komet2020's reviews
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In The Saint-Fiacre Affair, Inspector Maigret finds himself back in his hometown, having been in receipt of the following message: A crime will be committed ,,,during first mass .... There an old countess, whose family had long held sway over the town, has died in the pews of the local church under seemingly mysterious circumstances. Her death brings back into town her son, Maurice de Saint-Fiacre, who had lived a dissolute life in Paris with his mistress.

The story reveals a cast of characters, inclusive of Maurice de Saint-Fiacre himself, each of whom has something about him that casts a veil of suspicion about them. At times, the story meanders a bit. But as it goes along, the matter of the countess's death points to one of the town's characters as the contributor to her demise.

On the whole, The Saint-Fiacre Affair was a nice concise story. But among all the Inspector Maigret novels It has been my pleasure to read, this one is not a favorite. 

 

Helene Hanff, scriptwriter and lover of literature and life, lived in New York City most of her life.  She achieved a measure of fame from her book "84, Charing Cross Road."   

In this book, LETTER FROM NEW YORK, Hanff shares with readers excerpts from monthly broadcasts she made to the UK via the BBC radio program Woman's Hour between 1978 and 1984.  These excerpts convey with amazing vividness and richness what living in New York was like for Hanff, who lived in a small high-rise apartment in the heart of Manhattan.    Where she lived was made up of an amazing microcosm of characters no reader will soon forget.

For instance, there was Hanff's friend Arlene, 20 years her junior, twice married and divorced, who lived alone "in an eight-room penthouse, with a bedroom suitably decorated for Marie Antoinette, and a living room positively alive with silver and china ornaments and glittering chandeliers."  She and Hanff were of the same size.  But unlike Hanff, who described herself as plain and mousy, Arlene was "black-haired, flamboyantly beautiful, and the last word in high-fashion chic." What's more: she has always lived a high-powered social life in which her job often brought her into contact with some of New York's most prominent people.   And, unlike Hanff, Arlene was no dog lover, something she made abundantly clear to Hanff, once firmly saying to her: "I don't want to hear about your dogs."  

Well, imagine Hanff's surprise when she had invited Arlene to a Thanksgiving Day dinner with friends, one of whom had brought along his old English sheepdog named Bentley.   Hanff hadn't told Arlene about this.   Here is how Hanff described the evening ---

"... Bentley - who is a huge, snowy mop of a dog - was at the door to greet [Arlene] when [she] arrived, wearing a flame-coloured shimmering blouse and high black stormtrooper's boots with six-inch heels. While RIchard [Bentley's owner] made the drinks, I was busy passing hors-d'oeuvres and checking on everything in the kitchen, so it was some time before I settled with my drink and glanced at Arlene.

"She was sitting on the sofa, Bentley at her feet sitting with his back to her and his head locked in a vice between her high black stormtrooper boots.   As Richard and I gawked at her, Arlene yanked Bentley's head back, peered down into his eyes - one brown, one blue - and informed him, 'I like you. You're a very sophisticated dog.' "

Arlene and Bentley struck an immediate rapport with each other.   So much so, that Arlene told him: "No dog has ever crossed the threshold of my penthouse... But you're special.   You're coming to my New Year's Eve party."  

And so it was that Bentley, sporting a bow tie at his neck, was among 50 guests at Arlene's penthouse on New Year's Eve for a breakfast that lasted from 2:30 AM until sunrise on New Year's Day.   The party was a resounding success, though in a somewhat unusual way.  A couple of days later, when Arlene phoned Hanff to discuss the party, this is what she said --- 

"People have been phoning all day.  Would you like to know what they talked about?  Never mind the gorgeous buffet table, never mind the champagne.  Never mind the great piano player.  Never mind I looked sensational.  All anybody talked about was Bentley.  Will you tell me how I can go bananas over a dog who took the stage away from me at my own party?"

For all its 178 pages, LETTER FROM NEW YORK was a delight to read. As someone who spent a few hours in Manhattan with some of my high school classmates on the Saturday before Easter Sunday in April 1982, this book evoked happy memories for me.   Any reader will want to experience New York City for him/herself after reading it.   

