The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atomic Bomb by Allen M. Hornblum is a terrific read filled with loads of interesting information about the efforts of the Soviet Union in the 1930s and the 1940s to obtain industrial and military secrets from organizations in the United States.
The most acclaimed author of spy thrillers would be unable to effectively conjure up a character with the oddball habits, eccentricities, and general weirdness of Harry Gold. As a successful Soviet spy for many years during the 1930s and 1940s (although he refused multiple overtures to formally join the Communist Party) he eventually became an important federal witness against a number of other spies.
His testimony against Manhattan Project employees Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass (brother of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife of Julius Rosenberg), as well as a number of his Russian handlers, was instrumental in their successful prosecution by the federal government, although he ironically ended up serving more prison time than those he helped to convict. After all, he was just the courier.
The personal traits and characteristics that made Gold an ideal spy were his desperate eagerness to please other people (e.g., loaning money he could not afford, sacrificing his personal needs to help friends and coworkers), his nearly overwhelming obsessive compulsive disorder, and a strong belief that Stalinist Russia, because of its severe criticisms of Hitler’s Nazi regime and a law on the books technically making anti-Semitism a crime, was the only country willing to stand against fascism.
Recruited by a friend who was already passing industrial secrets to the Russians (Gold felt obligated and indebted because this friend had once helped him obtain employment as a chemist in the midst of the Great Depresssion), Gold began stealing information from his current employer and gleefully passing it along, apparently in the belief that these confidential chemical processes and procedures would be used by the Soviet government help the average Russian have a better life.
Of course, these first steps down a slippery slope ultimately led to his major espionage role as a courier picking up and delivering detailed blueprints of the atomic bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the recently established Los Alamos research facility and sketches of other key bomb components provided by David Greenglass, a sergeant in the U.S. Army who also worked on a crucial aspect of the atom bomb project.
Another one of Gold's oddities is that unlike many of the other spies and couriers who were providing highly classified information to the Soviet Union, Gold rarely accepted money from his handlers, and even then with great reluctance.
For example, all of his many trips over the years from his Philadelphia home to New Mexico and other places such as Boston and Chicago, were paid for out of his own pocket. He often traveled on weekends or used vacation time, while simultaneously holding down a full-time job that required significant overtime. Again, this is where his compulsive nature and pathetic need to please enhanced his effectiveness as an espionage agent.
Harry Gold’s sloppy house of cards began tumbling down on May 15, 1950. Yet even after he was picked up from his workplace by the FBI and began to take part in what turned out to be a very lengthy interrogation process that ultimately resulted in arrest, Gold took no time to clean his apartment and toss the piles of notes, maps, and ticket stubs that documented his treasonous travels, all of which were eventually seized by the government for use in his trial.
During his prison years, 1950 though 1966, Gold was by all accounts a model inmate who worked long hours in the Lewisburg, Pa., prison hospital, willingly participated in human trials of innovative drugs, and was even awarded a patent for work he did as an inmate that devised a new means of diagnosing diabetes.
Upon release, he was hired by Kennedy Hospital in Philadelphia, Pa. where he was much admired by members of the staff for his diligent work ethic and low-key personality. He died during open-heart surgery in August 1972, at the age of 61.
No obituary was published nor was a death notice released for public consumption for more than 18 months. This was perhaps fitting for a short, chubby, overachieving, and achingly insecure man who had notable ability during his lifetime to blend in with the scenery.
In summary, this is a detailed, cleanly and clearly written history of a very important chapter in American history, one with ramifications that are often misconstrued to this day. As such this tumultuous period of red herrings, loyalty oaths, pumpkin papers, and red-baiting McCarthyism still remains controversial to contemporary extremists on the far left and far right of the mainstream.
