Alex Troy

Revisiting the Milken Saga

Reviewed: 12-19-23

Witness To A Prosecution revisits, almost forty years later, the investigation, trial, and eventual pardon of financier Michael Milken. The author is a lifelong friend of Milken’s, and has the advantage of participating in many of the events he writes about.
Mr Sandler brings a refreshing perspective to the sprawling and complex investigations and trials that rocked Wall Street in the late 1980’s. He makes a strong case that Milken was the victim of prosecutorial (and regulatory) excess.
In that respect, the book is at variance with the small literature concerning Milken and the related cases that sprung up around the time of these events. Books like James Stewart’s Den of Thieves portrayed Milken without nuance or sympathy. Mr Sandler, by contrast, has boundless admiration for Mike Milken, and from a distance of forty years his sympathetic account has more than a measure of truth.
If you remember the unfolding insider trading scandals that led to the Milken plea deal, or if you’re interested in Wall Street, you will find this book compelling.
The story is occasionally slowed down by the author’s practice of quoting extensively from legal documents, but the drama of this remarkable legal, regulatory, and public relations battle comes through nonetheless.

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The media we no longer have

Reviewed: 12-06-23

William Shirer’s compelling memoir is a gripping story of a young American correspondent making his career covering European affairs and eventually the rise and fall of Nazi Germany.
Shirer is an educated and cultured man who aspires to write fiction, But, his gifts were to find and relate the stories of the hour to his readers and listeners ( he and his friend Ed Murrow were pioneers of broadcast news.)
Shirer is an honorable man, and an ethical one, who struggles to get the truth past Nazi censors.
It is heart breaking to contrast his commitment to reporting the truth with the approach of the journalist class today, most of whom see themselves as social justice warriors and woke advocates. It is common for many today to look back on Mr Shirer’s era with contempt for its racism, sexism and so on. And yet there has been a great and tragic falling off in reporting from Mr Shirer’s time until now. Any honest reader cannot fail to notice that change in the profession of news reporting.
This book is long but never flags. Fortunately, Mr Shirer was able to smuggle his diaries out of Nazi Germany and give them to us as a possession for all time.

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1 person found this helpful

gripping history

Reviewed: 11-12-23

M. Kaufman has written a concise and gripping account of a complex two-front war and of the diplomacy that ended it. He has done the invaluable service of challenging the conventional understanding of the war. I came to the book believing that Israel had suffered a moral, if not martial defeat, that Golda Meir had failed as a war time leader, and that Richard Nixon had proven to be a surprising but steadfast friend of Israel. Mr. Kaufman shows that none of these views is correct. He has given me new appreciation for PM Meir's excellence in guiding the Jewish state-- a woman in "orthopedic shoes" successfully standing up, at various times, against Soviet threats, American pressure, and, of course the combined Egyptian-Syrian onslaught.
Mr. Kaufman's always crisp prose occasionally soars to poetic heights, giving striking images of war's terrible beauty. He also has an admirable sense of humor, and his wit is enhanced by the narrator's excellent timing. Another of Mr. Kaufman's gifts is his ability to relate an anecdote that captures a historical figure in a few strokes.
This book is exceptional, a great work of scholarship that is also a page turner. it is worth your time.
I would add that, at the war's end, both Syria and Egypt were not only beaten but vulnerable to further devastating blows. In the fifty years since the war, neither nation has shown any interest in a sequel. Perhaps there is a lesson here for American policymakers who want to see quiet (peace is too tall an order) in the Middle East, that roughest of neighborhoods.

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Exceptional autobiography, movingly read

Reviewed: 07-19-22

Justice Clarence Thomas’s rise from rural poverty to Supreme Court Justice is both epic journey and a classic American tale in the Horatio Alger mode.
What odds would a sharp-eyed bettor have offered in 1948, Thomas’s birth year, that this newborn from Pin Point Georgia, lacking a father, would one day be appointed to the Supreme Court? A million to one against? Ten million to one?
But young Clarence Thomas and his brother got one very lucky break: they were put in the care of their maternal grandparents, who raised them with love and firmness, and saw to their education. Thomas’s grandfather is vividly evoked, and after Thomas himself, is the most fully realized figure in the story. No one shaped Justice Thomas more than his grandfather. Ironically, after embracing radical politics and rejecting religion in college, Clarence Thomas eventually returns to his self-educated grandfather’s values, patriotism, and faith. In a painfully won epiphany, Thomas sees that the leftist theories and nostrums on offer at Boston College and Yale Law, his alma maters, lead nowhere.
Clarence Thomas doesn’t spare himself in this account. He admits to having had a drinking problem, to marital and financial woes, and to being afraid of standup for his conservative views.
An even harder confession is his admission that he failed to reconcile with his grandfather after a bitter falling out.
The story has many moving moments, and their impact is heightened by hearing them in Thomas’s own voice.
I believe that in time this book will join the pantheon of American stories that starts with Ben Franklin’s autobiography.
God bless Justice Thomas

