Our Man in Charleson: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South

 In 1853, Robert Bunch was posted to Charleston to serve as British consul, clean up the mess left by his predecessor, and lobby for British interests. As the US careened toward Civil War, and talk of secession superseded all else in South Carolina, Bunch increasingly found himself thrust in the middle of events, and increasingly as a double agent - chumming it up with the best people, while working furiously behind the scenes to deny the new Confederacy the recognition and legitimacy in Europe it so longed for - and needed.

Christopher Dickey's writing and research are on-the-mark, his portrayal of Bunch flattering without being fawning, and the history engaging. That said, much like Savage Continent, I found I just cannot concentrate on other people's apocalypses at the moment. A country on the brink, neighbor-against-neighbor, is just too reminiscent of the current times. I think I'll turn away from my usual history reading for a bit. :)

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

I think in part motivated by my aborted attempt at American Ulysses last month, I have been determined to work my way through Keith Lowe's Savage Continent. Similar to American Ulysses, the topic is interesting, and unlike my chief complete with the former, that White simply included far too many details for the average reader to wade through, Lowe's writing is on point. 

A few years ago, in fact, looking back, I see it was even this same time of year, I began a review as follows: "I blame Shogun. Luncheon of the Boating Party isn't bad, it just pales in comparison to Shogun, which leaves Susan Vreeland's work seeming a bit washed out." Today's context is completely different, but all I can say is: I blame covid. And Trump. Try as I might, I'm simply not in the mood to read about the ravages and savages that followed on the heels of World War II. 

From the opening sentences, Lowe is clear about what the reader will encounter: "Imagine a world without institutions. It is a world where borders between countries seem to have dissolved, leaving a single, endless landscape over which people travel in search of communities that no longer exist. ... There are no banks...Nothing is made here. ... There is no food. Law and order are virtually non-existent, because there is no police force and no judiciary. ... There is no morality. There is only survival." (p. xiii) 

I should have stopped then, right? I mean, it sounds like Lowe is writing to prepare me for the coming electoral apocalypse, rather than merely recounting the experience of a bombed out continent after a half-decade of war. I soldiered on though, no pun intended, through the typhus in the DP camps, through the bones poking through the rubble, through the carnage of 12 chapters. And then I decided enough. It's not that the story shouldn't be told. God knows, we need every reminder we can conjure as to how such periods have ended before. But for me, personally, Savage Continent does not serve the purpose of thou-shalt-not. It merely brought me a lower. 

Perhaps in a few years, I'll revisit this book. It is, as I said, well-written, and despite myself, I am interested in the topic. Just not this year.

The Ghost Army of World War II

The Ghost Army of World War II sheds light on one of the lesser known divisions - and episodes - of World War II. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, or "Ghost Army" used every form of deception against the German army as Patton and company fought their way from the hedgerows of Normandy and on across the Rhine. The Ghost Army - at 1,100 strong - was often charged with convincing the enemy that anywhere north of 30,000 men were amassing to launch one or another audacious attacks. They did this through the use of multimedia deceptions, using visual, sonic, and radio illusions, the most amusing of which I found to be the inflatable tanks. 

Their work was so secret that other American troops were not privy to it - as evidenced by the quote from one private: "All of a sudden I see four guys, one on each end of a General Sherman tank, picking the thing up. And I practically collapsed, because I thought, 'Gee, I could never pick up a tank.' "  (A couple of unsuspecting Frenchmen were equally perplexed. A farmer had to be restrained from sharing what he witnessed when looking to round up his herd and instead saw his cows pushing an American tank around. Another time, a breach of the security perimeter led to two cyclists being told "The Americans are very strong.")

Generally, The Ghost Army of World War II is a snappy little book, the writing light, the anecdotes frequent, the humor outweighing the grimness of war. The story about measuring signs was my favorite; I'll not spoil it other than to say: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Authors Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles also do a remarkable job of incorporating art and photography into the story they tell. This emphasis is fitting, as many of the men in the 23rd were artists - their numbers included the likes of Bill Blass, Arthur Singer, Art Kane, and Jack Masey - and by incorporating their photographs and their artwork, works made during the war itself....well, a picture is worth a thousand words.

While plenty has been written about espionage in war, from Operation Columba to Operation Mincemeat, The Irregulars to Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, this is the first work I've encountered devoted entirely to the art of wartime deception. (Perhaps that's not surprising: you can spend a day at the International Spy Museum, and while the museum may boast the occasional exhibit that falls under deception, it's all much more James Bond than David Copperfield.) More disappointing, the National World War II museum lacks a permanent exhibit on the Ghost Army; when I checked their website to see how I had possibly missed it, I was instead met with an announcement that, in fact, there's a special, temporary exhibit on the Ghost Army from March 2020 to January 2021. Thanks to covid, I'll have to give it a pass.

