A Train of Powder, by Rebecca West

A group I belong to was doing a challenge throughout the month of October to read books by or about people or places in Ireland.  Since Rebecca West, the journalist, travel writer, and novelist was part Irish and she was born in Kerry, this was one of the books I read for it.  As is probably obvious from the cover art, <i>A Train of Powder</i> is a collection of six articles she wrote while covering various criminal trials.  They read more like short stories than like magazine articles because the author really develops the characters, their background, the circumstances of the crimes, and also her own thoughts on the situations.

Three of the articles make up a series called <i> Greenhouse with Cyclamens</i>, where she relates her thoughts during the closing sessions of the Nuremberg Trials and the rebuilding of Germany, including her observations of the personalities of top Nazi leaders like Goering and Hess as they sat in the dock, differences between German and American/British law, growing tensions between the Soviet Union and the other three Allies who shared control of Germany, leading up to the Soviets’ attempt to isolate Berlin from the West and the resulting Berlin Airlift, and the nascent West German government’s insistence on a free market economy despite pressure from the occupying Allies to adopt a more statist model.

 <i>Opera in Greenville</i> is about a lynching in Greenville, South Carolina in 1947.  A mob of about 30 people, mostly cabdrivers, convinced the prison warden to hand over a young black man named Willie Earle, in jail on suspicion of having killed the disabled white cabdriver who was driving him home.  After some days of no results from the local police, the FBI was called in to find the perpetrators.  West does a good job of sketching out what life was like in 1940’s Greenville and situating the crime in a society undergoing a transition in its attitudes towards race relations and vigilante justice.  

<i>Mr. Setty and Mr. Hume</i> is about a 1949 London murder case.   A man who enjoys hunting on weekends goes out in his boat to the marshlands at the mouth of the Thames hoping to bag some duck.  Instead, he comes across a bag full of a more grisly type of meat.  The remains turn out to be those of Mr. Setty, a shady businessman and member of a well-to-do immigrant family.  Mr. Hume is the ex-R.A.F. pilot with a checkered past charged with the murder and disposal of the body.

<i>A Better Mousetrap</i> is the story of an espionage case involving a young British radio telegraph operator employed at the Diplomatic Wireless Service suspected of passing information to a high official in the Soviet embassy.

The Second World War: Milestones to Disaster, by Sir Winston Churchill

This is the first volume of the abridged version of Winston Churchill's series on the Second World War.  It mostly covers the events leading up to the war, from the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the formation of the League of Nations, the defense treaties of Locarno, and the unwise manner in which the treaties were enforced, with the former Allies putting undue emphasis on Germany's reparations payments while at the same time being lenient about seeing to it that Germany stayed disarmed.  Churchill also discusses how the economic conditions of the 1920's and 1930's destabilized German society and brought about conditions favoring Hitler's rise to the chancellorship and also the presidency after the death of Hindenburg. This book spans all the way up to the German takeover of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Churchill's own rise to the prime ministership.  I would say that the most important lesson of the book is how the biggest war in history was brought about by an inordinate desire for peace.

Besides his knowledge and being one of the major players in World War II, Churchill is an excellent writer and storyteller.  I listened to the CD twice.  The reader of this audiobook, Christian Rodska, does an excellent job and his voice is somewhat like Churchill's so that you feel rather like the author himself is reading the book to you.

Sur le paupérisme (Memoir on Pauperism), by Alexis de Tocqueville

This book contains 2 essays Tocqueville presented to the Royal Academic Society in Cherbourg in 1835 & 1838.  Both are about poverty and the pros and cons of various measures undertaken to alleviate it.

In the first part, Tocqueville outlines the paradox of the wealthier, more prosperous nations (e.g. Great Britain) having much larger percentages of their populations claiming poverty and getting on the dole than poorer nations have (such as France and Spain).  He talks about the Poor Laws (basically an early government welfare program), which originated under Elizabeth I after Henry VIII destroyed the monasteries and seized their property, leaving the English poor without recourse, charitable works having once been one of the functions of the Church.  By Elizabeth I's time, the problem was so bad that the Poor Laws were passed, which made it the responsibility of each town council to tax their residents to support the poor in that town.  Tocqueville outlines the corrupting effects of these laws both on the poor and on those who are taxed to support them. He sat as an observer in a court of a British justice of the peace, where these poverty cases were heard, and his observations are as logical and as prescient as those in <i>Democracy in America</i>.

The second part is about the advantages and disadvantages of the French <i>caisse d'épargne</i>, a sort of special savings bank reserved for the poor.  It pays a higher interest rate than normal and it is meant to teach the poor to practice thrift and acquire habits of capital accumulation.  Tocqueville gives a very clear explanation how this institution works and his thoughts about it such that even a non-economist like me found it easy to follow.

I highly recommend this slim little book to anyone interested in the problem of poverty and the ways in which various solutions to the problem that look good on the surface can make it worse.

Update 8/22/16: In order to make this book more accessible to English speakers, as well as to practice my language skills, I decided to start translating this book into English and post it online in blog form.  You can access it <a href="http://tocquevillememoironpauperism.blogspot.com/2016/08/first-memoir-on-pauperism-first-part.html">here</a>.  It is not finished yet, but I plan to post a part of it every day until I get through!

