2 comments about Edward the Confessor.

1. Wow - this man knows his history! If you are a serious historian interested in Edward the Confessor - this is your Bible! The reading is extremely dry - don't think you'll find more here than the facts, but there are facts galore! Barlow begins with an indepth look at Edward's background and the background of the political situation in England. He ends with the impact of Edward during the reign of Henry III and covers literally EVERYTHING in between. Then for good measure, he adds nearly another 100 pages of appendicies, time lines, maps, tables and illustrations. I'm very impressed with the author's knowledge of the subject. I only hold back that last "star" because I regret that the author didn't make it a bit more "friendly" to read. It is dry and moves slowly and is not probably a book that would generate interest in Edward the Confessor so much as it is a book to verify facts for those already interested. I personally prefer history and historical fiction that can introduce a reader to a subject and make them want to read more. I'm afraid that his work will be too daunting to many and makes Edward sound extremely dull - which he truly was not.



2. Though the subject of this book may seem a bit daunting and even boring, I promise you that Frank Barlow has done a fabulous job. He has brought to life the enigmatic and somewhat obscure lives of the most important Englishmen of the late 11th century: Edward the Confessor, Earl Godwin, Edith Godwin's daughter, King Harold II, Swegn Godwinson, and Tostig Godwinson. A must-read.

5 comments about Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era.

1. This foolish book attempts to make the case that Bentley initiated the age of McCarthy. According to that thinking, anyone who unmasked a traitor was a McCarthyite- that is beyond stupid. What Igor Gouzenko and Bentley and Whittaker Chambers did was to expose the extent of Soviet espionage in the US. With the publication of Venona and the previously secret KGB files we know now that there were more Americans who betrayed their country than we ever suspected. They were traitors to the US and seriously damged this country. They were the real villains of the age.



2. This is the story of Elizabeth Turrill Bentley. No one suspected a "well-bred, Vassar educated descendent of Puritan Clergy" would join a communist party and run "two of the most productive spy rings in America." That is exactly what Bentley, code name Clever Girl, did. Equally unexpected was her transformation from spy to FBI informant.
   
   It all started in March of 1935 when Bentley was lured to an American League Against War and Fascism meeting by a neighbour. It turned out to be a front for the Communist Party. Kessler's descriptions draw the reader into the setting and give an idea of the atmosphere, as well as Bentley's mentality. Clever Girl attempts to shed light on the motivations of the most important woman to affect the McCarthy Era.
   
   Bentley's early dealings with the party made her feel important and independent. She lived in a one room apartment and was unemployed. She was lonely. Going to meetings may have started off as a social event but it turned into something more. A calling. She was impressionable. In the opening chapter I felt she had been brainwashed and lured into the fold because of her loneliness, desire to have a family and ties with others.
   
   Shortly after joining, Bentley met and fell in love with soviet handler Jacob Golos whom she affectionately called Yasha. Golos was the glue that attached Bentley to the party for years despite him not being as loyal to her. She let him interpret the world for her through his communist eyes. Regardless of what she gave up for him, it is because of her association with Golos she was able to move up through the ranks. After only 6 years (1935-1941), Bentley was running things.
   
   When it was discovered he was no longer in control she had to fight to maintain her status. She quickly became deemed a problem and after Golos death her status was taken away. Although Kessler doesn't come out and say it, I think this had more to do with her being a woman than the fact she was an American in a high ranking, Soviet spy position.
   
   When things started to look worse, she decided it as time to go to the FBI for help. In exchange Bentley named hundreds of Americans involved with the party. It is incomprehensible, the number of people who willingly supplied sensitive information from the Treasury Department to the party. It isn't so hard to believe or see the Soviet Union (the US wartime ally) as an "evil-doer" but what is difficult to believe is that Americans could be spies against their own country.
   
   What I found most interesting was not Bentley's plunge into the depths of communism but her relationship with the FBI and media after she became an informant; as well as her flip flop between a secure, independent woman of means and a neurotic paranoid, probably brought on by the alcohol abuse.
   
   Bentley played a game with both sides, never winning in either. She survived under a short-lived spotlight in each. Being an FBI informant wasn't as glamorous as being a Soviet spy. As a spy she basically worked alone and had control over what happened to her. As an FBI informant she was constantly scrutinized by the FBI, congress and most indignantly by the media. Her life was never normal. While most days I think she reveled in the limelight I also think that she longed for privacy, but mostly I think she longed for their respect.
   The stereotypes of this time period are evident and well known. Bentley was a woman in a male dominated society. She held a high-ranking position but she was never really respected for it. Not by the Soviets, the FBI, nor the media who directed lots of name calling her way. If she had been a man I wonder what their views would have been of her and how she would have been handled. Clever Girl shows the life of Elizabeth Bentley, the past she couldn't outrun and the price she paid for the choices she made. Kessler's interpretation of the facts is worth reading both for its historical and entertainment value.
   