It offers valuable insights into the nearly daily casual displays of anti-Semitism of the 1930s, the lure of socialism and communism to many people of the Jewish faith, and the reasons why so many of these and other like-minded individuals, especially intellectuals, gravitated toward the potential utopian promise exhibited by the Soviet Union in the 1930s prior to the shattering news of the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact, although even for many years thereafter hundreds of deluded true believers kept their faith in Stalinism alive.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Book Nook (July 11, 2010)
Spending a lot of time indoors to avoid a recent string of miserably sultry days always means that my book consumption will climb.
The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming started strong. I was intrigued by the premise that Toledo, Ohio began as a small independent kingdom founded by aristocrats fleeing the terrors of the French Revolution, and that as such the kingdom would eventually become a thorn in the side of the U.S. government, with the usual unfortunate results.
Then the tale turned into a mystery involving the possibility of time travel, a brief of the initial stages of construction of New York City's first subway, and the various purported intrigues and machinations of financier J.P. Morgan and fiercely competitive rival inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla with the two primary protagonists, machinist Peter Force and heiress Cheri-Anne Toledo, to discover whether time travel was real or fiction.
Ultimately, this work of fiction was not clever or well written enough to entirely hold my interest, so I'm unable to give it a strong recommendation.
A much more delightful read was Backing Into Forward, a memoir by cartoonist, writer and classic Bronx-born, New York City left-wing intellectual Jules Feiffer. Unflinchingly candid, he tells true tales of his almost stereotypical Jewish mother, his long and frustrating struggles to achieve his goal of becoming a successful cartoonist, late life achievements as an author of books for children, and his ultimate joy about becoming a family man besotted by his children.
This book is also a capsule history of New York's thriving art and intellectual scene from the early 1950s through the 1990s. Feiffer loves to drop names and offers insightful anecdotes about folks such as Will Eisner, Jean Shepherd, George Plimpton, Arthur Miller, Robert Altman, Roy Cohn (a cousin), Woody Allen, Mike Nichols, Bayard Rustin, Stephen Sondheim, Alan Arkin, Elliott Gould, Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel and many other heavy hitters from those halcyon days when Greenwich Village was the place to live, work and play.
A less interesting semi-autobiography is the recent one by musician Clarence Clemons, co-authored with Don Reo, a former producer and writer of television shows. These two alternate chapters and a number of "legend" chapters printed on gray paper may or may not be true. Did Clarence and Norman Mailer truly spend long evenings together getting drunk and discussing metaphysics? Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales is very cautious about what is revealed.
This book will not be mistaken for a Behind the Music episode where the ups and downs of life in the rock-n-roll fast lane are detailed. The sexual excesses of the 1970s and drug excesses of the 1980s by Clarence and presumably a few other members of the E Street Band (only the late Danny Federici is fingered as a bad boy) are glossed over, although Bruce Springsteen was reportedly a notorious womanizer in his early days.
The Big Man's response to the entirely unexpected and certainly heartbreaking firing of the entire band via telephone calls from Bruce Springsteen in 1989 is muted. Only about his many surgeries and physical challenges is he forthcoming.
Another American icon, Clint Eastwood, takes a bit of a beating in American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood by Marc Eliot, who has also written books about Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Walt Disney, Bruce Springsteen, and Phil Ochs.
Eastwood comes off as a gifted and hard working actor and director with an egotistical streak a mile wide who generally refuses to work with any actor who might be better at his craft, a womanizer of epic proportions who does not know the meaning of the words monogamy or commitment, and a film producer who does not hesitate to toss faithful collaborators in the trash can when they become too uppity or opinionated for him to deal with. It's clearly good to be the king.
The only woman among the multitudes, including his indulgent first wife of more than 30 years, who is tough enough to hold her own against his mistreatment is petite former girlfriend Sondra Locke, who vigorously pursues several legal options in the wake of her being dumped and then duped into signing a fake deal as a producer with Warner Brothers so that Eastwood won't have to pony up a substantial financial settlement for their nearly fourteen years together in a personal and professional relationship. Way to go, Sondra!