Let Dons Delight, by Msgr. Ronald Knox

The premise of this book is very interesting, as it traces the conversations that take place in one Oxford common room over centuries, at intervals of 50 years each, starting with the year 1588, the just before war with Spain and the Armada, and ending in 1938, when World War II is approaching. The reader (along with the narrator) gets to hear what questions and ideas are being debated in the university during each time and compare them with those in other times. Prominent among the subjects are questions of church and state, the relationship between them, Catholic vs. Protestant ideas, university politics, the changing role of the university, and, of course, occasional jabs at its rival, Cambridge.

The (fictional) Oxford college where the book is set is humorously named after Simon Magus, a Biblical figure who converted to Christianity, not because he believed its teachings, but because he wanted to acquire the ability to perform miracles. He thought the Apostles would confer this power upon him if he offered them money. Simony is named for him and he was known as the first heretic.

You do have to be familiar with the events of English history from 1588-1938 to get the most out of this book. Chapters set during times I knew something about (like 1588 and the victory over the Spanish Armada, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the loss of the American colonies) were the ones I enjoyed the most.  The ones set during times I knew less about, like the early 1700's, I could not appreciate as much.

Stages on the Road, by Sigrid Undset

This is a collection of six essays written by Sigrid Undset in the 1930's.  The theme that is common to all is that each details how various ideas or attitudes that had been established by the Catholic Church and that helped shape Western culture were lost when the faith in which they originated was lost or adulterated--starting with the Reformation.

In the first four essays, she presents a Catholic idea or custom, how it disappeared or is disappearing, then shows how that idea was manifested through the life of a prominent Catholic, many of whom are now canonized as saints.  I liked how she picked less well-known people because it gave me the opportunity to learn about them.  The four are:
- Spanish mystic Ramon Lull de Palma, who established a monastery in North Africa to enable friars to study Hebrew and Arabic, and whose goal was to spread the faith through persuasion and argument as Christ had directed
- English martyrs St. Robert Southwell and St. Margaret Clitherow, victims of the state taking control of the church
- Italian founder of the Ursuline order, St. Angela Merici, whose life shows how women with unconventional callings were respected in Catholic societies

<I>To St. James</I> is about the harmfulness of the sin of gossip--one that is only all too neglected today.
The last,  <I>Reply to a Parish Priest</I> deals with later developments in the Christian world that are controversial issues even today, such as changes in the definition of marriage, and euthanasia.

Alone: The Second World War Series, Book 2, by Sir Winston Churchill

This is the second volume in the audiobook version of the abridged World War II series by Winston Churchill.  It spans from Churchill's rise to Prime Minister in Britain and his formation of a government to the start of the German invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa).  On the way it includes an account of the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, and the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern battles.

Until I listened to this audiobook, I did not realize how important the Middle Eastern and North African battles were to the British war effort, as they were determined to keep the Germans and Italians from taking control of the Mediterranean, the Suez canal, and the oil fields in the Middle East.

Churchill is in top form as a writer and storyteller, as in <i>Milestones to Disaster</i>. The main drawback to listening to this as an audiobook is that you don't have maps to reference as you probably would have in the book. I had to look up many of the towns on the Internet with whose location I was not familiar. Christian Rodska does an excellent job as reader.

Triumph and Tragedy, by Sir Winston Churchill

Brilliant last installment of Winston Churchill's World War II series that clearly outlines the surrenders of Germany and Japan to the Allies, the fateful decisions made about strategy and troop allocations among the different operations, from the Normandy landing to the Mediterranean to the Pacific theater and how these decisions shaped postwar Europe, particularly the formation of the Iron Curtain, the partition of Germany, and Soviet efforts to grab even territories that had been liberated by the Americans and British.  Churchill remarks on the differences between how Roosevelt and Truman handled the war, how the invention of the atomic bomb and its use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed not only how wars could be fought, but the calculations behind the decisions connected with war.  Also included are accounts of the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek against the Chinese communists, India gaining independence from Britain, its partition into India and Pakistan, and Churchill's thoughts on Gandhi and Nehru (given how we tend to lionize Gandhi today I was surprised at some of these!).

I listened to the audiobook of the abridged version and am now motivated to read the full version because there are so many things just touched on briefly that I want to learn about in more detail!  In sum, an extremely interesting book that I know will take much re-listening to digest since it covers so much ground, and quickly too.

Magna Carta

The Magna Carta just turned 800 years old this past June 15 as I was reminded on several websites I visit regularly, so I figured it was time to read it. It is one of those documents whose importance is impressed on people in school, but that few actually read, so I figured that the procrastination went on long enough and that this would be the year I would read it. I read the text off the Project Gutenberg website, which is a translation of the original into modern English, so it was an easy read.

Basically, it is a list of new laws limiting the King's power. The English barons had King John sign it after they won the battle at Runnymede. Most of the items have to do with the rights and duties of the king and the barons (especially the council of 25), inheritance laws, laws about the rights and duties of creditors and debtors, laws protecting the rights of merchants, and taxes. It dispels popular myths about medieval kings being all-powerful and shows the important part historically played by the aristocracy in bringing about the tradition of mixed (and limited) government in the West.

One item (no. 20) in the Magna Carta struck me as glaringly relevant to current events.  It says that a man should be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offense and that whether his offense was trivial or serious, the fine should not be large enough to deprive him of his livelihood.  Moreover, the fine could not be imposed until reputable people in the same neighborhood assessed it to be appropriate.  It brought to mind certain small bakers and florists who have been fined out of their livelihoods within the last few years...

When 800 years is not enough time for a lesson to be learned once and for all, it is safe to assume that the condition is chronic and requires perennial management.