The Quiet Americans

"He [Peter Sichel] paused, folded his hands neatly on the table before him. "And we also didn't think about history. If we had, we would have remembered that crusades always end badly." 

Tripped

If you had asked me, I couldn't have told you what connection, if any, psychedelic drugs like LSD had with WWII. Ohler's research connects the dots. 

Spy

Did she really know what she was signing up for when she accepted a position as a spy in Nazi-occupied France during WWII??? 

Code Name Madeleline by Arthur J. Magida

Passive Resistance

Magida reports a fascinating dialog that took place between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Buber over the effectiveness or the ineffectiveness of passive resistance in the case of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Noor Inayat Kahn, the daughter of a Sufi mystic herself and inclined toward non-violence, nonetheless seemed persuaded that some kind of active resistance was required.

Nonfiction

Picked up another couple of books at my local library—Norman Ohler’s Tripped and Arthur J. Magida’s Code Name Madeleine.

Midred Harnack

Finished reading Rebecca Donner's All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days. A very interesting follow-up to Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest. 

Expansionist Views

In Larry Gara's The Presidency of Franklin Pierce, he makes clear how the United States has long entertained "expansionist views", especially when it comes to various countries both north and south of our present borders. Strange, but true.