   Review Originally Posted at http://www.linearreflections.com



3. Liz Bentley was born in a society that had limited opportunities for women. In the 1930's with the Great Depression this Vassar graduate had only the socila outlet of the Communist party.
   Kessler documents the importance that Bentley played as a Communist spy. Indeed before this book was written I always had the impression she was a courier or a bit player. Kessler documents that when bentley's lover got sick that she ran the spy ring. I always thoguth of Communist espionage in the 1950's as male driven from Greenglass, Julius Rosenberg, Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. But this book docwement without Bently the FBI would not had the collaboratiog evidence for the secret Venona intercepts. Because these tapes were secret ,Bentley had no collaboration and only one person -William remington went to jail arising directly fromn her accusations.
   Bentley had to endure the hatred of the far left for being a rat , a liar and worse. She contributed to rise of McCarthy and for J Edgar Hoover getting more powerful. Benley was years ahead of herself -running a businees (admitedly a Communist front). She was sexually expressive and her lover -Jakob Golos (whom was married) was her boss in epsionage. Benley exposed 2 spy rings the Perlo and Silvermaster ring and in doing so performed a patriotic duty.
   Where I fault this book is that more details on the spy ring could have been given. Kessler seems to weant to defend Bentley against the far left but is uncomfortable delineating the extent of Soviet infiltration of the US Government. Such a thing sounds like McCarthyism (proof of the validity) and she may be showing her poltical bias in not making this connection. This book is a quick read and gives this fascinating part of US history. This book should be included in a Women's Study group.



4. Although the life of Elizabeth Bently deserves a bigger book, I enjoyed this first biography of the enigmatic but fascinating commie spy, Elizabeth Bently. The author attempts to explain this Vassar educated American woman who became a Russian spy, but Bently still remains a vague phantom. Since I'm fascinated by that whole period--of Joe McCarthy, Alger Hiss, the shocking presence of real-life commnists in American government back in the 30s and 40s--I found this book very readable. You might also enjoy related books, especially Ann Coulter's best-selling, "Treason," which really delivers the goods about how the Communist scare of the 40s and 50s was not the imaginary fear of paranoid Americans. It really was something to cause genuine fear. Elizabeth Bently revealed just have intensive this spy network was.



5. As indicated, I have mixed sentiments about this book. The story is engaging enough, and Kessler delivers it in a readable, comfortable manner. However, it often seems as if she is acting more as an apologist for Bentley, rather than giving a fully candid evaluation.
   Bentley's career as teacher, communist, spy, and FBI informant is enticing and worth investigating, but there are some irritating flaws. Most prominent is the lack of footnotes; there is an endnote page, but no numbers in the narrative that correspond with it. There is also the unnerving sense that something is constantly amiss. For all her organizational skill, and apparent value to the Soviet spy network, Bentley is repeatedly duped, manipulated, and outright naive. The author never adequately resolves this paradox, and thus somewhat undermines its historical credibility. In fact, she ( Bentley) almost never seems to understand the implications of her actions, and is striking for appearing so intellectually shallow. Indeed , not very clever at all.
   Despite these limitations, it is entertaining, but should be read with the cautionary anteenae in place.

4 comments about Patriots Will: Surviving the Great Depression and World War II Combat.

1. I happened to meet Major Hubbard after flying on the B-17 Aluminum Overcast when it visited Sarasota this past Veteran's Day. You will enjoy this book. If you do get to fly on a B-17, Major Hubbard's book is must reading either before or after you fly so you can see what those men did and experienced in these aircraft - truly remarkable. Even if you don't get to fly on one of the few remaining B-17s that can still fly, you will enjoy this book.



2. Inspiring autobiography that left me in awe of his tenacity to achieve his goals. A self driven teen ager to a military life where he fought the dull assignments until he got what he wanted; putting his life in one of the highest risk assignments of World War II. One of many other brave men no doubt but clearly writes a book placing the reader there with him.
   George Flavell -Author & Airline Pilot (Ret)



3. This book is a fine contribution to WWII history. Mr. Hubbard shares his personal experiences as a boy during the Great Deppression in America and as a young man flying dangerous B17 missions over Europe. This book is well worth reading because it puts a human face to historic times. I highly recommend it.



4. This is a very interesting work highligting one man's experiences during WW II as he went from being a teenager to eventually flying 25 combat missions as a gunner on a B-17.
   What makes this book unique is the perspective on the war as seen through the eyes of an individual as he makes his way from the U.S. to the Canadian Army and how he eventually gets transferred to the US Army Air Corps. The book chronicles his his day to day experiences along the way - the problems of survivial, both large and small, the love affairs, the training, waiting, the bombing missions and his eventual return to the U.S. You will find this book to be an easy read with a new perspective on a subject that is usually treated from a more macro point of view.

No comments about The Life of Mary, Queen of Sots: An Accidental Tragedy.

2 comments about Kaahumanu: Molder of Change.

