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Googled, The End of the World as We Know It, Ken Auletta, 2009

This book, while still worth reading, is a big disappointment. The reader was expecting something akin to the remarkable 1981 The Soul of a New Machine by non engineer Tracy Kidder, that follows Data General as it designs a new generation of minicomputer intended to outperform the offerings of Digital Equipment Corp. This older book is a page turner that uniquely puts the reader into the environment of world class hardware engineers as they race to design the next market beater. I have encountered no other work that has successfully taken you inside this nerdish world.

Auletta focuses more on the technological displacement caused by Google than on the company and its founders and engineers, particularly the displacement experienced by media companies which is really Auletta’s main interest. As a result the two founders Larry Page, and Sergey Brin remain largely unknown beyond what the reader already knows. About their engineering and technology we learn virtually nothing at all. The outside CEO that the venture capitalists forced the founders to hire, Eric Schmidt, is an even bigger enigma. He comes off as a weak indecisive manager with no creativity or imagination and one wonders how he survived this long. His current contribution is to drag Google into “cloud computing” even though it is completely unclear why Google could write or buy suitable enterprise software or would be good at selling or managing this kind of business. Oh, incidentally, Schmidt shares Page’s and Brin’s passion for the Burning Man Festival.

Burning Man

The few facts imparted seem to be these. Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford and became and remain inseparable. They were both raised in academic families and both attended Montessori schools which encourage independent thought and activity. At Stanford Brin studied data mining, the algorithmic analysis of large amounts of digital data for information. Page was interested in the problem of Internet search and began developing the scan and search algorithms while a student. The first problem is to get the massive resources needed to scan the entire world wide web. The second problem is to somehow prioritize the search hits so that the most relevant results are listed first. We get little insight into either of these problems except some gobbledygook about the number of links to an item giving it weight. After reading this book we don’t know what makes Google the best search engine and this is a big disappointment.

Brin Schmidt Page

Auletta does a little better with the corporate culture captured in the corporate mantra “do no evil”. Somehow, maybe because Google searches are the best, or because their main search page remains totally uncluttered with cute ever changing and timely Google logos, the user has come to trust Google as users never trusted Microsoft. The founders, thus far, have succeeded in putting the user search experience first and any concern with making money second. Despite bad press for their voluntary censorship of their search results in China, Google remains (except for the companies their transformation threatens) a trusted brand and company.

“Do No Evil”

In fact, that Google became a money generating machine is described as almost an accident. Google is engineering driven and they wanted a totally automatic advertising model. What they came up with was an auction where bidders submit a list of keywords and the amount they are willing to pay per click for each word. The winning bid is allowed a short description which will appear in a walled out section of the search result (to make clear that the result is a paid advertisement). The advertiser pays only when the user actually clicks on the link to take them to the advertised page. The result is the money machine, named AdWords.

The second idea came a year later, called AdSense where Google uses a search query to guess what product or service the inquirer might be interested in and displaying, in the walled off section, short advertising blurbs describing the product or service. With AdSense, the result is not directly keyword driven but is driven by assumed inference from the query subject. Neither Adwords nor AdSense which are the only real revenue producers Google has yet conceived are poorly explained and given about 4 pages of the entire book.

In other words we don’t know why Google is the best search engine nor why they are able to generate enormous revenue after reading this book.

Auletta’s discussion of privacy comes down to this; users generally continue to trust that Google won’t misuse the information it collects and every other company in the world is extremely jealous of this information and the uses it could be put to.

Auletta gives considerable attention to the acquisition of YouTube, Google’s so far lack of success in monetizing YouTube, and the copyright problems engendered by user submitted content. Media seem to be slowly coming around to the idea that YouTube can be used to promote their products and lawsuits are abating.

Auletta spends some time on the competitive environment, particularly the almost comic efforts of Microsoft to acquire Yahoo for its reputation and search engine. (For a time when Google was young, Yahoo contracted its searches to Google so clearly even Yahoo recognized that Google has the superior engine). Auletta comments on this protracted odd-couple courtship (Steve Ballmer pursuing Jerry Yang) that the two companies only succeeded in knocking each other unconscious. Microsoft introduced its own search engine, Bing, after this book was completed, but Bing has only achieved about 10% market share and typically is completely entombed in Microsoft stuff like their Explorer 8.

Fearing that Microsoft Explorer will make it difficult to get to Google search, Google has introduced its own browser, Chrome. They would have been better off promoting Mozilla’s open source Firefox but I suspect Google hopes Chrome can become the operating system of cloud computing and wanted a platform that they control. I don’t think many users will use Chrome and Firefox remains very Google friendly.

In perhaps their biggest misstep to date, Google introduced its own open source mobile telephone operating system Android, which they failed to sell to Verizon. (AT&T has a deal with Apple and Iphone). So far, only Tmobile has agreed to experiment with Android. The mistake is that the once close relationship between Google and Apple has soured and Schmidt has been forced to resign from Apple’s board. Having Microsoft (and Yahoo) as enemies is probably inevitable but the Apple rupture should have been avoidable.

Google Earth View of Headquarters

Turning to his favorite subject, mass media, Auletta kind of loses Google because the transformational displacement faced by newspapers, television, radio, cable, and other media would have happened with or without Google. Google just happens to be the capitalization monster and money machine at the center of the Internet transformation. In this section we are really looking at the failures of leadership of these organizations as much as the Internet transformation itself. Corporate consolidation resulted in the corruption of journalism and content and general incompetence. The modern business manager is trained to focus on “efficiency” rather than opportunity and growth with the result that they manage their companies into non existence. Google didn’t destroy these companies, they self destructed in the face of an inevitable technical transformation. I wish this section hadn’t been put into a book purporting to be about Google. The best part of this section is a quote from NYU professor Clay Shirky (written for his blog of course) concerning the fate of newspapers:

The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment…When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution…They are demanding to be told that the ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to…We’re collectively living through 1500 (advent of the printing press), when its easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it…Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.

Maybe someday someone will write the real inside story of Google. This isn’t it.

This reader’s personal experience with search engines is more compelling than this book. As a software engineer, I was very dependent on being able to find very specific (and often obscure) information on the Internet. Every time a new search engine was introduced, I jumped to try it immediately, hoping that the frustration of finding what I needed would be lessened. When Google first appeared, in 1998-9, I tried it and never left. I have not tried Bing once. During the time I was developing Windows software for Ticketmaster, I was completely dependent on Google to find detailed technical information from Microsoft’s own Developers Network. If I used Microsoft’s own search from within their network I could never find anything. Google could find the most obscure information like how to create a dynamically scalable table in which rows and columns can be dynamically removed. Without Google search, I never would have found the right references and articles.

Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin, 2009

This book focuses on the period from the sale of Bear Sterns to JP Morgan (JPM) in March 2008 through the climactic weekend in September 2008 that decided the fates of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG, and finishing with the nine biggest wall street firms being forced to accept TARP money in exchange for stock warrants; the unthinkable temporary nationalization of the American financial system in October 2008 by a Republican administration. Like the account of Bear Sterns collapse, this book reads like a page turning novel.

Lehman Headquarters

Unlike William Cohen’s account, this book does not give a detailed history of the central firms, or attempt a detailed explanation of the securitized mortgages, sub-prime mortgages, and credit default swaps (insurance policies) at the heart of the crisis. Instead, Sorkin argues that even Alan Greenspan, with his extensive mathematical training, was unable to grasp the new investment vehicles, so clearly the wall street executive decision makers, the risk assessors, and the ratings agencies were unable to understand the investments they were rating or making. In other words don’t even try to understand the things at the very heart of the crisis. The only clear thing is that the real estate bubble burst and everyone’s home has lost value, along with 401Ks, etc.

Thus the Quants (quantitative analysts) who invented the complex strategies and instruments that led to the collapse of LTCM in 1998, who invented hedging investment strategies universally accepted whereby big investors hedge their risky investment bets by also betting on the opposite outcome, and who invented securitized asset vehicles that carve up a bundle of individual loans or assets into different risk valued slices that can be sold separately making it almost impossible to find or value the original loan or asset, and finally to credit default swaps (CDOs) as insurance or hedge options which serve to give the appearance of low risk and allow the investor to leverage their investments even further, go largely unexamined here. Someone needs to write a book about these creative geniuses whose work nearly brought on the second great depression.

Ultimate Gambler Einhorn

Some attention is given to short sellers like noisy David Einhorn who featured large in the demise of Bear Sterns. Once Bear was gone, Einhorn immediately focused on Lehman, calling into question their accounting and asset valuations. Thus was launched the short selling that quickly drove Lehman stock into the ground. The other Wall Street firms well understood the dynamic that they would be picked off one by one by the short sellers in order of size Bear first, following by Lehman, Merrill, Morgan, and Goldman. Citicorp was not far behind. But until it was their turn as the biggest firm still standing they said little about the practice. The short sellers were not limited to those who invest solely on the basis of shorting stock, but has spread to hedge fund managers and other institutional investors who now believe it is necessary to hedge your bets by placing opposing bets in order to minimize losses. The CEOs at Bear, Lehman (Fuld) and Merrill (Thain) railed against the short sellers but the government never seriously considered stopping the practice. They played with the uptick rule which Sorkin says is easy to get around. The British, by contrast, banned short selling for 30 days at the height of the crisis.

