Possible Books for June 2015 -- Books of Local Interest

Books on History of the District of Colombia

You might be interested in "The 50 ‘essential’ Washington history books" by Mike DeBonis in The Washington Post of 08/19/2011.

You might also be interested in the PBS special on Benjamin Latrobe which is available as a DVD.

Grand Avenues: The Story of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. by Scott W. Berg. 4.2 stars, 352 pages. Book talk by Scott Berg. Here is a review of the book in The Washington Post. In 1791, shortly after the United States won its independence, George Washington personally asked Pierre Charles L’Enfant—a young French artisan turned American revolutionary soldier who gained many friends among the Founding Fathers—to design the new nation's capital. L’Enfant approached this task with unparalleled vigor and passion; however, his imperious and unyielding nature also made him many powerful enemies. After eleven months, Washington reluctantly dismissed L’Enfant from the project. Subsequently, the plan for the city was published under another name, and L’Enfant died long before it was rightfully attributed to him. Filled with incredible characters and passionate human drama, Scott W. Berg’s deft narrative account of this little-explored story in American history is a tribute to the genius of Pierre Charles L'Enfant and the enduring city that is his legacy.

Empire of Mud: The Secret History of Washington, DC by J.D. Dickey  4.6 stars, 320 pages. Book talk by J.D. Dickey. Review in The Washington Post. Washington, DC, gleams with stately columns and neoclassical temples, a pulsing hub of political power and prowess. But for decades it was one of the worst excuses for a capital city the world had ever seen. Before America became a world power in the twentieth century, Washington City was an eyesore at best and a disgrace at worst. Unfilled swamps, filthy canals, and rutted horse trails littered its landscape. Political bosses hired hooligans and thugs to conduct the nation's affairs. Legendary madams entertained clients from all stations of society and politicians of every party. The police served and protected with the aid of bribes and protection money. The city’s turbulent history set a precedent for the dishonesty, corruption, and mismanagement that have led generations to look suspiciously on the various sin--both real and imagined--of Washington politicians. Empire of Mud unearths and untangles the roots of our capital’s story and explores how the city was tainted from the outset, nearly stifled from becoming the proud citadel of the republic that George Washington and Pierre L'Enfant envisioned more than two centuries ago.

Books on Montgomery County History

Montgomery County (MD) (Images of America) by Michael Dwyer. 4.0 stars, 128 pages. Nicknamed the "Gateway to the Nation's Capital," Montgomery County is home to a number of federal agencies and a highly educated and affluent population that has grown increasingly diverse in recent years. Established in 1776, Montgomery County now consists of urban centers like Bethesda and Silver Spring; suburban neighborhoods like Wheaton, Germantown, and Potomac; and scenic rolling farmland interspersed with historic villages, like Brookeville and Barnesville. An additional 50,000 acres of federal, state, and county parkland provide numerous recreational opportunities for its residents.

A Grateful Remembrance: The Story of Montgomery County, Maryland 1776-1976 by Ray Eldon MacMaster and Richard K.; Hiebert. unrated, 422 pages. Out of print, but lots of copies available online.

Montgomery County (Then & Now) by Mark Walston, Only one rating, 128 pages. Ranked among the 50 most populous counties in the nation and in the top 10 of the wealthiest, it boasts the most educated workforce in the United States. Through the juxtaposition of old and new photographs, noted author and historian Mark Walston chronicles the progression of county life in all its variety, offering historical insights into how modern Montgomery came to be.

Biographies 

My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. 432 pages (300 of the original text itself) 4.6 stars. The book is available in a free online version from Project Gutenberg. Here is a brief text and videos on Douglass from the History Channel TV network. Ex-slave Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland and lived in Washington for many years; his estate at Cedar Hill is now a National Historic Site. This book is his second autobiography-written after ten years of reflection following his legal emancipation in 1846 and his break with his mentor William Lloyd Garrison/ It catapulted Douglass into the international spotlight as the foremost spokesman for American blacks, both freed and slave. Written during his celebrated career as a speaker and newspaper editor, My Bondage and My Freedom reveals the author of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) grown more mature, forceful, analytical, and complex with a deepened commitment to the fight for equal rights and liberties. 

Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth by Terry Alford. 464 pages (340 pages of text), 4.3 stars Only hardcover $21.74. Here is Terry Alford discussing the book on C-SPAN's Book TV. Here is the Kirkus Review of the book. In Fortune's Fool, Terry Alford provides the first comprehensive look at the life of an enigmatic figure whose life has been overshadowed by his final, infamous act. Tracing Booth's story from his uncertain childhood in Maryland, characterized by a difficult relationship with his famous actor father, to his successful acting career on stages across the country, Alford offers a nuanced picture of Booth as a public figure, performer, and deeply troubled man.

Life of Josiah Henson: Formerly a Slave by Josia Henson. 4.7 stars, 100 pages. Also available free online as a digital book. There are some reviews on Goodreads. The character Uncle Tom, fr om Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling novel, ""Uncle Tom's Cabin,"" is based on the life of Josiah Henson (1789-1882). Born in Maryland, Henson escaped and fled to Dresden, Ontario, Canada in 1830. In 1841, a group of abolitionists, including Henson, created a community/school for runaway slaves called the British-American Institute for Fugitive Slaves. On the 200 acre parcel, Henson and his friends built a grist mill and a saw mill. After emancipation, many of the former slaves returned to the United States , though Henson remained in Canada until his death in 1882.

Alone by Richard Bird. 296 pages, 4.4 stars. It is no longer in print, but widely available used online. Both Amazon and Goodreads have reader reviews of the book. This is the 1938 edition of Admiral Bird's account of his Antarctic Expedition. When Admiral Richard E. Byrd set out on his second Antarctic expedition in 1934, he was already an international hero for having piloted the first flights over the North and South Poles. His plan for this latest adventure was to spend six months alone near the bottom of the world, gathering weather data and indulging his desire “to taste peace and quiet long enough to know how good they really are.” But early on things went terribly wrong. Isolated in the pervasive polar night with no hope of release until spring, Byrd began suffering inexplicable symptoms of mental and physical illness. By the time he discovered that carbon monoxide from a defective stovepipe was poisoning him, Byrd was already engaged in a monumental struggle to save his life and preserve his sanity. Bird was a distinguished member of Virginia's Bird family. 

The Sword & the Pen: A Life of Lew Wallace by Ray E. Boomhower. 5 stars (but only 2 reviewers), 161 pages. From fighting for the cause of freedom during the Civil War to writing of one of the best-selling books of all time, Lew Wallace of Indiana enjoyed a remarkable career that touched the lives of such famous figures in American history as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Mark Twain, James Garfield, James Whitcomb Riley, and Billy the Kid. Included here mostly because he led the Union Troops in the Battle of Monocacy.

Sickles the Incredible - A Biography of General Daniel Edgar Sickles By W. A. Swanberg. 4.7 stars, 433 pages. The book is out of print but lots of copies available online. Reader reviews are available on Amazon and Goodreads. Sickles was involved in a number of public scandals, most notably the killing of his wife's lover, Philip Barton Key II, son of Francis Scott Key. He was acquitted with the first use of temporary insanity as a legal defense in U.S. history. He was one of the Civil War's most prominent political generals, serving in the Army of the Potomac. His military career ended at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, after he insubordinately moved his III Corps to a position where it was virtually destroyed. And those are only a few of the aspects of his life.

