The Devils Apprentice (Ramblings of the Damned Book Three 3)

Some of that is downright hilarious. Some of it is downright depressing. Most of it is just boring. Even more amusing is his effort to abstract from the titular lady herself insights that can be used in this situation. He comes to identify himself with Eva. As a leader the workers he goes hither and thither in the slums, barrios, and suburbs, and finds his way to Evita City. It still exists, though over the years the name has come and gone and profile has been lost. In it all of social services and amenities that Eva campaigned for were to be available to those fortunate enough to live there.

Not so any more. This time the dynamic duo come to the aid of Mad Woman, whose madness is to be a lesbian and have a very unpleasant brother, who in addition to sexual harassment, rape, and theft, also wears a blackshirt when visiting Italy. What a package is this straw Marquess. Thereafter the fashion show moves to Venice and the eponymous island, Poveglia. She was born in Keokuk Iowa been there during a theatrical performance, and pretty much thereafter never left the stage of her own making.

Professor Wiki describes her as a songwriter, gossip columnist, radio presenter, and professional hostess. Prof also credits her with engendering the treasure hunt and the scavenger hunt as party pastimes. There is a nice study of Porter in these pages and his intense relationship with Linda, his wife. The palazzo the Porters rented in Venice. Porter once hired the Ballet Russe to entertain at a party there.

There is very little sleuthing. Though much of the plot is hidden in plain sight, and that is a nice trick. Many of the things seen and done are taken figuratively, only later to realise they were literal. Though I never did figure out what the brother in the white coat was doing, or quite how Mussolini's wife related to things. There is also some insight into how Bedlam worked. The research shows, but alas some of its presentation is laboured.

Yet it is remarkable that Laurie King has sustained this series since through fifteen titles and one collection of short stories. This is part of series of concise histories. History is just one thing after another, and in the case of Austria, the things occur here, there, and everywhere. The book concludes with an outstanding summary of the paradoxes that comprise Austria today.

In brief, the greatest Austrian is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who was born and raised in Salzburg when it was not part of anything Austrian and he never thought of himself as Austrian. I read this title long ago. The Holy Roman Empire is even harder to pin down. Its emperor was selected by German princelings, though Prussia - the most significant German-speaking land - was not included.

Got it so far? Yet in its core it was German with a considerable and influential cosmopolitan Jewish population in Vienna. When it stumbled into the Great War, it was in fact trying to avoid war, but being inept, instead it precipitated it. By Germany had taken over the AHE in all but name, managing its finances, commanding its armies in Italy, Romania, and Russia , running the trains, distributing food, and directing the home front.

The war was a chemical bath that dissolved the AHE long before the Treaty of Versailles made it official. Uniting Austria with Germany would have enlarged and strengthened Germany at a time when the League, i. Instead the League fostered the creation of something that have never before existed: It consisted of a hinterland and Vienna, and the two had little in common. While Vienna had long depended on Hungarian grain, Czech manufactured goods, and Slovene timber, it had little truck with the new hinterlands attached to it.

Some like Salzburg were altogether new additions. The Depression hit Austria like a hurricane. Because Austrians hate Naziism so much that even today the sight of such a parade would ignite a terrible reaction which the authorities might be unable to control. Oh, replied the producers, in that case they would use the ample newsreel footage of the rapturous welcome Austrian gave Nazis in Ah, replied the authorities, here is the permit for the staging.

It makes depressing reading to see how eagerly Austrians joined Naziism in all of its worst deeds. The enthusiastic enlistments in the SS. The ready subservience to the Gestapo. The quick denunciation of Jews. The vigorous competition to host and staff death camps. Austria and Austrians were willing allies of Germany.

Whereas Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and others were bullied and cowed into the Axis camp, Austria entered to the sound of music. Yet in the Moscow statement, sometimes called the Treaty of Moscow, the Allies said Austria was the first victim of Naziism. That has never made sense to me, and even less so as I read the litany of its crimes with Naziism in these pages. But now I see the point. In this spirit when Italy changed government in , it was readily accepted by the Western Allies.

Abraham Lincoln tried the some thing throughout the Civil War, trying to woo individual southern states, like North Carolina, away from the Confederacy with some success. In Austria left its Nazi past behind. It was occupied by the Allies until but the de-Nazification process there was perfunctory from the beginning. In fact, it became a route for Naziis to get to the Adriatic and escape. Schools, hospitals, railways, manufacturers and others were ordered to destroy the records for the period Others did so on their own initiative. The Brown Years were erased and blurred and a national amnesia settled over the new lines on the map.

During the post-war Occupation, the Marshall Plan poured money into the western part of Austria, while Russia stripped the Eastern part of everything from heavy machinery, to concrete blocks from buildings, to clothing, and dried food. The wire from concentration camps was taken down, baled, and transported to the Soviet Union where it was used in the Gulag.