The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming started strong. I was intrigued by the premise that Toledo, Ohio began as a small independent kingdom founded by aristocrats fleeing the terrors of the French Revolution, and that as such the kingdom would eventually become a thorn in the side of the U.S. government, with the usual unfortunate results.
Then the tale turned into a mystery involving the possibility of time travel, a brief of the initial stages of construction of New York City's first subway, and the various purported intrigues and machinations of financier J.P. Morgan and fiercely competitive rival inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla with the two primary protagonists, machinist Peter Force and heiress Cheri-Anne Toledo, to discover whether time travel was real or fiction.
Ultimately, this work of fiction was not clever or well written enough to entirely hold my interest, so I'm unable to give it a strong recommendation.
A much more delightful read was Backing Into Forward, a memoir by cartoonist, writer and classic Bronx-born, New York City left-wing intellectual Jules Feiffer. Unflinchingly candid, he tells true tales of his almost stereotypical Jewish mother, his long and frustrating struggles to achieve his goal of becoming a successful cartoonist, late life achievements as an author of books for children, and his ultimate joy about becoming a family man besotted by his children.
This book is also a capsule history of New York's thriving art and intellectual scene from the early 1950s through the 1990s. Feiffer loves to drop names and offers insightful anecdotes about folks such as Will Eisner, Jean Shepherd, George Plimpton, Arthur Miller, Robert Altman, Roy Cohn (a cousin), Woody Allen, Mike Nichols, Bayard Rustin, Stephen Sondheim, Alan Arkin, Elliott Gould, Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel and many other heavy hitters from those halcyon days when Greenwich Village was the place to live, work and play.
A less interesting semi-autobiography is the recent one by musician Clarence Clemons, co-authored with Don Reo, a former producer and writer of television shows. These two alternate chapters and a number of "legend" chapters printed on gray paper may or may not be true. Did Clarence and Norman Mailer truly spend long evenings together getting drunk and discussing metaphysics? Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales is very cautious about what is revealed.
This book will not be mistaken for a Behind the Music episode where the ups and downs of life in the rock-n-roll fast lane are detailed. The sexual excesses of the 1970s and drug excesses of the 1980s by Clarence and presumably a few other members of the E Street Band (only the late Danny Federici is fingered as a bad boy) are glossed over, although Bruce Springsteen was reportedly a notorious womanizer in his early days.
The Big Man's response to the entirely unexpected and certainly heartbreaking firing of the entire band via telephone calls from Bruce Springsteen in 1989 is muted. Only about his many surgeries and physical challenges is he forthcoming.
Another American icon, Clint Eastwood, takes a bit of a beating in American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood by Marc Eliot, who has also written books about Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Walt Disney, Bruce Springsteen, and Phil Ochs.
Eastwood comes off as a gifted and hard working actor and director with an egotistical streak a mile wide who generally refuses to work with any actor who might be better at his craft, a womanizer of epic proportions who does not know the meaning of the words monogamy or commitment, and a film producer who does not hesitate to toss faithful collaborators in the trash can when they become too uppity or opinionated for him to deal with. It's clearly good to be the king.
The only woman among the multitudes, including his indulgent first wife of more than 30 years, who is tough enough to hold her own against his mistreatment is petite former girlfriend Sondra Locke, who vigorously pursues several legal options in the wake of her being dumped and then duped into signing a fake deal as a producer with Warner Brothers so that Eastwood won't have to pony up a substantial financial settlement for their nearly fourteen years together in a personal and professional relationship. Way to go, Sondra!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Book Nook
Two of the most harrowing tales of chemical dependency addiction and the ways it which it cripples its users are contained in High on Arrival by singer and actor Mackenzie Phillips and American on Purpose by actor and talk show host Craig Ferguson. That these people survived decades of significant substances abuse and retained sufficient brain cells to write these books is stunning.
