Yes, an autobiography of this famous English King; obviously a work of fiction but one solidly based on historical fact.  The work goes from his time as a left behind second child, to his sudden elevation as heir apparent to his kingship with all of his hopes and dreams to reality as he moves through his life.  What is interesting about this book is that it is told from his side; painted by history as a cruel tyrant, a wife murderer and destroyer of the Catholic church in England, the book describes (from his perspective) his actions, motives, joys, fears and failures.

Too late, Henry found what any good manager or leader finds out; you are alone at the top.  Those who surround you may fawn on you, may tell you many wonderful things, but you never know their true motivations, their true feelings about you and your decisions.  Henry did not find out until so late this basic rule of life and as a consequence he lived in world that he often could not understand.  Being an absolute ruler, his lack of understanding is even more understandable.

The book describes the various factions at court; the powerful English families who vied for Henry’s favor even while scheming to place themselves in his position.  The politics as they fought for his favor by offering service, wives and more make for a view of like that we can still see today in our world.  Mankind has not progressed all that far.

The author has a fine grasp of history and male human nature.  She has written other (autobiographies) of Queen Mary, Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy and other notable women.  If you have interest in Henry but find traditional history dry, try this book; it shall entertain and educate you and perhaps, cause you to look further into the life and character of a key player in Western European history.

Tacitus was a Roman Senator and had access to the official records and books of the Empire.  His book covers the reigns of Tiberius (the period of 37-47 AD have been lost), Claudius and Nero (until 66 AD).  As Tacitus was still writing the history around 116AD, he was still relatively close enough to be blessed with a buffer of time, yet not far enough away to romanticize any of the events or individuals in the book.

The chapters (or books as they are called) are devoid of sensationalism yet manage to portray events and individuals in a light which leaves little doubt of the opinion of Tacitus.  Even the worst excesses of Tiberius and Nero are not graphically described while Claudius does not come across as the kindly, fatherly Emperor so portrayed by Derek Jacobi in his memorable role.

As is usual, for the beginner of Roman history, the names may be confusing and locations even more so as they are usually referred to in their “Roman” as opposed to their “modern” names, but it is a handy reference book and cross index against other histories, both fictional and non-fictional.  But it is not a book for speed reading as it is loaded with facts that go beyond normal history and you can believe you are actually reading a political memoir, full of twists and turns.

The average citizen expects that after the changing of the guard at the White House, there will eventually be a couple of “insider” books which will air some of the dirty laundry for that administration.  It used to be that those books would wait a discreet length of time, similar to a time of morning before the dead, or in this case, the dethroned would not be spoken of ill. Not any longer; the exit of the Biden administration has produced a fountain of tell all books in a remarkably brief period of time.

Fight was one of the first, and the two authors, both from left of center careers tell much of the story of the palace coup which led to an election unlike any other in U.S. history. They present a well-balanced book which is both kind and cruel to various players. They give credit where credit is due, such as to Kamala Harris for her successful efforts to quickly wrap up the delegate pledges despite the lack of support from former President Obama. While much of the hierarchy of the Democratic party procrastinated, Harris was on the phone, working to secure her position as the candidate of a party shaken by the turn of events. Unfortunately, from there, here next steps were halting and ineffectual. Pelosi held the view that there were “better candidates who didn’t have Harris’s negative, but that anyone would be better for House and Senate races than Biden” according to one Pelosi insider. Obama went as far as to tell Harris that she could not defeat Trump.

The book also details the gradual slippage of support for Biden after his disastrous debate against Trump. Biden was determined to hang on, as he had been pursuing the Presidency for years and was still upset at Obama for supporting Hillary Clinton. Additionally, Biden had been unsuccessful at selling his touted economic gains, he refused to acknowledge the terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan and his open border policy were all unpopular with the majority of Americans. After the failed debate, many Democrats wondered how they could sell another four-year term of a clearly shaky Biden to the public. It was a difficult choice for Obama, Clinton, and Pelosi but in the end, they decided that Biden simply had to go; up to fifty years of friendship was not as important as the maintenance of power.

Sadder than the betrayal Biden felt as he was abandoned by his long-term friends and allies was the complete misreading of pre-election polls and its impact on Harris. Up until election night, Harris was sure she was going to be victorious and like Hillary Clinton before her, but for different reasons, her loss hit her like a hammer. Despite spending over one point five billion dollars, she had failed at the basic level of being able to communicate with the average American. Missed opportunities were often due to her inability to balance her loyalty to Biden and her need to show she was her own person. She also simply did not have the skills necessary to play in the real world of politics where she had to stand on her own before the masses.

This is one of numerous books which have and will continue to flood the market, and each one will add to the mosaic that is the story of this past election. As the Democrats had to discard friendships and loyalty, so to will each of the stories told by insiders mean that they will have crossed the Rubicon against their party. Loyalty, or at least discretion, seem to have disappeared in the scramble for a publisher and royalties. The election is not a story that has many winners.