So effective was this scraping of the earth that by there was nothing left to take. Then the dotted lines became solid as a new Austria emerged from the cocoon of occupation. But by a neutral Austria suited both the Western and Eastern blocs. There came the Austria we know today. For all of its superficial worldliness manifested in Vienna in particular, it is inward looking, reluctant to change, intolerant, industrious, frugal, and insecure, says the author.

I saw Kurt Waldheim speak in and he denounced foreigners, insofar as I understood the German. That was in Salzburg, a place that became Austrian by drawing lines on a map, whose major claim to fame is a festival which originated in the desire to reject modernity. When the Berlin Wall fell, Austria shrank from engagement with its historic affiliations in the East, and only diplomatic pressure - greased by German marks - and deft handling by some Austrian leaders overcame that reluctance to admit reality.

Yes, Austria had taken in , fleeing the Hungarian Revolution in , but only on the understanding that they would move on further west. Ditto another , after the Prague Spring in These were experiences few Austrians wanted to repeated in the s. Steven Beller has many other titles. One thing he said made perfect sense. We were disunited among ourselves, that is, even that minority who opposed Anschluss mostly argued against each other. After the war, the new Austrians of the new Austria closed ranks against all outsiders, and for these new people everyone else was an outsider, including even Austrian expatriates, Austrian Jews, and Austrians who were not German by language or Catholics by religion.

An Intellectual and Social History, ' Not inclined to try again. The organisers include the unscrupulous Adeline whose speciality is blackmailing others with her own remembrances of things past. She brow beats her timid secretary who is also at the mercy of her PhD dissertation supervisor, a man combining all the worst features of a god-professor, one who smokes.

To add to the spice, Adeline has both a lover, who really does love her, and a fiancee. Neither of whom see her faults, so readily apparent to others. In the case of these two men, love is not only blind, but deaf and dumb. In addition to the locals, a party of American stereotypes has descended on the conference. The plot thickens when Adeline is found dead in the house museum. These two soon establish a long list of people with motives to harm Adeline, including all those mentioned above and more.

In fact, just about anyone who ever met her. There are some apposite Proust references, but never enough to satisfy a Proustian and too many for others. There is the usual bluster from witnesses, and the secretary is so timid it is hard to believe she is a Parisienne of thirty. Foucheroux and Djemani nicknamed Gimpy and Chipmunk by colleagues make a good pair of sleuths, and I liked the context. While the characterisations are largely cardboard, I did love the displays of scholarly pretension in several of them.

That part rang true. The author is a teacher who has no doubt seen all of these characteristics on display more than once. She has several other titles of the same ilk. As I was finishing this book, I thought it so-so. Maybe I will read another one. She being a serious literary scholar had no ambition to write a novel, until moving to St Louis and discovering the necessity raking leaves.

She went at leaf raking with such conviction that it led to a herniated disk, and while lying abed contemplating her errors, lacking the concentration to bandy lit crit, she wrote this krimi. By placing it is chez Proust, by dotting it with Proust bons mots, by populating it with Proust enthusiasts, she hoped it might entice some readers to turn to the man himself. The pleasure in forming that ambition led her on to other writers, e. Moi, I never went at leaf raking with conviction, though I have certainly gone at it, marvelling at how many leaves a couple of trees drop.

The last time I did this I had to stuff them into large orange bags because these were collected to later be opened and the leaves shredded and the bags re-used. Well that was the story. However the low bid contractor had taken the money and run, and the bags were all going -- unopened -- into land fill. But we rakers, until the story was blown, had the comfort of supposing the work of bag stuffing had an environmental benefit. OK but you try stuffing endless leaves into orange bags to see how much fun it is.

A village doctor taking part in a clinical trial carefully prescribes a trial drug, and things get out of hand, or in hand. The drug has viagra side effects with the result that …. Well, some of it is amusing. Some annoying, and some threatening. Despite the serious subject matter of sexual assault, not to mention murder, Watson manages to make it light hearted.

No one is ever harmed because the codgers reacting to the drug are well past it try though they might. The palate darkens when the drug company intervenes to cover its error. Especially amusing is the opening scene when a librarian deals with a would-be assailant by cracking his head against a tree. One to stop him and twice to get silly ideas out of what is left of his head. It seemed padded with a parody of advertising speak that had nothing to do with either the place, the plot, or the principals yet on it went. The first few pages were amusing but the repetition soon put that paid.

Just stirring around waiting for the villains to blunder. They are amusing, though sometimes hard to follow, and leaden in pace. Later episodes are enlivened a bit by Miss Teatime. However the acting was superb from one and all, including the ever reliable Moray Watson. January , Hamburg Germany is city in ruins and a city of paradox. It is depopulated and overpopulated. Depopulated by the war, by the bombing, by the deprivations…. Because it was a major seaport on a major transport waterway, the Elbe, because most of the U-boats were built there, because it lay within range of the RAF, Hamburg was subjected to constant air attack for five plus years.

