A long, filthy descent into nihilism in The Avery Cates Series

From The Week of July 8th, 2013

For civilization, devastation is a disease. For not only does it destroy buildings, disrupt basic services, and overturn the rule of law, it infects the humans exposed to its necrotic caress with a persistent sense of nihilism. It entices them to believe that society, as it was, is gone and that only fools would waste time re-establishing it. It convinces them that the only worthwhile virtue of their new existence, amongst the smoldering rubble of what was, is to survive and to do for oneself at the expense of everyone else in the name of that survival. But herein lies devastation's true perniciousness. For if everyone adopts this selfish attitude, then nothing is ever repaired, rebuilt, reborn. The world, staffed by survivors, is allowed to decay until even the memory of civilization is gone. This is the attitude that pervades the first three volumes of Jeff Somers' series and its one he wields to great and depressing effect.

It's the 21st century and life as we know it is gone. Nation states, and the individual freedoms they granted to their citizens, have been swept away by the System, an apolitical surveillance state that has, in the name of uniting the world, deployed bombs and droids, wars and assassins, as a means of establishing a new, peaceful order. For a time, widespread resistance to this new, globalist regime burned bright, but eventually even these organized pockets of rebellion were ground out beneath the ruthless bootheels of the System cops and their masters, men and women who would rather rule over rubble than not rule at all.

Through this dystopian world simmering with resentments slouches Avery Cates, a 27-year-old mercenary who barely remembers the world before unification. The totality of his adult life has been lived beneath the merciless eye of the system and their enforcers who roam the ruined streets of his native New York with a kind of brutal and uncaring vigilance. Cates' only means of survival in this world of solitude and disenfranchisement is to hire his gun out to those who can pay for murder. But though his skills have kept him alive for longer than most of his compatriots, his luck appears to have run out. For Cates has been tricked into killing a system Cop, a crime that generally results in long spasms of torture, at the hands of these new brothers in blue, prior to a painful death. His only escape from this particularly grim fate is to allow himself to become a tool for the director of the system Cops' Internal Affairs division, an exploitative relationship that will send Cates on a long, destructive spiral into the very bowels of his dirty, corrupted world.

A dark and difficult experience, The Avery Cates Series is a coarse and clumsy take on dystopian science fiction. Mr. Somers draws on 20th-century history to essentially recreate, in the 21st century, life imagined by the Third Reich, corporate fascism in which people were only allowed to act with the permission of the all-powerful, all-seeing state. This framework is then married to a series of explosive challenges for Cates to overcome at the expense of everyone around him. This union of historical influences and Hollywood blockbusterism initially stirs powerful emotions, particularly for those readers even passingly familiar with Nazism. Unfortunately, this is where the author's creativity ends. For all else is merely a stress test to see how far Cates can be pushed before he cracks and relinquishes what's left of his humanity.

Perhaps the most unpleasant part of Mr. Somers' work here, though, is his reliance on foul language. Any good story deploys its fair share of epithets which, when properly and sparingly used, have an unrivaled impact upon the reader. But the author completely rejects this philosophy, instead, peppering his work with every permutation of what George Carlin called the seven dirty words. Yes, to some degree, this harsh and violent language helps convey both the brutality and the hopelessness of Cates' world, but he accomplishes this at the expense of the reader's attention and respect, both of which are eroded by his reliance on such a flippant means by which to communicate personal and societal desolation.

There are virtues here. The Avery Cates Series challenges notions of what it means to be human. It adopts and darkly distorts proposed technologies such as digitized consciousness, mechanized exoskeletons and the artificial hivemind to create an affectingly grim view of a possible future. Imagining and spinning out such scenarios is not a simple achievement. And yet, this is at far as it goes. Mr. Somers does not grasp these tools and fashion something with which to advance the conversation. He has, instead, adopted the themes and the rhythms laid down by the masters before him and, sadly, re-constituted them with only marginal success.

