Author Dan Calabrese, a native Royal Oaker now living in Grand Rapids, sat for a book-signing 04 February, at Royal Oak's Barnes & Noble. I had hoped to spend an hour with the author before publishing this review, but our schedules made a meeting impossible. Perhaps we can arrange a future coffee conversation.

Dan and I met, appropriately, in the Barnes & Noble coffee shop.
He came in carrying a box of his books, most of which were to stay in the book store and ten of which he was to bring over to Laura Harrison's Lady Bug Crafts & Framing Shoppe.

He has drafted the first two chapters of a sequel, in which his three main characters will have new experiences, also set in Royal Oak. Dan leaked one detail: "I destroy __________[a downtown location]."

The book-signing went well. An earlier radio interview and some Facebook exchanges led to former classmates from Shrine and family and former friends and acquaintances from Royal Oak and elsewhere queuing up for an hour-and-a-half. Barnes & Noble had called him for more books; hence our arranging to meet there the day he delivered them.

We compared experiences about the creative and marketing aspects of writing, and we agreed that the God-given talent to write opens many doors in the private and public sectors. Dan's entrepreneurial mindset generates multiple and diverse markets for that talent -- trade journal through public relations to his first novel. Along the way he and wife operate a business entity which puts their respective creative and marketing skills to for themselves and for other writers.

During our several email-exchanges, Dan wrote the following comments about my review of his book.
"I read your review this morning. Thank you for writing it, and for reading the book. I can take the criticism, and I thought you leveled in a very fair way. Of course, when I decided to write the book in the manner I did, I knew I would come in for some criticism on that score. It's life in the big city.

The Europeans, by Luigi Barzini
This 1983 work follows Barzini's 1964 The Italians, which brought the political journalist to non-European attention. In the same slightly over-the-top but fascinating detail, he attempts to profile, in his chapter titles, the Elusive Europeans, Imperturbable British, Mutable Germans, Quarrelsome French, Flexible Italians, Careful Dutch, and Baffling Americans. His concern is to try to explain the overall reluctance of each European nation to give up some of its uniqueness or sovereignty in the reach for more  than merely an economic European Union. Barzini also feels compelled to be a bit condescending about most peoples, including his fellow-Italians -- perhaps in his attempt to be fair to all.

The United States is included because Continental statesman can, must, never forget that, "A wrong guess may spell disaster, as it did when Napoleon II sent Maximilian to Mexico in violation of the Monroe Doctrine; when Kaiser Wilhelm II and Hitler thought the United States would not fight a European War; or when the North Koreans believed the Americans would not defend South Korea."

As Barzini did in The Italians, he fails to do more than prove that it is impossible for anyone to describe the typical native of any country. In my travels abroad, for example, I suggested that Chicago is the most typical city in the United States, not New York or New Orleans or San Francisco. Nor is an Appalachian White more typical than a Detroit Black. That said, here are excerpts from Barzini's work.

The British
"My first conclusion was that the English, like most Nordic people, were not very sharp as a whole, and that the secret of their success surely was not exorbitant intelligence. . . . On  the other hand, all of them,  the dull and the acute, somehow knew how to act bravely, splendidly, and usually successfully in critical or difficult circumstances, as if they had all been intelligent . . . " Barzini emphasizes the well known British attitude: "England has neither eternal friends nor eternal enemies. She has only eternal interests."

The Germans
This is Barzini's weakest chapter, one reason being his unwillingness to deal fairly with Hitler. Obsessed with denigrating the man, the author pretty much left the Nazi period out his wrap-up of the Germans, so we have meaningless language like, "What are they really (the eternal question)? Where are they going, wittingly or unwittingly? Where do they think they are going? . . . What is the German mood?" Later, Barzini mentions widespread "hatred of the United States" as a factor to consider when characterizing the Germans. (This was in the 70s and early 80s.) Fuzzy to the end, this chapter concludes with a quote from Nietzsche, something about Germans being "acquainted with the hidden paths to chaos."