The Losing CEOs in Denial Thain Fuld Cayne

From March to September, the heads of all remaining investment banks on wall street should have seen the writing on the wall with the collapse of Bear Sterns and sought shelter through acquisition or transformation (to a bank or bank holding company) but the CEO of each, particularly Dick Fuld of Lehman and John Thain of Merrill remained in denial of the new realities of their world. Despite repeated pressure from Paulson at Treasury to raise equity or find a buyer both dithered the months away until it was too late. The section dealing with this interval reads like the lives of the rich and infamous as we meet and follow the handful of “masters of the universe” as they go about their daily lives; the private jets, the second homes, the globe trotting, the exclusive conferences. We meet second tier executives who need $13 million a year just to support their life style. No bridge players here but several masters ski regularly at Vail. The hobby of choice is golf with one CEO getting in 13 rounds of golf a week as his company goes up in flames. (Does even Tiger ever play 13 rounds of golf in a week?)

What really strikes home is how few masters of the universe there are and getting fewer by the day. They all know one another and share career histories as they move from firm to firm or into and out of government. Typically CEOs have previously lost battles for the top spot and retain that bitterness. They share a lack of trust in one another and seldom miss the chance to exploit an opportunity at the expense of a rival. In any crisis like those of last year they gather like sharks to try to learn the inside secrets of the failing firms and see what parts they may be able to devour or steal. They are less than honest even with themselves and seldom even consider the stockholder’s interests except to the extent that they themselves hold stock. They measure themselves in terms of their total compensation and not the success of the companies they lead. More and more, their compensation is untied to stocks and they can maximize their bonuses by creative accounting right up to day they file for bankruptcy. There are so few of them and now even fewer after the events of the last year that they can sit around a small conference table. A surprising number of them were mentored by Robert Rubin as if they are all his children, even Geithner. Warren Buffet hates and distrusts them all but still willing to capitalize on an opportunity if it is sweet enough.

The Key Government Players Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, Duggan, Cox

The unexpected exception here is Paulson, a Christian Scientist, who lives comparatively modestly with a 1200 square foot apartment in New York, who hates traveling by private jet, who likes to ride his bicycle with his wife Wendy around Rock Creek Park in Washington, and whose main indulgence seems to have been the purchase of a piece of a bird preserve island in Georgia for $30+ million. Not expectantly, Paulson is the central character in this drama.

As to the conspirator’s government Goldman, Sorkin doesn’t believe it but recognizes how many Goldman CEOs have served in government. He relates a delightful story of Secretary Paulson and the Goldman management team coincidentally in Russia at the same time arranging a secret meeting in Moscow and terrified word might leak.

New York Federal Reserve

Tim Geithner is the second central character as head of the New York Fed and who comes across as decisive but imperious, loving to order the masters of universe around like he is a school master giving exams to his pupils. The masters refer to him as the boy scout. Largely missing here is Ben Bernanke who comes across as professorial and detached, who frustrates both Geithner and Paulson for his unwillingness to use Fed powers in creative and expansive ways to deal with the unfolding crisis. Most of the climactic scenes in this book take place in the New York Fed building with one memorable scene where the emergency room with its defibrillator still hanging on the wall at the Fed is quickly converted into a conference room for the Lehman team during the fateful weekend. The irony is not missed by Lehman.

But lots is happening during the lull from March to September. Countrywide, Indymac, and Washington Mutual banks fail and are quietly taken over by the FDIC and Shiela Bair, the only woman of power in this story. Neither Geithner nor Paulson cares much for Bair but they respect her work and ultimately recruit her to help in the TARP bank takeover in October. Perhaps the most significant event of this lull is the failure and government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, a move engineered by Paulson, who many believe tricked congress into giving him authorization. Both Freddie and Fannie keep armies of lobbyists, are insular and arrogant, and can bring enormous pollitical pressure when given enough time. Paulson surprised everyone by instantly nationalizing both firms and firing their management in July. Had Freddie and Fannie who hold more than 50% of the countries mortgages and who freely participated in buying sub prime and mortgage backed securities failed, the entire financial system would have melted down.

And finally we get to the dramatic climax of the book, the weekend in September when a three ring circus is convened to determine the fates of Lehman, Merrill, and AIG. That’s right, all three outcomes were determined in one chaotic sleepless weekend. As we enter the weekend, it is understood that Lehman will not survive to open on Monday, it has been discovered that out of control AIG has another undiscovered $20 billion loss in a real estate investment division bringing its total immediate capital need to at least $60 billion.

Paulson has pressured Bank of America to purchase Lehman but insists that he has burned all his political capital with Bear and the takeover of Freddie and Fannie and will be unable to do a “Jimmie” (Dimond of JPM) where Treasury guaranteed $39 billion in losses for the purchase of Bear. British Barclay is also readying a bid for Lehman and neither BofA nor the British believe Paulson will not participate with a guarantee. Suddenly BofA decides that Merrill is a better fit and unknown to most participants, drops its efforts to acquire Lehman to concentrate of Merrill. Barclay finalizes a bid but at the last minute the British regulators and government refuse to allow the deal fearing the wall street contagion will spread to London (as if they were somehow insular otherwise). Out of time and out of options (how can Paulson and Treasury guarantee losses to a British company?) Lehman is forced into bankruptcy. Fuld alone loses $850 million in stock value. Barclay immediately approaches the bankruptcy judge to buy the New York trading arm (the piece they were after to begin with) and the judge agrees to sell to them to preserve the US jobs. In the meanwhile, and without government intervention or help, BofA agrees to buy Merrill. BoA comes to regret this decision as the true state of Merrill comes to light.

Geithner focuses on AIG this critical weekend and realizes that a failure and default on all its CDOs will be disastrous and collapse the financial system so he masterminds a takeover of AIG which takes place Tuesday and costs taxpayers almost $80 billion (now up to $180 billion). Paul Krugman joked that Paulson’s free market moral hazard lesson issued to Lehman had lasted all of 24 hours.

Joseph Cassano “Patient Zero”

Sorkin includes a picture of Joseph Cassano head of AIGs financial products unit intriguingly dubbed the man who crashed Wall Street. Like Ralph Cioffi of Bear, Cassano single handedly brought down AIG as his quants invented the CDO. Cassano used to brag that CDOs were so perfect AIG would never lose $1 on a CDO. The correct number is $180 billion and counting. Warren Buffet has called the CDOs weapons of mass destruction. More detail on Cassano’s activities and how it destroyed AIG would have been useful. Maybe another book? Incidentally, in a monumental miscarriage of justice, Bear Sterns’ Cioffi and sidekick Matthew Tannin were recently acquitted on charges of lying about their investments.

The book now winds down to the anticlimactic meeting in Washington where the nine largest financial institutions are forced to take government money and government participation. Did all this government intervention save us from catastrophe? Did Lehman’s bankruptcy make thing worse. Sorkin believes that the Fed and Treasury were winging it, moving from crisis to crisis and making numerous sequential and inconsistent decisions which confused the market. TARP was intended to correct this but somehow morphed from buying toxic assets to direct investment in banks. Sorkin thinks the government inconsistency rather than the Lehman bankruptcy itself exacerbated the problems in the markets. Had the government a better regulatory system in place to unwind failing wall street firms like the FDIC would the crisis have looked completely different and would the outcome have been better? One can only speculate.

So what did we learn from all this? Absolutely nothing according to Sorkin’s two page wrap up. Rather than fix some problems with regulation and orderly liquidation, Obama has moved on to other priorities. Wall street continues to focus on generating fees for themselves rather than clients. They see enormous potential profits from the collapse of the commercial real estate bubble. They are taking bigger risks than ever now that they know the government is there if they get into trouble. Even as bank holding companies, leverage is beyond belief. Egos are as big as ever. The survivors feel invulnerable. Humility is totally absent. Compensation and profits are at record levels. We eagerly await the next crisis. Too bad these two books aren’t really novels.

Money Driven Medicine, Maggie Mahar, 2006

This book was published in 2006, two years before the bursting of the real estate bubble and the resulting collapse of Wall Street. Her message in 2006 is that the free market economy doesn’t work in health care. Now even free market pied piper and Serial Bubbler Alan Greenspan realizes it doesn’t work for much else of the economy. The central theme here is the pernicious effects of huge corporations; hospitals, insurers, pharmaceuticals, device and equipment manufacturers on our health care system. Lost in the equation are doctors and patients.

We previously reviewed an excellent history of health care and the road to our current mess and a review of a work exposing the pharmaceutical industry.

She mentions private insurers as they trim their enrollment, deny coverage for preexisting conditions, increase deductibles, and deny claims. She is particularly incensed by the new Las Vegas style “thrill seeker” policies. Blue Cross even named some of their plans Thrill-Seeker, Part Time Daredevil, and Calculated Risk Taker. The idea here is the buyer assumes they will never have a catastrophic health care problem but the low cost policy is there just in case. Of course the fine print in the policy plus the typical $10,000 deductible make the policy all but worthless for most illnesses and problems. Mahar also discusses the medicare drug benefit program which is costing far more than projected and precludes medicare from negotiating for better prices.

On doctors, Mahar says few keep up with developments in their field. They use the excuse of lacking time (that could be better used billing patients) but the effects are profound. In an experiment, a hypothetical patient with symptoms and test results was given to 130 doctors. Using amazing creativity they managed to come up with 88 distinct treatment programs. As far as doctors voluntarily adopting electronic records, it may have to wait for the next generation of doctors. There is a continuing trend for doctors to specialize. Specialists earn more money, only need to keep up with a limited field of knowledge, and can earn more prestige It has the side effect that the specialist has very limited contact with the annoying patient (they may be unconscious most of the time). The downside is the “when you have a hammer, everything is a nail” phenomenon where the specialist is tempted to expand business by employing unnecessary and even harmful treatment (See the Redding doctors later in the review).