 

A few days ago (December 7, 2022) I walked from work to the downtown library just to kill some time. It was after 4 PM and clearly getting dark. I walked into one of the main areas on the first floor and was idly looking at some of the books therein when I saw a large print edition of the Curtis Sittenfeld novel RODHAM which is focused on the life of Hillary Rodham (Clinton) from the time of her graduation from Wellesley in 1969 (she was first in her class and spoke at the graduation ceremony) through her time at Yale Law School where she made the acquaintance of a classmate named Bill Clinton, with whom she had a very close romantic relationship. It was a relationship that did not last.

As elaborately spelled out in RODHAM, the paths taken by Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham after 1975 sharply diverge --and over the next 4 decades converge in interesting ways. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel which was very cleverly written, being largely told in Hillary's voice.

RODHAM never flagged. I read it greedily over a 4-day period, reading on average 100 to 120 pages daily. I rarely indulge in reading alternative historical novels, but this one was a delight to read. Highly recommended. 

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN CUBA is a novel in which the lives of three women become entwined through a variety of circumstances across 2 nations between 1896 and 1898.

Grace Harrington is a young woman from Gilded Age New York society who has ambitions of becoming a journalist with one of the 2 major newspapers in the city. The year is 1896 and in New York, there is Joseph Pulitzer's The New York World vying with the upstart William Randolph Hearst's The New York Journal for readers and market dominance. The competition is cut-throat, so much so that it wasn't unusual for a journalist to leave one paper to work for another, with the promise of higher pay and a bigger profile as a journalist. Grace goes first to the World, where she interviews with Pulitzer himself for a job. Pulitzer views her skeptically, but is open to making a place for her on the paper, provided that she's willing to go over to his competitor Hearst for a job there and act as a spy for Pulitzer, as a way of garnering any possible scoops as far as news stories are concerned. Grace is unsure of this. But she goes across town to apply for a job with Hearst. Unlike Pulitzer, Hearst is willing to give Grace a chance to prove herself as a journalist. Grace is grateful for the opportunity and admits to Hearst that Pulitzer his rival had earlier offered her a job, but only if she would spy on Hearst. This she had qualms about doing. Hearst expressed to her his appreciation for her candor, which makes him more willing to give Grace a chance.

Grace's place in the Journal is hardly ideal, being often tasked with what could best be described as writing "puff pieces" for the paper as well as stories crafted along with other journalists on the Journal, without attribution. But she is determined to be a serious journalist, which Hearst gradually comes to recognize and appreciate over the next 2 years, during which time Grace is put on a story that puts her in touch with one of the Cuban exile groups in New York engaged in fighting the Spanish forces in Cuba, who are set on suppressing the Cuban revolutionaries in their efforts to win independence for Cuba. 

The second woman is Evangelina Cisneros, daughter of a Cuban revolutionary whom the Spanish had imprisoned on the Isle of Pines, a small island off the coast. There she ekes out a threadbare existence with her younger sister. The two sisters voluntarily chose to live there, so as to be close to their father. Unfortunately for Evangelina, she runs afoul of the Spanish military commander through no fault of her own. Consequently, she is imprisoned at the woman's prison, the Casa de Recogidas, on the Cuban mainland in Havana. 

The news of Evangelina's plight becomes known in the U.S., where Hearst begins to highlight Evangelina's story as characteristic of the brutality of Spanish rule in Cuba. A photo of Evangelina has been smuggled out of Cuba and comes into Hearst's possession. Evangelina is a strikingly beautiful woman and Hearst plasters her image in his paper and throughout New York. All this is part of his ongoing efforts to elicit U.S. support for the revolutionaries by going to war against Spain. This marks the beginning of what later came to be known as "yellow journalism." Evangelina comes to occupy center stage in Hearst's efforts to win sympathy from the American public for Cuba. 

The third woman in this drama is Marina Perez. Though hailing from a very privileged background, she leaves it all behind to marry a poor revolutionary she had loved from the time they were children. At the time, the reader is introduced to Marina, she has an 8-year old daughter (Isabella) for whom she has assumed sole responsibility after her husband Mateo had gone off into the countryside to serve with a small force of revolutionaries fighting the Spanish. The Spanish supreme military commander in Cuba, General Weyler, has set up a system of 'reconcentrados' or concentration camps (the first in recorded history) in which many Cubans are forced to live, so as to deprive the revolutionaries of material support. (This attempt by the Spanish to confine the Cubans to certain designated areas serves only to impoverish Cuba.) Marina, Isabella, and Marina's mother-in-law are compelled in live in one of these camps, where disease and starvation are rife. To survive, Marina takes on a job as a laundress throughout Havana. And at the same time, Marina, like her husband fully committed to the establishment of a free and independent Cuba, serves as a courier, conveying secret messages to revolutionaries as part of a clandestine network. 