Roger B. Taney by Carl Brent Swisher. Unrated (published in 1935, out of print but some copies available online.) 608 pages.
or
Life of Roger Brooke Taney : chief justice of the United States Supreme Court by Bernard Christian Steiner. (published in 1922, scarce on paper) Available free online here. There is a useful reader review of the book on Goodreads.
Taney, a Marylander, is most remembered as the author of the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, of which he was Chief Justice from 1836 to 1864. He also served as Secretary or War and U.S. Attorney General but was the first man to be rejected for confirmation by the Senate when nominated Secretary of the Treasury. He was a central figure in President Jackson's successful effort to close the Bank of the United States. After Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in parts of Maryland, Taney ruled as Circuit Judge in Ex parte Merryman (1861) that only Congress had the power to take this action.

Not our usual kind of thing, but since F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried in Rockville:

The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 4.2 stars, 352 pages. A self-portrait of a great writer 's rise and fall, intensely personal and etched with Fitzgerald's signature blend of romance and realism.
or
Beloved Infidel by Sheilah Graham. 4 stars, 338 pages. Autobiography, love story, and literary history, this classic memoir is "the very best portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald that has yet been put into print". So wrote critic Edmund Wilson about this international best seller in 1959. 

Not quite local interest, but here is one more book to consider:

Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove (Pulitzer Prize winner) 3.6 stars, 464 pages (365 pages of text). Here is a video of Prof. Rakove's discussion of his book from C-SPAN. Here is the H-Net review of the book. From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so, traces its complex weave of ideology and interest, showing how this document has meant different things at different times to different groups of Americans.

Islam Under the Great Caliphs

A dozen members of the History Book Club met on March 11, 2015 to discuss The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the Abbasid Empire by Amira K. Bennison. It was a balmy evening -- a welcome change after what seemed a long winter. We were hosted again by the Kensington Row Bookshop; the owner was a gracious host as usual.

The date was the anniversary of the first creation of the Army Corps of Engineers in 1794 by the Continental Congress. The anniversary of the first knowledge based enterprise of what would become the United States of America was a fortuitous time to consider the empire that created libraries of works from Greece, Rome and Persia, added to that knowledge base, and passed the heritage of knowledge on to others.

Here is a review of the book, and here author Bennison talks in a video on the cities of the Abbasid empire.

The discussion opened with a member commenting that Bennison's book described an empire founded by Arab Muslims who exploded out of the Arabian peninsula to rule a huge area. The Caliphates from the 7th to the 13th century ruled a huge area, ranging from the Atlantic coasts of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, into Sub-Saharan Africa, across the Middle East to India, and even down the coast of East Africa. The Caliphates spread Islam where they ruled and they revived trade. In a time when Europe was experiencing the Dark Ages, the Abbasid Empire was translating books from the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, and thus from earlier Greek, Roman, Persian and even Indian sources. These books were copied and distributed, and eventually translated back into Latin and other European languages igniting the Renaissance. We seldom hear about the greatness of Islamic culture at the time, and this book seemed to the member to be a welcome reminder of the accomplishments of the early Muslims/

Another member read an email that had been sent by one who could not attend, as follows:

Although I thought the book had too many names, I thought her coverage of that period of Islam was very interesting. The contributions to western culture were interesting, although not that new. Also, I found the coverage important of the theories of creative and uncreative as intellectual threads in Islam. The importance of different haddit and their role in their culture is also not discussed that much in talking about Islam, just like Talmud and different approaches to it in Judaism is not understood very well. For Moslems it is not just the Koran and for Jews not just the Old Testament. It is not just law in both, but literature, etc. 

She (author Bennison) does tread lightly on any persecution of Jews and Christians in the period she covers. Also, the present day nostalgia for this period of power is not addressed and is part of the issues today. An interesting book but not written in a compelling style; sorry to miss the meeting.

Source

A member chimed in that he had disliked the book as he read the first two of its six chapters, but having read the entire book came to regard it as one of the best books he had ever read. His enthusiasm was due to the breadth of knowledge commanded by its author and shared in this brief book.

Still another member harshly criticized the book. First she found the writing lacking in clarity and elegance, citing examples of torturous sentences and difficult to follow excerpts. Another noted that in this respect the book share a fault found in the writing of many modern professional historians. The book was also criticized for use of many terms drawn from Arabic and unfamiliar to our general audience -- perhaps defined on first appearance, but often unrecognized on a later appearance many pages later. It was suggested that a glossary would have helped.

The Knowledge Survey

An important chapter in the book focused on the translation movement in the Abbasid empire. In this chapter, author Bennison would frequently mention a classical author or an author writing in the period of the Caliphates, and then identify one or more of that author's works. Such references would perhaps be adequate for someone already well acquainted with the authors in question and with their works. However, at least some members of the club found that chapter to be convey little serious knowledge. Yes we learned, that many translations had been done and many books written, including books with new knowledge, but had only the foggiest idea of what was in those books.

The chapter did make the point forcefully that knowledge systems were far more active in the Caliphates than in western Europe at the same time. On the other hand, a member pointed out that the number of writers and scientists a thousand years ago was tiny when compared to the numbers today.

A member mentioned The Book of Roger, described briefly by Bennison. None of the other members was familiar with that title. However, this was a great and famous book by al-Idrisi, a geographer and cartographer -- an Arab who lived in the 12th century. "Roger" was King Roger II of Sicily for whom al-Idrisi created the book. Al-Idrisi is today known as one of the founders of the science of geography.

The Tabula Rogeriana, drawn by al-Idrisi for Roger II of Sicily in 1154

In a similar vein, a member asked who was familiar with al-Farabi, resulting in blank stares. Al-Farabi is salso mentioned in Bennison's book. He was a renowned philosopher who wrote on political philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and logic, as well as a scientist, cosmologist, and a music scholar. Our member had visited the most important university in Kazakhstan -- Almaty's al-Farabi Kazakh National University. (The point being that important thinkers, well known in Islamic countries, are not known in the west, and that Bennison's treatment of this philosopher/scientist did not clarify for us the importance of such an outstanding figure in other parts of the world.)

We noted that early in the Caliphate period, many of the key positions in government were by necessity occupied by Christians and Zoroastrians who had learned the duties of their positions under the previous regimes. It was questioned whether these folk would need translated versions of the books describing their duties. One response was that they might want copies of the books for their own reference (and to share information with others who did not read the languages of the originals). Later in the Caliphate, when there were more Arabic speakers available for government positions, the translations might have been even more necessary; Bennison also mentions that by that later time, non-Arabss had to be fluent in Arabic to get good jobs in government.

We spent some time talking about the efforts in Spain to translate books from the Caliphate libraries into languages that could be understood in Europe, notably Latin and the Spanish dialects. The club some time ago had read The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal. That book had given a description of how Christians, Jews and Muslims living together in Toledo after it had been reconquered by Christians contributed substantially to that work.

Another criticism was made that the book's focus tended to exclude practical technologies. For example, those involved in the long distance trade must have wanted maps and written documents to which they could refer. Thinking of documents from the Egyptian Genizah (which were a treasure trove of texts from the time of the Caliphates) we noted that even if ships captains sailing the Indian ocean did not need great maps and charts, they did use books with information on the exports available and the imports desired at the ports along their routes.

As another example, we noted that there was an extensive water related technology, from canals to qanats. So too, we know that there was water lifting technology used by the ancient Egyptians (see figure on right) which is still in use, and the Archimedes screw was also available technology from ancient times That is still used today. How were these technologies modified and spread? The book is silent on such topics, perhaps because these were not the topics of the educated men of the time, nor of the school of history to which Amira Bennison belongs.

