Book Review - The Dictator Pope by pseudonym Marcantonio Colonna

“Might we see the Italian state denounce the Lateran treaty of 1929 that made the Vatican a foreign state, thus creating the lawless, corrupt playground that it has become?’’

The answer to that question, posed in a book released this week, The Dictator Pope, is almost certainly no — after all, Italy is no paragon of propriety itself.

The blunt “lawless, corrupt playground’’ epithet, however, is apt judging by recent events.

The book’s website says its author, writing under the pseudonym Marcantonio Colonna (a Vatican admiral in the Battle of Lepanto against the Ottoman Turks in 1571) is an Oxford-educated historian living in Rome. 

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The book is purportedly “the fruit of close contacts with many of those working in the Vatican, including the leading Cardinals and other figures mentioned in the narrative’’.

It shows — especially in the accounts of Pope Francis’s close relationships with four Vatican cardinals and their underlings who have stymied sweeping financial reforms enacted mainly by Australia’s Cardinal George Pell, who uncovered 1.4 billion euros in various Vatican departments not previously entered in the balance sheets.

The man described as “the most scandalous’’ of the four, gun enthusiast Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, president of APSA, the body that manages Vatican assets, dines with Francis most nights. Calcagno is under investigation for real estate dealings in his previous Italian diocese.

Financial corruption has dogged the church for half a century, since Pope Paul VI called in a US archbishop, Paul Marcinkus from Chicago in the 1960s. 

Far from improving efficiency, Marcinkus engaged freemason Mafia bankers Roberto Calvi (known as “God’s banker”, who was found hung under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982) and Michele Sindona (who died from cyanide in his coffee in an Italian jail in 1986).

The current reform effort, designed to improve transparency and accountability, took a major blow in June when Vatican auditor Libero Milone, a former chairman and chief executive of Deloitte in Italy, was sacked after an extraordinary raid on his office by Vatican police and firemen. 

Despite the office being on Italian, not Vatican territory, the Vatican officials burst in unexpectedly, confiscating electronic equipment and forcing open the safe with axes and crowbars. Milone’s offence, it appears, was doing his job properly.

The Vatican’s notorious homosexual lobby also remains a problem. One of its players Monsignor Luigi Capozzi, emerged from the shadows in June. Capozzi, secretary to Vatican Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio — described as “the foremost of Pope Francis’s yes-men’’ – was caught running a drugs party in his Vatican flat. Cardinal Coccopalmerio had reportedly proposed his underling for a bishopric.

Despite the crime and color, Dictator Pope does not belong to the “Vatican potboiler’’ genre. It is sober, blunt and forensic. Four days after its release in English on Monday, Amazon listed it as an e-book bestseller.

The world it describes is a hothouse, in which gossip, secrecy, personal hostilities and the craving for power thrive. Free speech is barely tolerated.

The head of the Roman Rota (the Vatican court), for example, Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto — whose name appeared on a notorious list of alleged Vatican Freemasons decades ago — suggested last year that four cardinals who criticized a controversial papal document on marriage, Amoris Laetitia, were guilty of “grave scandal’’ for doing so and deserved to be stripped of their cardinals’ hats.

As the book’s name suggests, it is primarily about Francis, emphasizing the adroit political skills he employed in Argentina and Rome to win the papacy and build his image. 

His much lauded humility — traveling on the Buenos Aires rail underground and paying his hotel bill in Rome after being elected Pope, for example — has been conveniently captured on camera and disseminated by press secretaries. Such savvy media management, the author suggests, begs the question “to what extent the smell of sheep was applied aroma and how much the mysticism was part of the manifesto’’.

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Original review on: http://www.theaustralian.com.au

Book Review - Dead Man's Blues by Ray Celestin

This massive, mammoth, mesmerizing mystery takes place in Chicago in 1928 with its plethora of mobsters, murderers, millionaires, musicians and marginalized minorities. 

Race permeates everything, particularly with Chicago’s recent intoxication with jazz — and every alcoholic beverage during Prohibition. Al Capone runs a tight ship, and Louis Armstrong’s arrival from New Orleans in 1922 starts the town dancing.

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Celestin magnificently anatomizes Chicago from the Gold Coast to Bronzeville, complete with beer and brothels, corruption and the stink of the stockyards, steel mills and speakeasys. 

