“Full Circle: A Homecoming to Free Poland”, by Radosław Sikorski

288 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-0684811024

Full Circle: A Homecoming to Free Poland is a moving personal-and-political account of a country and its people emerging from under the rubble of Communism. For Sikorski, rebuilding a dworek (manor house) known as Chobielin was not just a real-estate investment – it was a literal and symbolic contribution to the task of rebuilding his country. With a novelist's eye for revealing detail and a politician’s instinct for the deeper currents running through society, Sikorski tells the dramatic story of his family: his childhood under Communism; his parent’s resistance to authoritarianism; his relatives on all sides of the political spectrum (including a great-uncle who survived Buchenwald and Dachau). At the same time, literally unearthing Polish history on the grounds of his home (one of his discoveries was a silver half grosz piece dating from the 16^th Century) Sikorski also brings to life for American readers the dramatic history of Poland, where national identity has always been problematic.

An engrossing personal memoir, Full Circle is also a fascinating insider's account of the political transformation of a country that has come full circle many times over the years in its quest for a national identity, for in 1992 he was appointed deputy minister of defense, a job from which, amid so much controversy, he was forced to resign after only three months. Sikorski, originally a freelance journalist, sets out to establish his country's history going back to the 18^th Century partition, his childhood under Communism (with annual trips to the West; he was not deprived), and through the exhilarating time of Solidarity. There are astonishing revelations about former president Walesa, who purportedly planned to buy nuclear warheads from the KGB (and cheat them of payment), and a tale of his refusal to entertain the visiting Margaret Thatcher, because he “[did] not receive failed politicians.” Can any of that be true? The Walesa presidential palace was like a beer hall, according to Sikorski, and the Solidarity politicians failed because of incompetence and graft. But the new crowd is no improvement, he bemoans, for the Communist collaborators are back in charge. Sikorski concludes that Poland is “busily building an Italy” but that, nevertheless, “life can be perfectly tolerable in a cleptocracy.”

All in all, If you are interested in the history of Poland, and want to learn about contemporary life in that country, but are tired of reading dry accounts written by someone without a real connection to the country and its people, this book is for you. I enjoyed the manner in which Mr. Sikorski provides both a personal and national history, woven together to keep the reader interested. I would have enjoyed more details about the actual reconstruction of his manor house. However, his insights into the post-Communist government, it strengths and weaknesses, and his accounts of involvement in the Solidarity movement were very interesting. I hope he writes another installment when he eventually finishes the manor house and the current Polish government has a chance to play out its role in Polish and world history.

“Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World”, by David Maraniss

496 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-1416534075

The world is changing so fast right now that most of us can barely keep up with the daily news that affects our lives, jobs and future. So, it's a rare and wonderful treat when a book comes along that carries us back to a time and place when the world changed more slowly – to show us one of those events that truly did change our global culture. When such books come along, they're usually about wars, but not this new gem by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Maraniss. In his book Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, Maraniss shows how Rome in 1960 ranks right up there as a milestone in world culture.

Mr. Maraniss is a former reporter of the Washington Post and author of acclaimed biographies of Bill Clinton and Vince Lombardi. He is a wonderful writer and storyteller. With the approach of the 2008 Summer Games, Rome 1960 takes us back to a simple era, without the terrorism threats, outrageous commercialism and non-stop TV coverage. The Cold War was the backdrop and the author weaves in the stories of the athletes, the familiar and the unfamiliar. I don't know that these Olympics changed the world as Mr. Maraniss argues (the 1968 Games in Mexico City or the Munich Games in 1972 have a better claim) but the world has changed since then.

The 1960 Olympics was held at a time when the world was on the cusp of great change. Not only in the United States were these changes about to take place, but the entire world was on the edge, and we were beginning one of those periodic watershed eras that come along every so often. New nations in Africa were being formed. The old Colonial powers had gasped their last and were no more. Governments were changing, attitudes were changing and the world was just beginning to become wired. There were two super powers at that time, the United States and Russia. These two countries were locked in a war, the Cold War and this war was at its height. These Olympics held in Rome, had this struggle of ideas as a constant backdrop and its presents was quite significant. The two Germanys, for the first time, were acting as a single team; not having completely split as they would soon do and the entire contest was not only the United States v/s Russia, but it was East v/s West.

Racism, sexism and all the other old evils of this world were alive and well. The games were still controlled by Avery Brundage and his band of Old Guard. Brundage was truly a horrid man and represented the worse of the ruling class of the time and treated the Olympic movement as a private fiefdom and all those who participated as his own flock of surfs. Truly, in my opinion, and the author's as well, you could not have found a man, or group of men, who personified racism, sexism, arrogance, privileged class ethos and egotism more than Brundage and his cohorts.