This is the story of how American business, which is the American people came together to produce the best equipped military in the history of the world.  The book has two key players; not FDR, not Eisenhower, not even Marshall, but two Americans, one a first generation American, the second, an immigrant who helped to focus and force American industry at a time of national peril. 

The first was Henry Kaiser, first generation American who through his drive and skills was the driving force behind such pre-war projects as Boulder and Grand Coulee dams, as well as thousands of miles of paved roads as the country was getting behind the wheel of their new cars.  His vision of what he could do enabled him to move into ship building, but his skill was not just in being able to successfully move from industry to industry (during the war he would build ships, airplanes, etc.) but in finding ways to mass produce them in record time.  An example is his work building the Liberty Ships which helped to defeat Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic.  When given a contract to build ships, he also had to build his own shipyards, as well as recruit workers and provide housing for them.  The workers came from every facet of American life; they were teachers, hairdressers, farmers, students, housewives, etc. and they all had to be taught how to handle tools, cut sheet metal, maintain equipment, order parts, inventory those parts, supervise production lines, etc.  All from scratch.  And he did it so successfully that a ship which use to take 200+ days to produce were coming down the waterways at one every 15-20 days.

The other main character in this excellent book is William Knudsen, a Danish immigrant (he landed in the U.S. before his teens) who not only revolutionized the production facilities of Henry Ford, but also was the driving force behind General Motors which he managed to be built to a point where it surpassed the production of his old boss, Henry Ford.  Knudsen was the type of production man who could look at a production problem and, in his mind, reconfigure the entire process to speed up production and better quality.  In recognition of his skills, he was the only civilian in the history of the U.S. to be made a Lieutenant General in the military.

But this is also the story of the average Americans who not only worked at the huge war plants but created tens of thousands of businesses to support the war effort.  An excellent example is Ma and Pa Harrington in Rockford Illinois.  Their specialty was making machine tools for turning artillery shells and tank turrets.  When they realized that a new lathe would cost four thousand dollars, they made their own out of a junked lather, an old washing machine motor, and oil pump from a 1926 Chevrolet and an old washtub that caught the oil that leaked from the bottom of the home-made tool, all in their living room!  This is an example of American ingenuity which was not found anywhere else in the world and which contributed so much to the war effort.

In the days before the internet, social media, faxes, computers, even a reliable nationwide telephone system, we would able to design, order, produce, ship, inventory and assemble the 55,000 parts for a bomber, all in record numbers.  That ability won the war as surely as the men on the front line, and despite the best efforts of the New Dealers in Washington who wanted to direct all production centrally, as occurred in Nazi Germany. 

This is an inspiration book, of interest to anyone interested in production, or wishing to read a book about what the country was capable of during those dark hours.  Is the country, are our people still able to pull together in such a desperate time?  That is for you to determine.

Elting, a noted historian and lecturer at West Point has put it all together in this 700+ page book. He starts with a discussion of the decline of the French Army after King Louis XV and its destruction during the French Revolution. He then proceeds to discuss every aspect of the Army, from the equipment, feeding, transportation, etc. of each branch of the Army, from the infantry to artillery, etc.

An outstanding one volume history which ends with the new regime of King Louis XVIII, his mistrust of the Imperial army, his lack of skilled advisors, etc., and of course, the Hundred Days of Napoleon. I would recommend that if you are going to read this book, that you keep handy “Napoleon’s Marshals” which was edited by David Chandler. This book discusses (each Marshal is covered by a different historian) the records of all of Napoleon’s Marshals (25 French, one Polish) including their skills, greed, loyalty (or lack thereof), etc.

Another wonderful reference book to settle or at least provide fodder for any discussion of the subject (Napoleon’s campaigns, his personal skills, etc.). The two books total about 1200 pages so don’t think you will finish them in a sitting, but they are well worth the effort. If nothing else, as with so much of history, you learn a great deal about human nature and management.

This is an outstanding and very readable history of the Imperial Austrian Army which was a major player in European history from 1619 until 1918. Although often pictured as an army which was poorly led and had a terrible record, the facts are altogether different. During its existence, it won more than 350 major victories, far more than its defeats (imagine the scope of European warfare; 350 major victories meant more than one major battle for each year of existence). It was never completely destroyed (as was the Prussian army at Jena) and adapted despite several defeats at the hands of Napoleon to eventually be instrumental in the coalition that destroyed his power.

Much more sweeping in scope than “The Army of Francis Joseph” by G. Rothenberg or “History of the Hapsburg Empire” by Robert Kahn, it nevertheless presents information that will be of interest to the novice and the expert.