The Religion

A member asked what did "sunna" mean, a term used in the book occasionally but not redefined each time used. That led to a discussion of the felt need by the early Muslims to supplement the Koran by knowledge of the sayings of Mohammed and the practices of Mohammed and the community of believers he gathered around him (the Hadith and the Sunnah) . Thus there was an effort to record such material in the early days of Islam from people with direct knowledge, or from people to whom it had been conveyed by those who heard it from those who were in contact with Mohammed. Eventually there came to be an effort to define canonical versions of these materials, discarding those which were not trusted. This effort seemed to us similar in some ways to the efforts of the early Jews to define canonical texts of their religion and to those of the early Christians to define a canonical New Testament. (The Book of Peter was mentioned as a purported gospel what was rejected.)

Of course, the content of the Koran was completed by Mohammed, and a member pointed out that extreme care was taken in assuring correctness of copies of the Koran, even when it was copied by hand before the development of the printing press. Faulty copies of the book were (and apparently still are) buried in a respectful manner. It was noted that early manuscripts of the old and new Testaments of the bible have been found with errors crossed out; experts studying these corrections have been better able to understand the biblical texts.

A member questioned "just what is the difference between Sunni and Shiite Islam, and among the various sects within those major branches of Islam. We could not answer that question; indeed, one member noted that he could not answer that question for Christian religion, It was suggested that a standard reference be sought, such as this on Wikipedia.

The Aga Khan, is seen by some 15 million Nizari Ismailis as their imam. He is believed by his followers to be the most recent in a continuous line of religious leaders from Mohammed, via Mohammed's son-in-law (married to Fatima) and nephew. A member noted that one of his friends had gone from working in USAID to working in the Aga Khan Foundation, which deals primarily with members of the Ismaili faith. The member reflected on his friend's comment that it was easier to get things done when he had the authority of the imam believed to be in direct line from Mohammed behind him, than when he worked for USAID.

Prejudice Against Non-Muslims

Under the Caliphates, Muslims were especially favored. However, Jews and Christians as "people of the book" were usually accorded privileges not accorded to animist or followers of other faiths. Christians and Jews were required to make a payment to the state, for which they of course benefited from the protection of the state. (Author Bennison states, however, that this payment was comparable to that required of Muslims, who are required by their faith to make charitable donations, but not required under the Caliphates of other people of the book.)

Slavery was institutionalized under the Caliphates, but Islam forbids making Muslims slaves. Thus under the Caliphates, slaves were obtained from the Christian west, or from the non-Muslim north. It was pointed out that there was also a slave trade with Africa. Some years ago the club chose to read The Sultan's Shadow: One Family's Rule at the Crossroads of East and West by Christiane Bird, which describes the Arab slave trade in East Africa, albeit much after the end of the Caliphates. (This book was so admired, that it was chosen by the club a second time.) Slaves were encouraged to convert to Islam, and many did so over time.

The period discussed in the book (from the middle of the 7th century to the middle of the 13th century) was one of tribalism and continuing warfare between tribes. While Mohammed led in the reduction of tribal warfare in the Arabian peninsula and Islam eventually allowed trade to take place by land and by sea over a huge, pacified area, there were incursions by Turkish and Mongol peoples (who eventually converted to Islam). We noted that at this time, Western Europe also saw prejudice and conflict, noting the Normans, Goths, Vandals and other warlike peoples who exemplified prejudice against other peoples.

The Islamic State (IS)

Not surprisingly, the Islamic State came up for discussion in out conversation. One member had circulated a recent report by Cole Bunzel published by the Brookings Institution, and another mentioned a recent article in The Atlantic magazine. Still a third member mentioned a recent edition of a serious magazine published by the believers in the Islamic State; she had previously circulated a link to the edition to club members.

Islamic State Territories

Source: "What ISIS Really Wants", Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, March 2015

While both emphasize jihad and seek to reestablish "a Caliphate", IS is distinguished from Al Qaeda in that it aspires to be a state, holding land and governing while Al Qaeda is a movement seeking to influence policy through international terrorism with members in many countries . Obviously, of the two, the IS is now the more in the news and now the more visibly successful. The IS is described as based on theological arguments promulgated by its founders. The IS jihad targets both apostates to Islam (as it describes them) and unbelievers; it emphasizes jihad against Shiites. While we did not discuss the history of the IS in any detail, it is important to recognize its claim in 2014 that it was the Caliphate.

Why do people volunteer to fight for (and against) the Islamic State. One member, with long experience as a high school guidance counselor mentioned that many young men he counselled told him of their intent to become soldiers; some people really want to become warriors. Other members added that while there are American soldiers who have volunteered to serve seven or more tours of duty in Afghanistan/Iraq, many others serve one tour, go home and then never go into active combat again. American Sniper, the movie, was mentioned as exemplifying a type of American soldier focused on the technical aspects of combat (perhaps not dissimilar to some of the volunteers for the IS); in response it was pointed out that Chris Kyle, the man portrayed in the film, had volunteered to be a Navy seal and a sniper, and had completed very difficult and very effective training for the function he would fulfill. He must be seen as an exception rather than a typical soldier.

A member mentioned that technology is now available at very low cost to produce quality videos and digital documents and that it is easy and cheap to distribute them online. Not only does the IS do so, but so too does the Donetzk People's Republic. We should not infer from such publications that the publishers are large, strong, well financed organizations. Thus the Islamic State may be less than it appears. A member noted that March 9th and 10th, 2015 were the 70th anniversary of the firebombing of Tokyo by the U.S. air force in World War II; more than 100,000 people were killed, more indeed than by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The horror of those events put the atrocities of the IS, of which they distribute videos, into perspective.

We diverged into a discussion of the fear that has been generated in the American public by media coverage of admittedly horrible events of violent terrorism, but events that are in the greater scheme of things of no great importance. As a result, the United States sometimes does not focus on more serious problems, such as automobile accidents and gun related deaths, focusing efforts and treasure instead on less dangerous and less pressing problems (e.g. shoe bombers and underwear bombers).

Violent Religions Extremists vs. Muslim Terrorists

One member moved the direction of the discussion by complaining that she did not understand why the members of the IS were seldom described as Muslim terrorists since they clearly were Muslims. There has been a recent effort to focus discussion more on "violent extremists", albeit that many of them profess religious motivation. On the one hand, the vast majority of Muslims clearly are not violent extremists; on the other hand, the relatively recent Rwandan genocide and Srebrenica genocide were committed by violent extremists who were not Muslims. We seemed to agree that violent extremism comes in many forms, and that all forms of violent extremism should be opposed.

We noted that there are many evangelical religions, and extremists professing quite a few of these religions are willing to be violent. Our member recalled as a child being emotionally quite upset by the idea of friends and relatives who she then believed must go to hell since they either refused to join her church (or if members to go to services); another member comments, "but then you grew up". It was noted that Pope Francis (like the leaders of many churches) has emphasized the need for people of different religions to live together in peace.

One member, citing many years working with Muslims in several countries with majority Muslim populations and who had American Muslim friends said that he found the entire discussion of Muslim terrorists at odds with his own experience. He people with whom he had worked tended to be secular in outlook, and were much more interested in promoting peace than in encouraging conflict.

Final Comments

This was quite a lively discussion, one that seemed to involve most of the club members who were present. While there were complaints about the book, it seemed that there was agreement that the author was well informed and that the topic was worthy of our attention. Americans probably should reflect more about that "golden age of Islam" and the dept that we owe however indirectly the contributions made to world heritage under the Abbasid, Umayyad and Fatimad Caliphates.