As to why the free market economy doesn’t work in health care she gives a simple illustration. The patient visits his doctor who diagnoses a live threatening problem. An immediate operation is required to save the patients life and as luck would have it, the doctor and a hospital have an opening this very afternoon. Can the patient make an informed buying decision under these circumstances. Both the patient and the patient’s spouse are probably in total shock at the diagnosis and would be unable to make any sort of rational decision under the circumstances. This is a situation calling for complete trust between patient and doctor, not a free market economy. At the end of the book she includes a real world example of a doctor, after a full career diagnosing a treating a particular disease himself contracting that disease. Here the doctor has full world class knowledge and information about his own condition and the options available. Yet the doctor is frozen, unable to decide anything about his own treatment until a friend suggested he needed a doctor, a trusted outsider and professional to develop a treatment plan. Free market economics doesn’t apply to health care and Mahar coyly points out only economics of all social sciences is built around the assumption that people behave rationally.

Mahar discusses the full range of issues confronting our broken health care system but gives particular attention to two subjects; for-profit hospitals, and device manufacturers. Hospitals are a bad business for making money; they are labor intensive, need constant equipment updating, and their income is restricted by the private insurers and medicare. So the hospital business became a real estate play where the big hospital corporations go on a mergers and acquisitions binge, swallowing up low valued hospitals around the country. The difference in PE ratios between the hospital corporation and the acquired hospital translates direct to increased valuation of the corporation. Then, once the corporation is satiated it starts unloading its money losing hospitals and because real estate and hospital prices are continuing to rise, the corporation makes money from dumping its losing hospitals. The cycle repeats.

Sen. Bill Frist Lives High on Medicare Fraud

The other way hospital corporations make money is by over-billing, usually fraudulently, insurers and Medicare. They employ accountants who are specialists in “gaming” the insurers and medicare, often fraudulently. One of the first investor owned hospital corporations was HCA founded by the Frist family. In 2000 HCA paid a total of $1.7 billion is civil and criminal penalties as a result of fraudulent billing practices. Senator Bill Frist, joining other insiders at HCA in 2005, sold all his shares at $58, a market peak. Stock prices at HCA subsequently plunged and the company was taken private through a leveraged buyout in 2006. Was this a case of insider trading like that notorious Martha Stewart. Bill Frist was never prosecuted despite an SEC investigation.

Chae Hyun Moon and Fidel Realyvasquez Fraudulent Cardiologists

Hospitals were also generating business by performing unnecessary procedures including surgeries, most notoriously by two doctors in a Redding hospital who conducted bypass surgery and implanted stents in any patient who came their way, needed or not. Some patients who needed no surgery at all died as a result. The Federal government went after the hospital and two doctors with the resulting settlement that the doctors would no longer be eligible for Federal payments for their work. For private insurers, its business as usual.

Mahar also talks about the equipment arms races that all hospitals succumb to for competitive reasons. If one hospital gets a full body scanner, then all hospitals must get one. Doctors joke that in Toledo Ohio their are so many MRI machines that you can feel the magnetic force field just walking across town. The advertising that hospitals are now free to use escalates the arms race with hospitals trying to outbid each other with the latest amenities. They almost sound like resort spas today. Whats wrong with buying the latest equipment? For one thing you risk false negatives and subjecting patients to treatments they don’t need (like the Redding Cardiologists). But even older equipment like mammograms are only as good as the doctors or specialists reading the xrays. And the skill varies remarkably. By having every piece of equipment in every hospital you are almost assured that not everyone performing the tests is adequately skilled and competent, to say nothing of intentional misdiagnosis to generate business.

And what about those uninsured who show up in the hospital’s ER. If they don’t have insurance get lost. Despite laws to the contrary, more and more hospitals, including University research hospitals are turning away uninsured or under-insured patients who are unable to pay for treatment. Simply put, treating uninsured patients hurts the bottom line. Still hospitals routinely set aside a reserve of 12% or more to cover noncollectable debt.

Finally with hospitals there is the issue of electronic records. With billions at stake, IT vendors are falling all over themselves to offer proprietary systems. The problem is that the system do not inter-operate, that is, information can not be shared across systems by different vendors. Then hospitals work with many doctors who each has his own practice and each practice may use two or three different hospitals. Doctors are reluctant to install and learn an electronic record system and it is likely no one system will allow them to communicate with each hospital. Until the government steps in to create an interchangeability standard, electronic records will go nowhere. The two exceptions, noted by Mahar are Kaiser Permanente, a prepaid non profit hospital system and the VA. These two organization have been able to automate records because they are closed systems with payer, doctors, and hospitals all bundled into a unified health care system. The VA’s system costs $78 per patient per year to operate. Kaiser’s system costs $40 per patient per year to operate. Cost should not be a reason not to implement universal interoperable electronic health care records. The VA’s system has been so praised they have offered it free of charge to anyone wanting to automated their records. The VA even has volunteers willing to help any doctor set up a system. Still there are few takers. Electronic records is also not in the interests of the big powerful corporations controlling today’s health care. With electronic records it would be possible to track the performance of doctors, hospitals, devices, drugs, and see what is effective and to find problems. Secrecy is necessary to protect the big interests so expect a big fight over electronic records and interoperability.

Now don’t assume that non profit hospitals are immune to the problems of their for profit brothers. Non profit hospitals still require huge expenditures to keep up in the equipment arms race and for that they need to sell bonds to raise money, and to sell bonds, they need good credit ratings so they are subject to mast of the same problems and constraints of publicly traded companies.

Device manufacturers are now the leading cause of runaway health care costs, but to understand them Mahar says you must start with the pharmaceutical takeover of the FDA in the early 1990s (under Clinton. Pharmaceutical companies wanted fast track approval for new drugs and as part of the new federal mandate they directly foot most of the cost of running the FDA. The program was a rousing success with fast approval of record numbers of new drugs. But of course the FDA ceased to operate as a regulatory body responsible for continuous testing and monitor of FDA approved drugs and devices. As an example Vioxx was identified by the VA, Kaiser Permanente, and the Mayo Clinic as unsafe years before the the FDA came forward and Merck was forced to withdraw Vioxx.

Guidant’s Faulty Defibullator gets Recalled

Her worst device story concerns an implanted defibrillator manufactured by Guidant. A young man with a defibrillator suddenly died while riding a mountain bike in Moab Utah. A New York Times reporter got interested when he discovered the defibrillator had short circuited just when it was need which led to the death. The reporter filed a freedom of information request to find out how much the FDA knew about such failures. His request was denied but upheld on appeal. What he discovered was shocking. Guidant had known about the problem for years and had redesigned the unit to correct the problem but continued to sell the original design for at least three years after the redesign. Many deaths resulted from the faulty device but neither the FDA nor the company ever issued warning to doctors or patients. Only when the reporter began the first of more than 30 articles on the device did the FDA issue a very tepid warning. Oh, by the way Guidant was purchased by another company for an astounding $27 billion in the middle of all this. Device manufacturers think they can get away with anything and charge anything they want.

Now to some startling statistics. Worried about a government run health care option? The Federal government is already paying 51% of all health care costs if you add medicare, medicaid, VA, SCHIP, and Federal employees insurance. If you add tax revenue lost to deductions from employers and employees for health care, the Federal government is in fact paying 60% of all health care. The Federal government and its taxpayers are already paying more than enough for a first class comprehensive all inclusive health care system but the corporations are making sure we don’t get one.

And guess who the the big hero of this book is. The lowly Veterans Administration, those guys with the pealing paint and holes in the wall. The VA had been able to cut their costs by half at the same time everyone else s costs are skyrocketing. They have been able to dramatically reduce hospital beds, negotiate for better drug prices (The VA laments that if VA 5% drug market share could have added to Medicare’s 10% market share they could have negotiated even better prices), control doctor salaries, and implement only testing and treatment procedures that are acknowledged to be be best practices. The result is better outcomes and lower death rates along with lower costs.

Israel Is Real, Rich Cohen, 2009

A 350 page history of the Jewish people from Abraham, Moses, David, through to Zionism and today’s Israel is tough sledding for the reader. Cohen is American, doesn’t speak Hebrew, at one point claims he is Christian to be allowed into the Jerusalem old city, and writes with a strange mixture of empathy and puzzlement at the Jewish story and fate.

Jerusalem – Layers of History

His history is fleeting with special attention to the life arch of King David, from Shepard, to hero, to king, to wife stealer, (he sends the husband to die as a soldier), to sad old man yearning for his lost son. He credits David with the transition from wandering tribe carrying the Ark of the Covenant everywhere to building a permanent temple on the Temple Mount, thus fixing Jewish fate to a single geographic location. He also gives special attention to the Roman conquest and role of the warrior Jewish Zealots in the death and destruction of Judea including the second temple. The Roman built a temple to Jupiter on Temple Mount but within a few hundred years, the Caesars had converted to Christianity as had many Jews.

Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum

He discusses the 2000 year plight of the Jews with alternating pogroms, assimilation, ghettos, leading up to the Holocaust, which he says has been turned into a new religion with its own temples (museums now include Berlin and Washington) throughout the world centered by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem, leading via Zionism to the formation of Israel.