For those looking to be entertained by a swift, atavistic plunge into a grim, pugilistic world, there is material here worth exploring. But for anyone seeking to find enlightenment amongst the ashes, such embers are few and far between. (2/5 Stars)

The devastating history of eugenics chronicled in War Against the Weak

From The Week of July 8th, 2013

Though the question of what we individually owe to our fellow man is the pressing, sociological issue of this new, global civilization, there's an equally important debate to be had. What do we owe the least fortunate among us? From the mentally ill to the physically deficient, millions of people never receive a fair shot at a successful life. Is this merely a necessary outgrowth of a democratic, capitalist system, that some of us simply will be left behind, or is this inequality a consequence of poor ethics and poor morals? Perhaps, some day, we will have answers to these questions. Perhaps one will help solve the other. But until that day, we have only our past actions to go by. And where misfits are concerned, this is decidedly grim, a truth relentlessly demonstrated in Edwin Black's thorough examination of eugenics.

A scientific movement that grew out of nineteenth-century revelations of the remarkable role evolution plays in the advancement of life on Earth, eugenics is an ethical framework that argues for the purification of the human species through proper breeding and genetic engineering. Popular in the first half of the 20th century, it was originally confined to agricultural and horticultural fields before being seized upon by scientists and philosophers as a means by which to eliminate human malformations. After all, would the world not be better if disabilities from Spina bifida to blindness could be erased from the gene pool? Imagine the benefits to society if it, and its people, could be relieved of the costs of caring for those who, because of some genetic deficiency, cannot care for themselves.

However innocent the origins of this view of humanity's future, eugenics soon took on a sinister air, made all the more obvious with hindsight. For how could the enfeebled and the disabled be trusted to remove themselves from the gene pool? Would it not be prudent for society to sterilize them as a means of assuring that such genetic mistakes would die out with them? Armed with scientific funding from powerful, turn-of-the-century trusts, an American organization set out to lobby state legislatures to pass sweeping laws that would make commonplace the forced exclusion of deficients from the gene pool. Drawing on biased, reprehensible science, the American Breeders Association became a haven for racial purists who disseminated their ugly conclusions not only throughout North America, but to a receptive Europe eager to have its white, Nordic superiority re-affirmed by sham science. Of these new, European adherents, none were as enthusiastic as the group of German scientists who would go onto play key roles in Hitler's attempted extermination of the Jewish population, participating, in the name of eugenics, the worst crime in modern history.

A lacerating account of the history of eugenics, War Against The Weak is a shattering examination of one of organized science's darkest hours. Mr. Black, who possesses a first-class mind for research, has not only assembled an authoritative account of the attempt by a small group of humans to play god over the future of an entire species; he has brought to light, with color and compassion, the many thousands of souls who suffered at their hands. For the eugenics movement was not a victimless crime. It was not simply a foolish idea rooted in a series of unfortunate misapprehensions. It was a systematic attempt to strip groups of innocent people of their basic human rights, passing judgement on them in a manner that is both abhorrent and obscene. From the American Breeders Association's first steps into the arena of public policy, through to the unimaginable Holocaust into which it eventuated, the work reveals the corporations and the actors, the governments and the bodies that sought to destroy the individual freedoms we all hold so dear.

Though the work's most obvious quality is its exceptional thoroughness -- Mr. Black presents the reader with pages and pages of sources that must have taken years to organize and compile --, its most enduring virtue is the manner in which it exposes us to an inescapable truth about the human mind, that it is unavoidably biased. Shaped by its social, cultural and economic environments, and hardened by personal experience, it favors conclusions it likes and ignores those it finds unpleasant. In this, it creates for the individual a narrowed view of the world that, while agreeable to the individual's sensibilities, is colored in the extreme. We now know, thanks to the work of both social and scientific crusaders, that the physical, intellectual and emotional differences between the races are at best negligible. And yet, seeking to find an explanation that justified their distaste for the tide of non-white, non-Nordic ethnicities flooding into their homeland, these eugenicists created pseudo science, convinced receptive governments of its voracity, and then implemented a program of social engineering criminal in its intent and tragic in its scope.