One of the members has posted comments on the book on his blog:

• The Early Islamic Empire
• The Great Caliphates -- The time of Huge Islamic Empire and Muslim Leadership of World Knowledge

There were several recommendations and announcements of events at the meeting, including:

• The Kensington Day of the Book Festival, Sunday, April 26 11-4pm 
• A book talk by Mary Louise Kelly on her novel, The Bullet, at Politics and Prose, March 22, 5 pm Kelly is the niece of a long-time, active History Book Club member; a couple of members who read Ms. Kelly's earlier novel recommended it highly/
• Chris Hyland will give a talk on the railroad and trolley history of Kensington on April 28th at the Kensington City Hall. His model railroad will also be on display. Time 7.00-9.00PM; Refreshments at 7.00 Talk begins at 7.30
• A member recommended the film Of Gods and Men, an award winning French film dealing with a Cistercian Monastery in Algeria in the early 1990s.

Virus Hunter: A Biography from American Medical History

On Wednesday evening, about 10 members of the History Book Club met at the Kensington Row Bookshop to discuss Virus Hunter: Thirty Years of Battling Hot Viruses Around the World by C. J. Peters and Mark Olshaker. Dr. Peters is the virus hunter of the title and Mark Olshanker is a professional writer.

The interest of the club was triggered by the Ebola epidemic in West Africa; Dr. Peters is a world expert on that disease, and was the man in charge of the effort to contain an Ebola epidemic in monkeys that occurred in Reston, Virginia in 1989.

We owe special thanks to Eli and Al, the owners of the bookshop. The shop was closed this week, but opened Wednesday evening especially so that the book clubs could meet as regularly scheduled.

The meeting began with an unusually long discussion of possible future books to be read and discussed. These are all described with links to obtain more detailed information on the club's blog. There was special interest in two topics:

• California history, since we had not read about that state in the past and its history is quite different than that of other regions of the USA. We were especially interested in Father Junipero Serra, a founding father of the state who is to be formally declared a saint during the visit to the United States by Pope Francis in September. (This will be the first such ceremony ever conducted in the United States, and is likely to be a topic of conversation and debate.)
• The history of the United States as a sea power in the 19th century. It has been suggested that the oceans were an important frontier for Americans before the opening of western lands. Again, this is a topic that the club has not explored in the past, but is one quite important to the nation's commercial, military and scientific history.

Bolivian Hemorrhagic Fever

A member who had been a health planner began this portion of the discussion when he described having been asked to identify a consultant to the USAID mission in Bolivia many years ago. The consultant was to lead an assessment of that country's health sector. The purpose of the assessment was to form the basis for a consideration of a possible health sector development loan. Our member was asked to find a U.S. citizen who was a medical doctor, with a post doctoral public health degree, strong writing and public speaking skills in English, fluent Spanish, who had worked in Bolivia, and who if possible spoke either Aymara or Quechua. After a week of work three qualified candidates were identified. There was an aside at this point on the huge personnel resources of this country, where such requirements can be routinely fulfilled. Dr. Robert Lebow was selected for the job. 

What makes that anecdote relevant is that Dr. Lebow also appears importantly in our book. Dr. Lebow had been a Peace Corps physician assigned to Bolivia, and he learned of several cases of hemorrhagic fever that had occurred in Cochabama. Viral hemorrhagic fevers had been of interest to the international health community since they had been discovered in Korea during the Korean War, where they had been a threat to American troops. An Argentinian Hemorrhagic Fever had attracted further notice, especially because it proved highly contagious and highly lethal; one team sent to investigate an outbreak had had every member infected and killed by the disease. Lebow recognized that the outbreak in the middle altitude of Bolivia was unlikely to have come from the same rodent reservoir as that in lowland Argentina. He called for help from the NIH Middle America Research Unit (MARU) in Panama; MARU sent Dr. C. J. Peters to do an epidemiological investigation of the outbreak.

Dr. Peters had exceptional training. An outstanding record as an undergraduate led to medical school at Johns Hopkins University (one of the best in the world), After internship he did a residency in immunology, and then worked as an NIH virologist at the MARU under one of the world's experts for some five years. If you think about it, this was about a decade and a half of higher education and specialized training preparing him for the work he was to do during the rest of a long career.

A Bolivian physician friend of Bob LeBow's had agreed to do an autopsy on one of the victims of the outbreak. Tragically, an accident had occurred during the autopsy, and the man was infected and came down with the disease.

At that point in the discussion, our health planner intervened to describe a visit to a hospital in Cochabama that he had made with an official of the Bolivian Ministry of Health. Several anecdotes served to make it clear to other club members that such a hospital could not adequately care for the man suffering from hemorrhagic fever, nor indeed could it protect its own staff from being infected were they to provide such care.

Lebow and Peters agreed that they would care for the man themselves. That meant rotating 12 hour shifts, each working alone under conditions of considerable personal risk. They did so until the patient died. These two men were physicians who cared deeply for their patients, not just public health officers or scientists, and they had put their own lives at risk. We club members considered them to be heroes.

One of the club members who had read this section of the book late in the evening while in bed reported that she had been so disturbed by the described events that she had needed to put the book down, get up, and watch television for an hour to regain her composure.

Virus Hunters

We discussed the small cadre of highly trained and skilled men who go to the ends of the earth, to the most dangerous of places dealing with the most dangerous diseases to find new threats to mankind and to learn how to deal with them. C. J. Peters is prototypical, but there are others.

A member briefly described the work of Dr, Robert Shope, a Virologist who was on the faculty at Yale for decades and eventually went to a university in Texas. "He helped discover hundreds of viruses, conducting investigations in Malaysia as an Army medical officer and in Brazil for the Rockefeller Foundation. At Yale, he led or participated in investigations of Rift Valley fever, Lassa fever, Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever and other diseases......Dr. Shope also built the World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses, a collection of some 5,000 samples."

A reference center is an important tool, helping virologists identify the viruses that they isolate from human patients or animals. Such collections also help illuminate the genetic relationships among viruses. Discovering that a new virus is genetically related to known viruses can suggest how contagious it may be, how it is transmitted, how lethal it may be, and even how to deal with it.

Dr. Shope was also one of the editors of a major report issued by the National Academies of Science, Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States (1992). The Spanish Flu that was associated with World War I was such an emergent disease; it killed 50 million to 100 million people world wide. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is from another emergent virus, and its slow-motion epidemic appears comparably lethal to mankind.

One of the points made in our group is that viruses mutate, and the strains of a virus newly arrived in humans may evolve quickly; it is possible for emergent diseases to become more contagious, more deadly, or both. Such mutation has been one of the threats of the Ebola virus. It is an RNA virus, likely to mutate more often than DNA viruses. The more people that are infected, the more opportunities for the evolution of more dangerous strains of the virus. The current epidemic which for the first time infected more than a handful of people, thus threatened to be the site for evolution of an even worse Ebola disease agent that the current strain.

The point of Emerging Infections was that a global epidemiological surveillance system that was capable of quickly detecting an emerging infection and limiting its spread is of direct value to the United States as well as to all other countries. Some advances have been made in achieving such a system (SARS was mentioned), but it has not yet come near to perfection.

Virus hunters like Drs. Peters and Shope are the first line of defense against emerging viral diseases. There are not many of them, but we were surprised that there were any at all. They are very highly trained, they risk their lives in their work, they travel to the ends of the earth often living in the roughest circumstances, they work in evil locations such as bat caves and infectious disease wards, they must sometimes wear uncomfortable protective gear, and they are paid only modest government salaries. A member who had been a school counselor told us that he had regularly been surprised by students choosing careers that to the outsider seemed most unattractive.

The Reston Ebola Outbreak

Reston Virus

Ebola broke out in 1989 in a facility being used to quarantine monkeys in Reston Virginai. It was caused by a filovirus similar to the species of Ebola that cause human disease, but apparently several humans who handled monkeys were infected but did not become sick. It was not the same Ebola species that has ravaged African nations. Initially it was thought to be more dangerous to humans than it eventually proved to be and there was great anxiety among those dealing with the disease.