 

The Ghost Army isn't a must read in any traditional sense. It's not the story of major battles, overall strategy, soaring rhetoric, or historical antecedents. That is, it's easily overlooked for those who are interested in the war in the broadest sense. Like Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, though, it's one of those books focusing on a smaller episode that collectively lends richness to the our understanding of World War II. That it does so with humor, rather than a body count, is the cherry on top.

After the War is Over

Jennifer Robson's After the War is Over is escapism fiction as its best. It is sappy and predictable, but I can't think when I've had more fun watching the story unfold as I predicted (hoped!) it would.

Following the end of the Great War, Charlotte Brown has left her job as a nurse in a neurasthenia hospital and returned to work as an assistant in the constituency office of Miss Rathbone, where she is able to work on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable citizens, for whom she has a particular soft spot. She has also maintained her friendship with her dear friend and former charge Lilly, youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Cumberland, for whom Charlotte was governess.

When Lord Cumberland dies suddenly and Lilly's brother Edward must assume his father's position while grappling with physical and psychological reminders of the war, Charlotte is thrust squarely into their affairs - after all, she has extensive experience with neurasthenia. More difficult than managing Edward's medical needs is coming to terms with their complicated and unresolved history.

As I said, this book is both formulaic and fun. It's the sequel to Somewhere in France, although one needn't have read Somewhere in France to enjoy After the War is Over. I read the former almost five years ago, and recall little from it. Robson does a nice job of filling in the reader on the salient points in the latter book so that it's able to stand on its own.

Five stars.

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran

Christopher de Bellaigue is a British journalist who lives in Tehran (or did at the time he wrote In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, in the early 2000s) with his Iranian wife and son. He is then, well-positioned to think and write about Iranian culture and society for a western audience, but with an insider's nuance.

What de Bellaigue does best is modern Iran: the traffic; the nuances of buying a car, and why new rarely trumps used; the contradictions. If he had written an entire book on the Iran of today (or 2002, say), the entire work would have been a joy. He writes, as one would expect of an author whose byline has appeared in such stalwarts of the Western press as The Economist and the New Yorker, beautifully, using short, snappy prose to bring emphasis, irony, or humor as needed. That said, a reader can only remember/differentiate so many mullahs, so many generals, so many wounded veterans of the Iran-Iraq war. To say I was bogged down in the politics is an understatement, and quickly I learned to skim passages on the competing ideologies that led to or stemmed from the Revolution.

While Iran's relationship with the world today is largely defined by its standoff with the U.S. (and on which side of that standoff others nations choose to align themselves), de Bellaigue deftly raises the issue of the collective West's long history of meddling in the Middle East (see: Hero), writing, "Two centuries of semi-colonization sometimes seem worse than unambiguous colonization; at least the unambiguously colonized got railways and sewers and unambiguous independence."

The Iran-Iraq war looming as it does over so much and so many in Iran and the larger Middle East, de Bellaigue also plucks at the threads of U.S. involvement, not least the Iran-Contra affair. That U.S. arms - to both sides - increased the firepower and made the bloodletting that much greater is clear, only reinforcing one of the central tenet's from Notes on a Foreign Country: U.S. decisions directly impact the lives of those in other countries on a regular basis, in a way that is difficult for Americans to appreciate. (Although the global experienced with Covid-19 may offer a taste.)

The most telling exchange occurred toward the end of the book, as de Bellaigue is discussing the present and future of Iran with one of the few Iranians he considers a friend, Mr. Zarif. In thinking about the state of the country, Zarif draws a corollary with the state of the Iranian-made Paykan, the butt of more than one joke throughout the book (and country, it seems). Zarif says, "When I get into my Paykan and it lurches and coughs, I think to myself that the men who made it aren't well enough trained or paid, and that they have bad equipment and are badly managed and didn't sleep well last night. ... On the few occasions that I've been in a Mercedes and been astonished by its mechanical perfection, don't you think I've asked myself if the men who built this car are better off?"

Food for thought.

Four stars. 

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

 American Ulysses, you're bringing me down.

In fact, after waiting eons to read this book, I'm not going to finish it. Oh, Ronald C. White writes well enough, but he's never met a fact he didn't like and as a result American Ulysses is swollen until any sense of story is lost in the mists of a veritable dissertation. (One example, just one, from a description of weaponry in the Mexican War: "His special weapons this day were a pair of eighteen-pound cannon, heretofore used only for defense because their massive weight made it so difficult to haul them into battle. ...each cannon pulled by six yoked oxen across seven miles of open prairie...they employed canister, a tin can filled with up to twenty-seven lead balls stuffed in sawdust...they possessed a range of up to three hundred yards" (p. 73). By the time I've gotten to the range, I've nearly forgotten how we got there. Or why. And so it goes for many hundreds of pages.)

