The Dangerous Otto Katz: The Many Lives of a Soviet Spy

Although born a Baby Boomer, I was raised by parents for whom WWII was the defining event in their lives. Every year on December 7, my mother sent me off to school with the admonishment to remember that it was Pearl Harbor Day. My family watched every movie ever made about the war and all of the television series set during the war.

The Cold War with its accompanying Duck and Cover Drills defined my life. Signs in public buildings directing visitors to fallout shelters were ubiquitous. NATO stood guard in Europe. A war was being fought in Viet Nam to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia. I read long and deeply trying to understand the how and why of the Communist threat that hung like a malevolent cloud over my life.

When I picked up this book, my first thought was “Otto who?” I thought that I knew just about everything about the political threats of the first half of the Twentieth Century. The reason I had never heard of Otto Katz is that he was so successful as a spy, few people ever knew his real name. Born in 1895 to a wealthy Czech family, he was a lazy playboy and a “useless” soldier during WWI. After the war, he drifted to Berlin joining the art scene and becoming a true believer in Socialism.

It was his wealthy background and artistic contacts that made him such a successful spy and fundraiser for the Russians. He travelled the world using different names and passports making him difficult to track by Western intelligence agencies. He spent time in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, in Hollywood amongst German expatriates such as Marlene Dietrich and the director Fritz Lang, and in Mexico City where Germans who had fled Hitler’s Germany had settled.

In the end, it was his cosmopolitanism that did him in. In Stalin’s paranoid mind, anyone who had spent significant amounts of time outside of the Eastern Bloc was suspected of having been turned by Western intelligence agencies. The fact that Katz was a Jew sealed his fate. He was tried and executed in 1952.

Author Jonathan Miles does a good job of tracing Katz’s complex life. The book is rich in detail about Katz’s life up to the beginning of WWII. After that point, the narrative becomes less detailed and more hurried as if Miles is impatient to get to the end of his story. Katz’s trial, execution and rehabilitation a decade later are given short shrift. I wish that Miles had taken more time and given more weight to the last decade of Katz’s life. It was an important period not just in his life, but also in world history. WWII shaped the political landscape of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Katz was an important participant and deserves a full treatment of his entire life, not just part of his life.


Review copy courtesy of Bloomsbury USA

Cleopatra: A Life

The reviews of this book present an interesting dichotomy. Scholarly reviewers rave about author Stacy Schiff’s ability to flesh out the life and times of a queen about whom very little is known. Other reviewers complain that there is very little about Cleopatra herself in the book. Although not a professional historian, I am firmly in the camp with those who stand in awe of this recreation of an extraordinary woman.

History is written by the victors. As Schiff points out, in Cleopatra’s time they were men, Romans whose culture did not allow for powerful women or female rulers. In their eyes, she was the enemy who had seduced Caesar and Mark Antony, bent them to her will and contributed to their destruction. Subsequent authors through the ages, accepted this interpretation of her and embroidered on it.

In this book, Cleopatra’s life is placed in the context of both the Egyptian culture that she ruled and the Alexandrian culture of the ruling class (her ancestors were Macedonians who had conquered Egypt). Both of these cultures allowed for a woman ruler, unlike many other ancient cultures. To the Egyptians, she was a goddess, the incarnation of Isis.

Both cultures allowed her to rule without a husband unlike many future European queens who were forced to make the difficult choice of remaining single like Elizabeth I of England or choosing a husband who either alienated her subjects like Prince Philip of Spain, the husband of Elizabeth’s half-sister Mary, or cost her her throne like Lord Darnley, the husband of Mary Stewart of Scotland.

Her world is brought to life in this enchanting book. One can almost smell and feel the humid, spice laden air of Alexandria and the chill of the Roman hills. The colors, the pageantry, the rites and the people come alive.

It’s been more than thirty years since I last took an ancient history course but the author provides plenty of background information on each country and personage who was a part of Cleopatra’s life. I was able to follow along with no problem.

Unlike the heavy, ponderous style of male biographers, Schiff’s writing style is peculiarly suited to her subject. Her light feminine style provides the perfect voice for a smart, fearless, feminine queen.

Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen

I was so excited when this book arrived from Amazon.com. I couldn’t wait to dive into it. After all, it promised a brand new view of Elizabeth I, “…portrayed here as the product of women….” The reader is assured that it is “…a thrilling new angle by the brilliant young historian Tracy Borman.” The author herself guarantees that she has “…focused the story upon those women who help to reveal Elizabeth the woman, as well as Elizabeth the Queen.” 418 pages later, I am still waiting for a revelation.