Overall, the Hapsburg dynasty was, in my opinion, much stronger in terms of ability to produce successful monarchs than any of the other European monarchies. They did not have their George III or Nicholas II, nor the wasteful Louis XIV.

This is the first book I have read by Bassett and based on his skill as an historian and writer, I shall be looking to read more of his books.

This is a massive novel (about 1600 pages) written in three sections: They Were Counted. They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided. There are a number of sub-plots, some romantic, others centering on the morals and norms of the aristocratic Hungarian society prior to World War I and quite a bit on the politics of Hungary and its relations with the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Originally published in 1934 and 1940 but was banned by the Communist government until a new edition was published after the fall of Communism in 1990.

The author was an active liberal member of the Hungarian pre-war parliament and after his retirement, wrote several plays, short story books and this novel. Vainly attempting to save his properties after the end of World War II, he could not leave Transylvania and was separated from his wife until shortly before he died when we was allowed to leave Romania and live in Budapest.

There are numerous plots and mini stories within this massive work which center on the norms of the pre-war Hungarian aristocratic society. There are love stories, tales of falling from grace, political foolishness in a time of national danger and more. Since the author was an actual politician at the time of the novel, the second and third sections give the reader an insight into the actual politics of the day. In fact, if someone were interested in Hungarian politics of that time, they would enjoy large sections the novel as the political squabbles of the time is presented in a lively, interesting manner.

There is one unique opportunity in reading this book as the author, who was an active politician at the time of the story, is able to provide an insight into the actual government debates and problems leading up to World War I. Those sections would be an excellent addition to Luigi Albertini’s three-volume history of European events which led to the First World War. The petty bickering over what colors should the ribbons be on the officer’s swords while the army is starved of money shows the inability of the Hungarian politicians to confront reality due to their own self-centered ideology and prejudices. It makes for fascinating reading.

Let me say there are two drawbacks to the book. The first is that I was hoping for more of the plot to center on Transylvania and its relationship with its Hungarian overlords. While the main character of the novel has extensive land holdings in Transylvania, aside from a minor sub-plot about agrarian/forest reforms, there is little that really occurs in that area. Yes, one reads that the local residents who were mostly Romanian, were abused by the petty officials and money lenders who were Hungarian. Unfortunately, the true extent of how the Romanians were abused is not covered.

Another weakness in the first section is that there are too many pages which go over the romantic sub-plot of the main character and the woman he pursues. That section is beautifully written, but it seems to go on and on for scores of pages.

The strength of this novel is its ability to take us into a society and world that disappeared in 1918. The norms, standards and misdirection of the Hungarian kingdom are laid out and from the advantage of hindsight, we can see where the errors of that society and it political structure must lead. Being the length that it is, it is another of those novels that one would pick up to re-read once every ten years or so (in fact, I first read it in 2013).

A friend of mine recently lent this book to me and it brought to mind various debates I had during graduate school many moons ago regarding the premise of the book; whomever controls the Eurasian continent controls the world.

This theory was originally formulated in 1904 by Halford MacKinder, a British geographer. It shortly followed the work by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan’s extremely influential book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. In that book Mahan put forth the theory that as the oceans are the fastest routes for trade, control of the oceans will decide which powers will succeed and which will die. MacKinder put forth the idea because of the population, central position, and mineral wealth of the Eurasian land mass, that it will determine which nations live and die. Going further, Karl Haushofer, a German geopolitician continued MacKinder’s theory and he was influential to the Nazi view of the world as MacKinder was influential with Kaiser Wilhelm prior to the first World War.

Britain and the United States are both sea faring nations, outside of the Eurasian sphere, yet both have played vital parrs in controlling and shaping the Eurasian sphere. Brands goes through several examples of how the United States has dealt with the area, including World Wars I and II, the creation of NATO, our actions in the Middle East and so forth. In one way, this is a weakness in the book as the involvement of the U.S. was not due to an acceptance of MacKinder’s theory, but rather at least until the Cold War, a natural case of self-defense. The U.S. actions in the Middle East, plus Afghanistan are more suspect in that they went far beyond actions that were previously acceptable to the average American.

The last part of his book looks at the current players who seek to control if not all, at least sizable chunks of the Eurasian land mass, namely China. China with it ever increasing military power and sizable economic power, is the greatest player. It pushes until seriously pushed back as the nations such as Viet Nam, the Philippines, and others are finding out today. Their Belt and Road programs has reached even into Europe and has been successful in spreading China’s influence through most of Africa. Can China, with help from Russia, seize control of the Eurasian area thus locking out England and the United States out of such a vital area.? Can anyone accomplish that goal?