We were struck by the good fortune that the outbreak occurred near Ft. Detrick in Maryland. Dr. Peters was assigned there, and the Army's research facility there had one of the only staffs in the nation capable of dealing with an Ebola virus outbreak. It also had unique physical facilities needed to deal with the outbreak.

One member of our team noted that accidents seem to happen more frequently than one might expect among people handling such dangerous disease agents. A member recalled a (long ago) job as a bartender, noting that cuts were common in that job, even though everyone knew that handling broken glass was a common hazard of the work. Another member, one who had once worked in a military blood bank, added that he too had found accidents there more common than one would expect.

The situation in research involving disease agents is getting safer. Today there are four levels of research laboratories defined, and the U.S. does not fund research unless it is to be conducted in a lab with a sufficient safety rating to assure the security of the research.

In 1989 there was only one level 4 lab in the country, but fortunately it was in Ft. Detrick. That is the level designed to deal with highly contagious, potentially lethal disease agents for which there are no known treatments. That is what is still appropriate for handling the Ebola virus.

We discussed the fact that the thicket of regulations designed to protect the public from health risks also creates barriers to the conduct of the biomedical research that might really protect the public. Virus Hunter is especially good at explaining how this phenomenon worked in the Reston Ebola outbreak. There were different regulations in Virginia and Maryland. There were different federal regulations for use of non-human primates in medical research and for quarantine of imported animals. The federal Center for Disease Control had to be involved as there was a national threat to public health. The Department of Defense had its own regulations. Dr. Peters and his collaborators had to deal with them all and with the officers each employed to enforce its specific regulations.

Some members of our club found it shocking that the ultimate control of the outbreak was achieved by killing all of the hundreds of monkeys in the facility -- healthy as well as sick. This was a terrible job! Monkeys are smart and quickly realized that they were in danger; they are tough and fought for their lives. Many of the cages in the facility (which was a quarantine facility, not a research facility) did not allow immobilization of the monkeys. The people were working in protective suits that were hot, uncomfortable, and limited their mobility. The workers feared that if bitten they might come down with a potential fatal disease. Even disposal of the bodies created problems -- were they potential sources of lethal human infection?

That led us into a discussion of the complexity of rules for the ethical treatment of animals involved in research. For example, there are different rules for treatment of laboratory animals than for livestock, and still different rules for wild animals. The rules for treatment of non-human primates recognize that they are intelligent and much like humans.

That part of the discussion was ended with an unanswerable comment: We thought of a researcher carefully assuring that the cows involved in his research (research funded by the Department of Agriculture, with protocols approved by his university) are treated humanely. Would he then go out and enjoying a steak dinner?

Where Are They Now?

Dr. Robert Lebow continued for many years to consult in the field of international health, but his main interest became a community health service he created in Idaho. He built it into "a $9.3 million a year operation, treating more than 18,000 patients in 10 locations.....(I)n 1998 and 1999 he was (also) president of Physicians for a National Health Program." He published a book, Health Care Meltdown: Confronting the Myths and Fixing our Ailing System. Tragically, he was disabled by an accident riding his bicycle to work in 2003, and died that same year.

Dr. Robert Shope suffered a major pulmonary disease of unknown origin; he died in 2004 as a result of complications from a lung transplant carried out to treat that disease.

Dr. C. J. Peters is still active, and is one of the experts called upon to help deal with the current Ebola epidemic.

Measles

The current outbreak of measles in the United States (after it had been eradicated following the 1971 introduction of the measles-mumps-rubella - MMR - vaccine) led us to a disbelieving discussion. We wondered how highly educated people were denying their children immunization, based apparently on a discredited article published years ago. There has even been a report of a "measles party" -- parents of a child who had contracted measles invited their friends who had children who had not been immunized to bring them so that they too could contract the disease; these parents apparently preferred to immunize their kids by giving them the dangerous disease rather than the safe vaccine. It was pointed out that in 2012, there were some 150,000 deaths from measles in the world, since mass immunization has not been possible in many parts of Asia and Africa.

A member pointed out that German measles (also known as rubella) was a real danger to pregnant women, causing many unwanted abortions prior to the general availability of rubella immunization.

Another member reported having contracted mumps as an adult prior to the availability of the MMR vaccine. He wound up hospitalized with a dangerous complication. Mumps too is a dangerous disease.

That member who had suffered an attack of shingles strongly recommend adult immunization against shingles. It was noted that the vaccine does not offer 100 percent protection and that shingles may recur, but reduction of the likelihood of an attack is still worthwhile. However, another member mentioned that she had a chronic medical condition that precluded her taking the vaccine.

The bottom line of this portion of the discussion was that while vaccines are generally safe, some vaccines are dangerous for some people. While vaccines are one of the most important advances in public health, one should always consult with one's physician before being vaccinated. One should not follow medical advice about so important a matter from untrained people.

Ebola in West Africa

We concluded the discussion with a review of the current information about the Ebola epidemic in three African countries -- Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. There have been nearly 23,000 reported cases, of which nearly 13,000 have been confirmed by laboratory tests. There have been more than 9000 deaths.

While at one time there were 1000 or more new cases being reported a week, in January 100 cases or less were being reported per week. That reduction has led to a change in the response strategy. Now emphasis must be placed on maintaining the effort, identifying every contact, quarantining contacts when possible, isolating the infected and eliminating every last case.

We discussed why the incidence had fallen off. In part this was because community behavior had changed, and people were avoiding the contacts that earlier had led to the high contagion rate. In part the change in behavior was due to the impact of public health messages, in part to people spontaneously choosing to avoid Ebola victims, and in part it was due to the officials sending burial teams in protective gear to bury the Ebola dead rather than leaving that task to family and community members.

During this epidemic, it was learned that people sick with Ebola hemorrhagic fever were more likely to infect others later rather than earlier in the course of the disease. Early case identification and hospitalization therefore seems to have had a significant benefit in reducing the spread of the disease.

We noted that people who recovered from Ebola had gained an immunity, and young recovered people were playing an important role in caring for the many Ebola orphans -- children who are sometimes shunned by relatives who might otherwise care for them but fear that they may still carry the disease.

The U.S. troops who had played an important role in building facilities to help the countries deal with the epidemic are now largely back in the United States. The USA is still supporting some 10,000 people in West Africa working to end the epidemic, most of them Africans. There are more than 200 U.S. Center for Disease Control staff there contributing to the epidemiological efforts.

The world still has few remedies to help a patient survive Ebola hemorrhagic fever. A member brought in an article from the Washington Post that described the difficulties of testing new treatments that have emerged for the disease; there is only a waning numbers of patients on whom to do the tests. She also brought in an article from the same source that described three potential vaccines, two of which have entered testing; the completion of those trials is also questioned.

Final Comments

Looking back, the discussion  was wide ranging, focusing on topic about which we would like to know more. These topics ranged from the history of the parts of the United States with Hispanic backgrounds, to the role of Americans at sea, to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and how its division influences the region today, and indeed to medical history.

The Book Club has not focused on American medical history in any depth in the past, and this week we focused on one story from that history, especially as seen through the biography of one man, C. J. Peters. It is the story of the scientifically trained experts who contribute to our knowledge of infectious diseases.

Many historians of medicine believe that a century ago a visit to a doctor was more likely to result in harm to the patient than medical benefit. That century has seen unprecedented advances in medicine and a corresponding dramatic increase in life expectancy in the USA. Much of the improvement has been achieved through the prevention and treatment of communicable diseases -- notably the development of vaccines, antibiotics and antivirals (as well as other drugs treat some communicable diseases).

On the other hand, the 20th century saw the Spanish flu and HIV/AIDS pandemics and many epidemics. Moreover, the benefits of modern medicine have still not fully penetrated to the ends of the earth. Experts believe that new disease agents will emerge, probably in these under-served areas, with the potential to cause new pandemics.