The French
"It is almost a French reflex to oppose what the United States wants, without feeling it necessary to propose anything different or better," Barzini quotes an American complaint at the time, without disagreeing. He reviews French history from Middle Ages through Napoleon to de Gaulle to demonstrate the nation's apparently perennial obsession with being considered the best and brightest in all things. Examples: "The French were at first the earliest and the most determined champions of European unification. . . . Only a few years later, after Jean Monnet died, the same French turned into the most implacable opponents of the European idea. . . . They were reluctant to be included in a disciplined camp, among equals, in which their proudly egocentric freedom of action would have been hampered . . . "

Recalling that from 1870 France went to war with Germany three times and lost all three wars, Barzini foresaw that France would move to become partners with Germany in the hope that "the two nations together" might dominate Europe.

The Italians
"Italy is universally considered a particularly unpredictable and deceptive country. . . . There are no sure guides to what Italy is and what it might do next. Italians themselves are almost always baffled by their own behavior."

Barzini opens his essay with those unappealing words and carries the same pessimistic tone through his review of political developments. Contending that Italy is still more a geographical concept that a nation of very different peoples, he suggests Italians are willing to live with "public lies" and "private truths." Those phrases are intended to help explain his countrymen's distrust of all governments, at all levels. He sees that duality as inherent and unchangeable and points out that those same characteristics account for Italian greatness in such arenas as art and music and literature. Moving to the military arena, Barzini asks, "Are Italians always bad soldiers?" then goes on to cite impressive military achievements over the centuries -- not counting the Roman Empire.

He describes Italy's 1950s economic miracle, the country's near takeover by Communists, its love-hate relationship with the Vatican, its "well-intentioned but suffocating new legislation," the "ill-informed pressure of trade unions" before concluding that Italians may never achieve enough self-confidence to assume dominance in international economic or political affairs.

The Dutch
Barzini provides the background which generated Benelux, a consortium which included Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg -- "the Low Countries." Then he concentrates on Holland, the Dutch. He reviews how that nation, like Belgium, exercised its early military power not in Europe but by establishing colonies. It believed, still believes, strongly in the benefits of economic success. (Traveling through the Low Countries, I was  repeatedly  told that the rest of  the Continentals label the Dutch, not always flatteringly, "Europe's' Americans.") For the most part, though, the Dutch have been what we Americans call, also not always flatteringly, "peaceniks." Barzini calls them "pacifists." By the 1980s, and since, their military capability and willingness to fight in any cause seem to have dropped to zero.  That led, the writer suggests, to the Dutch being "adamantly against" any supranationlist European entity which might attempt to exert military power.

Giving up, Barzini concludes this chapter by letting the Dutch speak for themselves with the following statement by the Dutch State Secretary:

"Europe would participate in world affairs by means of constructive policies in the field of trade and development aid to underdeveloped countries, by assisting the world in the wise management of its resources by and exemplary advancement of the quality of life, by a happy compromise between society's demands of freedom and equality, for social justice and individual opportunity. It is for this Europe, which will have an unmistakable identity of its own but will remain linked to the nations on t he ot her side of the North Atlantic, that we opt. . . . Only this Europe will be an additional force for stability and progress in the world, instead of a new factor of uncertainty, disruption, and discord."

You got that?

The Americans
Here Barzini does a good job of summarizing how and why Europeans admire, detest, respect, resent the United States. Why and how  they depend on yet fear our military might. Of most importance is that he demonstrates that anti-American rallies, even riots, occur for European reasons, almost disregarding what is actually going on in the world and who the American president is -- all the while fearing that the United States will withdraw from Europe.

That has changed since this book was written. European integration has gone far beyond what some had hoped for or feared, but not as far as others had hoped for or feared. There is a strong economic community. The euro has become the continent's currency. A European parliament exists. But, Europe is no where near being able to defend itself if a real military threat develops.

I have previously reviewed how France's attitude toward America has remained simultaneously respectful and fearful throughout our recent history.

Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do, by Peter McWilliams
Whether you are for or against legalizing drugs, you will love and hate this book. If you believe prostitution is a victimless crime, you'll find support and opposition here. Are you one who cites the Bible to justify your condemnation of or praise for a certain behavior? McWilliams will drive you crazy.

Throughout the book, the author uses "consensual crimes" as a leitmotif, whatever the specific topic. His definition: "A consensual crime is any activity -- currently illegal -- in which we, as adults, choose to participate that does not physically harm the person or property of another." Along the way, we have: "In addition to police, judges, prosecutors, and politicians, organized crime also has on the payroll doctors, scientists, and journalists in all media whose job it is to predict and report how terrible life would be if consensual crimes were legalized."

A sample of of the 68 chapter titles in this 800-page book conveys McWilliams's subject matter and tone. Personal Morality Versus Social Morality . . . Prohibition: A Lesson in the Futility (and Danger) of Prohibiting . . .Laws against Consensual Activities are Unconstitutional . . . Laws against Consensual Activities Violate the Separation of Church and State . . . Laws against Consensual Activities Discriminate against the Poor, Minorities, and Women . . . The Titanic Laws: Public Drunkenness, Loitering, Vagrancy, Seat Belts, Motorcycle Helmets, Public Nudity, Transvestitism.

McWilliams's in-your-face style sometimes makes it difficult for a reader not to get caught up in anger or delight and miss his intellectual arguments, of which he offers many. In the chapter on The Laws of Moses, the writer quotes chapter after chapter and verse after verse without comment until -- at the end -- when he suggests how impossible it must have been for anyone to live without sinning many times every day. Before that point, however, anyone who does not consider sacred every word in the Bible becomes discomfited reading about some of the barbaric beliefs and practices of a nomadic tribe.

McWilliams also exasperates the reader, because he too many times seems to be tape-recording his stream-of-consciousness. He rambles off-topic at length before refocusing. Most writers would have edited and shortened those turgid excursions. Whether from vanity or just for fun, McWilliams printed them.

What does McWilliams conclude? On page 759, his chapter, The Politics of Change, begins:
"This is a chapter on the specifics of what to do if you'd like to see the laws against consensual activities changed.

"The single most effective form of change is one-on-one interaction with the people you come into contact with day-by-day. The next time someone condemns a consensual activity in your presence, for example, you can ask the simple question, 'Well, isn't that their own business?'" The chapter goes on to suggest such activities as writing letters to the editor, dealing with local governmental officials, and providing influential people with copies of this book.

Book IV of The Aeneid is titled "The Love of Dido, and Her End," in a prose translation out of Britain, imported to the U.S. by Barnes & Noble. The opening lines

But the Queen, long ere now pierced sore with passion, feeds the wound with her life-blood, and wastes in a hidden fire. Again and again his own valiance and his line's renown flood back upon her spirit: look and accent cling fast in her bosom, and the pain allows not her limbs rest or calm. The morrow's dawn bore the torch of Phoebus across the earth, and had rolled away the dewy darkness from the sky, when, scarce herself, she  thus addresses the sister of her heart:

• The South had to deal with what we now call peaceniks. ". . . for Horace Greeley and many another, sprang up the notion that if only all their sort could be brought together for talk and talk and yet more talk . . . " Peace societies formed in both the North and the South.

• Both Presidents found it necessary to suspend habeas corpus, both resorted to conscription. Other secret societies encouraged desertion. (In the North, there were secret societies which favored the South.)

• The Confederacy's Congress fought Davis on many things, along party lines. The parties tended to be identified by 1) whether they had originally favored or opposed secession and 2) whether they were among the states which considered their state's needs superior to the needs of the Confederacy and 3) their opinion of Davis. Some saw the Confederacy as a new nation forming on the continent; others wanted to be free of any central government, North or South. Today's advocates for "states' rights" are the descendants of that group. Georgia was tempted for a while to negotiate peace directly with the North.

• The South's economy was hard hit, especially since it had no substantial industry other than cotton. No manufacturers of arms, for example. The economy suffered. One telltale sign was that newspapers were limited to a single sheet. Another was that the bandit-raiders, whom today's movies have tended to romanticize, were that day's terrorists -- made up largely of the unemployed and deserters from the Confederate army.

