was the country’s first and probably greatest president, in large part because he was a reluctant leader (those are typically the best kind).

Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson (ISBN: 978-0-06-288016-1) takes an often detailed look at how Benjamin Franklin and George Washington worked toward common goals during the Revolutionary era, often working in concert to attain the desired outcome of a free United States.  Larson provides an overview of each man’s life, which establishes that even before they knew each other, they had much in common.  They were colonists, their early fortunes were tied to the western frontiers of their respective colonies, and they were involved in military and political matters.  While their person routes to success were different, with Franklin rising to wealth and fame via hard work, ingenuity, and learning and exploiting the political scene, Washington had a slightly easier route that involved coming into land and marrying into a wealthy family.  Ultimately, though, he, too, was a self-made man, parlaying his surveying and military skills into productive aspects of management and leadership, letting him be a successful estate owner and businessman with a strong ability to find workable compromises in otherwise explosive situations.  Once both were convinced that British rule was not the way to go for the colonies, they poured their hearts and souls into independence.  They believed strongly in liberty, and put their money where their mouths were, sacrificing time, money, and more to the cause of liberty.  Franklin spent years abroad; Washington spent years leading the Continental Army.  Once independence had been secured, both turned their attention to helping the thirteen colonies unify, something both strongly believed in.  This was more time and sacrifice.  They were leaders at the Constitutional Convention.  Their styles there sometimes differed, but they worked toward a common goal of a unified country with a federal government strong enough to keep the states in check at times.  Larson also spends a significant amount of time talking about one of the biggest differences between the two, which was their outlook on slavery.  While they started life someone on the same footing there, Franklin slowly evolved to eventually come to an abolitionist viewpoint.  Washington never moved from his position as a slave holder, although he was willing to go along with the anti-slavery clauses in the Constitution.

The book was mostly interesting, and I found the comparison between the two storied leaders to be an interesting approach to studying the Revolutionary era.  Even though their stories are well known, the biographical section was good and had some details that were at least new to me.  The author claimed Franklin to be a deist, which is the popular thing to do, and while the first Franklin quote he used to prove that could possibly support that assumption, I thought the next three God-related quotes from Franklin were much more supportive of his believing in God.  The author didn’t really touch on Washington’s religiosity (a good thing, too, considering that George Washington’s Sacred Fire thoroughly destroys any argument to the contrary on that score), which I found a little disappointing.  If they really thought so differently about God, it could’ve been a good point about how  men of differing fundamental beliefs still found common ground and worked together, a very appropriate lesson for today.  If their beliefs were closer in nature, it could’ve been another point where these great men saw eye to eye.  The slavery discussion had its interesting moments, but was too much. The point was made early in the book that these two didn’t see eye to eye on this issue, but then the reader had to read fifty pages about it.  There was also a rather accusatory approach to Washington’s views (“views” being a stretch as one really only reads about his actions and not what he said about it, which, as I have read in other places, were conflicted), seemingly pointing out that Franklin came to the abolitionist side, so automatically Washington should’ve, too.  In any case, the historian is not supposed to judge the actions of yesteryear’s figures by today’s standards.  All modern readers know slavery is wrong, and the Constitution they helped create set up a system that allowed for the abolition of slavery to happen much faster than many would’ve preferred, so the focus should’ve been, again, on how the two managed to work together and have strong respect for each other until their dying days despite this.  Both of these problems seemed like missed opportunities by the author in what was otherwise a good book about two great men.

   

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Wallenberg

World War II is probably most famous for the atrocities of the Nazi regime in Germany.  It’s other claims to fame are not much better, including the general death, mayhem, and destruction that are an inevitable part of war.  While those are real, true parts of war and human nature, wars and other dire situations also bring out the best in some people.  Two pieces of literature taught me that early in life.  First was the Winged Watchman, a book about the Dutch resistance during World War II.  It is based on true accounts of Dutch efforts in the war.  I read and re-read it as a kid, easily placing myself in the roles of the main characters.  Second was the Diary of Anne Frank.  The family that hid her continues to have my greatest admiration.  These books inculcated a sense of duty and sacrifice that are the exact opposite of the destruction the war with which the war is most commonly associated.