From July the air raids were obliteration bombing aimed at the industrial and attendant working class areas of Hamburg. Because precision bombing was then, as now, largely a fiction for popular consumption, the bombs fell where they may. What became the British Army of the Rhine occupies Hamburg and environs with an experienced colonial hand.

Then came the hard winter in which the story is set. Both the roads and railroads were badly damaged by bombing, and now the weather has rendered them useless. The trains cannot run. The roads are impassable. The Baltic winds drive the C temperature into the bone. It has been much too cold to snow for weeks. In this weather the Brits mostly stay indoors, near the heat. They have plenty of everything, and stealing from them is crucial to the blackmarket. Much of the population is homeless, living in basement ruins, lean-tos, or cobbled together Nissan huts surplused by the Brits.

Most are dressed in the rags, clothes they have had on since Most wear all their clothes at once for warmth, but also to keep others from stealing them. In the last years every tree has been cut for fire wood. Medicine is beyond price. With the closure of transport for weeks, neither wood nor coal can be trucked in. Everyday people die in the street of starvation, malnutrition, exposure, disease and simply freeze to death.

Death in the streets. Starvation, malnutrition, and disease. DeNazification has gone full tilt. Expelling Naziis from the police, courts, law, hospitals and so on. Necessary but disruptive to the workings of the city. Expatriate Germans who got out are returning to this new world, but many are out of depth in this situation. False identity papers are a thriving black market. Since few paper records have survived the firestorms of the bombings, claiming identity is common. Could things be any worse? This nightmare world is far more disturbing and disjointed than any dystopia conjured in the Sy Fy films treated on this blog.

This environ and the city of Hamburg itself is the major actor in the novel. Then it gets worse when a murder victim is found, naked and frozen into the surface in a bombed ruin. Then another, and another. Can it get any worse? The first victim was a young woman. The second an elderly man. The third a child. The fourth, an older woman.

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Each garrotted, a method much favoured by Naziis as degrading and economical. Inspector Frank Stave with a stiff leg that kept him out of the Wehrmacht and much baggage is landed with the investigation, aided by a British liaison officer, and a new vice detective. His loyal office assistant does what she can. There are wheels within wheels in this circle. The strength of the book is the context.

The ice freezing on the windows of unheated bedrooms. The flapping of roof tiles in the Arctic gusts. The odors which penetrate even the sub-zero temperatures. The desolation of the streets. The exhaustion of the people. The flow of humanity in the Displaced Persons of every nation, race, and creed. Everyone is suspicious and fearful of everyone else pace Thomas Hobbes's state of nature. The desperate efforts of Jews to get to Palestine. Ominous rumbling about what the malevolent god in the Kremlin might do next. As Stave muses, we brought this on ourselves and now we have to endure it.

On the terrible conditions in Germany read Stig Dagerman's 'The German Autumn' , though when I read this years ago while travelling in Sweden I found it to be an apology for the Reich. Back to the book in hand, in contrast to the environment, the characterisations are not particularly compelling, and as is usual there is far too much sympathy-jerking backstory for Stave. This volume is the first of a series and I will certainly try another. I quibbled about some of the terminology. Would a German have used that expression in There were other instances of the same sort that distracted this reader.

Set in the Swiss alps in the early s when radio was a novelty. A local is found dead. Was it suicide or murder? Not to be confused with Chablis. Into this isolated mountain top community comes Detective Sergeant Studer from the distant Canton to find out which is which. He takes up residence and observes the locals. The nursery man and his staff. The family of the deceased. That is something like the Maigret approach but the hands of this cuckoo clock are heavier by far.

As far as this reader can report no thumbprint figures in the story. Friedrich Glauser was diagnosed schizophrenic, addicted to morphine, dabbled with heroin, and was intoxicated when he could not get drugs. He spent most of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums, and prisons. That experience makes him well qualified, ahem, as well qualified, as most journalists, to comment on the human condition. There are two or three other titles with Studer. They are unlikely to be disturbed by this reader.

Spy and counter-spy vie to manipulate the natives. It centers around a group from a UN agency housed in Geneva which includes a Yankee doodle, a Polack, a Magyar, a Sudanese princeling, a MI6er, and others who embark on a drive from Geneva to Khartoum. While the journey is as fantastic as anything Jules Verne conjured, the characterisations are nicely done.

No one is quite whom they seem to be, and yet perhaps they are. Even at the end, it is not at all clear to this reader whether Miernik was a villain, though he certainly was a victim. What is unusual is in the telling. It reads like a dossier that collects and combines testimony, written reports by observers, diary entries from protagonists, archival material about them, analysis by Langley desk jockeys, wiretap transcriptions, post hoc interviews, radio intercepts, case officer cables, opened mail, entries from the CIA Fact Book, field briefings, and such.

While there is a master narrative with an arc, it is by no means told as a story. Though in its own way it is, and the story unfolds in these several different registers. The ending is open, but not empty. This is the first title in a long series featuring Yankee Doodle, namely Paul Christopher. Alan Furst ranks it highly and that persuaded me to give it a try. Not sure, but inclined to try another.

