“Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home, 1986 to 1990”, by George F. Will

 

 429 pages, Free Press, ISBN-13: 978-0029344354

All hail the Barnes & Noble overstock shelves, for it is where I built so much of my library with practically-new books that I picked up for a penance…like, for instance, Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home, 1986 to 1990, George Will’s fourth collection of columns that does much to clarify the times: Glasnost, Gorbachev, Reagan, Bush Sr., the Bork nomination, education, drugs, science, the Election of 1988, the fall of the Berlin Wall and baseball (always baseball with this guy). As this still-incomplete list shows, Will had no shortage of consequential topics to write about during this time, the foremost among them being the event that provided the title of this volume: the sudden collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, the event most of us thought we’d never live to see. Will informs, educates and makes valid points, sometimes even criticizing allies (and praising opponents), refusing to twist facts, invent statistics or slander the faith and patriotism of those that dissent. Thinking people will both agree and disagree with Will, depending on the column. Still, you can learn something from his crisply informative writing.

“The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives”, by Ada Petrova and Peter Watson

 

 180 pages, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN-13: 978-0393039146

There’s just no getting away from this son of a bitch, is there? Ah, well, here we go again: with The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives, Ada Petrova and Peter Watson were the first writers to investigate and write a book based on the then-opened Soviet archives and the “Operation Myth” files (but not the final dossier, file no. 462a, put together for Stalin and now known as “The Hitler Book”). They were the first to state in detail how the remains of Hitler, Eva Braun and the Goebbels family were disposed of by the KGB after years of speculation; they even have a chapter claiming to know who the leak was in the Berlin Bunker and go so far as to identify that person (although their conclusion may or may not be correct). The Death of Hitler was the first to show the photos of the remains of Hitler’s so-called skull (however, we now know the skull fragment is that of an unknown female).

Okay, so that was the good news. Now, then…Although The Death of Hitler is impressively packaged and appears authoritative, it’s anything but. Petrova and Watson appear to be pop historians who specialize in fiction and their weaknesses show throughout, as there is almost no basic understanding of Hitler, his life, his personality or his place in the proper historical context. The author’s arguments are poorly stated, disjointed, repetitive and not particularly convincing, and overall there’s a rushed, let’s-get-this-one-together-fast-and-have-a-vodka feel to the book. Essentially, what we’ve got going here is a refresher course on what happened in the Bunker during Hitler’s last several days. Interesting enough, but the billing on the dust jacket far exceeds what’s delivered between the covers.

“The Popes: Histories and Secrets”, by Claudio Rendina, translated by Paul McCusker

 

672 pages, Seven Locks Press, ISBN-13: 978-1931643139 

The Popes: Histories and Secrets by Claudio Rendina (and translated by Paul McCusker) is not a fascinating or spellbinding read (far from it), but rather a mini-encyclopedia that provides a chronological description of the personalities and histories of the 264 popes in Catholic Church history; each entry explores the man, the times, the controversies, the miracles and the political significance of the men who assumed the mantel of the Vicar of Christ. There are more typos than I like to see in a scholarly work, although fewer per page than I accept as a given in mass-market paperbacks, and I just can’t be sure whether those glitches came in the original writing or whether they are the fault of the translation, but they’re there in all of their irritating glory. I will say that it would seem to me, as a non-Catholic, that it would be difficult to read this book without having a severe strain placed on one’s faith in the Church, if one had any to start with; historically, so many of the leaders of the church were clearly not very pious or holy individuals, but were rather venal, adulterous cads, more interested in matters of their political power in the world of the flesh rather than in matters of the spirit. But it must not be impossible to do so, as one would assume that it would be even more difficult to write this book without losing faith than to merely read it, and it seems that the author has succeeded in doing so.