Books Set in Asia: Iran

An American Martyr in Persia, by Reza Aslan (2024)

This book is a biography of Howard Bakersville, a young American Christian missionary from South Dakota who was sent to Persia in 1907.  Ostensibly, he was there to teach English and preach the gospel.  He became enraptured in the culture and soon found he was in the midst of a democratic revolution.  I had never heard of this democratic revolution in Persia that occurred over 100 years ago.

Read:  April 21, 2025

5 Stars

Books Set in Europe, Madrid, Spain

The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffiths, Countess of Romanones, by Larry Loftis (2021)

 

Aline Griffith (1923 ~ 2017) was born Pearl River, New York, a sleepy little town in outside of New York City, to a middle-class family.  She had big dreams and longed to make a name for herself.  After graduating from college, she landed a job as a model with New York fashion designer Hattie Carnegie.  While it wasn’t her dream job, she did learn poise and a fashion sense.

 

A chance meeting at a dinner party one night in the early 1940s with an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative changed the course of her life.  She was given mysterious instructions and told to show up at a building in Washington, D.C., and give a false name.  That led to her training to become an operative with the OSS.  After completing the training course, she was sent to Madrid, Spain in the midst of World War II.  There she was to search for Nazi supporters in the supposedly neutral Spain.  She rubbed elbows with the rich and famous and dated many glamorous men.

 

After the War, she married Luis Figeuroa y Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, Count of Quintanilla, making her an instant countess.  Her husband’s grandfather was Álvaro de Figeuroa, who had served as Prime Minister of Spain in the early 1910s.  She mostly retired from the spy business after her marriage, but in the 1950s she occasionally took on secret information-gathering missions for the CIA.

 

Her actual involvement in espionage was not well enumerated.  The author describes one event when Aline takes in some female operatives into her home, and one woman was sleeping in her bed.  Later, Aline discovers that the woman had been shot and killed while sleeping.  Aline called her handler and they quietly removed the body before morning.  The author, however, acknowledges that it is difficult to determine what is real and what is not because Aline, herself, provided very contradictory versions of various events.

 

Most of the book describes the life of high society in Spain during.  The author describes the sport of bullfighting in detail and introduces the reader to some of the most famous bullfighters of that era.  Aline traveled in circles where she met and became friends with many of the bullfighters.  From reading this book, one gathers that most of her time as a spy was attending cocktail parties and bullfights.

 

During the War, Aline seems to be nervous about having too much contact with Nazis.  After the 
War, however, she considers the Duchess of Windsor, a known Nazi sympathizer, as one of her closest friends.

 

The book was mildly interesting.  I expected to learn more about a female spy during World War II, and not the antics of a high-society partier.

 

Read:  April 26, 2023

 

3 Stars

 

Books Set in Asia: China, Shanghai

The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China, by Jonathan Kaufman (2020)

 

This book is about the Sassoon family and the Kadoorie family, both from Baghdad, Iraq, who built tremendous business empires in Shanghai, China.  They arrived in Shanghai at a time when was becoming an international city.  Europeans were beginning their colonization of the city.

 

The Sassoons were a wealthy business family in Iraq, but due to political influences in the early 1880s moved their enterprise, first to India, and then to China.  They increased they wealth in the Opium Wars.  This book gave a clear explanation of the origins of the Opium War, and how the Western world help to feed and exploit the opium trade in China.

 

The Kadoorie family arrived in Shanghai a few decades after the Sassoons.  They built their empire from the ground up.  They opened up lavish hotels and began one of the largest electric companies in the country.

 

During World War II, the Kadoories build shelter and fed numerous Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany.  China was one of the very few countries open to Jews during this period.  The city also came under Japanese occupation during the War.  The families survived through this occupation and then sided with Chiang Kai-Shek as the Nationalist and Communist faced each other.  Ultimately, Communism won and the two families lost virtually everything.

 

It was an interesting slice of history.  I wish this book had been published a few years earlier and I could have read it prior to my visit to Shanghai.

 

Read:  September 17, 2020

 

3.5 Stars

Books Set in Europe and North America: France, England and the United States

Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X, by Deborah Davis (2003)

Strapless is about a painting and the story behind the painting.  The portrait of Madame X is probably recognizable by almost anyone with any interest in the arts.  It is the portrait of a woman from the late 1800s, wearing a black, low-cut dress with thin and jeweled straps.  The woman is looking towards her left and her face is in profile.  When this painting hit the Paris Salon in 1884 it caused quite a scandal for both the artist, John Singer Sargent, and the subject, Virginia Amélie Gautreau.

