For a couple of years, my favorite wife has wanted to spend a month in the French countryside; she is originally from Montreal, speaks excellent French and enjoys the French culture, wine and history.  Anyone who has been to Paris realizes that France can be very expensive, but we found a way to live well, enjoy the countryside and keep our expenses to a reasonable level. How? One advantage was by traveling with another couple, in this case my wife’s parents.  By splitting some costs, our month-long visit to rural France costs much less, about $175/night per couple. 

Rokin 96

1012 KZ Amsterdam

020-623-7494

www.hajenius.com

Walking in the rain of Amsterdam can be a bit tiring or you may be feeling quite victorious for not being run over the the bicyclists (who seem to believe that they totally own the roads). When that time comes and you want to have a good cigar, I recommend Hajenius; they not only have an excellent selection of Cuban brands (if you are heading to London, pick up your Cubans here as they are much less expensive than in London), and a great exhibit of beautiful humidors and accessories, but they also have their own brand which features Sumatra tobacco harking back to colonial times (they were founded in 1826)

These two novels finish the trilogy by Margaret George (The Autobiography of Henry VIII was previously reviewed).  Of the two novels, Mary Queen of Scotland has the more complex character development, and while Elizabeth is good, it seems Ms. George must have been worn out by the time she got to the last book in the trilogy.

This excellent article shows that the Radical Left can have a philosophical basis for their beliefs. Unfortunately, that philosophy has led to many of the worse abuses known to man since the French Revolution. https://quillette.com/2020/02/11/my-former-life-as-a-radical/

Neill Ferguson, one of todays top historians and social observers pulled together several noted historians (John Adamson, J.C.D. Clark, etc.) to create alternative views of history.  Unlike most counterfactuals, each section requires the reader to have a better than average understanding of the period being discussed.  The first time I read this book I knew that I would have to read it three of four times to really grasp some of its arguments. 

The phrase, E pluribus Unum (out of many, one) had been an ideal that had served the United States well for well over one hundred and fifty years. Although the nation was never able to live up to its ideal in a perfect manner, it was the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt that took the first concrete steps to undermine this ideal. Before his election, the question in campaigns seemed to be, “what is good for the country”; Roosevelt by focusing on specific segments of the populace began to promise that government largess would be given in return for votes. This process continued but was greatly expanded during the 1960s when different grievous groups (Blacks, women, etc.) began to demand their share of the government largess.

Mr. Gonzalez in this article provides an excellent history of the rise of a new group, the “Hispanics” who turned away from their traditional image to find a new one, one which could apply for and receive government largess. It is an interesting read. https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-invention-of-hispanics/

Andrei Vyshinsky rose to fame as the chief prosecutor during many of the infamous show trials of the late 1930’s in the Soviet Union.  A brilliant student, lawyer and lover of academia, he was a second level (never entering Stalin’s inner circle) bureaucrat who managed to use the deaths of those he prosecuted to advance his career.  Although the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time, Joseph E. Davies felt that the trials were conducted to the highest legal standards (his book, Mission to Moscow was made into a terrible propaganda movie in 1943) they could only be viewed in that manner if you wondered why defendants who recanted were taken from the court room and then their written statements reversing their recanted statements were admitted and they were convicted (many who recanted were so badly beaten that they could not be taken into the public eye and were quickly executed).  As a side note, Ambassador Davies spent most his time antique hunting and sent hundreds of “finds” back to his home in the U.S.

One of the author’s previous books, Wages of Destruction previously reviewed, was an outstanding look at the financial world of the Third Reich and how Hitler’s world view and understanding of the strength of the U.S. economy impacted on his decision regarding going to war.  In this massive (almost 700 page) work, the author looks at an even more complex problem, the financial crash of 2007-8 and the later one in Europe.  As one can imagine, this is not a light work, the excellent descriptions of many of the financial vehicles invented by the banks and regulators can be mind numbing.  Not a book to be read lightly, to grasp the complexity of what is written would require a flow chart that would make the invasion of Normandy look like a plaything.  It is because of this complexity that no one at any level could understand, regulate or formulate a strategy to contain the forces that had been let lose several years before the crash. It is in this area that this book fails for while being critical of the banks (worldwide) and fawning over President Obama, he manages to cover in a couple of sentences the role of the politicians (especially President Clinton) and the authors favorite financial advisors (Rubin and Summers) for their roles in passing the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and the easy housing policies of HUD and Andrew Cuomo which led to the housing bubble.

At over seven hundred pages, I approached this book with a certain degree of trepidation; am I really that interested in Hamilton and what about his life could hold my interest.  Within a few pages, Chernow snagged me by bringing a man I knew little of into my life and presenting an exciting brilliant personality that fundamentally changed the course of history.