Mr. Zilahy was the most popular Hungarian writer of his time; wrote three novels tracing the Dukay family, a fictitious Magyar family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire through to the takeover by the Communist after World War II.  This book covers the time after World War I through about 1950.

The novel contain a very interesting in insightful study of the Magyar nobility of the time, from their belief in their superiority over their Romanian subjects, their resentment of their German neighbors and their inability to recognize their soon to be realized inability to adapt to a rapidly changing world.  Proud and haughty, they refused to work with the Austrians (the Magyars and Austrians were the two major power holders of the Dual Crown, Austro-Hungarian Empire aka Habsburg Empire) and would block even military budgets over which color knots their officers could wear on their sabers. The book is also filled with interesting historical facts (the belief that Cleopatra’s true source of power was the amber ring and how this led to the founding of Budapest and a rush by women for amber), etc.

Few novels are well written, but Zilahy was successful in weaving an interesting web of actual history with fictional character development, with many experiences drawn from his personal experiences. You feel that you are cast back into that time; the characters are vivid, the situations interesting and you have a cast if personalities to remember long after you have finished the book.  Well worth a read.

DeGaulle was a major figure for almost two decades in post-World War II Europe.  After being the lone voice for a free France after its collapse in the face of the German invasion, he managed against all odds to create a movement which was often at loggerheads with the very forces (the British and Americans) who paid for, fed, equipped, and supplied his small forces (most of French rescued at Dunkirk had decided to return to France rather than stay in the U.K. and continue the fight).  He was egotistical, dogmatic, tightly controlled, and he shaped Europe more through his inactions than through his actions. 

Orwell was a keen and brutally honest observer of poverty which he experienced firsthand during the early 1930’s.  His descriptions of poverty and the struggle to survive in two of the most famous and richest cities of the world read more like something from the Middle Ages as individuals scurry from place to place hoping to find a meal, a crust of bread or a place of shelter.  In fact, one is tempted to keep looking at the copyright date to make sure it is not a work of historical fiction set in some dark, dismal land and time.

This classic of political writing features essays by some of the brilliant intellectual minds from the 1930s through the mid-1950s.  The studies include those of Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender.  All had joined (some for only a few days) their local Communist parties and all had rejected it for a variety of reasons.  Each sought to find a solution to the problems they faced, such as the fall of Capitalism (often predicted, none accurately yet), artistic freedom, someone to stand against Fascism, the end of racism, etc.  Each found that while the theory was supposedly “scientific”, the practical application of the theory in fact worked against the solutions they sought and were run by humans with the same emotions, fears, etc. that have always existed

Published in the United States in 1943, this interesting novel the decline of the French intellectual class prior to the outbreak of World War II.  Not all of the characters are French, for we also find a Soviet Ambassador, paranoid and corrupt, an elderly Russian Revolutionary who is only a seeking a quiet exit from a life and efforts that he has come to doubt and a young Soviet secretary who loves to buy Paris clothing but keeps trying to convince herself that life in the Soviet Union of 1938 is better and happier than Paris.

If you like history, you probably feel comfortable in a discussion about most Western European states including their history.  But how much do you really know about the real foundations upon which the modern states were built?  Norman Davies has put together a book which is exhaustive in detail about those communities, smaller states and some greater states which are bypassed in most history courses.  What role did the Kingdom of the Rock play in the formation of Scotland?  Did you know that Prussia was once a fiefdom of Poland (a fact which most German history tends to miss)?  How about the long history of Burgundia which covered over thirteen hundred years and yet is seldom taught? Of course, you do not want to miss the history of Litva which was a Grand Duchy with Kings.

Although Valentin Berezhkov was not Stalin’s primary interpreter, he did attend many important meetings with Stalin during the Second World War, including Yalta and in Moscow.  With a natural flair for languages, Berezhkov found that he was chosen for important work by Molotov and was suddenly thrust into the middle of history making events.  His memoirs are interesting as they reflect the mind set of suspicion, fear and ambition at the very highest levels of Soviet government. The leaders of the State were constantly looking over their shoulders and testing the ground beneath their feet as their leader, Stalin, the consummate politician watched them for any inking of disloyalty or lack of duty.

From the early 1960s through 1973, the U.S. was engaged in a secret way in Laos.  While President Kennedy and Khrushchev signed accords in Geneva to ensure the neutrality of Laos, the accords were immediately violated by the North Vietnamese.  The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran the length of Laos and was key to supplying their forces in South Vietnam and Cambodia.  The government of Laos requested help and the result was a group of air force flyers who volunteered for a secret and dangerous mission.  Their goal was to help the Hmong tribesmen (aka Meo which was a Chinese term meaning barbarian) in their fight against the NVA.  The Hmong army led by General Vang Pao was outnumbered, out gunned and poorly supplied.  It suffered huge casualties, and, in the end, the army consisted of boys as young as thirteen who carried M-16s almost as long as they were tall.

The belief that certain people(s) are inherently superior to others and that “lesser” peoples need to be controlled did not begin with the Nazis.  Margaret Sanger, Woodrow Wilson and other Americans joined together with others in Europe decades before the Nazis to argue that birth control would help to control the “lesser” peoples, that blacks could not learn mechanical skills and that somehow the “superior” white race which had created Western Civilization needed to control the animalistic reproductive urges of the “lesser” peoples before they swamped the civilized world.

There are a few novels that I will read more than once, for the simple reason that most novels are poorly written or predictable. I have just re-read this novel for the third time, the first time was in 1977, the last in 2007. I have found that each reading is a treat as the story and characters are realistic. This is a story about a man, Sam Damon, the product of small-town America. We follow his journey as he joins the U.S. Army during World War I and makes a career with all of it’s mind numbing stupidities, undying loyalty and honor and knowledge that the real reward is in his sense of his own identity and purpose.  Although a novel, it was written during the height of the Viet Nam war and is required reading by Marine officers and occasionally used in leadership courses at West Point.