• Davis, like Lincoln, worked his way through many incompetent and passive generals before Robert E. Lee became Davis's Ulysses S. Grant.

• Lincoln's Cabinet, labeled a "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, was apparently paralleled by Davis's, and both presidents were accused of seeking dictatorial power.

• The press in the South was sharply split about Davis; influential papers praised or belittled him. Like today's media, opposing newspapers distorted the meaning of statements taken out of context. One example was their turning into a negative Davis's praise of a general's loyalty who would do whatever the President asked him to do.

• At one point, there was a movement to encourage Lee to take charge of the government.

• There were shortages of the necessities of life; there were price controls; there was rationing; there were riots here and there about this or that.

• The South attempted unsuccessfully to get foreign countries, especially England and Spain, to recognize it as a nation. Some of the Confederate leaders were willing to agree to return to Mexico the land won during the Mexican War, if Spain would recognize the Confederacy.

All that in this little book which has found its way into the library of the Royal Oak Historical Museum, where it may be read on-site.

The Ottoman Empire, by Lord Kinross
This sparsely but beautifully illustrated 671-page book is heavy reading, both intellectually and in heft. But what a treasure.

So fairly does Kinross write that the reader finds himself at various points rooting for the Christians or for the Turks. As the history unfolds, one becomes alternately sympathetic or antagonistic toward Bulgarians, Germans, Greeks, Russians, French, English, Serbs. Ancient history comes alive as it flows through such countries as Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia, Persia (Iran), Syria, Egypt, Cypress, Turkey -- all still in today's headlines. Queen Elizabeth, the Spanish Armada, the French Huguenots are placed in contexts not frequently encountered in Western-dominated history books.

Kinross is studious without being pedantic; he provides enough detail to add color without inundating the reader with esoterica. In no particular  order, here are enough tidbits to suggest the historical context the book provides, context which proves helpful in understanding today's East-West or Muslim-Christian relationships.

• For about 300 years, France allied itself with Muslims as part of its attempt to alter the European balance of power. Depending on what the French diplomats had for breakfast, the European enemy or friend would be Spain or England or Russia or Austria or Germany.

• As Turks developed the Ottoman Empire, the tension between mandating sharia law throughout Islamic states, or not, became a perennial problem. The issue expanded as the Ottomans debated the pluses and minuses of Westernizing.

• At one time, Muslims -- often tolerant of Christians -- forbade the ringing of church bells at night, because the noise kept awake the angels in mosques. [Wasn't there recent controversy in Hamtramck about the noise of Muslim calls-to-prayer?]

• Macedonia epitomized the "mixture of overlapping races and languages and religions, with imprecise geographical divisions among them, which were in continual conflict at once with each other and with the Turkish provincial government."

• "The struggle in Crete itself dragged on for a year longer. Germany and Austria, still upholding the Sultan, defected from the concert of powers in protest at their philhellenic policy, and removed their own forces of occupation from the island."

• Kinross's treatment of the Crusades comes close to moral relativism but balances the examples of brutalities and atrocities, as well as the good works, of Christians and Muslims.

• Queen Elizabeth ". . . continuing to court Ottoman support against her Catholic enemies, sent him a shipload of presents."

• After the fall of Constantinople, as the capital became Muslim, there was debate over the role of free enterprise. According to Kinross, the government's concern for commerce is reflected in the following passage: "Look with favour on the merchants in the land; always care for them; let no one order them about, for through their trading the land becomes prosperous, and by their wares cheapness abounds in the world; through them the excellent fame of the Sultan is carried to surrounding lands, and by them the wealth within the land is increased." [Globalization , anyone?]

• During a highly polarized period in Great Britain, Queen Victoria threatened to lay down her crown rather than "remain the Sovereign of a country that is letting itself down to kiss the feet of the great barbarians, the retarders of all liberty and civilisation that exists."

The more things change . . .