We used to teach something call Org Theory which bore little relation to Org Practice. Anyone who works in a large organisation will recognise the pathologies exhibited by many of the characters. Two of the Slough House crew are seconded by James Webb, known as Spider, to provide purely nominal security for a visiting Russian tycoon.

Why two slow horses for the job, oh, because there is flap on at the Park. Something about office furniture. As always there is never any paperwork to justify the assignment. No paper trail for the FOI rats to find. Why did I find it credible that a mighty organisation like the Secret Squirrels of MI5 might grind to a halt while an argument with accountants about office furniture takes precedence. Goal displacement comes in many forms. Of course, the furniture is only a means.

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The end is for two ambitious opponents to fight for supremacy within the organisation. Both of the slows, Min and Louise, hope this assignment might restore them to the shining light of the Park, ending their tedious exile to the outer darkness of Slough House, which per the earlier review on this blog is neither in Slough nor a house.

Webb is counting on that motivation to preclude them asking too many questions about this verbal secondment. In meeting them directly he bypasses the supremo of Slough House, Lamb. There are so many wheels within wheels that my head got in a spin. Rather try to unravel that I offer a few remarks. One of the salutary lessons is how easy it is to be fooled if one wants to fooled. He found there flattering portraits from the 'Financial Times,' interviews in 'Der Spiegel,' and testimonials from here and there. He looked no further. There were no laudatory accounts on the pink pages of the 'Financial Times' nor in the Gothic script headlines of 'Der Spiegel.

What have teachers said since Odysseus returned? Check the original to see if there really was a horse. Webb did not verify anything because he dearly loved the idea of doing a favour for major player in Russia, a favour that could be cashed later. Ergo, he saw what he wanted to see and nothing more. In his case a successful deal would lead to a promotion up the greasy org pole.

Once promoted he would move on away from any fallout anyway. That is the other lesson. Later when asked who set up the contact, Webb tried to make it sound like his initiative. When finally he later reluctantly admits that the Russian contacted him first, the tale takes on a different light. It seems it was Webb who was being reeled in and not the Russkie. The London sky line these days. Back to those nits, I found it hard to believe that Dickie would spot the hood quite that easily after all those years.

Equally hard to believe was that Dickie did not wonder why it was so easy. In that administration, verbal communication became the order of the day to avoid written records. Freedom of Information applies only to what is in writing, after all. For what it is worth he won the popular vote in three elections. The plotters were at odds among themselves in every way but united in one. Over night school teachers were required to mark out their names in every scrap of instructional material. Republicans have been doing likewise regarding Obama.

Follow the Author

He had seen the thousands come to mourn her as she lay in state, and since there was demand he set about supplying it. Work had begun on that. There was also a nascent plan to produce wax replicas, least the body decay despite the preservation. They came; she gave. Even the touch was enough. Some of this work of preservation had been done in secret and later amid the turmoil of the coup which was followed by an in-house palace revolution by another faction.

Moreover some of those trusted with the cadaver tried to hide it from the usurpers. When usurpers found it, they in their turn tried to hide it. In short, the body got lost for many months. When it was discovered the new regime was in a quandary about what to do with it. Unsure even if it was the real thing.

To hide it indefinitely in a time of coup and counter-coup would not suffice. To summarise what cannot be summarised, thinking takes time and initially during the thinking time a squad and a colonel, low enough in rank that he could not reject the assignment, drive the cadaver in a coffin around in a truck from place to place, phoning in for more orders. This becomes a truck of Otranto as the six men keep to themselves, park in deserted streets, eat army rations, skirt cemeteries, and begin to think Santa Eva is watching them from the coffin they transport, the coffin which they must not open, but which….

When the truck is parked overnight, and a careful watch is set, yet the next morning the truck is surrounded by flowers. Or when they turn into a blind alley far off the beaten track to park for the night, when they open the doors to get out they find the alley is now illuminated with candles.

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Thereafter the colonel is obsessed by the body. Meanwhile, others took charge of her personal effects and papers and in pawing through them come into vicarious contact with the Argentines she touched. There is no doubt that she was a miraculous saint to millions, one who brought material succour and, more importantly, spiritual hope. It is all there in the letters she received from individuals and the letters she sent in reply. In death there are sightings of her in the valleys, pampas, deserts, villages, barrios, hills of Argentina. Since there are no facts to contain the imagination, the rumours grew.

If a sighting was reported in a village in the distant mountains, within a few hours a host of peasants was on the road making for that village. If a bundle of cash was bestowed anonymously on an orphanage the dead hand of Eva was credited. When the national soccer team scores a goal against the odds ….. Dead she was omnipresent and omnipotent.

The replicas are as dangerous and priceless as the cadaver and in the hysteria, miasma, fear, exhaustion, and confusion of the time, those responsible for the replicas and the cadaver themsevles become uncertain about which is which. Much is fact, most is fiction. At time the author breaks the theatrical fourth wall and addresses the reader directly. Likewise he makes short shrift of Juan Luis Borges attempt to crucify Eva.