This book is only interesting to readers who know little or nothing about Elizabeth I. For the rest of us, it is just a tiresome rehashing of all the familiar stories. Elizabeth’s relationships with her half-sister, Mary and Mary, Queen of Scots. Her ladies in waiting, both those who served her selflessly and those who “betrayed” her with secret pregnancies and secret marriages, usually in that order.

There are no new insights into any of these women, their lives nor their influence on Elizabeth. The only original thinking in the book is a few brief pages on Elizabeth’s similarity to her mother, Anne Boleyn. Most biographers point out her similarities to her father, Henry VIII. This biographer looks at her resemblance to her mother both in looks and personality and how she used both to manipulate the men around her, again like her mother.

This single original thought could have fit comfortably into an article or academic paper. There was no reason to write a book.

George Eliot in Love

Many years ago when I first became aware of George Eliot as a Victorian woman who openly lived with a man without benefit of marriage, I eagerly sought out her novels thinking they would be as scandalous as her life. Imagine my disappointment upon discovering that the books were conventional Victorian novels, no different from the books of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope or Henry James, all of whom she knew and with whom she socialized.

The mystery of how a woman who flouted Victorian conventions while writing stories observing those conventions has finally been solved for me by Brenda Maddox’s excellent biography, George Eliot in Love. This small volume, which the author calls a "…short life of the great Victorian author…." is a sympathetic treatment of Eliot’s life and career.

It is in some ways, a typical Victorian love story. A woman, Mary Anne Evans, too ugly for marriage has several brief love affairs before finally finding a man, George Henry Lewes, who can ignore her looks and love her for herself. But there the story becomes more modern. They are unable to marry because he is already married and has acknowledged his wife’s children by her lover as his own thereby depriving himself of grounds for divorce. Nevertheless, George and Mary Anne live as man and wife, she taking his name.

She had been a journalist and editor but with his encouragement, turned to writing novels using the pseudonym George Eliot. He nurtured her talent, shielded her from critical reviews and managed all of her business affairs. Her fame grew and people began to "forget" that she was not married to the man she was living with. Their love also grew. This book is as much a love story as a biography.

Unlike most modern biographies, this one does not dwell on its subject’s flaws. The author mentions the possible physical relationships Eliot had before meeting Lewes, but doesn’t speculate. She also mentions but dismisses rumors that Lewes was unfaithful to Eliot. She doesn’t make a big deal of Eliot’s marriage after Lewes' death to a much younger man. There is no titillation here, only the story of two soulmates who defied society to be together.

Having gained a better understanding of George Eliot as a person as well as an author, I am keen to re-read her novels.

Review copy courtesy of Palgrave MacMillan

Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend

I really have to start reading the book blurbs more carefully when I enter the Book Giveaways on GoodReads. This is the second book I have received that is not what I thought it was when I signed up. I thought this book was about Samuel Colt and the invention of the Colt Revolver, a nice segue from the previous Giveaway, They Rode for the Lonestar; the Texas Rangers having made the Colt Revolver famous.

Instead, this book is about John Colt, Samuel’s brother, and the murder he committed for which he was tried and condemned. To make things more confusing, throughout the book both brother’s lives are described in tandem, switching back and forth between them, leaving the reader to wonder just exactly who the book is about. Or is it both of them? A nice little twist at the end, which I won’t reveal, explains how and why the brothers’ lives were so entwined despite their very different temperaments, professions and places of residence.

Both brothers are interesting, but I was particularly fascinated by John. Growing up, he was a cut-up and ne’er-do-well who as an adult finally found his calling as an accountant. None of the accountants that I know could be even remotely described as rabble-rousers. They are all terribly straitlaced and conventional. John Colt, despite his troubled past, was not only a good accountant, but he also wrote a book on accounting that was so popular it went through nine editions. It was the final edition of the book, The Science of Double Entry Book-Keeping, that was the cause of the quarrel between him and Samuel Adams, his printer, that resulted in the murder of Mr. Adams. Fully half of the Killer Colt is devoted to the trial of John Colt.

I was also unaware that the author, Harold Schechter, is a noted writer of true crime books. Not normally a fan of true crime books, I was pleasantly surprised that Mr. Schechter writes from a historical point of view rather than the usual lurid and titillating approach typical of that genre. He quotes extensively from the contemporary press to provide the emotional color of the trial. He provides enough background on the City (Manhattan), the press and the various figures involved to allow the reader to fully appreciate the crime, the trial and the emotions swirling around them.