He says after the Roman conquest, the Jews succeeded in turning the lost temple with its rituals into a book (or really several books) that they could again carry with them everywhere in their wanderings. Unlike the Ark, the book could be multiplied so every Jew could have his own copy wherever he went. He attributes the strength of the Jewish identity to possession of this book.

One interesting section deals with the rise of the notion of race which was intended to doom the prospects for assimilation since the Jews would never be considered Arlan even if they converted to Christianity. So, to counter the race argument, some Jews discovered a lost tribe of red headed Jews who for a short time around 700 AD ruled a small kingdom called Khazaria. But the concept of race somehow got buried deep in the psyche and today Jews are themselves very race conscience with their distinctions between Ashkenazi Diaspora-Caucasian Jews and Sephardic Jews from the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain.

He traces the origins of Zionism, the movement to return and create a Jewish state in Palestine to people like Disraeli, the first and only Jewish British prime minister and American journalist Mordecai Noah, or more interestingly, to German-Polish Jew Moses Hess who knew and shared a coffeehouse with Marx and Engels. Credit is generally given to Theodor Herzl near the end of the nineteenth century.

He traces the arch of the State of Israel through its key leaders and heroes, particularly warrior Ariel Sharon, hero of 1948, 1967, and 1973. He draws some parallels between Sharon and David and even Sharon and Moses. Sharon’s bold aggressive style of warfare finally came into disgrace in the 1982 Lebanon invasion following the Christian massacre of Palestinians in several refugee camps in Lebanon. In the final stage of the arch, we follow embittered Sharon as he leads a band of police to the mosque on the Temple Mount during Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

Ariel Sharon Visits Temple Mount

Most memorable are his stories of the 1973 Yom Kippur war which Israel almost lost. We see once heroic one eyed Moshe Dayan losing it when it appears Syria will prevail in Golan, ranting about the loss of the third temple and scaring everyone around him; we see tough Golda Meir taking a cigarette break to collect herself at the height of the crisis then calmly declaring “Let’s go back to work.”

Tough Mother Golda and her cigarette

Force Zvika

Then there is the amazing story of 21 year old tank commander Zvika Greengold, who commands the only remaining functional Israeli tank and enters the Hula Valley alone at dusk to try to hold off hundreds of assembled Syrian tanks until Israeli reinforcements can arrive. In an all night tank battle, without lights, Greengold maneuvered among and knocked out uncountable tanks and stopped the Syrian advance for 22 hours. He was aided by the fact that his aging tank was a Sherman the same that Syria was using, and that any tank he could find in the dark would be an enemy but the Syrian couldn’t identify him as an enemy. To confuse the Syrians further, he used his radio to command his “Force Zvika” tanks during the action. When reinforcements finally arrive the Israeli commander asks Greengold “Where is Force Zvika?” and he answers “I am Force Zvika”.

Dayan and Sharon during Yom Kippur War

The other Moses-like story concerns Ariel Sharon in the Sinai dessert in 1973. Two divisions of Egyptian soldier have driven the Israelis deep into the dessert where their advance is finally stopped. Some scouts report an incredible discovery; the two Egyptian divisions have left a gap fifteen miles wide between them. Sharon asks his timid commander Gonan for permission to drive through this gap to Suez. Gonan refuses but Sharon, of course, goes anyway. He gets to the Canal by morning and asks Gonan for bridges to cross. Gonan refuses again, so Sharon finds some derelict old landing craft and manages to get several hundred troops and equipment including tanks across the canal. The Egyptians awake to discover their supply lines cut (including water), Israeli troops camped a short drive from Cairo, and two divisions trapped in the dessert. An Egyptian MiG fighter attacks Sharon’s position and Sharon is wounded. Sharon is called back to Sinai for a meeting (shouting match) with Gonan with the result that reinforcements are sent to hold Sharon’s Egyptian position but not under Sharon’s command. Anwar Sadat is forced to negotiate a peace.

Jerusalem Epicenter of Western Religions – and Graveyard

He talks about visiting Israel and of the Jerusalem Syndrome which affects most visitors to the old city, possibly excepting Asian tourists whose culture is outside the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions. Few visitors actually become psychotic but the effects of seeing all the layer upon layer of history built one upon the other and the sites that are central to the three major western religious traditions is somehow overpowering. One wishes that the entire city could be preserved as an international museum, protected from all the struggles and politics but of course Jerusalem is home to a diverse collection of people going about their daily lives, an idea inconsistent with the notion of museum.

The big dynamic today seems to be population, as the Arabs outproduce the Jews changing the political dynamic that would ultimately lead to an Arab controlled democracy. Cohen himself was criticized for being Jewish and for living in the safe US instead of returning to his Jewish homeland. If all American Jews emigrated to Israel (they automatically have Israeli citizenship) the population disparity would be instantly corrected and the Jews would dominate the country. This is the ultimate contradiction buried in the very concept of a religious state. It is something that Ataturk understood when he declared Turkey to be a secular state but that the Zionists and Ayatollahs of Iran have somehow missed.

“B” is for Best

Jenson Button 2009 Grand Prix Driving Champion

In the Brazil Grand Prix, Brawn GP won the constructor’s trophy in its first year of racing, while Jensen Button won the drivers title. This is the fifth straight year where the driver’s title was decided in Brazil, that mecca of sport ready to host the 2014 world soccer cup and the 2016 summer Olympics. (You’ve won a free vacaction to a destination of your choice; you choose A. Chicago; or B. Rio de Janiero. Yeah right.)

We seldom delve into sports with the exception of the tragic-comic 2007 Tour de France which was a first class debacle. This year’s Formula 1 racing season is turning into another memorable sporting season; one that is turning this inbred racing world upside down.

Formula 1 is truly the sport of the very wealthy with unlimited budgets in excess of $400 million (Toyota has been the top spender at $418M) and teams of up to 700 employees. The cost, size, and status of formula 1 in Europe make the America’s Cup contenders look like poor man’s amateur hour. Formula 1 has also been dominated by a few teams, four of which (McLaren, Williams, Renault (formerly Benetton) and Ferrari) have won every world championship since 1984. One driver, Michael Schumacher, and Ferrari won an unprecedented five consecutive drivers’ championships and six consecutive constructors’ championships between 1999 and 2004, putting Ferrari into the same league of dominance as the Boston Celtics under Bill Russell. Schumacher with his endorsements was by far the highest paid athlete in all of sports at the time of his retirement in 2006.

Schumacher and his Ferrari in 2005

Formula 1 today races on 17 circuits consisting of streets and specially built tracks throughout the world. Today they race in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, North and South America. Their most famous circuit is probably Monte Carlo where they race through the city tunneling under hotels and along the ocean side with one U turn reverse on the same street. The cars are powered by tiny 2.4 liter V8 engines that reach 18,000 RPM produce 450 HP and propel the cars to 220 MPH. The cars are technological marvels of electronics, aerodynamics, and ever changing invention and regulation. Tires are equally important with Michelin and Bridgestone competing with equal passion for dominance. In 2009 Bridgestone exclusively supplies the tires, both soft and hard compound, and the cars are required to use each type at least once in each race. Each circuit is unique with some set up clockwise and others counter-clockwise. The cars must be reconfigured with fuel tanks moved to the opposite sides depending on the track. Race conditions and road surfaces also vary dramatically and formula 1 cars race through rain, wind, and heat. Only very extreme conditions will halt a race. These different conditions often find favor for cars that otherwise seldom see wins such as BMW or driver Glock in the rain.

1976 Elf Formula 1

The respect for Formula 1 innovations and technology is highlighted by a McLaren story. McLaren’s designer of the transmission and rear suspension got a call from legendary Jackie Stewart asking him to host and answer the questions of a mysterious visitor, who turned out to be the real world gadget inventor of MI6 (”M” of James Bond fame.) “M” wanted to know everything about the innovative rear car design. One innovation that didn’t survive was the 1976 Elf 6 wheel car considered by some to be the ugliest racing car ever built. Another attempt pitted four cylinder engines against the 8 and 12 cylinder engines used at the time.

The most talked about innovation of 2009 was the addition of a Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) 55 pound flywheel to the transmission. The flywheel stores kinetic energy during braking which can be released by the driver during acceleration. The KERS is of no value to the cars at the critical start of the race and the actual value of its addition seems to have gotten lost amid the surprise victories of the Brawn team.

Britain’s Lewis Hamilton 2007 Second Place and 2008 Formula 1 Driving Champion

Honda, tired of losing, hired the retired technical director of Benetton and Ferrari, Britisher Ross Brawn to head a new racing team for the 2008 season. Honda still finished the season 9th out of 11 teams. For the 2009 reason, Brawn developed a completely new chassis but when Honda sales turned down, a Honda family member returned to take the helm of the company and announced that Formula 1 racing would be dropped. Honda sold the team to Brawn for $1 but stopped production of the race engines as well. Brawn turned to Mercedes who supplies engines for other teams, and to Virgin and other sponsors to enter the 2009 season as Brawn GP with British Jenson Button and former Ferrari driver Brazilian Rubens Barrichello as drivers. Brawn barely finished modifying his new chassis for the Mercedes engines before start of qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix. Brawn GP qualified 1 and 2 and finished the race 1 and 2, setting the race world on its ear. Brawn GP and Button went on to win 6 out of the first 7 races of the season.