The grip the woman had on the soul of Argentina and Argentines is the theme. And that grip included both those who loved her in their millions and those who hated her in their millions.

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Both get plenty of space in these pages. Eva is much present in these two titles, but I wanted to read more. What she argued was that historically the army made Argentina and that despite its many later corruptions and failings it remained the only legitimate institution in the society. When I referred to a scorecard above the meaning is that it helps to know the players, some of whom I have learned of through the reading above.

Every military coup in Argentina was justified on the ground that it would bring stability. A coup was followed by a counter-coup in one case by a single day and in another by a month. No military government lasted as long as the term of an elected government. Civilian governments, said the army officers, were unstable. The duty of the army was to bring stability.

This it did in an endless parade of coups and counter-coups, sometimes between the services, Navy, Air Force, and Army, and sometimes within the Army.

They shot it out, bombed Buenos Aires, and fought it out again and again. Stability is a hard thing to get out of a gun. He makes few friends and falls in lust. It is and when he is expelled, then he is drafted and dies in Korea. Our hero is Messner who dislikes other Jews he meets in Ohio, cannot get along with Gentiles who befriend him, and is attracted and repelled by the only co-ed who knows he exists.

With the auto-didacticism of youth he spouts ill digested bon mots from Bertrand Russell. On the one hand he is typical of a nineteen-year old in all this and on the other he has not got the sense to stop. His self-destructive streak has no rhyme or reason but the needs of the author to make him and vicariously himself the author into a victim. Young men are often as stupid as Messner but they grow up little-by-little but not so here in either case. HIs expulsion arises in this way.

He hates attending Chapel, not on religious grounds, but because it is boring. He hires a substitute to go in his place. This fact is revealed by one of the many people he antagonises and when confronted with the fact he is defiant. I attended Chapel in a similar fashion and found it often boring, but not always. It was sometimes an opportunity for rest, if not reflection. At other times I heard Basil Rathbone read Shakespeare, Robert Penn Warren recite poetry, Ernie Chambers call blacks to arms, Sarah Gardner make science wonderful, Alexander Kerensky mourn the missed opportunities of , Paul Tillich bring the New Testament to life, and a stage set designer whose name has been lost talk about how to stage Greek tragedy in a contemporary theatre, and more that I can no longer remember.

It is the usual from Philip Roth, to my mind ever an greying instance of arrested development. He is totally focused on his ….. He and Silvio Berlusconi are cut from the same cloth. Neither Messner, the paper protagonist, nor Roth, the writer, shows any interest in Olivia, the co-ed, except insofar as she relates to his first friend. The style is simple and that is a relief as the pages are free from the lengthy and pointless descriptions that encrust other of his novels which I have sampled.

Ergo it is easy to read. The style, one supposes, is to match the voice of the man-boy Messner. In that it succeeds. The title is ironic. In Korea at a map reference he is killed by Chinese, we must suppose. That all goes beyond heavy-handed to lead-handed. There is never any explanation of how and why Messner has latched onto this passage. Did I mention that Messner was dead all along. I did not much care. Not true, I did not care at all.

Here is a comparison. Anderson's prose is supple and evocative. The people come to life off the page. A reader feels the breeze from the river and hears the quiet sobs from behind closed windows with a minimum of words. The development of Atomic Bomb in twenty-seven months on a mesa in New Mexico is quite a story from theory to practice.

The book offers a near day-by-day account mostly of the administrivia of Los Alamos. Largely told through the subsequent recollections of the office manager of the project, located at East Palace Street in Santa Fe, Dorothy McKibben, who adored Oppenheimer.

In silence the author credits Dorothy with a remarkable and flawless memory for conversations because she recalled them years later without the benefit of diary or any other written record from the time. Apart from listening to complaints about laundry and indulging the pranks of immature minds, Oppenheimer never comes into focus in these pages despite his image on the cover and his name in the title. These impressions are not helped by the slangy style of exposition and the credulity of the author who takes as fact whatever a favoured source said.

This reader got no sense that any assertions were double checked. In addition, facts were scarce. I never did get an idea how big the operation was. Only more than half way through are some numbers mentioned, e. I said one-eyed because the author is always on the side of the scientists, say when they complained about secrecy and security and seems repeatedly to belittle both the GIs who built most of the set-up and the intelligence agents who censored the mail, kept strangers away, demanded to see passes, and so on.

The immaturity of many of the scientists involved is breath-taking, the more so later when some of the same individuals took it upon themselves later to pontificate about the use of the Bomb. Even the fraternity brothers paled at some of their antics. While some of these draft-exempt scientists were planning panty-raids, in the Pentagon was sending yellow telegrams a day to mothers and wives. Most of the Europeans on the project were more serious because Naziism was a reality to them, and not a newsreel.