When it comes to total debauchery and hitting rock bottom as hard as possible, Phillips' habit of mainlining speedballs and claims of having periodic sex over a number of years with her dad -- Mamas and Papas creative force John Phillips -- are terrifying and horrific. But Ferguson's destructive pattern of addiction to everything from cheap wine to heroin also ran deep.
For a lighter read, The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum, by Rebecca Loncraine, tells the tale of the famous author. Born a few years before the Civil War and dying shortly after the close of World War I, Baum was witness to some of the most turbulent decades of American history.
More than a writer of the Oz books, he authored dozens of others published under multiple names, and was a brilliant mechanic and illusionist who play a key role in developing innovative special effects for the theatrical productions he wrote and mounted, and played a similar part in the early days of the film industry.
The author also brings to life a vivid portrait of America during these decades, covering issues such as the popularity of spiritualism, the immense interest in amateur photography that allowed the documentation of daily life, the domestic effects of the dreadful mortality rate in the 19th century of children under the age of five, and robust political debates regarding the right of women to vote and the proposed panacea of prohibiting the manufacture and consumption of alcohol.
When it comes to total debauchery and hitting rock bottom as hard as possible, Phillips' habit of mainlining speedballs and claims of having periodic sex over a number of years with her dad -- Mamas and Papas creative force John Phillips -- are terrifying and horrific. But Ferguson's destructive pattern of addiction to everything from cheap wine to heroin also ran deep.
For a lighter read, The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum, by Rebecca Loncraine, tells the tale of the famous author. Born a few years before the Civil War and dying shortly after the close of World War I, Baum was witness to some of the most turbulent decades of American history.
More than a writer of the Oz books, he authored dozens of others published under multiple names, and was a brilliant mechanic and illusionist who play a key role in developing innovative special effects for the theatrical productions he wrote and mounted, and played a similar part in the early days of the film industry.
The author also brings to life a vivid portrait of America during these decades, covering issues such as the popularity of spiritualism, the immense interest in amateur photography that allowed the documentation of daily life, the domestic effects of the dreadful mortality rate in the 19th century of children under the age of five, and robust political debates regarding the right of women to vote and the proposed panacea of prohibiting the manufacture and consumption of alcohol.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Scraping the Bottom of the Oil Barrel
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the U.S. has already run through its entire supply of easily exploitable oil. For example, in the 1970s it was rare for an off-shore drilling platform to drill more than a few hundred feet.
Today, it is not uncommon for wells to be drilled to depths of 5,000 feet or more, which has been one of the complicating factors in stopping the enormous and environmentally destructive flow of raw oil from the destroyed British Petroleum facility in the Gulf of Mexico.
People cannot physically operate at this depth. They are solely reliant on machines and complex technology, which are as vulnerable to failure as any human being.
Moves are already well underway to in the U.S. and Canada to extract oil from tar sands and shale oil at what might well be environmental costs that easily dwarf the damage already done to the Gulf of Mexico.
There is also the matter of complicity and collusion between the oil companies and their purported regulators, the U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service, which duplicates the destructive relationships between greedy financial institutions and their purported regulators. And we all know how that turned out because we are still reeling from the consequences.
Gail Collins dissects these relationships in one of her typically thoughtful New York Times columns.
If there is a moral here, it is perhaps that we as a nation are stricken by a collective hubris when it comes to our dependence on fossil fuels. The handwriting on the wall was clear to many of us in 1973. Each passing day we are increasingly dependent on the "kindness of strangers" in foreign countries, many of whom wish us nothing but evil. The status quo is doomed. Change is inevitable.
Today, it is not uncommon for wells to be drilled to depths of 5,000 feet or more, which has been one of the complicating factors in stopping the enormous and environmentally destructive flow of raw oil from the destroyed British Petroleum facility in the Gulf of Mexico.
People cannot physically operate at this depth. They are solely reliant on machines and complex technology, which are as vulnerable to failure as any human being.