The Promise, by Chaim Potok
The comings and goings of the characters in this tightly written novel form the foundation on which Potok very effectively builds his analysis and comments about religious tensions among American Jews -- especially the tensions between secular humanist Jews and the ultra-Orthodox. Along the way, the author describes Orthodox daily practices with, to a gentile, excessive detail which distracts from the plot and overwhelms the persona of the characters.

Plodding through Talmudic arguments gets in the way of solving the real world career problems of one character and the emotional breakdown of another. However, for a reader familiar with the arguments among Jews about Assimilation, about whether Jews are a religious group, or a race, or a nation, Potok presents excellent exemplars of the extremes.

For context: The notion that Jews are more a people (race or nation) than a religion is expressed in Rabbi Philip Bernstein's "What the Jews Believe" when he says, for example, that the "American Jewish scene" has lost "much that made European Judaism so rich and so glorious." And, "[T]here is no creed which all Jews accept." Speaking from his admittedly hate-filled perspective and referring to the group's self-identification as a people, Hitler is reported to have said somewhere, "You are not a Frenchman, you're a Jew; you are not a German, you're a Jew." Bernstein: "Judaism is the sum total of the spiritual creativity of the Jewish people. It is not a scheme of salvation."

Potok touches lightly on the role of Judaism in civic and political affairs, but he is strongest when a couple of absolutist characters argue throughout the book about the relationships between man and God and secular society. As a goy, I learned much about Orthodox practices, but I admit I hurried through those paragraphs to get back to the comings and goings of the aspiring rabbi, his secular Jewish friend, and the emotionally disturbed teenager.

Coincidentally, my son, who owns and operates a martial arts school in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, has a rabbi as one of his one-on-one students. Frank (middle name Paul, not a Junior) visited us not long after I had reread "The Promise," and I asked him to ask the rabbi why the Orthodox rock back-and-forth when praying. Frank's emailed reply:

I chatted with my Jewish tai chi student today and he says the rocking during prayer is just a natural body movement of deep prayer when you’re connected to it all. Not induced on purpose, just what the body does when it’s relaxed and in deep contemplative mode; which also happens at times in meditation classes for us. The body’s energy moves around and it causes slight rocking, sort of swaying back and forth.  He also said he’s read a number of books by Chaim Potok, says they’re all good.….fpv

Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham
In the preface, written by the author himself, Maugham acknowledges that this book is "very long." And that it is largely autobiographical. He wrote the book after he already was a successfully established playwright, novelist, and short story writer. Critics and biographers have long done the psychological interpretations of his writing and its themes. You know, homosexuality, bisexuality, stuttering, and the like.

I had forgotten those critiques until I found myself again detesting the protagonist in the book and wondering about the reasons that Maugham finds it so difficult not to paint every character, except one, as physically or intellectually unlikable, or both.

Maugham introduces us to Philip Carey, an 8-year-old club-footed orphan living in a vicarage with his clergyman uncle. We follow Philip through his school years and his adult attempts to find an occupation he can stay with, at age 30. On the way, we watch this self-absorbed man make and break friendships, have several sexual affairs, develop an unhealthy obsession for a prostitute, and finally end up -- 565 pages later, in Chapter CCXXII -- ready to marry a wholesome young thing, whose heart he is sure to break, given his self-destructive nature.

Philip Carey's (Somerset Maugham's) unlikable and unsympathetic emotional ups and downs, and his moral vacillations, make him now the prey, then the predator in his encounters with others. For me the interest in the book comes from Maugham's ability to create almost tangible descriptions of places and attitudes to which Philip is exposed, from an accounting office to a department store, from the Bohemian artist colony in Paris to a hospital in London, from a slum to a sandy beach.

Maugham was belittled by some critics who called his unpretentious writing "clichéd." He writes short sentences but long paragraphs. And some of those long paragraphs are essentially speeches through which the author has his characters expound on the several philosophies re life and death, beauty and ugliness, love and hate, duty versus selfishness. Although a character here and there seems self-assured to the point of being dogmatic, one comes away from Of Human Bondage never quite sure where Carey (Maugham) stands.