Race, regions and riches clash, collide and confront one another. Sex runs rampant. Jazz juices up the blood. Poisoned alcohol kills. Everything can be bought from the governor on down.

Three mysteries immediately surface. Why has Capone summoned Dante Sanfelippo, a bootlegger from New York, to Chicago? Can Pinkerton detectives Ida Davis and Michael Talbot help old-moneyed Mrs. Van Haren find her daughter Gwendolyn, who’s vanished along with her beau, Charles Coulton? 

And who’s the dead man in the alley that crime photographer Jason Russo, discovers? How will this triad merge? Who’s addicted to what? And why do more bodies end up in the sewer canal and by the old Pullman Ice Works?

Is there a traitor in Capone’s outfit? Who’s been sabotaging his liquor runs? Who’s been gouging corpses’ eyes? How is Randall Taylor involved, the black guy who treats rich whites to “slumming” in Bronzeville?

The novel’s divided into sections — cadenza, duet, solo, improvisation — that mimics Armstrong’s hit recording “West End Blues.” 

Celestin’s prose often waxes lyrical and poetic and makes this a terrific book to immerse yourself in. Chicago plays a major role, engulfing, killing, and entangling all comers. Social Darwinism rules with a bloody vengeance, and the stakes are literally available to the highest bidder.

This city of “chrome and speed” delights, appalls, terrifies and seduces. And so does Celestin’s ultimately majestic novel.

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Original review on: http://www.providencejournal.com

Book Review - Kartikeya: The Destroyer's Son by Anuja Chandramouli

The Hindu pantheon has a number of eminent, eclectic, and enigmatic deities. But few can be more mysterious than its god of war -- a key figure in any divine assemblage. 

Yet, Kartikeya's origin and even appearance have variant accounts, his achievements eclipsed by his younger sibling, and his following not as universal.

While the general consensus is that he is the son of Shiva, the Destroyer, and Parvati, born to defeat the asuras, who yet again dethroned the devas, there is a certain school that attributes his parentage to fire god Agni. 

Then there are accounts that say six babies were born of Shiva's seed and became one, while some say he was one with six faces.

Then did Kartikeya defeat the asura Taraka, or was the asura ruler Soorapadma? What did he do after defeating the asuras? And why is he more popular across south India?

Despite Sanskrit's pre-eminent poet Kalidasa writing about the birth and exploits of the god in "Kumarasambhava", there are no definite, conclusive answers -- but that doesn't mean there aren't any. 

As Anuja Chandramouli, who is a unique combination of new age classicist and a most compelling storyteller, shows in this book.

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And her work on Kartikeya -- one of the three new books she has out this month -- is not merely a recounting of the god's story in modern language, but an inspired and imaginative retelling. And in this, comes out the essence -- which was these accounts' original motive before form trumped content, and ritual bested right conduct.

For Chandramouli, who has earlier presented Kamadeva and Shakti as seen never before, keeps to her trait of not only working a unique and contemporary sensibility into the lore, but also a more nuanced depiction of good and evil, duty, destiny, power, love, gender relations and rights, especially, and above all, mercy and redemption.

And true to her style, she doesn't begin with the travails of the devas, but Parvati, who has finally realised her goal of union with Shiva. And when the devas come, it is with their king Indra, who is delivering a long harangue to the trinity's Preserver, Vishnu, how the divine couple are delaying emergence of their progeny, who will help him regain power.

Chandramouli doesn't have a very high opinion of the king of the gods as per her unflattering depictions in the past, and here too, it is not much different -- with Indra more a resentful, manipulative power-hungry debauchee than a celestial being.

On the other hand, Soorapadma, despite being the "undisputed Lord of the three worlds", has "grown heartily sick of it all". And then while his his brother Simha is conscientious in helping better the lot of his subjects despite facing slurs, the other, the infamous Taraka, is cruel but mostly to keep his family's honour.

The obvious point is that even those portrayed as evil have redeeming points and those as good may not be spotless, and it can also be a circular process -- like the cyclical idea of time in the Hindu ethos.

But coming back to our protagonist, Chandramouli lyrically recounts the strange circumstances of his birth -- and how it affected the fire god, and the wind god and Ganga herself, his raising, and his relationship with his parents.