By 1898, the paths trod by the 3 women will bring them together both indirectly and directly when the United States declares war on Spain following the destruction of a U.S. battleship in Havana harbor earlier in the year. 

I very much enjoyed this story and the way it played itself out. What is even more amazing is that this novel is loosely based on a true story, thus giving credence to the saying "Truth is stranger than fiction." 

Originally published in 1952, FLAMES IN THE SKY contains within it a series of stories full of derring-do based on various aspects of the air war during World War II from the German Blitzkrieg in the West in May 1940 to Japan's last gasp through the use of Kamikazes (suicide planes) to wrest victory from the inescapable pincers of defeat in August 1945.

While the stories contained within this book are essentially true, some of the details therein are questionable. For example, Clostermann's description of the actions of a German fighter pilot in a Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter in attacking an American bomber formation over Germany in April 1945, while written with a novelist's flourish, beggars belief. As does the details of the final Kamikaze mission of the war carried out by Admiral Matome Ugaki on August 15th, 1945. None of it matches with what really happened on that day. Clostermann describes it as a success. But in truth, Ugaki failed to hit his target, a group of U.S. warships near Okinawa.

Were FLAMES IN THE SKY a novel, I would rate it at 3 stars. But given that it has inaccuracies in it and that its author was himself a Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot during the war, I can only rate the book with 2 stars. I liked the book, but it is not a keeper. 

HOLLYWOOD ENDING: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence is a biography that does a thorough job of exploring the life of a man who, in certain respects, revolutionized the movie business over the past 30 years. Had this man not given in to his baser self, and not destroyed or undermined the careers of a number of actresses and not been a chronic sexual predator, perhaps he would still be a force in Hollywood today.

Until about 10 years ago, I knew next to nothing about who Harvey Weinstein was, though I had enjoyed some of the successful movies he helped promote and produce like The Crying Game and Good Will Hunting. (Shakespeare in Love I had heard about some years earlier when it came seemingly out of nowhere to win a Best Picture Oscar in the late 1990s, besting Saving Private Ryan for the award (which I was not happy about for I saw Saving Private Ryan, which resonated powerfully with me because my late father was a GI who had fought in Europe during World War II.) It was only when I was watching Seth MacFarlane, the MC for the 2013 Academy Awards mention the nominees for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar and say "Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein,” followed quickly by a shudder from the audience and some uneasy laughter, that I thought to myself: "Could this be true?" I think I may have had then some inkling of a dark side to Weinstein that was being hushed. But until watching Seth MacFarlane make that remark, I didn't give Harvey Weinstein a second thought.

Ken Auletta has to be congratulated for writing a thorough, well-crafted, engaging, and readable book that gave me a palpable sense of what Harvey Weinstein was like, from his formative years in Queens (New York) to his first taste of success in his 20s as a concert promoter in Upstate New York, onward into his career as a mover and shaker in Hollywood, and his fall from grace in 2017. Frankly, it amazed me that Weinstein, was able to get away for YEARS with some really, awful behavior towards actresses who came into his orbit. Yet, on a certain level, he had a genius for understanding film and how to appeal to moviegoers that was uncanny. For instance: "... since its founding, Miramax [Weinstein's film company until 2004] had dazzled audiences with many celebrated movies and by 1998, it was America's dominant independent movie studio, accounting for an estimated 80 percent market share of all independent movies released in the United States." Furthermore: "...Miramax became the preeminent gatekeeper for the sort of prominent roles that could define an actor's career, as with Gwyneth Paltrow, or revive it, as with John Travolta."

For anyone with a interest in learning about the lives of public figures who rose to the heights of dizzying success in their careers and later self-destructed, HOLLYWOOD ENDING is terrific.

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SCHWEINFURT–REGENSBURG 1943: Eighth Air Force’s costly early daylight battles is a book that chronicles one of the fiercest and most pivotal air campaigns of World War II.