The virus hunters have been in the vanguard of the public health movements. They remain the front line defense against emerging viral diseases. They are a special breed, often heroic. The History Book Club members present enjoyed beginning to learn about these heroes and their work.

Below are President Obama's recent speech on American leadership in the Ebola response (which was distributed via the club blog) and two posts related to the book by one of our members on his own blog.

Previous blog posts:

• Dr. Peters: Virus Hunter
• On the Modeling of Ebola and Epidemics

Possible Books for April 2015

Woman reading (c.1912). Karl Alexander Wilke

"And she is the reader

who browses the shelf

and looks for new worlds

but finds herself.”

Laura Purdie Salas

Perhaps it is time for the club again to read some North American History. Here are some books that you might consider:

Junipero Serra: California's Founding Father by Steven W. Hackel.  352 pages, 4.1 stars. Father Serra has been called the most important man in California history. He established a chain of missions through the state three centuries ago that completely changed the lives of its Indians. The Spanish heritage is marked in place names: San Diego, Nuestra Senora de los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francico. Steven W. Hackel’s groundbreaking biography is the first to remove Serra from the realm of polemic and place him within the currents of history. Here is an article on Serra that mentions the book. Here is a brief article by author Hackel on Father Serra. Here is a video news report triggered by the Pope's recent announcement that Father Serra is to be recognized as a saint; Hackel is included as an expert. Selected for May 2015

Bridges

Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge by Kevin Starr. 224 pages, 3.8 stars. Kevin’s Starr’s Golden Gate is a brilliant and passionate telling of the history of the bridge itself, and a recounting of the rich and peculiar history of the California experience. The Golden Gate is a grand public work, a symbol and a very real bridge, a magnet for both postcard photographs and suicides. In this compact but comprehensive narrative, Starr unfolds the hidden-in-plain sight meaning of the Golden Gate, putting it in its place among classic works of art. Here is the New York Times review of the book. Here is a video with author Starr talking about the bridge.

The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge by Guy Talese. 208 pages, 4 stars.  Towards the end of 1964, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge—linking the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island with New Jersey—was completed. It remains an engineering marvel almost forty years later—at 13,700 feet (more than two and a half miles), it is still the longest suspension bridge in the United States and the sixth longest in the world. This is a reissue of Talese's 50 year old book on the construction of the bridge. Here is a review of the book. Here is a long video interview of the author about the book.

Americans on the Oceans

You might want to read this one page brief from the State Department's Historian on origin of U.S. interest insea power in the 1890s, especially as it was influenced by Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History.

Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin. 512 page (342 of text), 4.6 stars.  A Los Angeles Times Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007; A Boston Globe Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007; Amazon.com Editors pick as one of the 10 best history books of 2007; Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History, given by the North American Society for Oceanic History. Here is the New York Times review of the book. Here is a video with Dolin describing the book. One of final four in History Book Club voting.

Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick. 480 pages (364 pages of text), 4.4 stars. America's first frontier was not the West; it was the sea. Philbrick writes about one of the most ambitious voyages of discovery the Western world has ever seen -- the U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838 to 1842. Here is the New York Times review of the book. Here is a long video with Philbrick discussing the expedition. Selected for April 2015

George Washington's Secret Navy: How the American Revolution Went to Sea by James Nelson. Paperback seems to be out of print, but available from secondary sellers, hardcover affordable. 320 pages, 4.7 stars. From the author of the critically acclaimed Benedict Arnold's Navy, here is the story of how America's first commander-in-chief--whose previous military experience had been entirely on land--nursed the fledgling American Revolution through a season of stalemate by sending troops to sea. 2009 recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for excellence in naval literature. Here is a review of the book.

Atlantic Kingdom: Americas Contest with Cunard in the Age of Sail and Steam  by John Butler (local author). 280 pages, unrated.  Atlantic Kingdom pays tribute to the Americans who challenged Cunard, the shipping company that held a monopoly on North Atlantic trade routes in the nineteenth century. In an era when civilization first grappled with large-scale technology and creative industries promised a new standard of living, competition for control over maritime trade was fierce. Cornelius Vanderbilt and P. T. Barnum were among those who battled like mythical gods for control of their domains. These titans of the Atlantic left behind them a wreckage of human lives, lost ships, and squandered fortunes in their failed bids for supremacy of the seas. Here is a review of the book.

Other American History

William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor. (427 pages of text), 4.6 stars. Winner of the Bancroft, Beveridge and Pulitzer prizes, this book presents the story of two men, William Cooper and his son, the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, who embodied the contradictions that divided America in the early years of the Republic. Taylor shows how Americans resolved their revolution through the creation of new social forms and new stories that evolved with the expansion of our frontier. Read a review of the book in the Smithsonian magazine. Here is a C-Span video of Alan Taylor's presentation of the book. One of final four in History Book Club voting.

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner. 448 pages (336 pages of text), 4.6 stars. Winner of the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Lincoln Prizes. this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln's greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth. Here is the New York Times review of the book. Here is a long video of the C-Span interview of Eric Foner on the book.

Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O'Connell. 4.3 out of 5 stars, 432 pages of which about 350 are text. Sherman is best known as a Civil War General, but his service began in the Seminole War in Florida, and continued after the Civil War as Commanding General of the Army during the Indian Wars when he took responsibility for the safety of the transcontinental railways. This book is described as less a military history of his campaigns (although the Washington Post liked the description of the March to the Sea) than a biography of a complicated man and his development as a military expert. Here is a review of the book in The Economist magazine.

The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War by Don H. Doyle. 4.1 stars, 400 pages. The book is not yet available in paperback but the hardback edition is affordable and available used. Author Doyle explains that the Civil War was viewed abroad as part of a much larger struggle for democracy that spanned the Atlantic Ocean, and had begun with the American and French Revolutions. Foreign observers held widely divergent views on the war—from radicals such as Karl Marx and Giuseppe Garibaldi who called on the North to fight for liberty and equality, to aristocratic monarchists, who hoped that the collapse of the Union would strike a death blow against democratic movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Nowhere were these monarchist dreams more ominous than in Mexico, where Napoleon III sought to implement his Grand Design for a Latin Catholic empire that would thwart the spread of Anglo-Saxon democracy and use the Confederacy as a buffer state. Here is a review of the book from The Economist magazine. Here is a video interview with the author on the book.

Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown. The paperback is to be published March 1, but the book has been available in hardback for some time. 416 pages (338 pages of text), 4.5 stars. Winner of the Hawley Prize, the Beverage Award and 4 other prizes. Brown tells the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia--they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant. Here is a review of the book. Here is a long C-Span video of Kate Brown describing the book to a Baltimore audience,

Some Other Books That Were Mentioned Last Meeting

Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent by Larry Berman. 336 pages, 4.1 stars.

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by 
Jung Chang. 464 pages (374 pages of text), 4.3 stars.

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moises Naim. 320 pages, 3.9 stars.

British Upper Class Soviet Agents: Ben Macintyres Book

15 people participated in a lively discussion of A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre at the always hospitable Kensington Row Bookshop. The meeting, as usual, was held from 7:30 to 9:30 on the second Wednesday of the month (January 14th). Prior to the meeting, club members were provided with a link to the review of the book in the New York Times.

Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt were recruited as Soviet spies during their education at Cambridge University in the 1930s. All later held important positions in the British government while continuing to serve as Soviet spies. The book covers the pre-war, World War II, and early Cold War period. Kim Philby was perhaps the most effective spy in modern history, over time serving as a senior officer in the British MI6, as the MI6 liaison with the CIA in Washington, and eventually-- even after he fell under suspicion left the service and was rehired -- as an MI6 field operative in the Middle East. Eventually Burgess, Maclean and Philby all defected to seek asylum in Moscow.