Wallenberg: The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Saved Thousands of Jews by Kati Marton (ISBN: 978-1-61145-337-9) tells one of the positive stories from World War II, one that definitely fits the mold of duty, daring, and sacrifice.  Wallenberg is the story of Raoul Wallenberg, a member of a wealthy Swedish dynasty, who was unafraid to use his position to augment his natural abilities to help save Jews from Nazis and Hungary’s Nazi-supported regime.  Wallenberg, an orphan, did not have the usual family resources available to him, and, with his grandfather’s help, charted his own course after his early years, one that included extensive travel and schooling abroad.  He later tried banking, but was unfulfilled.  He worked with the Swedish foreign ministry and Western organizations toward a higher purpose in Hungary, where he devised various systems to help preserve the lives of Hungary’s Jews.  He provided them with Swedish documents, sometimes as Jews were being loaded on trains to Nazi death camps.  He provided Swedish-flagged housing in Budapest and met with Hungarian and Nazi dignitaries, always looking for a sympathetic ear and sometimes finding one, which lent him a little more time.  As the Russians closed in on Budapest, he figured his mission was not over, but the Russians believed otherwise, especially since he got some of his money from Western organizations.  They arrested him and sent him to the Soviet Union, where he languished in the Gulag until he died, having made the ultimate sacrifice in his efforts to love and serve his fellow man.

The book, coming highly recommended, did not disappoint.  Every part of it was interesting, even the discussion of Wallenberg’s family history and early years and some of the post-war intrigue from the Soviets.  The Soviet portion of the story was actually pretty sad, especially once Stalin had died.  It seemed to me that there was no real reason to hold Wallenberg any longer, but the Soviet system and leaders weren't up to releasing him, somehow viewing that as an affront to them.  The story of Wallenberg's daring and sacrifice was exhilarating and inspiring.  That may be the book’s largest contribution.  The reader is uplifted and gets a glimpse of what it means to do the right thing when doing the right thing likely comes with a very steep cost.  Wallenberg's example is one worth emulating.

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far)

Year-end synopses and other annual summaries were something that seemed to be pretty popular in the news during my teenage years and into my early adulthood.  Newspapers would publish year-in-review stories and devote a page of one of their lesser-read sections to what the editorial staff considered to be the year’s top ten or so stories.  Admittedly, I am somewhat sentimental in nature, affected a little by nostalgia, so these kinds of things in the papers appealed to me.  Humorist Dave Barry was not one to be left behind by that trend, and one of the Sundays around New Year’s Day always featured his year-in-review columns, which were always laugh-out-loud funny and something I looked forward to.

Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far) by Dave Barry (ISBN: 978-0-399-15437-9) is a compilation of those year-end columns for the first few years of the 2000s.  Since those were always multi-page columns, the book is a decent length even though it doesn’t even deal with a full decade.  The style of Barry’s columns relies on a couple main devices.  One is to make fun of real events, and given the state of American politics, that is easy to do.  Often, it seemed like he didn’t have to do a lot of writing; the material was writing itself.  Another is to start by reporting a real event and then, suddenly and usually rather abruptly, turn it into something surreal or absurd.  The subject of the jokes is wide ranging and includes politics, religion, sports, crime, popular culture (singers, movie stars, and generic celebrities who are famous for now real reason), and some bizarre things that make hometown papers only.  As the cover to the book suggests, the Republican Party and President Bush are the subject of many jokes, but politicians at all levels find themselves in Barry’s crosshairs.  Another continuing theme throughout the book is that things really are getting worse.  Each year’s summary starts out with a comment about how we all hoped the year would be a good one and would improve on the past, but that, as usual, we were all disappointed with just how the latest year turned out.  Given the ineptitude around us, why should we keep being so optimistic?  It’s never dark humor, but there is a level of sarcasm or cynicism that often gives the jokes an edge.