Since August 1942, when the Eighth Air Force of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) mounted its first bombing raid over German-occupied France, it had been gradually growing in numbers and perfecting tactics for carrying out strategic bombing missions against key industries in Germany deemed vital to its war effort.

The goals of the Eighth Air Force during 1943 were twofold: (1) to prove that B-17 bombers (and some B-24 units as well) could successfully carry out deep penetration raids into Germany without fighter escort and (2) defeat the Luftwaffe's day fighter force, whose aim was to make the USAAF strategic bombing campaign so prohibitively costly that the USAAF would be faced with little choice but to suspend its daylight bombing campaign. Were that to happen that would leave the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command (which flew night bombing raids over Germany) as the sole offensive arm taking the war into the heart of Germany.

The book reads almost like a daily diary, explaining in considerable detail how the USAAF daylight bombing campaign grew during 1943, along with the number of USAAF fighter units tasked with escorting the bombers as far as their limited range would permit. The various countermeasures employed by the Luftwaffe day fighter forces are also laid out. Photos of the various aircraft involved in the bombing campaign are aplenty for the reader to examine, in addition to illustrations and diagrams that show how the campaign played itself out.

The climax of the daylight campaign came with the raids by the Eighth Air Force on Schweinfurt (where most of the ball bearings crucial to the overall German war effort were produced) and Regensburg (where a large number of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters, one of the mainstays in the Luftwaffe day fighter force, were manufactured). Both places were situated deep inside Germany and were subject to attack from the Eighth Air Force in August and October 1943. Unfortunately, VIII Bomber Command suffered heavily, losing 60 B-17 bombers (amounting to 600 airmen) on the August 17, 1943 dual mission to Schweinfurt and Regensburg. And on the second raid to Schweinfurt in October 1943, 77 B-17 bombers were lost.

Furthermore, as the book points out, "[m]orale at bomber bases was a major problem. The crews had been told time and again that the Luftwaffe fighter force was almost finished, but {B-17] Fortress crews were currently incurring a casualty rate higher than any other branch of the US forces: during 1943, only about 25 percent of Eighth Air Force bomber crewmen completed their 25-mission tours --- the other 75 percent were killed, severely wounded, or captured. It was difficult to persuade the men who survived Schweinfurt that the opposition encountered was the last effort of a beaten force."

SCHWEINFURT - REGENSBURG 1943 ends with an indication of what the future would bring with the introduction of the P-51 Mustang fighter to the Eighth Air Force. It would develop into a formidable long-range, high altitude fighter plane that in the year to come would be instrumental in breaking the back of the Luftwaffe fighter arm and ensuring the continuance and eventual success of the USAAF daylight bombing campaign. 

This book is an absolutely first-rate reference source for any World War I aviation enthusiast who wants to know, in considerable detail, the casualties (both alphabetically and chronologically) incurred by personnel of the Imperial German Air Service between 1914 and 1920.    

Furthermore, even if you're a reader with a budding or layman's interest in World War I, this is a book that will win your respect. 

Reading AMERICAN MIDNIGHT: Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, 1917-1921 was a very sobering experience for me. It showed how the U.S., from the moment it declared war on Germany in April 1917, allowed itself to be swept up in a hysteria that would brook no dissent or criticism, however slight, of the war and of the nation's leaders.

Prior to reading this book, I had known of the widespread anti-German sentiment that led to the banning of the teaching of the German language in many school systems, the prohibition of the playing of classical music of German composers in orchestras across the country, and the renaming of frankfurters as "hot dogs" and sauerkraut as "liberty cabbage." But I did not realize the full extent of the changes the U.S. went through from being a neutral nation prior to April 6, 1917 to a country at war that became suffused with a hyper-patriotic fervor which gave the government license to brutalize and dehumanize conscientious objectors, made it permissible for people to beat or kill union leaders and organizers, tar and feather union members, and ignore people's constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.

Then, once the war was won in November 1918, the U.S. government continued to promote and encourage a repressive environment that, using the fear of the threat of Bolshevism (in the wake of the Russian Revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War), led to massive crackdowns on labor unions, the Socialist Party (which, before the war, had been gaining much national appeal; indeed many Socialists had been elected prewar to various state offices and Congress), and a spate of arrests of people deemed as "threats to the peace and security of the nation." (The country itself in 1919 endured race riots, a number of bombings thought to be caused by anarchists or Bolshevik agitators, and scores of labor strikes; for with the end of the war, came inflation, and a major economic downturn.) Many of those arrested who were found not to be American citizens were hastily deported through the frenzied efforts of the Bureau of Investigation and the Attorney General (A. Mitchell Palmer, a Quaker and presidential aspirant in 1920) and his young assistant heading the Justice Department's Radical Division whose name was J. Edgar Hoover. 