And before his battle with the asuras (instigated most cynically by Indra), there is a telling episode where Soorapadma and Simha go to see Kartikeya on Mount Kailash and discuss the limitations of power. The inevitable conflict -- told in a dream form that is a staple of Chandramouli -- is set against how Kartikeya treats his defeated foes.

All this has to be read to be relished, but not necessarily believed as gospel. For that is the beauty of Hindu religion, in which many versions can co-exist without any problem.

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original review on: http://www.business-standard.com

Book Review - Strong To The Bone by Jon Land

Jon Land's Caitlin Strong thrillers usually have a "ripped from the headlines" feel, and the new one, "Strong to the Bone," features violent neo-Nazis, industrial robots, a lethal biological weapon, the international opiates trade and a creep who buys pharmaceutical companies to jack up the price of drugs.

For the uninitiated, Strong is a trigger-happy, insubordinate, fifth-generation Texas Ranger whose exploits always have a direct link to one of her ancestors' investigations. 

In this one, the ninth book in the series, it's her grandfather Earl Strong's pursuit of a Nazi who escaped from a World War II prison camp in Texas in the 1940s.

The series' other regulars, including Caitlin's long-suffering commander, D.W. Tepper; her ex-con lover, Cort Wesley Masters; and Masters' sons Luke and Dylan, all return. 

The oldest boy, Luke, who becomes more like his father with every book, initiates the action when he faces off against neo-Nazis who harass his Mexican-American friends.

The story also finds Caitlin coming face-to-face with the darkest moment in her past. Called to the scene of a nightclub brawl in Austin, she discovers that a young woman has been drugged and raped.

The circumstances are eerily similar to what happened to Caitlin when she was a college student — an assault Land reveals here for the first time.

Caitlin soon suspects that the girl's assailant and hers are one and the same. This makes Caitlin wonder if she's always been quick to pull the trigger because she harbors a deep-seated rage against male offenders.

Eventually, the Masters' struggle against neo-Nazis and Caitlin's pursuit of the rapist merge into a single, related criminal case. As always with this rollicking, entertaining series, the complex plot is resolved in a burst of righteous violence.

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Original review on: http://www.nzherald.co.nz

Book Review - THE SECOND COMING OF THE KKK by Linda Gordon

The cover of Linda Gordon’s “The Second Coming of the KKK” shows a procession of men marching in full Klan regalia up Pennsylvania Avenue, the Capitol dome looming behind them. 

It would be a disturbing image in any era, but in 2017 — after the attack on an African-American church in Charleston, S.C., after the neo-Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., after the alt-right poured into Washington for President Trump’s inauguration — it is terrifying.

The photograph was taken in 1925, during the decade when membership in the so-called Second Ku Klux Klan — the first was put down during Reconstruction — swept the country. 

In all, 30,000 men participated in that parade. What the photo leaves out are the throngs lining the avenue: The Klan didn’t just march in the nation’s capital; it received a warm welcome. 

Unlike the first and third Klans (the third appeared during the civil rights era), the 1920s Klan was well integrated into American life. “The K.K.K. may actually have enunciated values with which a majority of 1920s Americans agreed,” Gordon writes.

One of Gordon’s tasks is to show that the 1920s we think we know — a Gatsbyan bacchanal of speakeasies, flappers and mob hits — was just an urban, coastal bubble. 

For most Americans, it would appear, the decade was more like something out of “Babbitt” or “Elmer Gantry”: a country turned inward against the world, small-minded and cruel. 

A country in which the Klan and its values — so-called Americanism, xenophobia, white nationalism and patriarchy — were the norm. An America, Gordon all but says, not unlike today.

The second Klan was national in scope, with a surprisingly small footprint in the South — its highest per-capita state memberships were in Indiana and Oregon. In New Jersey, Klansmen burned a cross in the black section of Metuchen, today a liberal commuter suburb of New York. 

The Klan was so powerful in Southern California that it nicknamed Anaheim “Klanaheim.” Its main focus was, as always, on spreading hatred against blacks, Jews and Catholics, but its agenda always fit the local context: In the Southwest, it turned its ire on Hispanics and Latino immigrants; in the Pacific Northwest, it took aim at Japanese.