1. 
   ...but Jane Silverman moves us closer to that goal by adding to the first foundation of what we know for sure about Queen K. She mines journals and letters to provide descriptions of events that were not witnessed by anyone else, offering us the first cogent summary of Queen K's actions as regent for so many years.
   I found Silverman's suggestion that Queen K was some sort of proto-Feminist unpersuasive. She never acted on behalf of women generally. She broke rules for herself, when it suited her. Her observations about religion and the law were more compelling. Steeped in a tradition where the priests and kings set out the rules of life, she tried to use that same approach in governance. Substituting puritanical Christianity for the old kapu system seemed only natural.
   Not a great book, just a good one, but one of the only references if you really want to know more about Queen Kaahumanu and her reign.



2. Kaahumanu and her husband Kamehameha the Great are the first well-defined personalities in Hawaiian history.
   The definitions are open to more than one interpretation, however. Jane Silverman chooses to define Kaahumanu as Hawaii's first feminist. There is no evidence that Kaahumanu thought of herself in that fashion. None of the laws that she imposed upon her society were presented in terms of differences between the sexes, for example.
   It is true that Kaahumanu took on roles that probably no woman in Hawaii ever had before, and that she initiated changes that removed tremendous disabilities from Hawaiian women. But there is no reason to believe that she burned the old gods on behalf of women. She burned them, it appears, for the benefit of all, in the service of what she regarded as a new truth, and especially for the benefit of Kaahumanu.
   For she was not first a feminist, nor a stateswoman nor a politician, although she was all of these. First, she was an aristrocrat.
   "In an undefined space on the boundary of two cultures, Kaahumanu created a role for herself that she would not have been permitted within either culture," Silverman writes. This is too selective. No man, not even Kamehameha, could have done what she did without the solvent of the outside world. and even in the special conditions of her times, no woman but an aristocrat could have done what she did.
   None of that detracts from her accomplishments, for after all there were other women with even higher mana who did not seize power the way Kaahumanu did.
   Societies vary in their ability to resist intrusion from the modern world. The old Hawaiians were essentially receptive to new things, some of them good for them and some not. It was unfortunate for them that Kaahumanu replaced the violent old religion with a narrow-minded and repressive new one.
   It was easier for her, however, since she refused to be repressed herself. Like aristrocrats everywhere, she did as she pleased.
   This was true to an extent even before the impact of the outside world hit Hawaii. Silverman overstates the case when she says, "Kaahumanu, the most favored women of her society, lived within rigidly prescribed boundaries."
   The rules were right enough, but enforcement was not. It never is in aristocracies.
   Overall, the outside impact that Kaahumanu sponsored must have been liberating. The common people, at least, accepted it with a minimum of protest. Looking back, the picture seems more complicated. Whatever the judgment, Kaahumanu deserves to be ranked with the great social innovators and leaders of all time.
   she was a contemporary of Napoleon and just as able. If her nation had been as important as France, she would be as famous.
   All of this is well set out in "Kaahumanu: Molder of Change." The book reads well and is accurate as to facts. But the feminist spin that Silverman puts on every interpretation is anachronistic. At its worst it leads here to such absurd statements as, "These missionary women were not narrow in their outlook." And at the least it jars because Kaahumanu was not a modern political operator. She broke traditions, but she could not break the context of her own life.

No comments about The Northerners: A Study in the Reign of King John (Clarendon Paperbacks).

2 comments about Princess Remembers; Memoirs of Maharani of Jaipur.

1. I have read many books about the Royal lives from various parts of the world. This book by "Gayatri Devi" is exquisite and her narration simply makes the book premier of them all. The details and the wonderful experiences amazed me. Her life has so much vitality and enthusiasm. Its a book by someone with bright spirit and great soul.



2. I have always been interested in the history of Princely India because I find the lives and times of the great Maharajas of India very fascinating. I found the first edition of this great book at an Indian book store in New Jersey. I was very ecstatic about my discovery since one can hardly find books about the history of Princely India in the States. This is the perfect way to find out what it was like during the time when the Maharajas ruled India. Her Royal Highness, the Maharani Gayatri Devi has done a superb job in writing this book. Her writing makes it seem as if we are there in Jaipur when they welcomed Her at the Rambhagh Palace, and we feel the emotions she might have felt when Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi imprisoned her on false charges. This book is easy to follow and flows very nicely from one chapter to the next, and from one situation to the other. The English used in this book is not too complex either, and has many great pictures so that one can feel as if they are right there when She wins the elections and welcomes Jackie Kennedy at the City Palace. This book is a must read for all people who are interested in Princely India, or interested in famous influential women. It is a must read for people who like to read a romantic story, but it is a must read for people who like to read and gain new knowledge.

No comments about DANCING WITH THE DEVIL..

No comments about The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Including an Autobiographical Chapter. Edited by his son. Volume 2.

No comments about Queen Elizabeth I (British History Makers).