Book Review: The Bastard Brigade (WW2, scientists) Part One (OT)

The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb, by Sam Kean (Little, Brown and Company, 464pp HB, 2019, $30) Review by Skye Anderson.

Can a Physicist Ever Be Funny?

One time I started writing a book review before I had finished reading the book but never just about 10% through the book so I titled this, Part One. I may not be able to finish it for a couple of weeks* but I wanted to sing the praises of The Bastard Brigade, a book I would not pick up myself if I didn't have to but I am so glad I did - for several reasons. 

Would you believe 59 chapters? At first I thought I could skip around but then I read that I couldn't because this book is linear so it would not have made any sense if I had: the first few chapters don't even get to World War 2 but they are fascinating in that I know the names of the scientists but nothing else about them as people, only their formulas or discoveries. 

Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Enrico Fermi, Oppenheimer, General Groves, Wild Bill Donovan, Wernher von Braun, . . . .

If you found the Hedy Lamarr story (review here**) fascinating, you will love The Bastard Brigade. 

If you liked The Monuments Men***,

you will be on the seat of your pants reading The Bastard Brigade (when you are not laughing****). I never knew Heisenberg stayed in Germany and worked for Hitler (actually he worked for Germany - there was a difference).

"Bastard" because the scientists and soldiers were not your ordinary soldiers taking orders from above (reminds me of one of my Army Reserve units). Their mission was to find the Nobel Prize winner scientists, mostly physicists, and kidnap them or help them escape to the States: also to ascertain the locations of the Nazis' stores of uranium plus their notes, in order to find out how far along they were in making a nuclear bomb, which the US was also working on, but with a later start.

And one of these 'soldiers' was Moe Berg, the professional baseball player who became an attorney and knew several languages proving that this book is full of surprises and humor. All of the scientists are well known to any chemistry or physics major and several are Nobel laureates.

The Story

You know that Joe Kennedy, Jr., was killed flying a plane in Europe in World War 2 and his little brother John (our future president) became a hero in the Pacific Theater commanding a PT-109 but were you aware of the animosity, envy and competitiveness between the brothers? You will be, after reading Brigade. And I had previously heard that that Great Dane, Niels Bohr, reluctant to leave Europe, was spirited over the Pyrenees but now I find that he went to Sweden and England, a version I tend to believe.

Written to grab and keep your interest, Brigade is told chronologically, so chapters jump around from one person's 'story' to another, then the next part of the book continues on with each soldier or scientist or incident, and so on. And you will discover how many SNAFUs there really are during combat! Sometimes it is a wonder that we won after all.

Clues Hidden in Plain Sight

The long chapters have sections marked with little icons which represent the theme of that chapter. See if you can guess why each icon was used.

Writing Style

Author Sam Kean, who also wrote The Violinist's Thumb (about DNA)

and The Disappearing Spoon (about the periodic table)

majored in physics and finally writes about it. The non-science reader, however, can skip those paragraphs about heavy water and thorium and uranium-235 and -238 and fission and dirty bombs and neutrons and V-2 rockets, e.g., and still fall in love with this well-written and exciting book.

Though long, The Bastard Brigade reads like fiction. You will not be able to put it down!

*Correction: There is no Part Two. I ended up reading Bastard quickly!

**read the review here

***watch The Monuments Men on Netflix

****"Moving on to his [German physicist, son of a Nazi diplomat] office, they found the door locked so several stout fellows lowered their shoulders and slammed into it. It didn't budge, so they started kicking. When that failed, they grabbed an axe. Only after smashing through the wood did they realize the door opened outward and hadn't been locked at all." (p. 360)

Book Review: The Best Possible Experience (stories)

The Best Possible Experience: Stories, by Nishanth Injam (Pantheon Books, 2023, $25, 224 pages) Review by Skye Anderson.

Eleven stories speak to the universality of human nature, set in India and the United States. . . but with a few word changes, could also portray Italians or Irish or Jewish or. . . .

An excellent book club selection, even for only a few of the short stories, Best Possible Experience will captivate the readers and start many a discussion. Some readers will fill in the blanks and 'finish' the stories that seem to end rather abruptly - without an ending (cliff hangers). Other readers will reminisce about their exchange student experiences. Some will reflect back on graduate school and discussions will ensue about families and laws and immigrants.

Best is well-written though it is obvious the author is not a native-born and raised American. And readers will have fun guessing at some vocabulary: is that the word for a fruit or mother or cart? 

Families

Leo Tolsty's Anna Karenina said, "Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." A comparison of some of the families in Best reveals nuclear families (mother, father, siblings) whose composition differs around the world. We have a grandfather in India raising his granddaughter who returns every summer from her tech job in the US to find more changes in her small village, we have a family newly settled in the US whose son invites a school buddy home for lunch but the family doesn't know what to cook for this very American kid and they want to make a good impression so the mother cooks a practice meal. 