What I also found galling was President Woodrow Wilson's general indifference to the domestic scene during most of these years. Frankly, I can't think of someone given his position who was such a gross and shameless hypocrite.   Wilson presented himself to the world as an apostle for democracy, while remaining unconcerned with the plight of African Americans who, whether serving in the military during WWI or in support of the country at home, were treated with suspicion, scorned, despised, and if deemed by the white power structure in the South guilty of 'socially unacceptable behaviors' more likely to be lynched. 

Furthermore, Wilson's efforts to get the U.S. to ratify the Versailles Treaty and become a part of the League of Nations (his brainchild) were for naught. For his pains, Wilson suffered a paralytic stroke in September 1919 while on a cross-country speaking engagement to convince the public to support him. He spent the remaining 18 months of his presidency closeted in the White House, where his wife and some of his aides largely acted in his stead. 

Truly this was a shameful period in the nation's history. One that, given the precarious state the U.S. democratic system is now in, should be re-examined so that we become firmly resolved to avoid making the same grievous errors again 

UNJUSTLY DISHONORED: An African American Division in World War I goes a long way towards redressing the undeserved reputation the 92nd Infantry Division was given by several of the white officers who served in it, as well as by a number of field officers within the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne in which the 92nd played a role.

Robert Ferrell was able, during the course of the research he carried out in writing this book, to gain access to a wealth of records within the National Archives.   These records consisted of hundreds of pages, much of it reports that were prepared by the 92nd Infantry Division's white officers shortly after the War. Many of these records had been left to languish in the Archives for a century.  Ferrell also evaluated personal reports from the Army War College pertaining to the 92nd Division's battlefield performance.   Among these reports was one from the commanding general of the 92nd's field artillery brigade (Brigadier General John H. Sherburne), which lauded its outstanding record in the Meuse-Argonne battle.

As the only African American infantry division to be deployed in combat with the AEF on the Western Front, many white officers in the U.S. Army were inclined to think, because of their longstanding racist attitudes about African Americans, that African American soldiers simply weren't capable of being effective combat soldiers.    So, when a portion of one of the 92nd's infantry regiments (the 368th) suffered a reversal during the early stages of the Meuse-Argonne battle, this was pointed to by many of these white officers as evidence that African American soldiers could not fight.    But Ferrell is able to show that the 92nd's performance was on a par with the other AEF divisions at the battle's outset.    For instance, during the first attack in the Meuse Argonne carried out by the U.S. First Army, the 3 white divisions in I Corps "did not do well, with the Seventy-seventh moving ahead in its part of the Argonne with a slowness that was contrary to what General Pershing [the AEF commander] asked of his divisions.    The second division of the corps, the Twenty-eighth, did likewise.   The third, the Thirty-fifth, collapsed in the field, gave up territory it had taken, and had to be relieved and sent to a portion of the line where there was little action and it could refit and recover its nearly lost morale.   In the ... V Corps, the performances of all the divisions [therein] were so poor that General Pershing withdrew all three; the third of the V Corps divisions, the Seventy-ninth, did so badly that it held up the advance of all the divisions of the First Army for an entire day while the division fumbled in front of Montfaucon, where two if its regiments stalled before a minuscule German force."   As for the 92nd Division, despite the reversal experienced by the 368th Infantry Regiment, its "First Battalion managed" to secure its objective, Binarville, with a few of its men managing to gain some territory beyond it.     

Ferrell also highlights the performance of the 92nd Division in the Marbache sector, where during the last 2 days of the War, it achieved all of its objectives as a part of the U.S. Second Army, whose commander, General Robert L. Bullard, a Southerner, disparaged the 92nd Division at every turn.  All the while, the 3 white divisions in Bullard's command, by way of contrast, failed to meet any of its objectives on November 10-11, 1918. 

UNJUSTLY DISHONORED is a book that should be read by anyone with an interest in the battlefield achievements made by African Americans in the U.S. Army during World War I.