Britisher Ross Brawn and his revolutionary Brawn GP car leading the field

The other surprise team this year has been Red Bull (Renault engine) whose driver Sebastian Vettel is in second place in the drivers championship going into the last race and it appears Red Bull has now sown up second place in the constructors competition. Ferrari particularly has been beset by inexplicable lapses and problems. Brazilian driver Filipe Massa received insufficient fuel on his final pit stop and lost several positions nursing his Ferrari to the finish in one race. Another big 4 car lost a wheel on the track. Massa crashed his Ferrari while qualifying in Hungary and is out for the season. With one race remaining legendary Ferrari had won one race, Belgium.

Why is this huge change happening? There are suspicions and accusations, particular surrounding the innovative double diffuser which other teams tried to disallow, in this highly competitive world. In fact the issue of the double diffuser (a subtle rear undercarriage change that is crucial to the aerodynamics, and small changes can have a big impact on down force – and therefore grip and speed, actually ended up in court with Ferrari taking the lead in opposing the innovation. The court ruled that the double diffuser conformed to Formula 1 rules on April 15. This decision left other teams playing technical catch up for the rest of the season as they added double diffusers to their cars. This flap is reminiscent of the controversy over the Kiwi’s secret twin keel on their America’s Cup contender.

But the most significant difference seems to come down to one principal difference which made all the difference in Italy: The Brawn cars are lighter and therefore have greater fuel efficiency and produce less tire wear. This difference was highlighted in the race at Monza in Italy where the two Brawn cars qualified in the third row. Their fuel efficiency and tire life allowed them to pit much later than the leading teams (Hamilton driving for McLaren Mercedes led most of the race from the poll start) and the Brawns were able to finish the race with only a single pit stop where Hamilton had to stop twice. Formula 1 pits stops require only 8-9 seconds for fuel, tire change, and adjustments and the cars can be back racing with only a loss of less than 30 seconds. This second pit stop meant that Hamilton emerged third after the two Brawns. Hamilton pushed hard and had closed to less than 4 seconds with one lap remaining when he spun out and did not finish. The Brawns won by eliminating that extra pit stop, a revolutionary advantage so long as they can qualify in one of the first few rows at the start of the race.

Formula 1 is constantly changing the rules with the result that Schumacher still holds course records 3 years after his retirement. A big change was requiring the actual race car including fuel and tires to be used in qualifying. The teams can’t even change the down forces. This change was needed to stop the manufacturers from creating expensive, lightweight, qualifying cars never intended for an entire race. The problem with this change was highlighted in Brazil where qualifying was held in heavy rain while the race was expected to be conducted on dry roads. McLaren set up Hamilton’s car for dry roads and he qualified near the back of the field. Still Hamilton finished the race third after six cars crashed or broke down in the race. Barrichello, who won the poll position in qualifying, finished eighth. Next year they plan on eliminating refueling entirely during the race which means all cars must be able to carry enough fuel to qualify and complete the entire race, a huge change. The most revolutionary proposal for next year would limit team expenditure to 50 million Euro a huge reduction over current expenditures.

Finally, next year will see the first US entry into Formula 1 with a Charlotte North Carolina based racing team. The Dukes of Hazard this team is not we hope. Also next year will see the return of Lotus to Formula 1.

The Places In Between, Rory Stewart, 2006

I first discovered the Scotsman Rory Stewart on the Bill Moyer’s Journal. Rory Stewart is now director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Lynn Sherr introduced Stewart as advisor to both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke. The following is a small part of the transcript:

LYNN SHERR: What do you tell them?

RORY STEWART: Again, my message is: focus on what we can do. We don’t have a moral obligation to do what we can’t. People can get very fixed by saying, “But surely you’re not saying we ought to do nothing? Surely you’re not saying we ought to allow the Taliban to do this or that?” And I just keep saying “ought” implies “can”– you don’t have a moral obligation to do what you can’t do.

LYNN SHERR: How is your advice taken?

RORY STEWART: I think what I see at the moment is that people are polite, because they imagine maybe I have some experience with Afghanistan. But I’m one of a broad community of people — we have nine people working in my center at Harvard who’ve worked there for 20 or 30 years and the problem we all have is that if the Administration has for some reason already decided that they’re going to increase troops, they’re going to do a counterinsurgency campaign, it’s very difficult for them to take on board people coming back and saying, “Look, actually, I don’t think this is going to work. It’s a great idea. I can see why you want to do it. But by trying to do the impossible, you may end up doing nothing. I’d like to present an alternative strategy, which is lighter, more intelligent, and may end up actually achieving something.”

LYNN SHERR: And again, their reaction? They listen politely, you say?

RORY STEWART: They listen politely, but in the end, of course, basically the policy decision is made. What they would like is little advice on some small bit. I mean, the analogy that one of my colleagues used recently is this: it’s as though they come to you and they say, “We’re planning to drive our car off a cliff. Do we wear a seatbelt or not?” And we say, “Don’t drive your car off the cliff.” And they say, “No, no, no. That decision’s already made. The question is should we wear our seatbelts?” And you say, “Why by all means wear a seatbelt.” And they say, “Okay, we consulted with policy expert, Rory Stewart,” et cetera.

So much for being an expert today.

Rory Stewart’s biography sounds like fiction. Born in Hong Kong in 1973, he was educated at Eton and Oxford. He was tutor to Prince Harry and Prince William. In the 90’s he joined the Secret Intelligence Service and served in the embassy in Jakarta dealing with East Timor. He was next appointed British representative to Montenegro dealing with Kosovo.

Rory Stewart in Afghan garb with Mastiff Babur

This book recounts a small part of an amazing walking journey historian Rory Undertook over 20 months to recreate the 1514 journey of Babur (descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan) from Samarkand, Uzbekistan to Kabul which he conquered. By 1527 Babur had conquered all of Northern India establishing the Mogul dynasty with Agra his capital.

Rory spent 16 months walking from Iran to Nepal. The government of Iran took his visa away and he was refused entry to Afghanistan by the Taliban so he resumed his journey in Pakistan, crossing to Katmandu where, in December 2001, he heard that the Taliban had fallen, so he returned to Herat to pick up his journey from Herat to Kabul. Babur had made his journey through the mountains in the dead of winter and Rory seemed to find the prospect of doing the same thing in 2002 appealing. U.N. workers called him “a nutter” for his walk which he took as a complement.

This book recounts the kind of travel that is far more common in Europe than in America. Herman Hesse in Narcissus and Goldmund describes a young man wandering around medieval Germany indicating that this coming of age European “Walkabout” has been a tradition for a long time. Overland trips from Europe to India and Nepal by motorcycle, van, and bus were common in the 1960s and 1970s but with the Iranian Revolution and Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 such journeys died down. A recent German biopic, Eight Miles High, of Uschi Obermaier features a three year trip with boyfriend adventurer Dieter Bockhorn by customize bus from Germany to India in 1973. Their adventure lasted three years and was highlighted by their wedding, complete with elephants, in India. God seems to protect the young and naive which is why most young travelers, despite taking crazy risks, seem to come through relatively unscarred by the experience.

As if walking through the mountains alone in the dead of winter were not enough challenge, Rory somehow acquires a dog, a half wild, uncared for 140 pound mastiff of indeterminate age that he names Babur. So not only does he have to beg for food and shelter in each village for himself, he must find food and shelter for his huge dog in a culture where dogs are considered unclean. A boy who is in training to become a mullah informs Rory that the Koran declares dogs to be unclean. When Rory asks to see the passage, the boy says he doesn’t know where it is. “But haven’t you memorized the entire Koran in your studies? Yes, but it is written in Arabic and I don’t understand Arabic.” Like Roman Catholics who loved the Latin mass they cannot understand, this boy has memorized the entire Koran without understanding anything in it. In many villages he has to fight off with his walking stick packs of dogs sent by children to harass him and his dog.

The journey itself is pretty bleak. Rory walks in sub zero temperatures, through blizzards with zero viability, fighting to forge a path through waist deep snow, and trying to break through thick ice to reach drinking water. Through the first half of his trek, he follows the Hari Rud river, climbing to its source. In Herat, Rory collects a series of letters of introduction which he hopes will result in offers of hospitality along his route. This plan is quickly dashed as a village headman demands the letters (for his own use) and Rory discovers that the local head men are mostly illiterate so cannot write much less read such letters. He falls back on an oral tradition where he recounts the list of men who have recently offered him hospitality and memorizes the names of important men he is likely to meet at the next villages. To make life more miserable Rory suffers from constant dysentery and headaches. He tries to document his travels by writing in his journal, sketching people he meets (some are reproduced in the book) and taking very dark black and white film photographs in which the features of people pictured can hardly be made out.

From Herat he is accompanied by two security soldiers who are ordered to walk with him halfway to Kabul. Both are wearing American camouflage overalls and ill fitting boots which damage their feet. The leader is a congenital liar who introduces Rory as an Ukrainian (Soviet), American Spy, U.N. high official with millions to disperse to the local authorities. After the two start suffering from dysentery and foot sores, Rory is finally able to bribe them to leave him and they return to Herat. With the occasional local guide as part of local hospitality, Rory completes his walk largely on his own.

Minaret at Jam

Rory comes to the ancient city of Jam, destroyed by Genghis Khan. A lone minaret remains of what was once a major trading center. In the 1970s professional archeologists were busy excavating the historic city but the Soviet invasion forced them to leave and they have never returned. Rory encounters hundreds of local villagers randomly digging throughout the ruins looking for any artifacts which they will be able to sell to collectors for $1 or $2 dollars.