War Against the Weak has its blind spots. For all its rigor, Mr. Black's account is nonetheless a polemic against eugenics. He has no time for seemingly any argument in its favor. Given eugenics' costs, this is understandable, though, regrettable. We should be able to have a debate about what society owes the individual. We should be able to have discussions about the blessings of genetic engineering. But these are areas now profoundly poisoned by the sins of our past, certainly where the author is concerned.

An absolute must-read for anyone even mildly interested in science, justice and human nature... (5/5 Stars)

A dark journey through L.A.'s underground in Drive

From The Week of July 1st, 2013

Until science solves for the mysteries of the mind, the age-old debate of nature versus nurture will continue to percolate, propelled onward by the desire to understand unfathomable humanity. Why do some of us become saints and others sociopaths? Why do some of us have indomitable tempers while others possess uninterruptable serenity? Why do some of us drive ourselves to the heights of fame and fortune while others never make it out of our neighborhoods? Questions and accusations, theories and excuses, abound, some of them helpful, others generated from bias. Until we have a roadmap to human nature, we're left with only our intuitions and our suppositions, a circumstantial uncertainty played to eerie effect in James Sallis' brief but bloody piece of crime fiction.

A son of the American Southwest, birthed from a home of deep dysfunction, the Driver moves through life as if it were a movie. He remembers meals and jobs, girls and cars, but the rest is sloughed off as vestigial to his Polaroid life. Lacking even a name, he is a quiet ghost in the City of Angels, performing car stunts for Hollywood by day and acting as the wheelman for criminals by night, a dual life that seems to suit him quite well, that is, until two transplanted connected gangsters from old New York decide to tear up the rulebook to their underworld game, stalking him for ill-gotten gains Driver would have happily returned if they had the courtesy to ask nicely. That they don't is, for Driver, causes belli and the fallout promises to be spectacular.

Barely a hundred pages, Drive is nearly a perfect piece of dark, summer reading. Emerging from the swift, flashy tradition of crime fiction popularized by Elmore Leonard et al, Mr. Sallis has constructed a series of dramatic, even moving vignettes that act upon the narrative like flashbulbs, momentarily shedding light on fragments of time in the life of a man (Driver) who has only a foothold in our world, the rest of his nature lost to some netherspace of deeds and apparitions. Consequently, Driver, the only character who claims more than perhaps ten percent of the tale, is a person barely glimpsed, his motives hidden behind a creepily affectless facade that Mr. Sallis has miraculously imbued with magnetism, not repulsiveness.

Reducing his cast to but one serious player is, for the author, a toss of the dice, a roll made in the confident hope that Driver will captivate readers. And he does. For he is not a simple monster who demands that we accept his nihilism-as-parable for 21st-century America. Rather, he is a deeply damaged person who has come to imprint upon the world certain codes of conduct that are, for him, inviolate. This is not some ancient skein of honor upon thieves co-opted from the Mediterranean. It is the means of his survival in a world that, without his rules, is completely inexplicable. In this, is just like everyone else he shares the world with. The difference rises only when we contemplate the particular codes which, for a man who does not seem to feel pain, much less emotion of any kind, are quite apart from the ones we would know. This is why he is a creature of fascination. He is a puzzle, not an animal.

There are other pleasures here, certainly. Mr. Sallis' Los Angeles operates in that entertaining pretend space of urban cities devoid of law-enforcement, a world fully endorsed by Hollywood that suggests that civilization is merely a series of encounters and exchanges moderated by the threat of violence and the possession of power. This may be absurd, but it is also profoundly appealing, offering up a glimpse of an unrestrained life that our savage sides long to experience. It is the forbidden sandbox of no holds barred that we all left behind AS toddlers learning that we had to accept society's chains in exchange for life. This adrenaline hit never gets old.