Moves are already well underway to in the U.S. and Canada to extract oil from tar sands and shale oil at what might well be environmental costs that easily dwarf the damage already done to the Gulf of Mexico.
There is also the matter of complicity and collusion between the oil companies and their purported regulators, the U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service, which duplicates the destructive relationships between greedy financial institutions and their purported regulators. And we all know how that turned out because we are still reeling from the consequences.
Gail Collins dissects these relationships in one of her typically thoughtful New York Times columns.
If there is a moral here, it is perhaps that we as a nation are stricken by a collective hubris when it comes to our dependence on fossil fuels. The handwriting on the wall was clear to many of us in 1973. Each passing day we are increasingly dependent on the "kindness of strangers" in foreign countries, many of whom wish us nothing but evil. The status quo is doomed. Change is inevitable.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Primary Races Just Tempests in Teapots
The salivating jaws of our nation's 24/7 news media ("Our news hole is always 100%") are dying to pontificate tonight and tomorrow and possibly for the next week or two over the outcomes of three U.S. Senate primary elections (Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Kentucky) and one special election in southwestern Pennsylvania to fill the seat of a deceased Congressman accused of various acts of corruption and malfeasance.
In Arkansas and Pennsylvania, the incumbent senators are facing serious challenges from the left, similar to the way Utah's Republican Sen. Bob Bennett was hammered from the right at his state convention.
Primary elections are not generally bellwethers of national trends because a significant percentage of voters are either passionate true believers or extremist cranks.
Multiple factors unique to each state are also at play. For example, in Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter is under attack for leaving the GOP for the Democrats, for drinking at the taxpayer's trough for multiple decades, for his advanced age, and for recent serious health problems.
The factors that ultimately dominate in this race and the others, will soon be fully revealed, which will only partially sate the appetites of the voracious media jackals until the next electoral event.
In Arkansas and Pennsylvania, the incumbent senators are facing serious challenges from the left, similar to the way Utah's Republican Sen. Bob Bennett was hammered from the right at his state convention.
Primary elections are not generally bellwethers of national trends because a significant percentage of voters are either passionate true believers or extremist cranks.
Multiple factors unique to each state are also at play. For example, in Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter is under attack for leaving the GOP for the Democrats, for drinking at the taxpayer's trough for multiple decades, for his advanced age, and for recent serious health problems.
The factors that ultimately dominate in this race and the others, will soon be fully revealed, which will only partially sate the appetites of the voracious media jackals until the next electoral event.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Book Nook
One of the best books I've read in the past year (and one of the best books I've ever read regarding Thomas Jefferson and the American Revolution) is the recently published Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War by Michael Kranish.
Although the book is extensively annotated and footnoted, Michael Kranish's prose flows in a manner that reminded me of a classic thriller or whodunit. Granted, he bogs down now and again, especially when detailing tedious legislative deliberations (what writer wouldn't?), but my interest rarely flagged.
The primary focus is the British invasion of Virginia in 1781, which ultimately concluded with the surrender at Yorktown. While I'm generally familiar with this chapter of the war, the author's detailed examination of this operation, conceived and carried out by infamous turncoat Benedict Arnold, is revelatory.
Notable characters such as Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Lord Cornwallis, Baron von Steuben, the Marquis de La Fayette, William Byrd III, and other key players, both humble and exalted, are quickly and vividly sketched in brief anecdotes.
For example, Lafayette refused to allow two of his snipers who had Benedict Arnold within their sights to shoot him because he believed it would be unethical.
On two occasions the British came within a whisker of capturing Jefferson, once at Monticello when he was riding his horse down one side of the mountain while the cavalry was racing up the other side, and again at his Poplar Forest plantation about 80 miles southwest of Monticello, where they were within minutes of his residence before calling off the hunt due to exhaustion and poor weather.
Whether you're mildly interested in this period or consider yourself an expert on the key events of the American Revolution, you'll likely learn a great deal from this excellent book.