Rory’s route took through all four major ethnic groups making up Afghanistan. The Pashtun posed the biggest threat to Rory’s trek. When he asks village elders who they want to lead a new Afghanistan they invariably start by naming their local strongman. When Rory persists, they all mention Ahmed Shah Massoud the Tajiks fighter assassinated by al Qaeda. When he asks their opinion of Hamid Karzai, the most remote villagers immediately respond that Karzai is America’s puppet.

Stewart encounters more U.N. and other aid workers and writes one the best accounts of this new breed that I have seen anywhere (as a footnote):

Critics have accused this new breed of administrators as neocolonialism. But in fact their approach is not that of a nineteenth century colonial officer. Colonial administration may have been racist and exploitative, but they did, at least work seriously at the business of understanding the people they were governing. They recruited people prepared to spend their entire careers in dangerous provinces of a single alien nation.They invested in teaching administrators and military officers the local language. They established effective departments of state, trained a local elite, and continued the countless academic studies of their subjects through institutes and museums, royal geographic societies, and royal botanical gardens. They balanced the local budget and generated fiscal revenue because if they didn’t their home government would rarely bail them out. If they failed to govern fairly, the population would mutiny.

Post-conflict experts have got the prestige without the effort or stigma of imperialism. Their implicit denial of the difference between cultures is the new brand of international intervention. Their policy fails but no one notices. There are not credible monitoring bodies and there is no one to take formal responsibility. Individual officers are never in any one place and rarely in any one organization long enough to be adequately assessed. The colonial enterprise could be judged by the security or revenue it delivered, but neocolonialists have no such performance criteria. In fact their very uselessness benefits them. By avoiding any serious action or judgment they, unlike their colonial predecessors, are able to escape accusations of racism, exploitation, or oppression.

Perhaps it is because no one requires more than a charming illusion of action in the developing world. If the policy makers know little about the Afghans, the public knows even less, and few care about policy failure when the effects are felt only in Afghanistan… A year before they had been in Kosovo or East Timor and a year later they would be in Iraq or offices in New York and Washington.

Murad Khane District of Kabul

A year after his Afghan trek, Rory Stewart was appointed Coalition (civilian) Deputy Governor of Maysan and Senior Adviser in Dhi Qar, two provinces in southern Iraq. From this experience he penned his second book The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. For this he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire at age 31. In 2005, he founded an NGO, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation and spends much of his time in Afghanistan. Chalk one up for the neocolonialists.

Christopher and his Kind, Christopher Isherwood, 1976

Last Sketch of Isherwood by Don Bachardy

We recently watched an interesting biographical film Chris and Don about the 35 year relationship between British writer Christopher Isherwood and the American portrait artist Don Bachardy. Our Phoenix library is now limited by budget to buying mostly blockbusters like works by Dan Brown and so I picked up an old copy of a 33 year old paperback book that has been sitting around our house forever.

E.M. Forster

The book is a literary memoir by Isherwood of the period of his life from 1929-1939 after which he emigrated to the United States. When you think of the events in Europe in this period, particularly the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan, and think of the great British writers of the Bloomsbury generation (Leonard Woolf, Virginia’s husband, published several of Isherwood’s early novels) and the next generation with E.M. Forster, W.H. Auden, and Isherwood, all of whom were close friends, you can see that this memoir is must reading. Even Paul Bowles makes a cameo appearance, introducing Christopher to drugs which he doesn’t like.

Lizza Minnelli as Sally Bowles

Isherwood is perhaps best known through the 1972 Bob Fosse film Caberet with Liza Minnelli and Michael York which is based on Isherwood’s novel Goodbye to Berlin. Isherwood comments on the film in this memoir that Minnelli was far too talented to play real English woman Sally Bowles. Sally Bowles later introduced Isherwood to a German Hollywood film director looking for a screen writer starting Isherwood on his long later career as a Hollywood screen writer living in Santa Monica.

The memoir is the account of an openly and unapologetically gay young man, his literary work, and his lovers. Isherwood refers to himself in the third person as Christopher throughout the memoir. At first, this seems odd, until you remember that the memoir was published in 1976, 37 years after the period involved. Isherwood was working from correspondence and journals and it must have seemed that Christopher was an entirely different person from the writer of the memoir. Isherwood often mentions details he can’t recall, such is the frailty of human memory.

A large part of the memoir is given to his several year relationship with Heinz, a young working class Berliner, and of Isherwood’s futile attempts to find a safe country for he and Heinz to live peacefully after the Nazis come to power in Germany. This part is a travelogue, as they travel and live on a Greek island, Portugal, the Canary Islands, Belgium, Amsterdam and other places. There is a tragi-comic episode where Christopher borrows 1,000 Pounds from Kathleen to give to a Belgium lawyer to pay for an ill conceived plan to bribe Mexican officials for residence papers. Of course, the money simply disappears. Isherwood’s several attempts to get Heinz into England always fail. On one occasion, Heinz arrives carrying cash to prove he won’t be a burden on the state – along with Christopher’s letter explaining where Heinz is to claim he got the money. Christopher is sure the immigration official himself is homosexual and takes a perverse delight in having Heinz deported. Heinz is finally arrested by the Nazis and sentenced to a year of hard labor followed by two years of military service during which Heinz survives both the Western front and the Russian front. After the war Heinz marries and has a family.

Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden

The other major portion of the memoir is given over to Isherwood’s life long friendship with W.H. Auden whom he calls Wystan throughout the memoir. Auden and Isherwood co-wrote a play set in a vaguely Asian country and were asked to choose an Asian country to write a travel memoir. They choose China which has just been invaded by Japan; Isherwood commenting that they could never compete as writers with Maugham and Hemingway (Spanish civil war) so they chose a war and country of their own. This is typical of the tongue in cheek humor which laces the memoir.

On one occasion Erika Mann, daughter of Thomas Mann, has written and produced an anti Nazi play and become an enemy of the Nazi state. She needs to leave Germany and asks Christopher to marry her so she can move to England. Christopher is afraid of the reaction of his mother, who he calls Kathleen throughout the memoir, who very much wants grandchildren, so he turns Erika down. Christopher however suggests that Wystan might be willing and Auden agrees and they are married. In 1939 when Wystan and Christopher have emigrated to the States, they meet Thomas and Katia Mann who are living in Princeton. A photographer from Time asks to take their photo, then says he knows that Auden is the Mann’s son-in-law but who is the other man (Christopher)? Mann instantly replies “family pimp”.

When Christopher and Heinz are living in Portugal, Kathleen comes to visit. He recalls:

Kathleen was welcomed warmly by them (members of the British colony in Lisbon), as an elderly lady of distinction. Her presence at Alecrim do Norte made the Christopher-Heinz relationship suddenly respectable as Christopher had foreseen that it would.

His mother is in her sixties in this period (she turns 70 as Christopher leaves for New York) and he describes their relationship in increasingly warm terms as the memoir progresses. Kathleen becomes Christopher’s de facto literary agent acting on his behalf as he travels the world.

Virginia and Leonard Woolf

Christopher recalls a dinner that Virginia Woolf invites him to attend. Virginia, then in her 50’s, is described at her most beautiful and glamorous. Christopher is totally enthralled, forgetting he has previously arranged a liaison for that same evening. Virginia hardly seems to know who Christopher is even though her husband Leonard has published several novels until W. Maugham offers: “That young man holds the future of the English novel in his hands.” After this time Christopher always thinks of Maugham as “uncle Willie”.

Christopher is having his play On The Frontier performed at the Cambridge Arts Theatre under the sponsorship of John Maynard Keynes. Christopher remarks:

Keynes, that aristocrat of Bloomsbury and the stock exchange, referred to economics as though they were a branch of academic philosophy, quite unrelated to real money. It seemed indelicate to remember the fact that his financial know-how had made his college, King’s, the richest of the Cambridge colleges, and had funded the building of this theatre.

In September of 1938, as Chamberlain travels to Munich for talks with Hitler, newspapers in London produce new editions every 20 minutes as Christopher goes to Victoria station to meet Wystan, who is returning from Belgium. Wystan assures Christopher that there will be no war and Christopher assumes Wystan has learned something from the continent until he finds out a fortune teller is the source of Wystan’s prediction.

This memoir reminds us that the proclivity of intellectuals toward communism during this period is in the context of a general sympathy with the working classes and a fear and antipathy toward the rise of fascism which threatens everyone in Europe. On his political leanings Christopher explains:

He (Christopher) became defiant when he made the treatment of the homosexual a test by which by which every political party and government must be judged…The Soviet Union had passed this test with honors when it recognized the private sexual rights of the individual, in 1917. But in 1934, Stalin’s government had withdrawn this recognition and made all homosexual acts punishable by heavy prison sentences. It had agreed with the Nazis in denouncing homosexuality as a form of treason to the state. The only difference was that the Nazis called it “Sexual Bolshevism” and the Communists “Fascist perversion.”

Christopher arrives in New York determined to acquire a Brooklyn accent and learn to act tough, talking louder and faster than anyone. In America, without European traditions, Christopher realizes he is on his own and must rethink his philosophy and politics. He conducts a thought experiment in which he has a button which, if he pushes it, will destroy the entire Nazi army which he know are evil. But if he pushes the button, he will also destroy Heinz who is innocent. Christopher decides that he is a pacifist.

