Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Wednesday April 6, 2011
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THE SECOND SON
Jonathan Rabb
Farrar Straus Giroux
ISBN 978-0374299132
294 pages
$26
Reviewed by Wendy Smith
The mean streets and meaner political climate of Berlin provided an ominous backdrop to policeman Nikolai Hoffner's investigations in the masterful noir mysteries "Rosa" and "Shadow and Light." But in the summer of 1936, as the Olympic Games begin, 62-year-old Hoffner is glad to leave his beloved city. He's been forced to retire after the discovery that his mother was Jewish, and he's worried about his son Georg, on assignment for a British newsreel company in Spain. The young man hasn't been heard from since the civil war erupted in July. When Hoffner learns that Georg is, in fact, an agent for British Intelligence on the trail of Nazi gun shipments to Franco's fascists, he heads for Spain to find him.
Tracking Georg from the anarchist stronghold of Barcelona across loyalist and nationalist lines to the Portuguese border, Hoffner encounters a country racked by the same fratricidal conflicts he experienced in Berlin, where he vainly tried to detach his other son from the Nazi Party. He understands the look of "deep and abiding loss" in the eyes of Mila, a doctor who gives him shelter in Barcelona. Her fascist brother has been disowned by their communist father. Mila accompanies Hoffner on his journey in hopes of reaching her brother and persuading him to come with them. As they travel, love slowly grows between them, two people damaged in the most personal way by the murderous politics of their age.
In "The Second Son," capturing 1930s Spain with the same vivid specificity he brought to Weimar Germany in this trilogy's first two volumes, Rabb depicts a society at war with itself, in which even the good guys commit brutal acts and no one will walk away unscathed. The revelation that the fix has been in from the moment Hoffner left Berlin exposes a level of political calculation all the more horrifying because, in the extreme situation Rabb depicts, it's probably necessary.
The detached cynicism of those pulling the strings (untouchable, as they always are in noir fiction) contrasts starkly with the elemental agony of Hoffner's family. Leading us along a twisted narrative path strewn with clues hidden in plain sight, Rabb arrives at a denouement that shows the malignant particulars of Nazi doctrine. It's a dark conclusion to the series, but it's true to the history through which Rabb's guilt-ridden protagonist has suffered. We can be glad that Hoffner finds in his love for Mila "the only faith he had ever known," even though we can be certain that, in the terrible period Rabb has re-created, no faith is secure or eternal.
Wendy Smith is a contributing editor at the American Scholar.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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THREE BOOKS ABOUT COFFEE
Christopher Schoppa
NA
ISBN NA
NA pages
$NA
Reviewed by Christopher Schoppa
Not long ago, America's penchant for coffee seemed to be waning, but that death knell was premature. The United States remains the largest consumer of coffee - roughly 25 percent of the world market. So grab a cup of joe and pore over this trio of books paying homage to the favored bean.
1 -- "COFFEE TALK: The Stimulating Story of the World's Most Popular Brew," by Morton Satin (Prometheus, $21.95). According to this charming volume, coffee is technically a seed, not a bean. Morton Satin, who became something of an expert on food working for multinational corporations and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, offers a delightful, lively take on the beverage's origin (Ethiopia); its perfecting (Turkey and the rest of the Muslim world); the rise of the coffeehouse as social nexus (Europe and North America); and the development of gourmet coffee in such outlets as Peet's in Berkeley, Calif., and of course Starbucks.
2 -- "EVERYTHING BUT THE COFFEE: Leaning About America from Starbucks," by Bryant Simon (Univ. of California; paperback, $17.95). The author is interested in Americans' rampant consumerism (what he calls a "postneed society"), and what better vehicle is at hand than the Starbucks phenomenon? Simon argues that, like many other corporations crafting brand images around the world, Starbucks set out to fill a vacuum left by the fading role of public institutions and civic society.
3 -- "ONWARD: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul," by Howard Schultz with Joanne Gordon (Rodale, $25.99). Schultz made Starbucks what it is, and this book might be considered his response to its many detractors. He can also point to results: Since he returned to the company in 2008, Starbuck's has enjoyed a rebound in sales, record profits and higher customer traffic.
Christopher Schoppa can be reached at schoppac(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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