Both Sargent and Gautreau were American ex-patriots living in Paris at the time.  Virginie Gautreau, known by her friends as Amélie, came from a wealthly Louisiana family that had made its fortune in the sugar cane industry.  After the American Civil War, she and her mother moved to Paris, where the family had ties.  There she married a wealthy and much older man and made it her business to become a socialite.

John Singer Sargent was an American due to his American parents, but was born and lived much of his life in Europe.  He was able to study with the great artists of his time and decided to focus his career on portraits.  When he began showing his work at the famous Paris Salon, he began to make a name for himself.

He met the lovely Amélie and wanted to paint her portrait for his entry into the 1884 Salon.  She was flighty and didn’t like to pose for long periods of time, however, he eventually convinced her to pose in a revealing black dress.  As originally painted, one of the straps was depicted to drop off her shoulder.  It was this feature that created the scandal.  For months afterwards, the newspapers articles and gossipers talked about the painting.  The scandal caused Sargent to flee France and rebuild his painting career.  

Amélie, who for years had worked hard on her image to remain in the public spotlight, suddenly was ostracized.  Although Amélie and her mother approved of the painting before its public showing, afterwards, they, too, were scandalized.  The painting had ruined Amélie’s image, both to herself and in the public’s eye.

Intertwined with Amélie’s story, was the story of Sargent’s painting career.  He worked hard to restore his position in the art world.  He found patrons in England, where his painted his famous Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose ~ a picture of young girls in a summer garden with Chinese lanterns.  I have seen this painting and it is truly amazing!  The light from the lanterns seems to truly come from within the painting.

He later began traveling between the United States and Europe.  He encounter the formidable Isabella Stewart Gardner and painted her portrait.  This portrait scandalized Gardner’s husband, but apparently no one else.

Sargent retained the portrait of Amélie.  Because he had not painted it on commission, the Gautreau’s were under no obligation to purchase it.  He held on to the painting for over 30 years, before finally selling it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  Under the terms of the sale, the painting was to be known as Madame X, hence, Amélie’s name became almost lost to history.

I loved this book.  John Singer Sargent is a favorite artist of mine and when his work was on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston several years ago, I made a special trip to view the work.

Read:  February 22, 2020

4 Stars

Books Set in the United States

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America, by Will Haywood (2015)

Showdown, by Wil Haywood describes the nearly month-long confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the United States Supreme Court.  In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson was determined to appoint a Black man to the High Court.  Thurgood Marshall had made a name for himself as being a highly-talented attorney who had argued many civil rights cases before the High Court.

The Civil Rights were a hot button political issue in the United States in the 1960s.  As determined as Johnson was to appoint a Black to the Supreme Court, were the several Southern arch-segregationist senators equally as determined to keep Marshall off the Bench.  The Senate Judiciary Committee was headed by Mississippi Senator James Eastland.  Other senators recognized Marshall’s talents.  The battle by the segregationists, however, waged for nearly a month before Marshall was ultimately confirmed.

The author gives plenty of background into the players.  Several of the events that are recounted in the book occurred in Louisiana, although these are less well known than the bombings in Birmingham, and the sit-in in Greensboro.  The author also describes the events in Johnson’s life that led him to be a champion for civil rights.

I highly recommend this book as it gives a portrait not only of the events leading to the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice, but of race relations in America during the 1960.

Read:  July 9, 2017

5 Stars

Books Set in the United States: New York City

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.  (2013)

4 Stars

Read: May 12, 2014

Books Set in the United States: Confederate South

Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate, by Eli N. Evans (1988)

Judah P. Benjamin had been a U.S. Senator for the State of Louisiana prior to the American Civil War.  He was the first acknowledge Jew in the U.S. Senate.  After the formation of the Confederate States, Benjamin became a cabinet member of Jefferson Davis's presidency, serving first as Attorney General, then Secretary of War and finally as Secretary of State.

Benjamin married a Catholic creole from New Orleans and made his home in Louisiana.  The marriage was not a happy one.  His wife left him for Europe and most of their married live was spent on separate continents.

Evans brings to live Judah Benjamin, who was called the "brains behind the Confederacy," but has been largely left to obscurity in American history.  This book also bring insight into the American Civil war from both the Union and the Confederacy.  It was a fascinating book, that I found hard to put down.

Read:  April 14, 2012