Christopher comments that he only came to appreciate Britain after it lost its empire and became a second class power after the war. Now it could be enjoyed as a cosmopolitan center without imperial pretensions. Christopher concludes with the memory that Wystan has only three months wait until he meets the love of his life while Christopher must wait a little longer; Don is only four years old.

Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden, 2008

Beaver and Trapper

This second novel is the winner of the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize. It is the story of Cree indian Will Bird, retired bush pilot and his tomboy niece Annie Bird who supports herself trapping. They live near Moosonee on the Moose River near the Hudson Bay in Northern Ontario. These Birds are descendants of the Birds of Boyden’s first novel.

Northern Ontario Parking Lot

Annie travels to her trapping camps on her snowmobile which she maintains herself. The local bootleggers turned drug dealers are the Netmakers headed by oldest brother Marius. Younger brother Gus Netmaker has run away with Annie’s sister Suzanne and neither has been heard from for months. Marius thinks the Birds are talking to the police about the drug traffic and beats Will up as a warning. Pictures of Suzanne start showing up in magazines and catalogs indicating that she may be making a living modeling. Annie sets out for Toronto looking for Suzanne. She talks to other Indians she meets in Toronto and encounters a mute Indian, Gordon, called Painted Tongue. When a white man attacks Annie and attempts to rape her, Gordon, who has secretly been following her, kills the man and saves Annie. Gordon becomes Annie’s unofficial body guard accompanying her everywhere. Annie and Gordon go to Montreal where Annie meets some models who knew Suzanne including Violet. Violet invites Annie to a party where she meets a Mohawk DJ, Butterfoot, and becomes his lover. When Butterfoot and Violet travel to NYC for work, Butterfoot smuggles Annie and Gordon across the border with him. In NY Annie starts modeling and is invited to stay in a lavish Manhattan apartment by super model Soleil. It seems Gus and other bikers have been supplying drugs to the models. Annie becomes an accepted member of the in crowd welcome at any club in Manhattan. She takes drugs when offered at the parties. Suzanne never shows up. I preferred his first novel.

Moose River

Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden, 2005

Canoe in Northern Ontario

Boyden’s first novel is based on stories he heard growing up. Two Cree men fight in WWI as snipers. Niska a traditional medicine women paddles her canoe three days to pick up her nearest living relative Elijah, returning from the war, but finds instead her nephew Xavier who has returned. Xavier is addicted to morphine and he still has a small supply. On the return canoe journey, Xavier’s supply runs out and Niska uses traditional methods including a sweat house she builds beside the river in an attempt to save Xavier. Unforgettable images.

Sweat Lodge

The Collector of Worlds, Lliya Troyanov, 2009

A wonderful novel written by a Bulgarian in the German language about an Englishman, the legendary Sir Richard Francis Burton. Unlike the more famous T.E. Lawrence sixty years later, not much fiction has been written about Burton. This novel deals with three distinct phases or adventures of Burton’s event filled life; his early time in India as employee of the East India company from 1842-1849; his Hajj (holy pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca) in 1851-1853; and his expedition to East Africa in 1858 to discover the source of the River Nile. The structure of the novel alternates short chapters (usually a page or two) with descriptions of events as they happen to Burton followed by after the fact discussions with Burton’s servants or Ottoman (Turkish) officials in Muslim year 1273 (1856) corresponding or discussion the Hajj, accounts of which, Burton has published in English.

Sepoys

In India we are introduced to a young Burton who is already proving to be gifted in acquiring languages. His first assignment is in Baroda (near Bombay) where he hires a servant to set up his household and find a teacher of Gujarat. Burton’s job is to drill some Sepoys (Indian native soldiers) a few hours a day which leaves him with a lot of time on his hands.

The servant, Naukaram, stays with Burton throughout his time in India and returns home to England with him. Burton finally dismisses Naukaram with a simple letter acknowledging his employment term but giving no details of his duties or experiences. Naukaram, who is illiterate, seeks out a lahiya (letter writer) to create a resume he can use to seek employment with another Englishman. The lahiya is immediately captivated by Naukaram’s story and continues to ask questions, take notes, and draw the servant out. The simple letter takes days, then weeks to prepare (is the lahiya writing a book?) and costs Naukaram all the money he can borrow to continue the work.

We learn that Naukaram finds Burton a Brahmin teacher, Upanishe, who imparts far more than the Gujarat language and Sanskrit. Burton is soon immersed in Hindu culture, myths, and literature, including the Kama Sutra. Burton is so talented, Upanishe suggests he dress in native clothes and pose as a cousin from Kashmir for Upanishe’s visitors and friends. Burton is a big success and his career as a master of disguises is launched.

Devadasi

Naukaram also finds Burton a courtesan, Kundalini, to become his mistress (Naukaram is also in love with her). She was sold as a young girl to a religious house to be trained and serve as a devadasi (where she sexually serves the priests). She runs away and is living in a Bordello in Baroda where Naukaram finds her. Kundalini instructs Burton in the art of love, forcing Burton to listen to her stories at key moments.

Burton’s English Translation of the Kama Sutra

Burton is transferred to Sind (Sindh) to join a survey team (he is terrible at surveying) where he turns to the serious study of Urdu and Farsi. In Sind, he effects the disguise of a Persian Dervish and manages to befriend a Pashtun who is dedicated to undermining British authority in the region. Burton becomes a spy reporting to the local British general. The British raid the rebel’s house (the rebel is not home) and arrest Burton. Rather than give away his disguise, he keeps up his act in prison. Naukaram attempts to convince the jailers that Burton is English but they have discovered Burton is circumcised (that he had the operation performed illustrates how far he is committed to his disguises.) so could not possibly be English. Naukaram finally is able to get a message to the British general who gets Burton released, but not before Burton is tortured in an attempt to learn the whereabouts of the rebel. Burton is a broken man and is given a two year leave of absence to return to England. Burton insists on wearing a garish hodgepodge of Indian and Persian clothing in Europe. Naukaram gets to see England, France, and Italy before he is dismissed.

Burton in Turkish Disguise

In the second part, we find Burton in Cairo, once again in the disguise of a Persian Dervish. He is seeking Egyptian permission to travel to Suez for the start of his Hajj. He gets the permission and again seeks out a local teacher to learn the details he will need for his trip. The teacher immediately suggests that performing the Hajj as a Shia will be difficult if not outright dangerous and suggests that Burton (the teacher believes he is Persian) pretend that he is a Pashtun Suni from India. Burton agrees but keeps his identity as a Sufi Dervish. He tries out his new identity by treating Egyptians for medical problems. He is a great success and no one ever suspects he is not what he says he is.

He begins his Hajj and we are treated to camel caravans, crowded boats, Bedouins bandits, and other travails of the pilgrimage. Burton appears to be truly moved by the Hajj experience and receives his letter of certification from the religious authorities.

Burton as Arab on Hajj

After Burton’s book describing his Hajj experiences is published, we read correspondence and listen to conversations between Ottoman officials as they try to discover if Burton was an English spy, scouting out the Muslim holy land for possible conquest. If Burton was an English spy, why don’t the English honor him? Maybe he was spying for France, but that doesn’t seem to make sense. Could he possibly be a true Muslim believer? Impossible, all westerners are unbelievers as we know. They interview and occasionally torture people Burton encountered or who hosted Burton during his Hajj but all are convinced Burton was a sincere believer and very knowledgeable on all things Muslim. The inquiry is inconclusive.

Finally in the third part, we catch up with Burton in 1858 as he and fellow English explorer Speke set out to find the source of the Nile. It is Burton’s last chance to gain fame and recognition which have so far eluded him. He hires a former slave Sidi Mubarak Bombay in Zanzibar to guide him and the hundred porters for the trip. They are credited with the discovery of the source of the Nile (Lake Victoria) but Burton was abed suffering from Malaria when Speke explored the Lake and found the river flowing out of it. A jealous Burton would later say that the claim was unproven until someone actually ventured down the river to prove it was the Nile.

Bombay Aka Chuma

Bombay has been a slave his whole life and knows little of his own people or their language. He finally ends up belonging to an Indian living in Bombay where he adopts the name of his master’s city. Bombay is freed when the master dies and Bombay returns to Zanzibar to live. We encounter the trip from the real time account of Speke and Burton interspersed with the stories told years later by Bombay as he entertains throngs of listeners with his tales.

Bombay is puzzled when the Englishmen insist they are “discovering” lakes, mountains, and rivers that have been known to the Africans forever. When Speke starts giving English names to his discoveries, like naming the lake Victoria, he also asks Chuma for the African names of the features. Chuma thinks this arbitrary English naming is an interesting idea and starts inventing his own humorous, sometimes obscene African names which Speke dutifully writes down alongside his own English names. When Chuma later sees the first printed European map of the area, printed alongside the English names are the fanciful names Chuma has invented. Chuma is delighted.

A charming novel about a caustic, impossible character.

2666, Roberto Bolano, 2008

This last novel of Chilean writer Bolano was published posthumously in Spanish in 2004. Bolano asked that the novel be published in separate books but the publisher and heirs ignored him to publish the entire work as a single novel. As a result the English version, released in 2008 is almost 900 pages long. In March 2009, the Guardian reported that part 6 has been found among Bolano’s papers. The publisher, in the notes at the back of the book insists that the the book is complete as Bolano intended, but this appears not to be the case. It ends pretty abruptly with nothing resolved, making it pretty unsatisfying. Maybe someone will see fit to publish part 6 at some point. For more on the writer see Roberto Bolano.