A rewarding read... (4/5 Stars)

The techniques of modern counter-terrorists revealed in The Terror Factory

From The Week of July 1st, 2013

Though technology will eventually liberate human civilization from all forms of political control, government is, for the moment, a necessary evil for the continuance of our march towards a brighter future. For until we can delegate the functions of the societal machine to impartial and intelligent algorithms, organized around the public good while being immune from public pressure, this messy assemblage of technocrats and politicians is the best and only way to regulate commerce, normalize international relations and lend aid to the less fortunate. In order for them to perform these duties, however, governments must be given considerable power over our individual and collective affairs, a reality which eventually, and inevitably, tempts them to seize yet more power in the aim of doing more good. Rarely has this truism been better exemplified than in Trevor Aaronson's shattering examination of the counter-terrorism policies of the FBI.

Despite numerous presidential statements calling for American citizens to exonerate mainstream Islam for Al-Qaeda's nihilistic attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, the United States' intelligence agencies have spent the years since 9/11 alienating the Muslim community. Employing a series of strongarm tactics, they have aggressively recruited both willing and unwilling informants within targeted communities and unleashed them upon people of interest, individuals who have, through anger or foolishness, braggadocio or malice, harbored some intent to harm the United States. Prior to 9/11, this would not have been possible. For not only did the FBI not possess the financial resources to execute such missions, they lacked the networks of human spies necessary to carry them out.

Since 9/11, however, these chains, which once prevented the FBI and its sister agencies from digging into every dark corner of American life, have been lifted, an evolution that has allowed these agencies to infiltrate religious institutions and everyday businesses, all in the aim of preventing the next attack. But though this is a commendable goal, one that a majority of the populous would undoubtedly support, their tactics have been as crude as the informants they've paid to execute them. And though the these agencies claim numerous successes in this dirty war against extremist elements, their methods have been so manipulative, so self-serving, that they've sparked some to wonder just how legitimate the attacks they've prevented actually were.

Enter The Terror Factory, a devastating catalogue of government misdeeds. Mr. Aaronson, an American journalist, investigates the high-profile prosecutions of terrorists since 9/11 in a manner so systematic, so unrelenting, that he leaves the reader gasping in horror at the sheer audacity of government agencies who, in acting in the name of society's protection, are willing to bend-unto-breaking every law cherished by the citizens they are charged to protect. Informant by informant, victim by victim, the author explores the anatomy of this system of government-sanctioned entrapment of immigrants made vulnerable by Byzantine laws that leave them open to the threat of deportation if they fail to become double agents for counter-terrorist agents who are, in turn, in no way disincentivized to act reasonably, cautiously, or with much respect for the broken lives they leave behind. No price is too high when the stakes are the protection of the homeland.

This is far from a neutral account of this shadow world of informants and their sting operations. In particular, Mr. Aaronson devotes little time to trying to assess the guilt of the individuals caught up in the FBI's various nets. In fact, some of these individuals appear, superficially, to be quite willing to carry out attacks on the scale of 9/11. However, for all his reluctance to speak to the ugliness of some of these characters, the author's point supersedes such concerns. After all, whether or not one harbors the desire to commit a terrorist attack is entirely apart from whether or not one is willing to actually plan it, collect the means to do it and then to execute it. That the FBI eagerly enables these individuals to take all three of these fateful steps merely to arrest them and parade them for the world to see, is abhorrent. That they do so seemingly indifferent to the fact that they have recruited thousands of morally dubious, and sometimes outright criminal, spies in order to complete this self-beneficial mission is tragic.

