Vin Arthey (2010)

This is a spy story in the finest tradition, with the added advantage of being true.

There are plenty of surprises, not least the fact that the protagonist “Rudolf Abel” – whose name I knew from other histories – actually adopted this, the name of a colleague (dead, unknown to him) to muddy the waters of his interrogation. In fact, Willie Fisher was raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, left for Russia with his Leninist parents and only accidentally avoided being purged by Stalin as part of the Great Terror. His time as the main “illegal” on the US east coast was largely uneventful, and (it’s possible to argue) a waste of his other talents that might have been more profitably exploited in research and training. It captures the romance and the dedication of spycraft – but also the tedium, the danger, and the fact that much of it is often pointless in even the medium term.

There remain some questions. Were the Rosenbergs really spies? – this story suggest so, whereas a lot of modern research denies it. It a story that will be revisited again as more archives are opened.

4/5. Finished Friday 28 October, 2016.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Eugene Rogan (2015)

An excellent history of a rather forgotten and mis-understood piece of First World War history. This is a subtle and balanced review of the precursors and consequences of the war for the Ottoman lands, and puts a lot of history that we think we know well into perspective. Given how much of recent history has been shaped by these events – the Sykes-Picot agreement, the Balfour Declaration, and even in some ways the recent attempted military coup in Turkey – it deserves to be far better known and appreciated.

4/5. Finished Wednesday 12 October, 2016.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Nathaniel Philbrick (2000)

What was it like to be a sailor in the mid-nineteenth century? This book provides an evocative and compelling story. From the way in which Nantucket Island was once the centre of the world’s most valuable commercial trade, to the privations and hardships associated with whaling, the detail and contextualisation is impressive – and that’s before we even get to the main events, a whale turning and sinking the ship hunting it, the crew’s subsequent wandering the eastern Pacific in small open boats, their resort to cannibalism to stay alive, and the aftermath of their rescue. On the way we also encounter some wonderfully out-of-the-way islands, as well as a time when people – even sailors familiar with the waters – could reasonably (if inaccurately) fear murder and savagery on the various Pacific islands.

4/5. Finished Sunday 4 September, 2016.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Randy Shilts (1987)

It’s hard to sum-up this book: part history, part in-depth analysis of gay society in the 1980’s, part polemic against the Reagan administration. Randy Shilts lived through it (and eventually succumbed himself), and he wonderfully captures the frustration, the fear, and the final sense of creeping inevitability as more and more in the core social circle fall away.

It’s also a fascinating study of how governments listen (or not) to their own scientists, as well as of the political in-fighting between science groups and the ways in which reality is so often shaped by the perceptions of those reviewing the evidence: obvious in hindsight, perhaps excusably resisted at least in the early stages. There are plenty of examples of more recent “epidemics” that actually were not as devastating as they were at first warned to be (SARS and nvCJD spring to mind) – which isn’t to excuse the quite despicable inaction later when things became clear. There’s a lot here to be learned about how to respond to news of impending devastation.

One advantage of writing this review late is that I can include recent events: the exoneration of one of the main villains of the piece, Gaetan Dugas, who was reviled as “patient zero”, deliberately spreading the epidemic more rapidly and widely. It turns out that, whatever Dugas’ actions, they didn’t give rise to as much secondary infection as was thought when Shilts wrote his book, and just goes to show how science is always a provisional activity.

5/5. Finished Thursday 4 August, 2016.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)

Henry Marsh (2014)

A deeply felt and insightful – if sometimes over-personalised – view of medicine, neurosurgery, and working within the UK NHS. It’s at times terrifying: some cancers are benign, some are malignant, but anything that recurs will basically kill you no matter how well you treated it the first time. It also doesn’t reassure to think that neurosurgeons hone their skills by operating, and by failing – and this by definition leaves damaged patients behind. But it’s also comforting to see the professionalism and skills on display, and to learn the surprising variety of perfectly treatable conditions from which one might suffer. Not for the fainthearted, though.

4/5. Finished Saturday 23 July, 2016.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)