The book is really two separate works, one about an obscure reclusive German writer Benno von Archimboldi and the other about the serial killing of hundreds of women in the mythical Mexican city of Santa Teresa (located somewhere on the highway between Hermosillo and Nogales near the Arizona border). Reviewers have claimed the city is based on Cuidad Juarez but Juarez is not even in Sonora (it is in the state of Cihuauua) and the Sonoran desert dominates the landscape of the city of Santa Teresa. Many details, including small towns in Arizona immediately north of the border, and details of illegal border crossing puts Santa Teresa near Nogales.

Nogales Sonora

Part one is the most entertaining, containing a wonderful look at the strange, sometimes irrelevant world of academics. Four professors of German, an Italian, a Spaniard, and Frenchman, and and Englishwoman have all built their academic careers and reputations writing articles about the obscure German writer Archimboldi whom no one other than his publisher seems to have met and for which no picture exists. The four academics travel the world attending conferences to deliver their latest Archimboldi papers. We learn about the academic publishing peer review process (I’ll scratch your back in my journal if you scratch mine in your journal). Archimboldi books largely don’t sell (300 copies of his first three novels) but briefly, perhaps because of the four academics, Archimboldi became a cult figure among college students. The cult soon died down. Reviews of Archimboldi’s books are generally very negative. The three academic men all fall in love with the Englishwoman and we are treated to a menage a trois before the Englishwoman chooses the Italian who is paraplegic. Some of them travel to Hamburg to meet Archimboldi’s publisher. The original publisher, a Jew who spent WWII in exile in England, is dead, but his widow, a Prussian Baroness is running the business. She admits she has met Archimboldi but refuses to give the academics any information about his whereabouts. They hear that a Mexican Minister of Culture has rescued Archimboldi from the police in Mexico City and several of them fly immediately to Mexico. The Minister says he put Archimboldi on a plane for Hermosillo and thinks Archimboldi was headed for the city of Santa Teresa. They travel to Santa Teresa and meet a professor from Barcelona, Amalfitano, who is raising his daughter Rosa as a single father. They are unable to find any information that Archimboldi ever arrived in Santa Teresa.

Part two concerns Amalfitano, whose wild wife, Lola, has left him to return to Europe where she sleeps around and hitchhikes throughout the continent. She returns one last time to Mexico to see Rosa and announce she is dying. She tells Amalfitano that she has a child by another man and is returning to Barcelona to be with him. Amalfitano has hung an old book on his clothesline where the desert slowly destroys it. Amalfitano is slowly going mad.

Tijuana Boxing Match

Part three begins with a black reporter, Fate, working for an obscure journal in Harlem. His editor asks him to cover a boxing match in Mexico when the sports reporter for the journal dies. Fate needs the money so flies to Tuscon and drives across the border in a rental car to Santa Teresa where the fight is to be held. The journal has limited travel budget so Fate rents a cheap room and goes to the hotel where the other journalists are staying and where press conferences on the fight will be held. Fate meets some Mexican fight reporters who let him accompany them when they go to the camp where the Mexican welterweight is training. He is unable to interview the American fighter but the fight is a total mismatch and the Mexican is knocked out in the second round. Fate goes to a bar after the fight and runs into a couple of tough Mexicans with two girls one of which is Rosa. Fate is invited to join them and they retire to small house. Fate has followed them in his rental car. The Mexicans started taking drugs and are acting strange; Rosa gets nervous and Fate thinks something very bad is about to happen so Fate offers to give Rosa a lift home. Rosa tells him she thinks it is time she left Santa Teresa to return to Barcelona. Fate offers her a ride to Tuscon, Rosa packs, gets her passport, and Amalfitano gives her enough money for the ticket home. Fate drives Rosa to Tuscon where they part.

Sonora Desert Mexico

Part four is tough slogging through 280 miserable pages where hundreds of rape and murders of women in Santa Teresa and environs go largely unsolved. The horror is broken up by a crazy man that desecrates churches and their icons and occasional kills if someone tries to stop him. It is assumed that a serial killer or two killers is responsible for the murders but the incompetent or compromised detectives make absolutely no progress in solving the cases. They can’t even identify most of the victims. One murdered high school student was seen visiting a computer repair shop several times and when the detectives discover that the German (American citizen) owner has a police record in the States including violence and rape, the German, Haas, is arrested and charged with a long list of murders. The murders continue so the detectives arrest a few gang members claiming Haas has paid them to rape and kill women in a copycat fashion to make it look like he is innocent. The police have no evidence whatever against Haas or the gang members. The police misfile evidence or lose it altogether. This includes knives and guns. When they send sample to Hermosillo or San Diego for analysis the samples or the results always go missing. We get a picture of Santa Teresa whose three principal means of economic activity involve exports to the US; narcotics, illegal immigrants, and products built in the local maquiladoras by low cost Mexican labor. Most of the women victims works for the maquiladoras. Corruption of police and politicians is central to all three types of enterprise. After a couple hundred pages of utterly depressing murders, Bolano gives us some false hopes when a retired FBI agent is hired by the local authorities to investigate the murders and train the local detectives. The authorities have no intention of allowing the FBI agent to do his job. Finally, the best woman friend of a powerful RPI woman politician (read very old wealthy family) disappears while organizing a private party for a rich man near Santa Teresa. The politician hires a private detective who finds that the friend hires models and recruits local prostitutes and local girls for the parties where drugs and sex dominate. The detective finds nothing about the disappearance.

In part five we finally meet the elusive Archimboldi; in fact we follow him throughout his entire life. His real name is Hans Reiter and he was born in 1920 to a one legged (lost in WWI) Prussian father and a one eyed mother. Hans has a sister born in 1930. Hans has a couple near drowning experiences as a child and he draws seaweed. He is convinced his fate is to die a watery death so when he is drafted in 1939 he asks to join the navy, preferably the submarine corps. Unfortunately, Hans is 6 foot 5 inches tall and the navy rejects him. He becomes an infantryman and spends the entire war on the Eastern front. His fellow infantryman thinks his height makes him the logical first target for any enemy and Hans is still convinced he is destined to die which makes him fearless. The result is a long series of heroic efforts during which Hans never receives as much as a scratch. Hans also never kills an enemy. Finally, near the end of the war, Hans is shot in the throat and is sent to a hospital to recover.

Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich Ivanov Stamp

The Russians overrun the area and Hans and other patients who are mostly recovered are sent to an empty village nearby to await further orders. Hans can’t stand the other soldiers and finds an empty house where he lives alone. Exploring the house he determines the house was owned by Jews and that the Germans are probably responsible for the empty town. He finds a hiding place and a journal written by Ansky, the presumed former owner of the house. Hans reads the journal and we are treated to a short history of the Russian Revolution with particular attention to the Russian writers of the period. Ansky joined the communist party in 1903 and observed the entire revolution and aftermath. Ansky may be a little mad but he certainly has a strange imagination. He meets the Russian science fiction writer Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich Ivanov who is having writer’s block. Ansky writes three science fiction novels from his strange imagination that are published under Ivanov’s name. In 1937 Ivanov is arrested in the Stalin purges and show trials and Ivanov signs the required confession and is executed. He never reveals that Ansky is the true author the last three novels. One entry in the journal concerns an obscure Italian painter in the generation after daVinci named Archimboldi where Hans gets his nom de plume later. (See Giuseppe Arcimboldo famous for his vegetable face portraits.) Hans adds the von to identify himself as German and not Italian. The Russians continue their advance and the Germans continue to retreat eventually deserting the army altogether. Hans surrenders to the Americans. In the camp is a man who claims his name is Zeller (the Americans are interrogating their prisoners looking for war criminals in alphabetical order). The interrogators leave the camp before reaching Z and Zeller feels compelled to confess to Hans. Zeller whose real name was Sammer was a civilian administrator for a region in Poland. His primary job was to provide forced labor for German factories. Near the end, he mistakenly receives a consignment of 500 Greek Jews who were undoubtedly intended for a death camp. The train is needed elsewhere so he unloads the Jews into an abandoned tannery. Finally an SS officer gives him an order to eliminate the Jews (these orders are never written). Sammer has no facility to eliminate such a large number but gives the order to kill a few at a time. When the Russians overrun his region, he releases the final hundred Jews still alive and runs away in his car. Sammer keeps moving west until he also surrenders to the Americans. For the first and only time in his life Hans kills someone.

Cologne

Hans is released and eventually moves to Cologne where he works as a bartender. He rents a typewriter and writes his first novel. After several refusals, a publisher, the Jew Bubis in Hamburg, agrees to publish his novel. 300 copies are sold. Hans continues to write and Bubis continues to publish. Upon his death, Bubis instructs his widow, the Baroness, to continue to publish anything Hans writes.

Finally Hans sister, Lotte, learns that her son Haas has been arrested in Mexico. She is unable to help get him released but on a flight to Mexico Lotte picks up a copy of Archimboldi’s first novel and realizes it is the story of her own family and that Archimboldi must be her lost brother Hans. She contacts the Baroness at the publisher who tells Lotte where Hans is living and Lotte is able to contact him. As the novel ends, Hans, aka Archimboldi, age 80, is boarding his flight to Mexico City to try to rescue his nephew.

This ending certainly suggests that there was a part six with Archimboldi in Mexico. Maybe we will find out someday. If you have limited reading time parts 1 and 5 are best. 2 and 3 are not bad. Forget 4.