Havana

TJ English's book Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution brought me a much better understanding of Meyer Lansky.  It's pretty easy to read.  The book is now in paperback and on Amazon  here.
   
English has  new book out --- The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge.    



 

Reality

I'm reading this book now: Manjit Kumar's Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality on my Kindle. Here is Kumar's blog: http://manjitkumar.blogspot.com/.  The book is now out in paperback.

CIA Whistleblower Story

Here's the book: "Long Strange Journey" by Patrick G. Eddington and the author's website.
Here's a link to the Secrecy News report about the book. 

Lincoln & Douglas

Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, by Allen Guelzo and The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America, by Roy Morris.  These two books are both in paperback now.  These books seem to throw historical light on the recurring issue of whether the idea of democracy requires principles that majorities must respect or whether democracy means that majorities rule regardless of adherence to other principles.  The question is not easy to answer, but our leaders have been thinking about it for years.

Safire on Lincoln

In February 2009, William Safire reviewed Lincoln books here at The New York Times.  Safire wrote, "The way to honor the hero who did most to force use to stay united is to absorb the ever-better histories that illuminate Lincoln's character, his humanity, his genius in expression and, above all, his sure grasp of high political purpose."  

Safire spoke approvingly of Ronald C. White, Jr.'s A. Lincoln: A Biography.  The book is now available in paperback here.

Safire described as "a magisterial enterprise" Michael Burlingame's two-volume box set of Lincoln biography for a list price of $125.

Safire liked In Lincoln's Hand,  a book of Lincoln's original manuscripts edited by Harold Holzer, who has been a prolific Lincoln producer.  He produced a book for  Writers Library of America called a Lincoln Anthology, which includes works on Lincoln by a variety of authors.

There's so much high-quality work in this area.  More of us should be inspired by this unifier.

The World War II that the US ignored

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder, a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killing on the lands between Berlin and Moscow.  And The Show Went On, by Alan Riding, about how the Nazis occupied Paris and gained cooperation from French cultural figures. Germany 1945, From War to Peace, by Richard Bessel.  These books appear to intend to show the ambiguity of the stories that the winners tell. 

The Cold War became the dominant US preoccupation, but millions of people were affected by other considerations.  These books help us remember those millions.

Nuremberg Legacy: How the Nazi War Crimes Trials Changed the Course of History, by Norbert Ehrenfreund, successfully weaves personal anecdote, historical record and legal analysis into his account of the trials and their legacy, according to a 2008 review in the New York Law Journal.

Collectively, these books remind us that if you kill one person you're a murderer, but if you kill hundreds of thousands, you're a general, and if you kill millions you're a patriarch, so long as you stay in power.

Teapot Dome

Why does corruption in American Government persist notwithstanding the lesson that the country should have learned from the Teapot Dome Scandal?  See The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country, by Laton McCartney.  Click  here. Or here   Here's the review in The New York Times.