I am a huge fan of history so I loved this book. Through it, I gained a snapshot view of a particular time and place and really felt like I was able to enter into the lives and feelings of the people populating the narrative.

Review copy courtesy of Ballantine Books

Betsy Ross and the Making of America

Normally when I review a book, I first read the book and write my review, then I read reviews written by other people. In the case of Betsy Ross and the Making of America, my introduction to the book was via a review in the New York Times Book Review dated May 9, 2010. It was not a flattering review. The reviewer, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a professor at Harvard, accuses the author, Marla R. Miller, a professor of American History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, of "sentimental fiction" which "weakens her own historical prose, which is strong enough to stand on its own" and "defeats the ultimate purpose of her book, which is to rediscover the woman behind the legend." Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the fact that, other than books for children, this is the first biography of Betsy Ross ever written. Intrigued enough to buy and read the book despite the poor review.

By the end of the first chapter, I had forgotten about the scathing review and was completely hooked. I literally couldn't put the book down. This was American history as I had never read it before. These were real people and real experiences, not the usual dry recitations of politics and battles and tactics. I never liked American history. I felt it was boring compared to the thousands of years of history of Europe and the Mediterranean. Having been forced in high school to memorize every battle and every general of the Revolutionary War, I subsequently tuned out the following 200 years, learning just enough to pass exams while devoting my spare time to Egyptian pharaohs, Roman emperors and English kings who chopped their wives' heads off. Now that’s history.

It is precisely the "sentimental fiction" that makes this book interesting to the general reader. Rather than a dry overview of the development of the city of Philadelphia, we see it from the point of view of Betsy's great-grandfather, a master carpenter. It's one thing to read about the tactics, such as boycotts, the colonists used to protest what they perceived to be unfair taxation. It's quite another to read about the effects those boycotts had on the local artisans and merchants. The yellow fever epidemics that killed so many residents of Philadelphia are more meaningful when we learn of the various family members lost. Rather than just numbers, they are people that we have come to know. Small details like the families who were split between loyalty to the king and loyalty to the rebellion, illustrates the upheaval caused by this colonial rebellion much better than the usual political analysis commonly found in books on the American Revolution.

The final criticism in the review with which I disagreed was that the author devoted "only" 50 pages out of a total of 362 pages to the last 40 years of Betsy's life, despite the fact that these are the best documented years of her life. I have to admit that after 300 pages, I was pretty much Betsy Ross'ed out. Not only was her life prior to and during the Revolution tumultuous (three husbands and seven daughters), but just trying to keep all the people, many of whom had the same names, straight made my head spin. The author's decision to gloss over the details of the latter part of Betsy Ross' life was a sound one. And, in the best Hollywood tradition, leaves room for a "sequel", a more in depth analysis of her life after the Revolution, to be written by the author or another historian.

After I finished the book, I went back and read the review again. My second reading of the review led me to the conclusion that the problem lay in the intention of the author. The reviewer was critiquing the book from a scholarly point of view whereas it seemed to me that the author intended her book to be read by both scholars and general readers. Scholars are more interested in facts and conclusions supported by facts. Hence the harsh review. General readers like myself do tend to speculate as we read. What was she thinking? How would I have reacted in this situation? We enjoy seeing events through the eyes and emotions of ordinary people like ourselves rather than from the lofty perspective of presidents, kings and generals.

The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir

This is another Book Giveaway on Goodreads.com that I entered on a whim. It turned out to be much funnier than I had anticipated. The author had me midway through the prologue where he describes transporting five baby goats from his farm in upstate New York to Manhattan, a trip that takes several hours, during which time the goats develop diarrhea and he is forced to drive with his head out the window to get away from the smell.

I practically fell out of my chair laughing. I knew exactly how he felt. I once transported a kitten from a breeder two hours distant from my house, a kitten that was so nervous he began pooping forcing me to drive two hours with the car windows wide open in January. Unlike the author, whose passengers were confined in a cage in the backseat of his vehicle, in my case the kitten was loose in my car and being a typical feline, sought the highest elevation on which to perch. That elevation being the top of my head, with his claws firmly implanted in my scalp for balance.