I actually laughed quite a bit as I read through this book, which I thought was considerably better than the other compilation of Dave Barry columns that I read a while ago, Dave Barry’s Money Secrets.  Maybe politics, which are, in some ways, constantly changing, provide more fresh material than financial affairs, the nature of which really don’t change too much.  In any case, I thought the book was funny.  My guess, though, is that there is a shelf life to a book like this.  I lived through the era Barry is writing about in these columns and know about the people he makes fun of and remember most of the events he picks apart from the headlines of news articles that I read.  For people who either weren’t old enough to remember the early years of the third millennium or simply don’t remember it — maybe even on purpose — the content of the book is going to have a lot less relevancy.  So, while I enjoyed the book and found it quite funny (and fairly balanced as far as which political party was being skewered, maybe 60-40 with Republicans taking the larger share of the abuse), I think the chances are that this book is going to appeal more to those born earlier than 1990.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.

Reagan and Gorbachev

Ronald Reagan was technically the second president in my life, Jimmy Carter being president until 1981, but I really don’t remember much about any president from my life before George H. W. Bush.  In fairness to the presidents, I don’t remember a whole lot before 1989 anyway, just sporadic incidents, and some of those are somewhat nebulous memories that lack a lot of specifics.  I certainly wasn’t paying attention to politics.  Later in life, I started to learn about Reagan and have come to greatly admire him and much of what he did while in office as the president.  I was slightly more aware of who Mikhail Gorbachev was because he was at the helm of the Soviet Union when it fell apart, and the Eastern Bloc’s downfall holds a rather prominent place in those few early memories of mine (in part because some of it was broadcast on TV and because of a strong family history tie I have to Germany that made some of those happenings seem interesting to me).  I remember the Russian words glasnost and perestroika being bandied about in the American press, but was largely unaware of most of the events leading up to those policies and then to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended by Jack F. Matlock, Jr. (ISBN: 0-679-46323-2) is a very detailed, play-by-play recounting of most (all?) of the diplomatic events leading up to the end of the Cold War.  Matlock was a career diplomat that served on the National Security Council.  This position and his academic and diplomatic career as a specialist on Russia provided him with an insider’s perspective on the processes that led up to the end of the Cold War.  The book chronicles, often in great detail, various meetings, negotiations, summits, and communications that involved leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union.  The focus was, of course, on what the two countries’ leaders, Reagan and Gorbachev, did, including their preparations before their meetings, their political efforts in their home countries in order to secure the ability to push their preferred policies forward.  Matlock talked about the papers prepared for Reagan and how Reagan studied them.  He talked about the negotiation processes.  He recounted meetings between secretaries of state and foreign ministers.  Those meetings, though, and the preparations were made possible by the leaders’ efforts to put people in place that would assist them.  The preparations were made because the leaders desired that, something that was not always the case with the leaders who came before them.  While Matlock endeavored to explain that so-called summit meetings weren’t the most important things in the diplomatic arsenal, those are what got headlines and what, ultimately, required the most preparation and resulted in the headline deals that moved the West and the Soviets away from nuclear war and toward peace.  He, therefore, spent most of the book talking about these meetings that took place in Moscow, Washington, Geneva, and Reykjavík.

The book was interesting since it presented a lot of detail about the diplomacy the two leaders were involved in, but was not what I expected since it presented so much information on the processes and not as much about the two leaders themselves.  I realize that they have had so many biographies written about them that new information might be difficult to present, so respect the author’s decision to explain more about how they drove the process and how their respective personalities influenced politics and people toward their ultimate goal of peace.  The agreements reached were significant by any standard and led to the end of the Cold War, a seminal event in the history of the world that continues to shape today’s world.  The level of detail was sometimes excessive, I thought, and it felt like I had to push through some passages.  In general, though, the writing and information presented were relevant to the story and points being made, and it was kind of interesting to read about the great level of effort required on so many levels to bring a couple heads of state together.  The book only cemented by opinions of these two men further.  They were visionary and extremely able politicians.  They made mistakes on the way, but learned from them and ultimately reached their goals (Reagan more than Gorbachev, but Gorbachev is worthy of a lot of credit since his policies led to even greater changes).  In today’s world where the East and the West are set against each other, there may be something to learn from Reagan and Gorbachev’s efforts to lessen conflict in the world.

   

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.