That has always been the key question to me, for the land mass is so great, the populations so diverse and in so many levels of development that how could any power do anything but bleed to death attempting to gain a level of control that would be worth such a great effort. In the early twentieth century, thinkers like MacKinder and Haushofer might have believed it was possible, even though there were already small struggles for independence in India and parts of Asia and Africa. Today, we must add in the religious extremism of the Middle East (and parts of Indonesia) and the task would become even harder. Finally, we have seen failures in the Belt and Road project which show the Chinese model may have feet of clay.

I would recommend this book as it is objective (I only found a couple of examples of personal political bias) and provides an excellent overview of various nations causes for action. If one or more nations cannot control the Eurasian area, is it possible to be done by a group of nations? It is doubtful, for if we think of the problems in Europe which has tried to tamper down the differences between the various members of the E.U., we find that despite hundreds of years of cross border trade and wars, the differences in languages, customs, views of history, even food make for a challenge on so many fronts.
The Eurasian area is huge and the hundreds of millions of people who live there share little in common beyond a desire to live, have enough food and at best, provide for a better life for their children. Help yes, control and direction, no.

Last week I posted (But Will Europe Listen) about the threat to Europe, not from the U.S., but from the leaders of Europe who have allowed their nations to sink into an unrealistic sea of complacency. For decades, living under the U.S. umbrella of protection, the leaders of the E.U. have acted like teenagers, believing that tomorrow will never come regarding their own defense and their survival.

Tomorrow has arrived with the second Trump administration and the demise of the enfeebled Biden presidency. Suddenly the leaders of the Western European democracies face a dark and threatening future with troubling questions. Will Trump leave NATO? If he decides to stay, how much will the U.S. contribute to the defense of Europe given the other challenges to the U.S.? Given the hideous bureaucracy of the EU, how can the nations of NATO co-ordinate their growth of military spending so that waste and inefficiency are minimized? How are the massive amounts of money needed to rebuild NATOs military going to found? If the money is raised, does Europe have enough energy at reasonable costs to manufacture what it needs? Given the level of technology in Europe vs. the U.S., does Europe have the ability to produce the technology for current and future weapons systems. The list can go on and on.
The attached article outlines key problems and provides practical solutions to a few of these questions.

We are living in interesting times, and it remains to be seen if Europe, so long living in a dream world can summon the leadership and be able to face its greatest challenges in over eighty years.

Joint EU debt for European defence investment is a questionable idea – Brussels Report

Europe is going through a challenging time. For decades it has lived in a never-never land of social welfare programs designed to provide its’ citizens with ever immagionable comfort: free schools for as long as you wish to remain an adolexcent, free health care, job protection, and so much more. Of course, those “perks” of life are not really free, they are paid for by high taxes. But it was a compact between the government and the people. This promise could be fulfilled as long as the United States provided for the protection of Europe thus freeing billions of Euros annually and the demographic balance could be maintained.

Unfortunately, that compact was broken; the governments upset the balance by allowing seemingly unlimited migration of people who do not have a tradition of Western liberal democracy values, who want the “goodies” of the west without having to produce anything has disrupted the compact. Somehow the leaders of the EU managed to convince themselves that individuals from societies morally grounded in the fourteen century would provide the technocrats, doctors, engineers, and other skilled professions needed to maintain their standard of living.

Additionally, the umbrella of U.S. protection begain to be pulled back. With a new major economic and military threat growing in Asia, the U.S. began to question, why should the U.S. spend its precious wealth protecting someone else who had no desire to protect themselves?

Finally, while the leaders of the E.U. claim that President Trump is a threat to democracy, it is the Europeans themselves who are passing laws aimed at limiting speech and even thought.
The quiet secret that no one has mentioned for decades suddenly has come into the light; most of Western Europe has been suffering from societal atrophy. Europe has lost their economic edge; they have contributed little to recent technologies, their militaries were often decades behind the times, their industry is moribund, their tax system and bureaucracy stifle those who are innovative and reduce their capital for new ventures.

The attached lightly edited speech by Vice President J.D. Vance points out a number of threats to the E.U., all of them internal and all of them created by the governments of the E.U. The E.U. cannot regain its’ strength by fining American tech companies because Europe does not have the ability to compete, nor can the E.U. claim to stand for the dignity of man when they warn people not to pray in their own homes if they are within a “buffer zone” around an abortion clinic. If a politician can use the law against a citizen because the politicians “dignity” or “feelings” have been hurt, then it is time for those politicians to realize they are there to serve and not to act as if they wear the purple. Crimes by those immigrants who cannot and will not assimilate have been covered up for years and arresting those who expose them only go to undercut the trust between the governed and the governments.

It was said that no one had ever spoken to European leaders like Vice President Vance and that is too bad. Continuing to follow a failed path is the mark of stupidity and we all want to believe that there are still rational, strong leaders in Europe who can reverse the course of failure.

Europe Must Listen to Its People – The American Mind