The Terror Factory is a mesmerizing read that makes it abundantly clear that the United States will stop at nothing to prevent another large-scale terrorist attack on its soil. That it does so at the expense of all its hard-won principles is nothing short of frightening, not only for its citizens but for the rest of the world as well. (4/5 Stars)

The Battle of Tora Bora vividly catalogued in Kill Bin Laden

From The Week of July 1st, 2013

Humanity puts great stock in symbols, images and individuals who can either inspire us to achieve our wildest dreams or remind us of the darkness that lies within us all. They can drive civilization forward on the back of all they've sacrificed to give us peace and stability, or seize us in selfish hatreds that harden our hearts and narrow our minds. But for all their historical and rhetorical power, symbols are only what we invest in them. After all, our symbols would be meaningless to someone who lived a thousand years ago, much less a thousand years from now. And yet, in the heat of moments of pain and confusion, this lesson is forgotten, neglected for the pleasures of exorcising them, a lesson taught quite well in Dalton Fury's adrenaline-fuelled memoir.

Though the September 11 Attacks sent powerful shockwaves of emotions through much of the world, they, in their audacity and their horror, also formally introduced the general public to Usama Bin Laden, the Saudi-born jihadist who had spent most of the previous 20 years funding and engineering acts of rebellion and terrorism. His crimes, even prior to 9/11, were legendary within international circles, but after this bold and heinous strike at monuments of American economic power, he became legendary, a creature of near-mythical powers who could direct devastating assaults against the world's most powerful nation, all from the relative comfort of the remote, tribal Hindu Kush.

This mountainous, central Asian region shared by Afghanistan and Pakistan had already proven, in the 1980s, to be a successful base of operations from which Afghan guerillas, supported by Arabian jihadists, attacked and disrupted the Soviet occupation of their country, eventually leading to the USSR's withdrawal from the unruly nation. Now it would perform a similar function for Usama Bin Laden who hoped to use his attacks against America to provoke his enemy into a ruinous war in the mountains he knew so well. Here, on familiar ground, he could watch America's might break against his winter stronghold and, in doing so, reveal to the world the extent of American weakness.

Instead of committing to such a war, the United States sent special operatives to Afghanistan, teams of Rangers, Deltas, SBS operatives and CIA agents armed for battle and packing the millions of dollars necessary to purchase the loyalty of local warlords who would execute the American-backed assaults against both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. This campaign would culminate in the Battle of Tora Bora, a series of skirmishes that would eventually smash Al-Qaeda, sending its key men into hiding and largely ending it as an organized force.

The commander's eye view of this most consequential battle, Kill Bin Laden is an arresting narrative of a hunt that narrowly missed capturing the world's most famous terrorist. Dalton Fury, the pseudonym for the Delta commander in charge of this mission, draws from his journal of those difficult few months to paint a thorough, if nationalistic, view of the battle, its protagonists, antagonists and the circumstances that lead to them clashing in this most remote mountain range. Supplementing his account with colorful anecdotes of life as a special operative, and detailing the absolute extremity of the training these soldiers endure to join such elite companies, Fury succeeds in conveying a sense of what it's like to be a member of the world's supreme fighting force, both its rewards and its disappointments. In this, he leaves little doubt of just how far these men have deviated from the normal life and the price they pay for living so far outside this most customary box.

However much Kill Bin Laden educates us about the lives and the demands of special forces, it stumbles when attempting to carry out its primary mission, to provide an unbiased account of the Battle of Tora Bora. Fury certainly reconstructs the combat, and the chain of events that lead to it, but these details are drowned out by his incessant need to denigrate the Afghans with whom he operated. In light of the fact that these warlords and their armies required American cash as motivation to fight, it seems reasonable to conclude that Fury is right to criticize their reluctance to fully engage with a fundamentalist enemy ravaging their homeland. But his tone so often devolves into outright scorn that his contempt for these men and their ways creates a great deal of room for doubt as to whether or not he's given them a fair hearing here.

That said, one gets the sense from these pages that Fury is not a man interested in outside criticisms, that he'd no more be interested in disguising or shading truths than he would be in retreating from a battle. And so, though we may harbor some doubts as to his fairness, the author has absolutely succeeded in his attempt to communicate his own personality and the ethos of the Deltas, facts which, alone, make this a worthwhile read.