I found this book both entertaining and disappointing. Mr. Kilmer-Purcell makes frequent references to his former career as a drag queen and to his partner’s career on Martha Stewart’s show. Too many references. I understand that being a drag queen and within the orbit of Martha Stewart were two defining experiences for him and his partner, but there is whole other world outside of that small universe that he seems almost unaware of.

After a lengthy set-up in which the author and his partner, find, fall in love with and purchase a “mansion” in upstate New York as a weekend house that eventually becomes a goat farm, I felt let down with the rest of the book. There is almost no discussion of their friends and activities in Manhattan, where they lived five days a week. He manages somehow to devote most of the book to the mansion cum goat farm while revealing almost nothing about the surrounding area or the inhabitants.

I would like to have learned more about his rural neighbors and his urban friends. How did those two worlds compare and contrast? What was their life like before they bought the weekend house? They had been a couple for almost a decade. What did they do during that decade? How did their lives in Manhattan change after buying the weekend house? Did they attempt to mingle the two worlds by inviting friends to visit them at their upstate retreat?

This is a great human interest story, but I feel that a big part of it is missing. It is a quick, entertaining read that is more sequins and boas than compost and canning.

Review copy courtesy of Harper Collins

An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson

Andro Linklater has written a fabulous book. It is incredibly detailed. It took me more than a month to read because I could only digest it in small chunks. Thirty or forty pages a day were all that I could take in before having to put it down. Yet, at no time did I feel that I was slogging through it, pushing myself to just finish the darn book. It was truly a joy to read.

BUT

It’s a big “but”. My problem with this book is the misleading marketing. The book is heavily marketed as the story of a colossal traitor who somehow fooled everyone including the military and four presidents. What an exciting story! I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.

But that’s not this story. This is the story of a Southern gentleman who was raised to be very courtly, very conscious of his place in society, to run a plantation and live a very wealthy life. However, his meager inheritance was not enough to support his lifestyle. He was fortunate that the American Revolution occurred right after his graduation from medical school. He had a knack for the military life. But once the war was over, he was forced to engage in business, something at which he was an enormous failure.

The rest of his life was a story of continuous debt. He was always having fallings out with business partners after borrowing monies that he couldn’t repay. His off and on military career couldn’t support his lifestyle that grew more and more lavish.

He agreed to spy for Spain as just another source of income. As Mr. Linklater makes abundantly clear, General Wilkinson never intended to destroy America. When his back was finally against the wall during the Burr Conspiracy and he had to make a decision, America or Spain, he chose America. Most importantly, everyone knew that he was taking money from the Spanish. Everyone. Including the military and the four presidents for whom he worked.

The men who founded this country were not fools. They would never have knowingly employed anyone who was seeking the destruction of America. They knew that Wilkinson was brilliant militarily but couldn’t handle his personal finances well. So they continued to employ his services which were acutely needed by the young country and overlooked the thinly veiled payoffs from Spain.

Once I got over the hype surrounding this story, I genuinely enjoyed this book. General James Wilkinson was an important figure in American history. He seemed to go everywhere and to know everyone. He was also quite a character, even a scoundrel in some cases. He gleefully smeared the reputation of anyone he viewed as a threat, he regularly betrayed his superiors and friends but at the same time was a loving and attentive husband.

Mr. Linklater has done an excellent job of bringing to life a colorful figure from our past who played an important role in the founding of our country.

Review copy courtesy of Walker Books

The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily

I came of age in the 1970s at the height of the Women’s Movement. It was a heady time full of marches and protests and petitions. Women’s Studies departments were formed at colleges and universities. The study of history, full of dead white men, was expanded to include herstory, bringing to light the lives and achievements of women in the past.

Women have come a long way since then, now full partners at home, in the workplace and in the history books. But I still find myself, when confronted with a choice of books, always reaching for the one by or about women.

It was with great anticipation that I began reading “The Lady Queen”. Imagine, a woman ruler in medieval Italy, surrounded by “chauvinist” aristocracy and popes who shamelessly exploited women. How did she come to rule? How was her rule different from the men who preceded her and then followed her? How did her subjects feel about being ruled by a woman? What, if any, changes did she make to Italian culture?

Sadly, only my first question was answered. The rest of the 300+ pages were filled with the usual battles, funerals, coronations, plots and counter-plots found in most history books. This book was written for a popular audience, yet it is all the things that everyone hates about history. Just a dry recitation of dates and historical figures.