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Story in search of a protagonist

Reviewed: 07-14-22

Erik Larson us an excellent writer. I enjoyed The Splendid and The Vile. That book set my expectations for this one. The problem is that this book’s ostensible protagonist, William Dodd, can’t carry the story to its conclusion. Dodd was a good and admirable man, far-sighted and self-sacrificing. But he simply isn’t dynamic enough to sustain the reader’s interest. I suspect Mr Larson recognized this and therefore let other characters take on the burden of holding the reader’s interest. William Dodd’s daughter Martha takes her turn as central figure, as do various figures in the Nazi Party and others in the Dodd family orbit.
Martha is quite a personality, an aspiring writer and a completely liberated woman. She manages to admire the Hitler and Stalin regimes, (not at the same time) and even serves the latter as a low level spy. But even she isn’t enough to carry the book, and the author moves on to others, so that it seems as if the story is propelled forward by a relay team, with one figure handing off the baton to another.
Larson writes beautifully, sometimes leaving the world of prose for the poetic stratosphere. Occasionally, his prose sounds overdone, but that’s the cost of striving for lyrical writing
It is no criticism of William Dodd to make the obvious point that he wasn’t the equivalent of a Churchill. Who, after all, was Churchill’s equal?
So this book isn’t as good as The Splendid and the Vile, but it is still quality writing

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Comprehensive with all the drawbacks

Reviewed: 07-29-19

This biography is an admirable work of scholarship, but most will find its voluminous details of De Gaulle‘s life tedious.
The author is confident De Gaulle was a great man. Having listened for 41 hours, I am unpersuaded.
The case for the General is that he ”saved France’s honor,” as Mr. Jackson puts it. A fairer epitaph would be that De Gaulle wove a fig leaf behind which the French could crouch for decades and avoid confronting the truth about WWII and the occupation.
The account of the student uprisings in May 1968 is well done. Those days had the General with packed bags, ready for exile.
Ultimately, De Gaulle’s story has a tragic quality. His vision of France was unsuited to its capabilities. As a result, so much of his maneuvering and posturing has the character of shadow boxing.