And through it all is a certain foreshadowing of sadness and the belief abroad that America is the land of milk and honey for everyone, which doesn't materialize but the transplant doesn't want to disappoint his family back home with reality. And the marriage to a US citizen in exchange for money, in order to qualify for a green card but first the couple has to answer questions about each other, proving they really know the other. (This situation is also the basis for the movie, The Proposal, among others.)

And the Title is. . . . 

For those readers who focus on the title of books (and read parts like the Acknowledgements) and attempt to find out why a book received that specific title, Best will prove to be easy - it is the book title and also the title of the final story!

Book Review: A Fever in the Heartland (The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them)

A Fever in the Heartland* (The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them), by Timothy Egan (Viking - Penguin Randomhouse, 2023, 432 pp, $30) New York Times bestseller. Pulitzer and National Award-winning author. Review by Skye Anderson.

The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rose and fell in just four years during the 20s, due to one very charismatic character: D. C. Stephenson in Indiana, reminiscent of Harold Hill in "The Music Man," though the Meredith Wilson musical took place in Iowa, not Indiana. Both star an itinerant con artist who simply appears out of nowhere. Harold Hill eventually disappears while D.C. Stephenson (KKK) becomes incarcerated.

Why was this decade of the 1920s so ripe for a movement to spread widely and rapidly, a movement of hatred and hypocrisy, graft, and 'crime'? Why did it blossom in Indiana? 

That charismatic Indiana leader, Stephenson (Steve), turned out to be brilliant financially in the beginning and at one point ruled a mob of 400,000 in Indiana, the most Northern home of the KKK. Did all that power and money go to his head or did he end up in town after having skirted ethics elsewhere or was he always a psychopath? Most KKK members never saw the real Steve, but those who did were in it so deep that they ignored the rapes and kidnappings (perhaps much like our current political situation?) After all, this was during Prohibition.

We think of the KKK as being active in the South, not the North, and being directed against Blacks even though their acts of hatred were also directed towards Jews, Catholics, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, etc. 

Style

The first approximately150 pages could so easily be condensed into about 30 pages and more effectively so. This section details the history of the rise of the KKK in various towns and states (and the women's section and the Ku Klux Kiddies) and reads like a report. Much of it could be omitted.

Did You Know. . . ?

Famous people are mentioned by author Timothy Egan as being members of or sympathetic towards this mostly secretive organization with white sheeted uniforms and pointy hats: Henry Ford, Presidents Wilson and Coolidge. Others were affected by being 'on the other side' - Louis Armstrong, Malcolm X, Kurt Vonnegut.

Reading Fever may depress and disappoint you but in the end you will see the masses springing back to become wholesome welcoming ethical people once more. Thank goodness!

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*Also a Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction, an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Kirkus Review Best Book of the Year, a Chicago Review of Books Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, and a Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist

Book Review: The House of Doors (a novel based on real events, Somerset Maugham's The Letter)

The House of Doors, by Tan Twan Eng* (Bloomsbury, 2023, 320 pp, $20) International bestseller, longlisted for the Booker Prize. Reviewed by Skye Anderson.

Unforgettable

The Letter, by that extremely prolific author**, playwright***, editor**** and short story writer*****, Somerset Maugham is unforgettable. But this is not The Letter.

Intriguing

This is The House of Doors, by Tan Twan Eng. Set in Penang, Malaysia (Malaya, at the time of most of this book), the story by author Tan Twan Eng relates a 2-week visit in 1921 by an author, Willie, to old friends Robert and Lesley in 'the colonies.' But is it truth or fiction as it takes us from 1910 to 1921 (and back) and on to contemporary times?

When you realize that Willie is actually William Somerset Maugham, you will want to read more about him. You will find he wrote The Letter, Of Human Bondage, The Casuarina Tree, The Razor's Edge, A Marriage of Convenience, . . . .

The Backstory

With more-than-cameo appearances by Dr. Sun Yat Sen and his deportation from Malaya (and abduction in London), and with mentions of Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest), The House of Doors takes us on the historical tale of the story of The Letter. Author Somerset Maugham (Willie) plays a minor role in the book but at least the title becomes clear, though I would have named the book something else.

Chapters are told from the viewpoint of Willie and of Lesley and alternate between 1910, when the murder/rape/whatever takes place, and 1921 when Lesley tells Willie about it. Williie has a habit of writing fiction based on real life and is, fortunately, extremely prolific - fortunate since he lost his lifesavings in an investment deal early in the book.

Which version - the original in 1920 or the related retelling of 1921 (both as appear in The House of Doors or even the version in The Letter) do you like best? As for me, I prefer The Letter.

*Booker Prize shortlist author. Best Book of the Year - NPR, The New Yorker, Slate, The Financial Times. Notable Book (The Washington Post). Editors' Choice (New York Times).

**16 books and 20 novels

***25 plays plus 11 unpublished plays

****19 books

*****189 articles and 16 collections