The author's easy writing style makes this an easy, understandable and enjoyable read. As has been pointed out, each chapter is almost a news report, cum essay, on different aspect of these games; addressing individuals, events and the ever present political background. Many of the great names appear is this work; Wilma Rudolph. Lance Larson. Otis Davis, Herb Elliott, Cassius Clay, Rafer Johnson, C.K. Yang, Abebe Bikila, Al Oerter, the Tigerbelles and their coach Ed Temple, and many, many more (to name just a few) of the truly greats are written about, assessed and discussed. The author has given us a real feel for the times and has given us much to reflect over. Communications, training methods, attitudes toward different sexes and races, the beginnings of doping, how the athletes were treated and how various fans responded are all covered in this fine work.

“Disraeli”, by Stanley Weintraub

736 pages, Dutton Adult, ISBN-13: 978-0525936688

In the context of mid-19^th Century English politics, Benjamin Disraeli resembles a “hoopoe becalmed on a lawful of starlings”. Jewish, mercenary, “literary”, flamboyant, he stood for everything that a Tory party shaken by the aftermath of the 1832 Reform Bill was supposed to abominate. Hugely in debt, his parliamentary seat established on a dubious property qualification, he somehow found himself at the head of a country, partly at odds with Sir Robert Peel over protectionism. In a world measured out in titles and acres, he seemed excluded by race, upbringing, and even personality; a remoteness from the social core that was thought to explain some of his more outrageous maneuverings after office. As Lord Stanley, later, as the Earl of Derby, his party chief suggested to Queen Victoria: “Mr. Disraeli has had to make his position, and men who make their positions will say and do things which are not necessarily to be said or done by those for whom positions are made”.

It comes as no surprise to find out that an enduring theme of Stanley Weintraub's massive biography is the continual precariousness of Disraeli's position. In debt to the eyeballs from his youth, he still owed 4,000 pounds to long-suffering creditors as late as the 1870s (in middle life, contemplating a retreat to literature, he had to hang on to his seat simply to avoid being imprisoned). His political ascent was always liable to be frustrated by an apparent lack of principle. “Could I only satisfy myself that Disraeli believed what he said, I should be more happy”, wrote one of his acolytes in the Young England movement of the 1840s. It was an evergreen worry, even on the Tory front bench. He began his career as a novelist to help him into politics and took it up again in the 1840s as an ideological tool and pursued to lucrative effect in his retirement. As a novelist, he provoked scores that took decades to settle. Thackeray, who had cruelly sent up Coningsby (1847) in Punch, was a target as late as 1880, pilloried in the character of St Barbe, the paranoid critic of Endymion.

A less determined (and less lucky) man might not have emerged so spectacularly into the light as the chief royal confidant of the age. The Queen took against him from the outset, owing to his treatment of Peel; Albert thought he represented an ominous democratizing spirit. In fact, despite some more or less genuine nods in the direction of the national interest, the only spirit Disraeli represented was his own. He married for money, having previously enjoyed the favors of a string of aristocratic harpies such as the notorious Lady Sykes, and gamely applied himself to high-born backers who invariably turned up trumps: Lord Lyndhurst fixing his first parliamentary seat, Lord George Bentinck underwriting the country house in Buckinghamshire which gave him a property qualification for the safe Beaconsfield constituency. The whole edifice lay balanced on the edge of a precipice. Among several revealing vignettes, Weintraub supplies an account of an evening in July 1841 which reads like a Thackeray novella: noble lordships being entertained in the great dining room, powdered footmen in the hall, and bailiffs virtually queuing on the doorstep.

Professor Weintraub has written a discursive and slightly garrulous book, which occasionally threatens to collapse under the weight of incidentals: Gladstone’s redemptive forays after streetwalkers, what his subject thought of a dinner menu in 1837. The political background, too, is thinly sketched. But Weintraub's flair for narrative cancels out many of these imperfections. In the end one keeps reading simply to see what happens. Will his creditors catch up with him? Will he bring down Peel? What will the Queen say? If this makes Disraeli's career sound like a vast and labyrinthine game, a kind of parliamentary Monopoly on the grand scale - then it is fair to say that this was probably his own conception of public life. Like many a Tory leader he succeeded not through principle or policy but by ensuring that the decisive issue put before both colleagues and the electorate was merely himself.