In addition to being a tome, bloated by excessive adjectives and extraneous facts, American Ulysses is a tad too worshipful for my taste. I'm not suggesting Grant wasn't admirable, but from White's descriptions - and I was deep into the Civil War before I gave up the ghost - it appears Grant can do no wrong. For example, White seems to completely dismiss the idea that Grant drank any more than any other soldier or officer in the Army. Maybe White's right, but given that none other than Sherman felt the need to comment upon his drinking - "Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other" - White's dismissal strikes me as disingenuous at best. (And if White included that telling little quote, he did so after I'd closed the book for the final time.)

I left off reading somewhere in the realm of Vicksburg, and therefore certainly before Grant's presidency. Admittedly, I was mildly curious as to what defenses White would presumably offer for the corruption and cronyism that are generally accepted to have been widespread during Grant's second term, in particular, though not curious enough to tackle the next 400 pages.

I did, however, read the epilogue, and I have to say, given White's hero worship of Grant, it's somewhat surprising that he concludes his work not with his own soaring assessment, but with the words of Theodore Roosevelt who "surveyed the landscape of American history and made his judgment: Mightiest among the mighty dead loom the three great figures of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant," (p. 659). I find this decision all the more intriguing in that White chooses to continue with Roosevelt's second rank, which includes Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Andrew Jackson. The times they were a different then, but that anyone would rank Andrew Jackson so highly must call into question his overall judgment. (I've previously called into question TR's judgment, though, as I take the thoughts of America's greatest imperialist with more than just a grain of salt.)

Most surprising of all, White adds a concluding sentence or two following TR's thoughts that he has seized the opportunity to make Grant's story "accessible to the wider audience he deserves." Maybe he deserves it, maybe not, but the audience that will sit - and sift - through 650+ densely packed pages is not exactly wide. Or at least, I'm not an avid enough reader, non-fiction nerd, or history buff to appreciate it.

The Rent Collector

Ki Lim and Sang Ly live in Cambodia's largest dump, Stung Meanchey, where their daily aspiration is to earn enough for a few bites of pork and vegetables to accompany the nightly rice. Their great dream is for their chronically-ill young son, Nisay, to become healthy. Through an improbable turn of events (more on that in a minute), Sang Ly learns to read from the perpetually drunk and equally bitter - and embittered - old woman, Sopeap, who comes each month demanding rent money for their canvas-walled shack. Known to the tenants as the Rent Collector, Sang Ly susses out one of Sopeap's most closely held secrets, changing the course of both of their lives.

Camron Wright's story is so treacly that had I not been reading for work, I never would have finished. And while the writing itself is not bad, there's simply nothing to recommend it on that basis alone. I felt uneasy as I read, thinking that, compared to a work like Twilight in Djakarta or And the Rain My Drink, it lacks authenticity and voice. Moreover, while I could, at the most basic of levels, understand the author's decision to construct a story around a quest for literacy, the circumstances render this so unlikely as to interfere with the story itself. That is, the best fiction doesn't *feel* like fiction, but Wright's story is so improbable that the reader can never leave the realm of *reading* the story and simply *feel* it.

It wasn't until I came to the acknowledgments, though, that I was able to put my finger on exactly what bothered me throughout. The acknowledgments begin with Wright sincerely thanking "The many great writers of classical literature whose work I've referenced or quoted in The Rent Collector. In a handful of cases...I've modified their original work. There is a reasonable chance that all are horrified, but their work is in the public domain, and, of course, they are dead and I'm not." The arrogance! And then it hits me: this is what has left me so uneasy. The entire book is rotten with it, and now that I've identified my chief gripe, I can't let it go.

(I double down on this assessment when I look up Wright's author bio on Amazon and read "Camron Wright...has a master's degree in Writing and Public Relations from Westminster College. He has owned several successful retail stores in addition to working with his wife in the fashion industry, designing for the McCall Pattern Company in New York. Camron began writing to get out of attending MBA school at the time, and it proved the better decision." Now this has become personal. I'm sure he think he's merely cutesy - ha! these authors are dead; I'm not! - but plugging fashion design in his author bio? Really? And he began writing to "get out of attending MBA school?" This is a point of pride for him? Deep breaths, Sarah, deep breaths.)

Mostly, though, and this very much falls into the category of not-my-business, I'm most bothered that this is the book EMBA students were assigned prior to traveling to Cambodia and Vietnam in 2018. I see no value - historically or culturally, nor of the story itself. Frankly, Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy would have been more appropriate in providing context for students around the choices to be made vis-a-vis trading one type of hard life for another one; if historical context is what the faculty wanted, The Elimination (Cambodia) or The Sorrow of War (Vietnam) would have been far better choices, imHo.

Suffice it to say, I do not recommend this book, nor can I think of any circumstance under which I would assign it. The end.