Category Archives: Reviews

The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear

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This book written by Dr. Petr Beckman was published in 1976, which was several years before I had the pleasure of meeting him. He escaped from Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, and knew plenty about repression. He was Professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and therefore also knew plenty about the generation of energy. I was a subscriber to his “Access to Energy” forum, which advocated that plentiful, inexpensive energy was and is the key to maintaining the incredible freedoms created by a powerful economy. Access to Energy continues to be an excellent pro-energy forum, and it is currently published by Dr. Arthur Robinson.

Dr. Beckman’s acid wit shows up in his dedication of this excellent book, “To Ralph Nader and all who worship the water he walks on.” He then proceeds to discredit Nader’s positions opposing nuclear energy.

The primary point of the book is that there is no safe way to make energy. “Energy is the capacity for doing work, and as long as man is fallible, there is always the possibility that it will do the wrong type of work; to ask for safe energy, therefore, is much the same as asking for incombustible fuel.” However, nuclear energy is “far safer than any other form of energy.” Continue reading →

No Place to Hide

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No Place to Hide
, David Bradley, 1948

The book is based on the daily log of the author, who was a “radiological monitor” who conducted surveys after two atomic bomb blasts near Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. The front flap of the book says the author was, “Convinced that published reports available to the average man have given him an incomplete and therefore distorted view…(and) lulled him into a false sense of security. Dr. Bradley has interpreted the real truth…The truth constitutes a warning that no man can afford to ignore. It demonstrates that nuclear war has no remedy, and that our only hope is to control the power, that once loosed, will destroy us all.” Several used copies of the book are available on Abebooks.com.

The book has elegant descriptions of the atolls, the ocean, and the array of ships aligned to test the effects of an air burst of an atomic bomb and a subsurface explosion. Able was dropped from the B-29 Dave’s Dream July 1, 1946. The author was in one of the many planes assigned to take radiological readings, but he did not see the initial blast through his tinted goggles. He soon saw the cloud rapidly expanding past 30,000 and then 40,000 feet. His instruments found no radioactivity until the plane came close to the target area. The effects of the blast were less devastating to the armada of ships than had been expected. However, the ships were significantly contaminated, and would remain so despite repeated efforts to decontaminate them absent removal of their surfaces by sand blasting. Continue reading →

Perjury, The Hiss Chambers Case

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By Allen Weinstein, 1978

This review pertains directly to the “Witness” review, but it also provides insight into the allignment of forces against Elizabeth Bentley. The American Civil Liberties Union helped Weinstein obtain FBI files about the Hiss case for use in a lawsuit, and the author began his investigations believing Hiss had been unfairly convicted. Those on the political left were absolutely convinced that Chambers was wrong about Hiss and, that Hiss was unfairly convicted of perjury. The book presents a very detailed description of the five years of research that led to the author’s conclusion, much to the dismay of Hiss supporters, that Hiss had indeed been guiltiy of perjury. The book also confirms the magnitude of Soviet espionage in the United State. ….Nadya Ulanovskaya has confirmed the substance of Chamber’s account of his underground activities from his recruitment up to the time when Ulrich…returned to Russia in 1934. Nadya Ulanovskaya, who confirmed the substance of Chamber’s accounts of his Communist activities in the 1930s “scoffed at the dangers involved in conducting an espionage in the United States.” Nadya said: “If you wore a sign saying ‘I am a spy,’ you might still not get arrested in America when we were there.”

Early parts of the book describe the depths reached by Hiss and his supporters to discredit Chambers. There were unproven allegations of homosexuality (which would have been called “homophobic” today), insanity (the term “psychopathic personality” was used by one of their psychiatrist in testimony), imposture, and criminal behavior. There is no question that Chambers had a checkered personal life. He did come from dysfunctional family life as a child, and his father abandoned the family to move in with a male lover. There also is no dispute that Chambers served as a dedicated Communist courier for Soviet espionage rings. There is also the practical matter that he was dowdy and rumpled in appearance while his was handsome and always presented himself in well-tailored fashions. Continue reading →

Out of Bondage: The Story of Elizabeth Bentley

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Published by The Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1951
(Buy this book on Amazon.com.)

Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American who served as a courier for Soviet espionage cells who became disillusioned, and like Whitaker Chambers (see the “Witness” review), went to the FBI.  Bentley was a well educated liberal who became concerned about Fascism during a year in Italy and became a Communist when she had trouble finding work after she returned to the United States.  Her intelligence and dedication attracted the attention of members of the Russian Secret Police.    One was a woman named Juliet Glazer (actual name Juliet Poyntz) who scared her.  Glazer was liquidated by her Soviet handlers not long after meeting Bentley.  Over the next few years Bentley would work with others who would suffer the same fate as Glazer (Poyntz).

Elizabeth called herself a “steeled Bolshevik” by the time she went to work for a man called “Timmy,” and she was told to cut off contact with all her Communist friends to go deep under cover.  “Timmy,” who she later called “Yasha,” was Jacob Golos, chief of Soviet espionage operations in the United States.    Elizabeth, whose Venona code name was “Clever Girl,” served as courier for Golos, and the two became lovers against orders from the Soviets and despite the fact he had a wife in Lithuania and a mistress in Manhattan.

Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and orders came to Golos to get as many comrades as possible into the U.S. government.  Bentley assumed the name of “Miss Wise,” and she found a job in the United States Services and Shipping Corporation.  Bentley was surprised at how easy it was for hard core Communists to be hired into sensitive U.S. government jobs.  There were so many agents that she and Golos worried that American intelligence would “trip over one of them.”  So much information was stolen that it was difficult to keep up with the microfilming.  The information included plane production data, planned destinations, and performance data.  “Besides this purely military information, we had a steady flow of political reports from the Treasury…the Office of Strategic services, the Navy, the Army, and…the Department of Justice.  We knew what was going on in the inner chambers of the United States Government.” Continue reading →

Witness

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by Whittaker Chambers
Originally published in 1952; reprinted in 2001 by Regnery Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 0-89526-789

This 800 page small print book is regarded as reference material about the dangers of liberalism by conservatives. I assure you I can’t sort out all the key points in a short review, but I’ll give it a try.  The book chronicles the life of Jay Vivian Chambers (who, after a lifetime of embarrassment about what his parents had named him, changed his name to the one listed as the author above).    Chambers grew up in a destructively dysfunctional family and turned to Communism out of despair over world events.  He was the courier for an active espionage network in the government for several years, and began to doubt the validity of communism after word began to spread about the extent of the Soviet purges.  He decided he had to leave the party after Stalin signed a mutual defense pact with Hitler.  He initially went into hiding, remembering the Communist saying, “Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes and artist to commit a good natural death.”  He went to Adolph Berle of the FBI in 1939 and told him about his association with the Communists and named several of his associates.  He omitted discussion of espionage.  (Berle’s notes on the meeting begin on page 466.)  Berle briefed FDR on the information, who laughed at him.  When Berle became insistent about the information,   FDR told him to “go fly a kite,” only in less polite language.

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which included a young Richard M. Nixon, called Chambers to testify nine years later.  Chambers had been accepted into the Communist party by Ben Mandel, who was the research director for HUAC when he was called to testify.  His testimony accurately repeated the allegations he had filed previously with the FBI, and mentioned (once again) that Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official in the then Truman administration, was part of his spy ring.  That allegation ignited a storm of publicity and controversy.  Hiss denied the charges (and maintained his innocence until his death in 1996).  There followed years of investigations, including two Grand Jury trials, and the eventual perjury conviction of Alger Hiss. Continue reading →

The Sugar King of Havana

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Subtitled, The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba’s Last Tycoon
by John Paul Rathbone

This is a great book!  It elegantly intertwines the fascinating biography of Julio Lobo and his rise to be the most powerful sugar broker in the world with Cuban history. Much of the history is of revolutionary events, including Castro’s revolution and the close association of Cuba with the United States.  The author’s mother was a friend of Lobo’s daughters, and I think that allows richness to the book that is possible because of the personal connections.

I intend to begin with an overview, which is mostly quoted from the flap of the book, followed by  selected snippets with page numbers for reference.

Overview—The legendary wealth of sugar magnate Julio Lobo and his reign as the most powerful force in world sugar markets ended 18 months after Castro marched into Havana.  Lobo was born in 1898, the year of Cuba’s independence, and he had “…an extraordinary life that mirrored, in almost lurid Technicolor, the many rises and final fall of the Cuban Republic.”  Lobo not only often had the world sugar market cornered, he also had the largest collection of Napoleonica outside of France, faced a firing squad only to be pardoned at the last moment, survived a gangland shooting, and cavorted with numerous movie stars and several mistresses.  He described himself as being a good son, good brother, and good father, but correctly did not mention that he was a good husband. Continue reading →