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Original review on: www.nytimes.com

Book Review - Women Who Work by Ivanka Trump

In May, The New York Times published two poison-pen reviews of Ivanka Trump's book Women Who Work. Jessa Crispin (Twitter handle @theBookSlut) ranted it sounded like “the scrambled Tumblr feed of a demented 12-year-old.” 

So it's not surprising that the Times would slam her mother Ivana's new book Raising Trump, complete with her ex-husband described as a "throbbing blister."

Does anyone wonder why the Trumps might think the Times has an animus against them?

The Sunday Times Book Review carried this attack on the front cover, by liberal Vanity Fair scribbler James Wolcott. Ivana's book was reviewed alongside Jerry Oppenheimer's new biography of the Kardashians. 

Wolcott notes that Ivana Trump boasts that her children Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka are all "faithful spouses, superb parents, accomplished business people and sterling assets during their father's presidential campaign." 

Wolcott finds that barely worth contemplating: he thought the title Raising Trump was all about "husband-wrangling." 

I fear Ivana has mistimed her memoir and misread the mood of the troubled country, which isn’t interested in heartwarming holiday tales, family recipes, cute anecdotes about her trying to order a glass of Chablis at a Taco Bell, tips on teaching kids manners and the grown-up kids’ rote testimonials reiterating throughout the text what a swell mom she was and is (Ivanka’s initial entry has all the warmth and personality of a ribbon-cutting ceremony). 

We’re past the point of indulging hokum with a high thread count.Uppermost on the reader’s inquiring mind is how Ivana’s intimate perspective might help us unlock how the slick wheeler-dealer who charmed and courted her when she arrived in Manhattan in the 1970s — “an all-American good guy,” her instincts told her — mutated over the decades into apresident so seething with ignorance, malice, prejudice and destruction. Some hints, that is, of how we got into our present predicament of being held hostage by a throbbing blister.

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Original review on: www.newsbusters.org

An Unfinished Revolution - A Hostage Crisis, Adivasi Resistance and the Naxal Movement by Kishalay Bhattacharjee - Book Review

Maoist rebels were described as India's biggest security challenge (before radical Islamist terror supplanted them), having violently taken control of large stretches of the tribal-dominated heartland. 

The ultra-left insurgents, however, portray themselves as guardians of long-neglected and/or much-exploited tribals. While both stands have their supporters, the binary construct ignores the opinion of the tribals themselves.

"I was absorbed by the utter deprivation of a people whose own history of resistance was conveniently appropriated by the Naxals (Maoists). These people had lost the ability to speak for themselves and, if they did, it was seen as dissent that needed to be crushed by both sides wielding guns," says journalist Kishlay Bhattacharjee.

And it is this key, but mostly overlooked issue he seeks to examine in this book. But apart from the current plight of the hapless Adivasis, who are damned if they do and damned if they don't by the simple fact of just being where they are, he also goes into their own lively past of resisting the state and its demands and restrictions.

But this book has more too, for Bhattacharjee happens to wear many hats.

It has his own memories of growing up in the 1970s and 1980s with Bengali literature which had quite a bit of focus on the Naxalbari Movement. 

Then, in his profession, he dealt with people in "conflict zones" and as internal security chair at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, he had, in 2011, sought to carry out field research on the state response to the Maoist insurgency.

Then Bhattacharjee had first-hand experience of meeting and discussing politics with a top Maoist leader -- after a gruelling night walk through the jungle -- when he was covering the abduction of two Italians in Odisha in 2012.

All these go to make this book a compelling melange of "part reportage, part personalised ethnography and part memoir". 

It arose from the idea that if the hostage crisis, told from multiple viewpoints across the spectrum, is inserted into the larger picture of the Maoist movement, "it could perhaps provide an on-the-ground understanding of 'tribal militancy' and the Maoist 'revolution' which is still 'unfinished'".

He draws your interest right from the beginning with the starkly evocative description of a contest of wills, over a board game, between captive and captor, that could come from the pen of an accomplished literary figure.

This gives way to an equally atmospheric account of him and other media colleagues ensconced in a small, back-of-beyond Odisha town of Daringbari in March 2012 as they await some developments in the kidnapping of Italian tourist Claudio Colangelo and Odisha-based Italian tour-guide Paolo Borusco from the state's Kandhamal area.

Read the original book review on: http://www.business-standard.com