Indeed so focused were they on Germany that when the war ended in Europe many wanted to quit the project. They had so quarrel with Japan since it had no bomb and no prospect of one. Their goal was to get to the Bomb before the Naziis did. At this point Oppenheimer was, it seems, crucial in motivating them to work ever harder, far from quitting.

That he did this is, however, not explained by anything in his nature or character developed earlier in the book. Yet it was certainly crucial and he was the one who did it. We did get earlier the grudging admission by one of his many critics that Oppenheimer, despite his dilettantish pre-war mien, had proven adept at getting all those egotistical scientists to talk to each other. No mean feat that. More exposition of how that was managed would be welcome. There are many assertions that Oppenheimer was attractive to women, that he had blue eyes, and a confident manner.

There are many of these and none of them built the bomb. There had to be more than these superficial descriptions to explain his singular achievements as noted in the paragraph above. Using the word 'charisma' is neither analysis nor explanation. Oppenheimer is the centre of the book, even if he is seldom on the page. His own disregard of security is numbing. Why did he do those things that later would look so damning? My own conclusion is hubris.

In the first instance Oppenheimer was sure, because he was so much smarter than everyone else, he would never make a mistake and give anything away, no matter to whom he talked. Second, he was likewise sure he would always be able to talk his way out of suspicion. Instead he simply called attention to himself again and again, and it stuck. And he created a pattern that was at best reckless and at worst sinister.

That a skilled intelligence agent could learn much from what is not said, or from the lies told, these are tricks of the spy trade that Oppenheimer never considered, since his hubris meant he never thought anyone else could out think him. His hubris had another strand. After the war, he could have gone back to Cal and time might have healed some of the wounds, but instead he haunted Washington, putting himself forward as Mr. Atom, advocating committees, and himself as a member. He was hard to miss. He had come to view himself as indispensable.

Maybe he was, but the effect, given the two strands already mentioned, was to make himself into a target. He seems always to think he was an invulnerable Achilles. While the author mocks the efforts of the security officers with the fact that they missed Klaus Fuchs, who was indeed passing information to Them, she seems to fail to see that the security officers were right. Fuchs, by the way, was not the only source of leaks but the most well placed. Nor does the author indicate any effort at ascertaining, say by visiting the National Archives, whether German agents were active in the matter.

Still less other Soviet agents who monitored Oppenheimer when he was away, as was often, from Los Alamos. The drama accelerates quickly in the middle of the book, and we read less about bickering, picnicking, and laundry, when it is time to test Trinity. The Trinity test at 10 seconds after detonation. Yet she sits on the fence about the use of the bomb.

She quotes estimates of causalities of the projected November invasion of Japan and then in a rare footnote says this figure might have been fabricated. That is quite an accusation to make in a throwaway footnote. It is a fact, by the way, that the Pentagon planners had begun preparations for , American casualties from an invasion of Japan. It had also contracted for 10, yellow telegrams a day. Given the many uncertainties involved with the Bomb, the only way to go was to use it. What demonstration would convince the Japanese? Blow up an uninhabited island? Not likely to be convincing.

They would suspect a trick. That the Bomb would even work was always in doubt. If it did not work on the island, then it would serve no purpose but waste the weapon and do so in a way that nothing could be learned from the failure. And a failed demonstration would queer the pitch for another demonstration. Moreover, the weapons grade uranium was so scarce and hard to use that wasting a Bomb on an island might mean another one was not available for some time. Furthermore transporting the Bomb to the Pacific was hard. The cruiser USS Indianapolis that delivered the first Bomb was sunk by a Japanese submarine a few days after completing that mission.

See 'Jaws' [] for confirmation. Would the next ship transporting a bomb be sunk with it on board? The prospect of besieging Japan into surrender was considered and rejected on many grounds. The Soviet Union would nibble away at Japanese weaknesses, while leaving the hard work to the United States. Little material support would come from a depleted England. The Chinese would turn full-time to fighting among themselves. During a prolonged siege the young, the women, and the civilians would suffer most as scarce resources would go to the defence forces.

The result would be to cripple Japan for a generation or more without discrediting or displacing the war party. Douglas McArthur always preferred manoeuvre and surprise to direct attacks, but he saw no other way in The zealots in Japan were ready to fight on, and the example of Okinawa frightened everyone in the Pentagon. They would fight to the death unless the Emperor ordered them not to do so.

To get to that order, the zealots had to be completely undermined. Hence the first big bang. It was made all the more dramatic for being a single aircraft. Japanese air defence spotted it but did not respond to its approach, assuming it was photographic reconnaissance. In the two-day interval allowed for the Japanese to assess the destruction of Hiroshima, we now know what was unknown in D.