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3 people found this helpful

History vindicated Israel, not Hannah Arendt

Reviewed: 05-01-19

Hannah Arendt's analysis of the Eichmann trial has four glaring deficiencies:
1. She blames the Jewish leadership for the Holocaust’s body count. More than once she claims that had local Jewish leadership not cooperated, fewer than six million would have died. True wisdom requires silence on this point. Faced with a genocidal enemy possessing overwhelming force, what alternative did those who served on the Judenraat have? Was there any limit to the sadistic methods the Nazis would employ to coerce Jewish participation in the Shoah? What would constitute the breaking point for anyone, no matter how heroic: seeing one’s children put to death? Seeing everyone’s children put to death? There was, in the end, no bottom to Nazi barbarity and therefore no basis to her criticism.
2. Her language is needlessly provocative and not supported by history. For example, she calls the Eichmann trial a “show trial,” consciously evoking associations with Stalin’s show trials. The analogy is obscene. The use of the term “show trial” is an example of poor judgment.
3. She believes the Israelis should have handed Eichmann over to an international tribunal. Her argument is: since Eichmann’s acts were crimes against humanity, humanity, in the form of an international tribunal, should have judged him. Humanity had many chances to preempt the Holocaust and to stop it once it began. Regarding the former, there were real opportunities to abort the Nazi regime at little cost from 1933-1938. Humanity fumbled them away, and later, with some brave exceptions, either assisted in perpetrating the Holocaust or stood by and did nothing. Why should the Israelis have trusted “humanity” to get it right with Eichmann in 1960, given that track record? When Ms. Arendt talks about letting the UN handle the case, one need only reflect on the General Assembly’s record on Israel and anti-Semitism to see how ridiculous that idea is. Israel’s decision to try Eichmann has been vindicated by history. Ms. Arendt's alternative did not deserve to be taken seriously. Furthermore, the argument that since the Holocaust was a crime against humanity then humanity must try the case lacks coherence. Why can’t Israel stand in for humanity? And the Holocaust was a crime against the Jewish people, who had the blood drenched right to a reckoning.
4. Ms. Arendt misreads Eichmann. She doesn’t seem capable of taking him seriously because he is, in her eyes, a mediocre intellect. So what if he misunderstands Kant and lacks charisma? He was zealously committed to his genocidal task and carried it out with bloody singlemindedness, even as the regime he served was collapsing. She seems so eager to impugn the trial that it causes her to miss the man in the glass booth. Ms. Arendt is a highbrow Inspector Clusoe, oblivious to the monster in front of her nose as she cavils about international law.
Another example of her distorted judgment: there is no mistaking the contempt she feels for Israel’s prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, and Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. They draw the venom one would have expected to have been aimed at the defendant.
The book's highlight and one truly mesmerizing moment is the account of Zyndel Grynzpan's testimony. Zyndel was the father of Herschel Grynzpan, whose murder of a German diplomat served as the Nazi pretext for Kristallnacht. Zyndel's testimony of being thrown out of Germany with his family in one night after having lived there for twenty years is heart breaking Even Ms. Arendt is moved, but not enough to reconsider her condemnation of the trial and of Israel.
In the end, one can acknowledge Ms.. Arendt's intellect while recognizing her judgment in this work is off base. David Ben-Gurion, whom she lambastes, was right and Ms. Arendt wrong. That is the verdict of history.

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The Existential Hero wears six-shooters

Reviewed: 11-23-18

The Shootist is a compelling tale. It takes us inside the mind of JB Books, a gunfighter stricken with cancer. Books is a powerful character, a hard man, a man who realizes too late that he has missed the best that life can offer: family, friendship, and gratitude for nature's blessings. His imminent death forces him to examine his life, and though he lacks a formal education, Books is a reflective man, a man who has wrestled wisdom from a tumultuous and violent existence. Whether through good fortune or the hand of providence, Books becomes the tenant of Bond Rodgers and father figure to her son Gillom. Their brief and fraught relationship gives the gunfighter a taste of family life, widening his spirit. Bond Rodgers' boarding house becomes a kind of afterlife for the not yet deceased Books. It is as though divine justice, acknowledging the complexity of judging Books, gives him his earthly reward before death.
Though Books would scoff at being called an existential hero he is one, deciding to meet death on his own terms. Given his profession, the exit he chooses is not surprising. Nevertheless, the climax is magnificently written and narrated; it is Homeric and, for my money, tops the somewhat disappointing clash between Achilles and Hector. You see, both Achilles and Books have a hard time finding a worthy opponent, but the American is more resourceful at devising one.

There is poetry in this book as well as sharp observations about what it means to face imminent death. This book made me think more about cancer than I care to, and made me fear it.
A minor criticism: the narrator does an exceptional job with Books' voice; the gunfighter's deep, masculine growl comes so easily to J.P. O'Shaughnessy that the voices of a woman and teenage boy are harder for him to do convincingly. But that's a quibble. You can tell when a performer loves and respects the material. Mr. O'Shaughnessy puts his heart into this story.
I highly recommend the Shootist.

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2 people found this helpful

Esther Greenwood, unforgettable hero

Reviewed: 04-23-18

An exquisitely poignant tale. This novel touched me as few others have. The hero, Esther Greenwood, is both bard and hero of her own epic. She tells the tale of her descent into madness, her journey through its dark landscape, and her possible reemergence to the light. When the book ended, I was hopeful for Esther, and also craving more of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s voice. Ms Gyllenhaal’s sensitive performance gave life to the tale’s many voices and especially Esther’s.
The prose is lyrical, the work of a great artist.
Outstanding

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Deserved Classic

Reviewed: 07-19-17

A beautiful translation with countless poetic flourishes. The trip to the underworld and the culminating showdown between Aeneas and Turnus are riveting.
The narrator gives each of the many characters a distinct and appropriate voice.
You will enjoy this ageless masterpiece.

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4 people found this helpful