Maugham provides an excellent sense of place, without the turgidity of, say, Michener. Yet, the "too-simple" writing some critics complain of contains many focused phrases which leave no doubt about the thought Maugham wants to convey:

• The need to "prevent an argument from becoming a quarrel."

• Of those who claim to reject Christianity: "You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the ethic which was based upon it." . . . "You take your morality because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and the morality stays behind."

• "He was not one of those who can talk of what moves him without caring whether it bores or not the people they talk to."

• Of his protagonist's journey through multiple, lonely, fleeting relationships, with men and women: "It was the first time that Philip in his lonely life had been present in a family circle."

• "Her mind was of an order that could not deal for five minutes with the abstract."

As do so many English, writers or not, Maugham tosses off phrases like "of her class" with nonchalant condescension which irritates the less class-conscious, especially Americans. And the British obsession with maintaining distinctions within each class (of vocations among the middle class, for example, or of source of wealth among the upper class) goes far beyond the carpenter feeling superior to the plumber or the accountant to the policeman.

Overall, Of Human Bondage remains a pleasant read, despite Maugham's irritatingly amorphous but interesting characters.

Warlords, by Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts
Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin: All of them, each dedicated and sincere (believing his cause just), lied -- to each other and to their nation. Hitler and Stalin never pretended to be friends, but they respected each other's role in world affairs, even after Germany invaded Russia. Roosevelt and Churchill tried/pretended to be friends, but Winston's goal was to nudge the U.S. into the war right from the start, and Franklin's was not to expend any American lives to help preserve the British Empire.

Drawing on hundreds of published and unpublished sources from the U.S., UK, Canada, and Russia, the authors let the words of the four warlords and of their staffs and kin define their characters. What is exceptional about this 308-page book is that Berthon and Potts successfully apply a chronological gimmick which brings history alive for those with no sense of history and adds a useful and enjoyable collation of events for those us who both know the history and participated in some of it.

Each of the 15 chapters covers a time period. Chapter 1 is titled "May 13-July, 1940." The last chapter is "February 3-April 11, 1945. A prologue  and an epilogue provide helpful introductory and concluding comments.

The first chapter tells us: Churchill told a confidante: "I shall drag the United States in." Hitler angered and puzzled his generals by ordering the German tanks to halt when the generals wanted to continue the attack on Dunkirk. He declared Churchill "half-mad." Roosevelt seemed to be making an unequivocal offer of immediate and practical help to England: "We will extend to the opponents of force all the material resources of this nation." Stalin, who at the moment had a non-aggression pact with Hitler, was preoccupied with using his agents in England to foment communist-inspired upheaval.

In the epilogue, we have: Stalin, who already had occupied Poland and several Balkan nations, telling the Yugoslav communists, "This war is not as in the past. Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. . .  It cannot be otherwise." On April 12, Roosevelt was having his portrait painted and doing a little dictating when he died. On April 30, Hitler, after telling his secretaries, "Get changed at once. A plane is leaving in an hour and will take you south. All is lost, hopelessly lost," committed suicide. Churchill, learning of Hitler's death, said, " I think he was perfectly right to die like that."

By collating the thoughts and actions of these four leaders in time-slots, the authors provide simultaneously the grand sweep of historical events and the mindsets and characters of the main characters during those events. The temptation is great for me to write too-long a review of this interesting book, but here are some pertinent passages. (Statements by the authors are in Italics.)