Ben Macintyre's book poses two questions:

• What kind of man was Philby that he could live such a double life for so long? 
• How was it that the British Intelligence service could be so penetrated for so long (and how could that penetration not be discovered by the CIA)?

It is important to underline that there have been a great many books on spies and spycraft, many focusing on that related to World War II and the Cold War. Indeed, the History Book Club read The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant in 2010. During the meeting 

Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent by Larry Berman was also mentioned. Macintyre wisely avoided dealing with too much in this single book, focusing specifically on what he takes to be key relationships critical to the success of Philby's Soviet spying.

Clockwise: Anthony Blunt,
Donald Maclean, Kim Philby,
Guy Burgess

Macintyre stresses the relationship between Kim Philby and Nicholas Elliott, and to a lesser degree that between Philby and the American, James Angleton (who became head of CIA counterintelligence); both Elliott and Angleton are depicted as protecting Philby, or at least not giving credence to the accumulating evidence against him. The book portrays MI6 as run by members of a narrow British upper class who attended expensive public (read private if you are a Yank) schools and elite universities and whose families knew each other; these posh folk could not believe a member of their class would betray their country. Elliott was a little younger than Philby, and began their long relationship admiring Philby's journalistic career. Angleton had been educated in England, and shared many of the English upper class attitudes. Philby maintained long term social friendships with Elliott and Angleton, making it still more difficult for them to believe him a Soviet agent.

Macintyre's answer about Philby as a man was perhaps less than convincing to the members of the club, and they in turn offered a number of hypotheses.

The British Class Structure

The British class structure is hard for members of the book club (Americans all) to fully understand. There has long been a clear delineation between the upper classes and the working class. Entry to key government posts apparently was often achieved through family connections or through the recommendations of faculty at expensive public schools or elite universities to upper class officers of the relevant government agency. Indeed, vetting for sensitive posts was often simply based on the candidates coming from a "good family", or by informally asking a mutual acquaintance about the candidate.

The men who occupied the key positions in the foreign ministry and MI6 tended to belong to clubs, and those clubs limited membership to the upper classes. Belonging to the right club was a ticket to entry into the agency elite. Some of the government business was conducted in the facilities of these clubs.

Kim Philby was clearly a member of the British upper class. His father, St. John Philby was a distinguished British orientalist. As mentioned above, Kim Philby went to the "right schools". We were impressed that even after a long career as a Soviet spy, he was greatly concerned with assuring that his two sons also were educated in the right English public schools. Even when he was living in Moscow, married to a Russian citizen, teaching new Soviet spies, and honored by Russians as a distinguished former Soviet agent, the Russians regarded him as a British gentleman.

Nicholas Elliott's father had been a Don at Cambridge and was the headmaster at Eton. Nicholas too was educated at a public school and Cambridge, and he too was very upper class.

Nicholas Elliott

We noted that the OSS -- created in significant part on the model of British intelligence -- and later the CIA both recruited from Ivy League colleges. Often those who would run American intelligence were recruited by personal contacts, especially with a recruiter asking an acquaintance on an Ivy League faculty if he had some good student who might be right for a job in intelligence.

We noted that MI5, the British counterpart to the FBI in terms of its role in combating foreign spies at home, had tended to recruit from the police, and was thereby less of a bastion of the upper class. So too, we noted that the FBI in Philby's day recruited heavily from lawyers and accountants (we thought less so today) and thus was socially different than the OSS or CIA.

The British informal process for vetting candidates for the diplomatic and intelligence services seems likely to have played a role allowing the Cambridge ring of Soviet spies to gain entry. Perhaps the upper class disdain for the more proletarian staff of MI5 played a role in the Soviet moles' continued success. It does seem likely that the upper class men running British intelligence found it hard to conceive of members of their class betraying the country, their class and their friends as double agents. (And there seems to have been a closing of the ranks to protect colleagues from criticisms by others.)

As an aside, a member asked when the United States became paranoid about communist infiltration in U.S. institutions. A couple of people related high school experiences in which they had been interrogated by their school's Vice Principals after expressing liberal ideas in class. A long term teacher in the group told us that the large majority of reports to school principals of such "un-American activity" in fact come from other students. We briefly noted that the Rosenberg's were tried, found guilty and executed at the beginning of the Cold War (the execution took place in 1953). That was a unique event, and might mark an early maximum in the paranoia about communism and communist subversion,

How Important Was Philby's Intelligence to the USSR?

The group chatted briefly about the importance of the intelligence supplied to the Soviet Union by Philby. Given that he achieved important posts in MI6 and was passing a lot of information to his Soviet handler, we assumed that in that role he was an important agent. He had access to some of the Bletchly Park decryptions of German coded messages, and can be assumed to have passed them on as well; we judged that that intelligence was very important, especially when it concerned military movements on the German-Soviet front. When Philby was liaison to the CIA he must have had access both to information the British were sharing with the USA, and to information that the USA was sharing with the UK; this would also have been passed to his Soviet handlers. Indeed, that his intelligence was eventually routed directly to Stalin implies that it was very important indeed.

The Advantages of a "Ruling Class"

A member of the club suggested that there was an advantage that the British had relying on an upper class, trained from childhood to rule. The public schools and elite universities deliberately trained their students to take important roles in public life as adults. (We did not mention it, but the members of the upper class also tended to have responsibility early in their careers and rapid promotions; they were thus trained to ultimately accept very great responsibility by the end of their careers.)

In the past, the officers of the British foreign office or MI6 might find themselves serving during their careers in several different countries with the same counterparts from allied or competitor countries, thereby forming long term relationships with those counterparts. (A member described a U.S. and a Soviet intelligence agent that she understood personally to have formed such a relationship.) Ultimately -- later in his career upon achieving very senior rank -- a British government officer might know his foreign counterparts (who had also achieved senior rank) quite well and be well positioned to deal with them. Thus the system worked well, and perhaps there is little comparable in modern government.

What Kind of Man Was Kim Philby?

The key characters in this book were all trained intelligence officers, who presumably were trained on how to deceive others. The British agents of the Soviet government were all successful deceiving their closest friends and colleagues in English and American intelligence agencies for many years. Philby gave a famous press conference in which he totally deceived the press and public. We assumed that memoirs or interviews given after the double agents defected were likely to suffer from normal memory lapses as well as to have been self-serving. Angleton is know ultimately to have burned the extensive contemporaneous notes he made following his Washington luncheon meetings with Philby. Others who were interviewed about the spies may also have been less than accurate in their accounts. Thus author Macintyre was at a huge disadvantage trying to discover motivations of his subjects. 

One of the club members mentioned that Macintyre sometimes gave details about  Philby's motives or even physical "tells" from which motives and emotions might be inferred. Macintyre could not have been sure of these things; while he references sources, the sources could not have been both that specific and reliable. Still we recognized that the use of that narative device by the author made the book more interesting for the reader.

In retrospect there were clues in their character that could have alerted the British and American governments to the dangers these men posed. It seems clear that many of these characters were heavy drinkers. (The book suggested that increasingly heavy drinking may have been a response to the stress of spying and especially the role of double agent, but it was noted that many people similarly become heavier drinkers over time without any such stress.) Just before he defected to Russia, Burgess was drinking to great excess; we recalled one dinner party when he roomed with Philby in Washington in which his drunken comments about a fellow guests breasts caused her and her husband to take great offense. 

Burgess was gay, and apparently had many sexual partners. Philby's first wife was a communist, and he was known to have had an affair with the wife of a friend as well as several marriages.