Ms. Goldstone tries to excuse the paucity of material concerning the actual life and rule of Joanna on records that were lost during WWII. What I found most frustrating were the tantalizing hints of her life. Her concern with and improvement of healthcare, the arts, and religious orders are mentioned again and again but never expanded upon. I kept hoping for more details on them which would, directly or indirectly, tell me more about Joanna as a person and as a queen.

Joanna’s life was ended by assassination. There was a problem with what to do with her body because she had been excommunicated and couldn’t be buried in hallowed ground. A religious order, of whom she had been a benefactor, came up with a solution. I just wanted to scream. What had she done for them they were willing to put aside their religious convictions and provide her with a resting place?

Alas, this book does not live up to its title. I know very little more about Joanna and her “notorious reign” than I did before I read this superficial biography.

Review copy courtesy of Walker & Company

Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love, War, and Survival

"Stalin's Children" was written as a memoir of a family but it is much more than that. It is an intimate look at life in mid-20th century Russia. The story of those years is told through the lives of three generations of the Bibikov family.

Scholarly histories can only give dry descriptions of the tumultuous years from Stalin's purges through Perestroika. The Bibikov's lived those events. Through them, we experience the despair of parents rounded up in a purge and sent to the Gulag, the helplessness of orphans caught up in the chaos of the mass evacuations as the German army invades Russia. We share the joy of two sisters, separated during the war, who are miraculously reunited. Then we settle down with the sisters in Moscow and endure the privations of the Cold War.

Owen Matthews, the author, is the son an Englishman, Mervyn Matthews, who studied Russian, worked in the British Embassy in Moscow and fell in love with both Russia and one of the sisters. It was the correspondence between Mervyn and Mila during the six years that they were separated while Mervyn worked to get his fiancée out of Russia that inspired this book.

Readers who came of age after the break-up of the Soviet empire may find the tactics Mervyn used in his six year campaign unbelievable, if not downright silly. Those of us who remember "duck & cover" drills, hiding under our desks in school in the vain hope that they would shield us from nuclear attack, will be less skeptical. We remember the extreme measures taken by those desperate to escape from behind the Iron Curtain.

There is danger in writing a true story about dramatic events. The result could be maudlin or read like a fictional thriller. The author has avoided both of these extremes. He allows the family members to tell their stories through reminisces, letters and official documents, accurately capturing the fatalistic attitude of the Russian people.

I was a little disappointed at the end of the book. The constant foreshadowing of the dramatic love story between Mervyn and Mila builds expectations so high that the actual telling is a letdown. The final chapters are an attempt on the part of the author to draw parallels between his parent's lives and his own. His effort to make his story, told in a rambling oblique manner, as dramatic as his parents' doesn't end the book so much as let it just fade away.

Review copy courtesy of Walker & Company

Casanova: Actor Lover Priest Spy

Like most people, when I hear the name Casanova, I think of sex. Ian Kelly offers a more rounded view of a fascinating man who has come to be defined by a single facet of his complex life.

Casanova's autobiography, "The History of My Life", offers more than the story of one man's life. It allows us a unique glimpse into the life of people from all walks of life during the eighteenth century. He mingled with prostitutes and kings, actors and bishops, a Tsarina and famous courtesans, nobility and tradesmen. He wrote about all of them, detailing their lives and loves, their triumphs and travails.

He seemed to be in perpetual motion, travelling throughout Europe and into Russia, never living anywhere for more than two years. Even his mode of travel was unique. He used public transportation rather than the private coaches used by most travelers of the day. He hitchhiked and even sailed on slave-galleys. He wrote about it all, a veritable treasure trove of information for historians. He details the inns, apartments, castles and prisons where he stayed or was forced to stay.

He loved food, leaving a record of hundreds of meals, many of which featured dishes that are mentioned nowhere else and would have been lost to history if not for Casanova's writings.

As for his supposedly insatiable sexual appetite, Mr. Kelly rightly points out that his sex life was normal for men who had no fixed address, constantly moving around. More than a few of his contemporaries recorded more numerous encounters than Casanova. Just like modern times, he contracted sexually transmitted diseases over and over. In fact, syphilis may have caused his death. He was apparently bisexual, enjoying encounters with the occasional man, both singly and as part of group sex. Perhaps the most shocking act he committed was the possible incest with one of his daughters leading to the birth of a son that may or may not have been his.

This is an extremely well written book that brings to life both a man and his times. I found it to be totally engrossing for the details it provided of Europe and Russia during the eighteenth century.

Review copy courtesy of Jeremy P. Tarcher