The second bomb, by the way, was not targeted on Nagasaki but bad weather took it there. Back to the book in hand, the author seems to relish name dropping, as if everyone associated with a notable university is somehow a superior person. I could only put this down to an ingrained snobbery. This attitude shows also in the way those who were not blessed with such illustrious associations are portrayed. General Lesley Groves is one example. He, more often than not, is portrayed just one step away from Groucho Marx. Yet he oversaw an unprecedented and wide-spread effort of which Los Alamos was only a part, but he gets barely any credit, until, perhaps at the urging of editor, some condescending good words are applied toward the end.

But overall the tone is, how could this nobody criticise these men from prestigious universities. Yet the text shows he was right about many things, like the irresponsibility of some of the scientists, about the need for secrecy, about the dubious nature of the undertaking, about the subsequent need to explain and justify everything done, and even the spies. More importantly, that he stuck by Oppenheimer as the right man for the job even though he did not like him.

Reading this book but confirms my cynicism about the world of New York City publishing. The Greek world is full of gods in a bewildering array of statuses, ranks, powers, egos, and so on. Zeus defeated the Titans and most were destroyed in the Divine War. Only the most essential, like Helios, survived. He is one of the most important remaining Titans but no Titan is important among the Olympians. Over the eons he has sired many children. Every deity is important to mortals. Some are gods, some are demi-gods, some are titans, some are nymphs, some are mortals, some are half-animal, and so on and on.

This is a family tree for the LDS to sort out. The book is a biography of one such child, Circe. She and Flavia, whose books are reviewed elsewhere on this blog, would make quite a pair. For this sin she was exiled to an island dot far away to pass eternity alone with pigs. Later clever Circe finds a way to blackmail Helios with her sin. Over the centuries in this insular retreat she meets passers-by, and she learns of the mortal world from these experiences.

For a time she is befriended by Hermes, though he does so only for his own amusement and when no longer amused he is no longer friend. None of the echelons of the immortals will have anything to do with this outcast, apart from Hermes who is partly spying on her for Helios, and so she takes an interest in the mortals who find the shore. She welcomes some, careful to keep her yellow eyes concealed for they declare the godhead, and regrets it. One betrays her trust. Another rapes her before she can utter a spell, but she takes revenge by increasing the population of the sty.

Thereafter, she is much more cautious. Then one day wily Odysseus comes and she finds she cannot, nor does she want to deceive this deceiver. What a fresh and vivid portrait of this marriage springs from the pages. Yes, the story is well known but this is a telling Homer would envy. Finally he leaves, not knowing that she is bearing his child, a son. This is a circle that closes in the remainder of the book. With the great learning that underlies the book, the author explains much. One example will suffice. Why are the gods so capricious with mortals?

If mortal life was easy, then mortals would have no reason to pray to the gods and make sacrifices. While the gods do not need these prayers and sacrifices in any material way, together these offerings are how the divinities establish status along with their powers among themselves. They are counters in the social snobbery of the Olympians, nothing more.

But since the gods have no other pastime but that snobbery, it is the only game in town. The worse the harvest, it follows there will be more the prayers and sacrifices. The more children and women who die in childbirth, the more the prayers and sacrifices. Of course, to keep the wheel spinning the gods must occasionally allow a good harvest, and for child and mother to survive birth. But only now and then when it pleases them. Sounds about how casinos work, come to think of it. Odysseus did in time return to rocky Ithaca, but as with many a war veteran, the man who came back was not the one who went away.

That change is the dynamic of the latter part of the book. He returns short-tempered, easily bored, lustful, violent, and voting Republican. Yet in some ways he is what he always was. This schizoid duality makes sense in these pages. Penelope plays her part, too. The author brings this world of the gods to life with razor sharp insights, exhilarating prose, penetrating details, and a profound compassion. Yet no punches are pulled. The violence rips the page. The arrogance of the gods burns the eye of the reader. The duplicity of mortals in this world is bottomless. All this is true, yet Circe delights in spring flowers and warm sand underfoot.

Telemachus is straight as an oak. Her earlier book 'The Song of Achilles' is reviewed elsewhere on this blog with the same acclaim. While pulling these remarks together I noticed a number of deprecating reviews, many of them video, by mouth-breathers in Jim Rockford's phrase.

The Devil's Serum (Ramblings of the Damned Book #1)

It was amusing to watch a couple of these pygmies. A self-indulgent memoir of time spent in Barcelona by the man with shag carpet for a typewriter, the rich, soft, deep pile of his prose remains but in this instance it is largely devoid of substance. Well, unless a reader must know where Hughes drank sangria in For that information, this is the book.

Ostensibly a guide to the city, it a scrap book to selective memory mainly confined to his personal experiences. However, to his credit, and unlike some, he does note in passing the deep and murderous divisions among Spaniards. Their many failed attempts to find a modus vivendi and Hughes labours under no illusions about the future. But all in all, it is a very short and lazy book that seems to have been spoken into a recorder and then typed. I chose it prior to a trip to Spain and to Barcelona but found it offered little of interest.