Although the book is extensively annotated and footnoted, Michael Kranish's prose flows in a manner that reminded me of a classic thriller or whodunit. Granted, he bogs down now and again, especially when detailing tedious legislative deliberations (what writer wouldn't?), but my interest rarely flagged.
The primary focus is the British invasion of Virginia in 1781, which ultimately concluded with the surrender at Yorktown. While I'm generally familiar with this chapter of the war, the author's detailed examination of this operation, conceived and carried out by infamous turncoat Benedict Arnold, is revelatory.
Notable characters such as Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Lord Cornwallis, Baron von Steuben, the Marquis de La Fayette, William Byrd III, and other key players, both humble and exalted, are quickly and vividly sketched in brief anecdotes.
For example, Lafayette refused to allow two of his snipers who had Benedict Arnold within their sights to shoot him because he believed it would be unethical.
On two occasions the British came within a whisker of capturing Jefferson, once at Monticello when he was riding his horse down one side of the mountain while the cavalry was racing up the other side, and again at his Poplar Forest plantation about 80 miles southwest of Monticello, where they were within minutes of his residence before calling off the hunt due to exhaustion and poor weather.
Whether you're mildly interested in this period or consider yourself an expert on the key events of the American Revolution, you'll likely learn a great deal from this excellent book.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Book Nook
Recently completed reading (well, skimming might be the more accurate word for my perusal of a number of these pages) Samuel Adams: A Life, by Ira Stoll.
Given the many books about John and Abigail Adams (and two blockbuster miniseries produced by PBS and HBO) I was interested to learn more about John's famous cousin. Alas, this volume is not the best book to turn to in order to learn about this astonishingly capable revolutionary.
One major obstacle is the decision by Samuel Adams and his spouse Elizabeth Wells Adams to regularly burn their personal correspondence as soon as possible after reading. This places the biographer at a great disadvantage when it comes to discussing their marital and family life.
This profound obstacle begets another, which is reliance on the existing public writings of Adams, who was a newspaperman and a wordsmith at least as competent as peers such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and his cousin John Adams, but who exhaustively focused on two themes during his lifetime as a polemicist.
One, the enormous importance of religion in the public and private sectors of daily life in colonial Boston and the state of Massachusetts. Two, the need to fully separate from Great Britain, the sooner the better. Adams was one of the first, if not the first, to begin beating this prophetic drum, for which he deserves immense credit.
However, the generous and overly enthusiastic use of this material bombards the reader page after page with excerpts highly similar in tone, style, phrasing and content. Although Adams modestly modified a few of his core beliefs over time (e.g., eventually becoming a bit more tolerant of Roman Catholics and Quakers), this thematic repetition very quickly became very tedious to this reader.
Given the many books about John and Abigail Adams (and two blockbuster miniseries produced by PBS and HBO) I was interested to learn more about John's famous cousin. Alas, this volume is not the best book to turn to in order to learn about this astonishingly capable revolutionary.
One major obstacle is the decision by Samuel Adams and his spouse Elizabeth Wells Adams to regularly burn their personal correspondence as soon as possible after reading. This places the biographer at a great disadvantage when it comes to discussing their marital and family life.
This profound obstacle begets another, which is reliance on the existing public writings of Adams, who was a newspaperman and a wordsmith at least as competent as peers such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and his cousin John Adams, but who exhaustively focused on two themes during his lifetime as a polemicist.
One, the enormous importance of religion in the public and private sectors of daily life in colonial Boston and the state of Massachusetts. Two, the need to fully separate from Great Britain, the sooner the better. Adams was one of the first, if not the first, to begin beating this prophetic drum, for which he deserves immense credit.
However, the generous and overly enthusiastic use of this material bombards the reader page after page with excerpts highly similar in tone, style, phrasing and content. Although Adams modestly modified a few of his core beliefs over time (e.g., eventually becoming a bit more tolerant of Roman Catholics and Quakers), this thematic repetition very quickly became very tedious to this reader.
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