What was Philby's motivation to spy for the Soviets? Was he simply ideologically committed? Perhaps. It was also suggested that his motivation may have changed over time. As a university student of history and economics in the Depression he may have concluded that something was seriously wrong with capitalism; many of his contemporaries did. He might have come to believe that socialism or communism was a superior alternative to capitalism. During his time in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, he may have concluded that the Nazis and Fascists were the greatest threat and thus that support for the Spanish socialists and communists was important. We wondered why, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was announced, Philby did not abandon communism as so many contemporary western communists did. A decision to help the Soviets once the Nazis and Britain were at war was more comprehensible, since without successful American and Soviet allies the British were likely to lose the war. Eventually Philby may have been so deeply involved and so handled by Soviet intelligence agents that he had little alternative but to continue as a double agent. However, all of this is pure supposition.

We noted that the alliance of the four fellow Soviet spies lasted for years. These friends from their university days with common experience as foreign agents in their own government may have provided mutual support helpful to the maintenance of their duplicitous roles. We noted, however, that Anthony Blunt eventually appears to have ceased spying for the Soviets.

It was also suggested that the comradery of men who had served together in dangerous circumstances during wartime may have helped form bonds which sustain them in their common devotion to the Soviet cause.

Philby as a British agent, early in the Cold War, helped train anti-communist insurgents who were intended to overthrow the Communist government of Albania; indeed he was on the boat that took them to Albania. As a Soviet Agent he informed his handlers of the attempt to overthrow that government, leading to the capture and death of most of the insurgents. Of course, Philby must have known that his espionage had led to the discovery, capture and death of many allied agents prior, but the Albanian situation was direct and personal; what kind of man would do that? One answer is that the Americans and British were training and inserting insurgents to kill others; those who make a career of covert sabotage must accept the deaths that they cause as part of the job. Philby was surrounded by colleagues who took such treachery as a standard part of their jobs,

It was noted that the CIA employs more PhD social scientists than any other organization in the USA; they tend to fill desk jobs as intelligence analysts, rather than field jobs running agents to sabotage governments; intelligence analysts and field agents tend to be different kinds of people. While Philby served in desk jobs, he was recruited by both Soviet and British intelligence to run agents in the field. He seems likely to have had the kind of matter of fact attitude that this would imply. This too is consistent with early reports from his university days that he was not deeply interested in the ethics and deeper implications of the historical behavior he was studying..

We thought that Kim Philby might be one of those people who deliberately seek to take risks; he certainly did lead a risky life. We understood that there are some soldiers who seek out battle and find a return to peace to be difficult, that there are people who seek out careers in the most dangerous form of policing, such as drug enforcement work. Race car drivers, sky divers, and those who participate in dangerous sports may also exemplify such risk seekers. Philby sought out dangerous work in Austria, then in Spain during its Civil War, then in France as it was being invaded by Germany; he worked as a double agent when exposure would have resulted in disgrace and jail and when his handlers were sequentially executed as under suspicion of lack of loyalty to the USSR. He continued to work in the middle east when that was one of the most dangerous regions in the world. That pattern fits a man who wanted and perhaps even needed to experience risk in his life.

The Book Did Not Deal in Depth With the Soviets

A member said that she felt that a major failure of the book was that it did not deal well with Russian/Soviet sources. Macintyre did not mine the Venona project files for relevant information on Philby and the other Soviet agents of his circle. The files that became available from Moscow through defectors or at the end of the Cold War might also have been reviewed. There were a number of very capable Soviet agents who handled the British agents and their reports might have shed a great deal of light on the subjects of this book.

Do We Get the Full Story from the U.S. Press?

Having immersed ourselves discussing duplicity for a while, a member asked if we ever get "the full story" in the American media, or are critical aspects of events held back? Certainly a great deal of information is withheld by the government under the government secrecy acts.

Another member, one who had spent a long career in a major network newsroom, told us about the deterioration of foreign news by U.S. media due to cutbacks in funding for the news bureaus. His network has closed many of its foreign offices, depending instead on stringers to cover unfolding events. Thus, for example, there is no on-site network foreign reporter covering southern Africa, and a huge area of Africa is covered by only a few stringers. The only news broadcast by the network from the region tends to be that of armed conflict, and then only if the United States is somehow involved.

It was suggested that we now have other sources in addition to U.S. media. One member described watching RT (Russia Today) news, and finding it gave quite a different slant on its stories than U.S. media. We not only have television news from several countries available on our TVs (BBC, France24, Al Jazeera, etc.) but the Internet makes newspapers from other countries available online. While foreign language ability is required to read most foreign papers online, most major cities have at least one English language paper  available via the Internet. When questioned, a half dozen of the members present reported having used a foreign news source in the last week.

Did Philby Defect or Was He Allowed to Defect?

Kim Philby was separated from British intelligence after his career was tarnished by the defection of Burgess and MacLean. However, he was rehired as an agent working out of Beirut and working in the Middle East under cover as a journalist. He again came under suspicion at that time, and was interrogated by Nicholas Elliott. A club member asked, why was that interrogation limited to only the time before 1949? Was it to assure that the British government was not embarrassed even more before the CIA and FBI? Was it to protect Elliott's own career?

Why were the Soviets able to extract Philby from Beirut? Elliott interrupted his interrogation, announcing he was traveling and instead hiding in the city. Philby might have been taken to England for detailed questioning. Indeed, why was Philby not assassinated? We postulated that it was much more convenient to MI6 to have him living in Moscow than being fully interrogated by British and allied intelligence officers the west. A public trial in London might have been a public relations disaster for MI6 and would have made the British officials involved look very bad indeed. It was suggested that it was likely that the British had allowed him to escape -- as escape made with the help of the Soviet intelligence service.

On Current Movies

The current movie, The Imitation Game, rather naturally came up in discussion as it deals with the breaking of the German codes by the British during World War II. That led to a fulsome condemnation of the film by a computer professional in the group. He was offended by the many inaccuracies in the film's depiction of the breaking of the enigma code. He was even more offended by the movie's depiction of Alan Turing, finding it demeaned a very important mathematician and founding father of the field of computer science. Turing was in our member's opinion a far better rounded person than the film depicts.

That led to comments about another movie nominated for a 2014 Academy Award -- Selma. The film rewrites a number of the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. It seems that the King estate sold the copyright of the speeches. When the movie's producers approached the current owners of those rights, there were apparently quoted a price for using them in the film (with the exception of the "I Have a Dream" speech which was to be free); the producers chose not to pay that price, but rather to write a script in which alternatives were given which did not infringe upon the copyrights. We were not amused by the choice.

Prior to the meeting, members were informed that Cambridge Spies, a BBC television series, is available on DVD. The DVD also contains supporting materials. Well acted, the series is dramatic rather than factual, but perhaps helps the viewer to understand the environment that these spies lived in as young men.

One member then asked who owns the copyright to what members say in the Book Club meetings. Since the meetings are not recorded, the issue may never arise in practice. (I suppose the author of anything written about the club, such as this blog, owns copyright to what he/she writes. If so, the reader is free to use this post.)

Final Comments

Several people attending had a deep interest in intelligence agencies and had read a great deal about the subject. That knowledge enlivened the discussion.

Generally, people liked the book. That is not surprising since the book has received strong ratings from many readers and has been listed as among the best books published in 2014.

One member noted that he very much liked the questions raised by author Macintyre, and he had enjoyed thinking about those issues. He was not certain that even after reading the book he really understood the personalities and motivations of the characters nor the aspects of the intelligence agencies that allowed double agents to survive for extended periods, but he was willing to live with that uncertainty.

The Kensington Row Bookshop
Where the History Book Club Meets