• Stalin was the first of the two to be a mass murderer. Stalin: "Who's going to remember this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time?"
• [After Roosevelt had failed to deliver what Churchill thought had been promised] It should have been a warning that the president's words could not always be taken at face value.
• Count Ciano: "Hitler speaks simply, and I should say also, in an unusually humane tone. I believe his desire for peace is sincere."
• UK Paymaster General Maurice Hankey: "It is a complete dictatorship. The War Cabinet consists of a long monologue by one man [Churchill]. The others are just 'yes men.'"
• Josef Goebbels: "Stalin long ago let down the iron curtain." (Churchill after the war used the iron curtain phrase in a speech.)
• [About Roosevelt's decision to use American money and industrial power to finance and equip England and Russia] Roosevelt was defending America and opposing Hitler, his two core aims, at almost no cost to American lives. At the same time, he ignited an increase in arms production which finally brought the United States out of economic depression.
• Hitler: "Compared with Churchill, Stalin is a gigantic figure."
• Roosevelt [on the road to Casablanca]: "A paved but very bumpy road, through crowds of semi-dressed natives -- thatched huts -- great poverty and emaciation -- on the whole I am glad the U.S. is not a great Colonial power."
• Josef Goebbels [after the destructive bombing of Dusseldorf] "The English air raids have had the effect that in this war the German people have learned to hate."
• Roosevelt [in a secret letter to Stalin]: "[T]he United States will never lend its support in any way to any provisional government in Poland that would be inimical to your interests."
• Hitler: "This war must be won or Europe will be lost to Bolshevism. . . . I am the only one who sees the danger and  the only one who can stop it."
• Roosevelt was dead. Hitler had shot himself. Churchill was about to be voted out of office. One man stood triumphant: Stalin, the new emperor of Russia and half of Europe.

Showing the connections, and disconnections, between and among events, Berthon and Potts follow the four warlords individually and separately through battles -- like Kursk and Stalingrad and the North African desert and D-Day -- and meetings -- like Casablanca and Yalta. One comes away understanding a bit more about, for example, how Roosevelt was wrong about thinking he had established a meaningful friendship with Stalin but also wrong about ignoring Churchill's -- yes, empire-protecting -- desire to keep the Soviets from taking over Eastern Europe. The verdict remains split about whether following Winston's hope to strike from Italy through the "soft-underbelly" of Europe would have proved better than invading France.

About the difference in moral tone between totalitarian and democratic nations at war, one comes away also understanding that there isn't that much difference. All nations operate with the philosophy of having no permanent allies, only permanent interests and of doing what is deemed necessary to win. Although it is correct that "you started it" is a fair charge to make against Germany for its air raids in England, the American and British strategy of attempting to diminish German morale by firebombing Dresden and attacking targets of questionable military significance was shameful.

Morality aside, at the simply practical level, it is obvious that, win or lose, totalitarian societies are much more efficient at fighting wars than are societies whose "warlords" have to contend with cabinets, and rule-of-law, and elections. Specific events aside, "Warlords" is a great study re the significance, or not, of personality when leaders make momentous decisions. The book provides an opportunity to ponder the centuries-long debate: Do great men create events or are great men created by events?

The Vikings, by Jonathan Wooding
A delightful fast read, even for those with no love of history.
In this generously illustrated 159-page book, Wooding's main intention is to soften the image of those 9th Century Scandinavians whom most of us non-Nordics visualize as illiterate murdering, raping, looting barbarians.

"God's Savages or Displaced Persons?" is one heading which conveys the author's hope to depict Vikings and Norsemen as "individuals, creative and humane."

Wooding begins with the first recorded raid -- on the Lindisfarne monastery, in Scotland -- in 793. Then, using artifacts and writing, mostly by contemporary Christians, he moves back-and-forth through history. We are reminded, for example that, although they spoke French, the Normans who conquered the English Celts in 1066 were Norsemen. He briefly describes their impact on Denmark, Sweden, Iceland. The reader is introduced to the Vikings' attempts at writing (runes), their myths, their beliefs re any afterlife (Valhalla), their discovery of America hundreds of years before Columbus.

Wooding concludes: "Their monuments are subtle, much of their image was violent and they are not easily defined by our standards of what is important and unimportant. Their mariners may be described as 'intrepid', until we recall how unconcernedly they went about their work. We might call them a 'proud' people, but 'independent' is probably more the case. Romantics have seen in them images of socialism, totalitarianism, indomitable spirit and artfulness.

"The more one looks, however, the more they seem practical of spirit -- which, insofar as practicality is often ruthless, can be both a positive and negative quality in our terms."