The momentous five days are May 24 to May 28 when Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and overcame the resistance to his leadership within the War Cabinet and stiffened British resolve to resist Hitler and Naziism. In so doing Churchill felt the pulse of the British people far more accurately than his many opponents, most gathered behind him in the Conservative Party. British resistance at the time of Dunkirk prevented Hitler from winning the war so that later American gold and Soviet corpses would win it. The story is without parallel. His energy and concentration alone are noteworthy.

His hour had come and he lived up to it. He was certainly the Greatest Britain. First to the internal resistance. When Neville Chamberlain, over seventy himself stepped aside, after tumultuous scenes in parliament, he remained in the five-man War Cabinet, literally there was no one else at the starting line but Churchill. As PM he alone, it seemed, could restore order to Parliament which was elected in in far different circumstances.

And many in the Conservative Party thought it best to let him try …. That was Edward Halifax who had so many names and titles I gave up trying to keep track of them. An aristocrat to the core, Halifax could not push himself forward but would wait to be called. He was, after all, a personal friend of the King, and a vastly experienced parliamentarian, diplomat, cosmopolitan, and more. On and on he went in the super secret discussions, which remained secret at the time. According to the author, efforts were made subsequently by weeding archives to bury the secrets.

Sep 11, Amanda rated it liked it Shelves: An eclectic tale of woe- written as a journal entry- of the life of the immortal Christian- love, yearning, a search and unearthed secrets. We are th GoodReads synopsis: We are thrust into Christians confused tale of despair and longing from the first initial page- no introduction, but none needed. Ashliegh Wolfgang thrusts the reader head long into a bewildering story that leaves you marveling at the believability. I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads. Oct 03, Kirsty Bicknell rated it really liked it Shelves: I am not usually a fan of short stories and admittedly at times I did find the pace of Ashliegh Wolfgang's storytelling rushed, and I wanted him to elaborate.

However, the first person narration was an excellent choice for this story - as I felt that it allowed the reader greater access into the thoughts and feelings of Christian - particularly his love for Corrine and his fear after drinking the serum. Ashliegh Wolfgang cleverly writes a for a paranormal audience and a romantic one - the relation I am not usually a fan of short stories and admittedly at times I did find the pace of Ashliegh Wolfgang's storytelling rushed, and I wanted him to elaborate.

Ashliegh Wolfgang cleverly writes a for a paranormal audience and a romantic one - the relationship he explores between Christian and Corinne is a strong one, whilst the paranormal threads are unusual, yet they both have alarming and harmful consequences. I will definitely be looking out for more of Ashliegh Wolfgang's books and I would recommend this story, especially to someone who is looking for a quick read - however there is grit, emotion and heart here!

Nov 04, Patches Braz rated it it was amazing Shelves: I loved the way this book was written , I have never read a book written as this. I know I never will again. This Author draws you in and never lets you go. If I were to find a Beautiful Flask would I drink what is in it? That is the Question. If I do I go in 1 direction if not another. Read this and find out. I loved this Book. The main Character is has so many sides and it is great to watch them all. Sep 02, Trudy rated it it was amazing. Very descriptive, I could imagine each character the situation they were in.

I am now onto Devil's Folly. If you want a shorty story this is where it's at.

Thinking and doing

Sep 26, Lisa rated it really liked it. The devils serum is a short story and reads like a journal, so the reader is thrown straight into Christians mind. His hopes, His fears, and above all his love for Corrine.

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Its easy to understand Christian and what makes him tick and understands the decisions he makes. I especially enjoyed reading his fears about becoming immortal and the despair he felt over what would become of him, the story reading as a journal definitely help me understand all this better I would like to have known more abou The devils serum is a short story and reads like a journal, so the reader is thrown straight into Christians mind.

I especially enjoyed reading his fears about becoming immortal and the despair he felt over what would become of him, the story reading as a journal definitely help me understand all this better I would like to have known more about what Corrine thought of him being immortal but then this book was about Christian not Corrine Ashliegh does a brilliant job at bringing Christian to life, and kept me turning page after page, I read this is one day as I couldn't put it down, I found myself finding hiding places so I could read undisturbed A great short read and I am looking forward to reading the devils folly Apr 13, Stefan Vucak rated it really liked it.

Wolfgang has a compelling writing style that is a pleasure to read, although thorough proofreading would have eliminated basic punctuation errors that irritate. It is unfortunate that he tells his story in only 27 pages. Sep 07, Delilah rated it liked it. Nice little story but lacked so much detail. Rose rated it it was amazing Aug 28, Jensina rated it it was amazing Feb 22, Cecilia Olson rated it really liked it Mar 22, Gabriel Mortey rated it it was amazing Jul 27, Juliana Rivera rated it liked it Aug 25, Chris rated it liked it May 12, Ruth Lindner-Merkley rated it did not like it Dec 30, Bonnie Hilligoss rated it really liked it Sep 27, Jessica Buike marked it as to-read Aug 23, Andd Becker marked it as to-read Aug 23, Charlene marked it as to-read Aug 23, Saisha marked it as to-read Aug 24,