History shifts on pivotal moments like these. Had Bin laden died at Tora Bora, it seems likely that the pretext for the War in Iraq would have been too weak for it to eventuate. The history of the 21st century's first decade would have unfolded far differently in the wake of such a monumental change. To see such a moment play out is a gripping experience no matter how prejudicial the execution. (3/5 Stars)

A satisfying, imaginative piece of futurism in the engrossing Blue Remembered Earth

From the Week of June 24th, 2013

What are the costs of success? Our world, as of this writing, is awash in political strife, sectarian violence and organized criminality, all of which stain our civilization. But for all the damage these chaotic elements cause, they are at least reminders that we are, in a key sense, free to act as we choose. What if, in the near future, as seems possible, technology advances to the point where we could prevent crime, re-enforce the democratic process, and allow us to heal our world of the pollution and the corruption we've imposed upon it? Our civilization would be, by every measure, better off, but at what cost? These values would have to be imposed upon everyone. And though most would agree to them, would that uniformity not rob us of a fundamental ability to choose to be foolish? These sticky questions are brilliantly tackled by Alastair Reynolds' mesmerizing first volume of a promising trilogy.

The year is 2162 and Earth is at peace. Humanity has weathered the anthropogenic storms and endured the nihilism of sectarian and resource conflicts to create a newer, better world, one shaped by an admirable dedication to non-violent progress. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology and virtual reality are commonplace, deployed as mechanisms for aiding in both the enjoyment and the interconnectivity of humanity. This utopian society, which is lead by Africa, with India and China as somewhat secondary powers, is managed by the Mechanism, an omnipresent surveillance system that prevents violent actions through painful and debilitating stimulus applied to the human brain via their nanotechnological augmentations.

Having spread to both colonies in the solar system and to cities under Earth's seas, humanity appears to have reached the zenith of its progress. Technological advancement has slowed from the frenetic pace of the previous century, leading some to wonder if the Mechanism-imposed peace has retarded the chaotic creativity of earlier decades. However, this view is undermined when two members of the Akinya family, a powerful African outfit that have earned incalculable riches by creating some of the key technologies that have enabled the cultivation of the solar system's many resources, stumble upon secrets left behind by their clan's recently deceased matriarch. Geoffrey, a biologist, and Sunday, an techno-artist, together and individually, begin to investigate their grandmother's past in hopes of unearthing the mysteries that characterized her long, legendary existence. In doing so, they initiate a series of events that might well irrevocably change human civilization.

The rich product of one of science fiction's brightest minds, Blue Remembered Earth is a tour de force. Mr. Reynolds, an astronomer turned author, has not only spun out a well-paced, dramatic tale, he has deviated from 50 years of western tropes and divined, in their stead, a complex future world that oozes authenticity. No one writing from the early years of the 21st century can do more than guess at what life will be like in the 22nd, but Mr. Reynolds' refreshing brand of futurism immerses the reader in such inviting, mesmerizing layers of verisimilitude that this hard truth is happily discarded for an world that won't soon be forgotten.

Mr. Reynolds is by no means the first to conceive of a future world that takes for granted technologies that are currently only in the embryonic stage of development. No, the genius here lies in the manner in which he imagines their unspooling over the next 150 years, leading eventually to a probable future that has advanced well beyond the crude interfaces of screen and keyboard so ubiquitous today, embracing, in their stead, biotechnologies that interact directly with our minds. These electrifying technologies not only play a substantial role in the unfolding of the narrative; they are explored by an author interested as much in their philosophical outcomes as their tangible ones.

For all its brilliant futurism, however, this first entry in the Poseidon's Children trilogy suffers from one significant systemic flaw. One of Mr. Reynolds' imagined technologies allows individuals to project their consciousnesses into automatons, ranging from robots to lifelike androids, designed to allow humans to interact over long distances. But though this technology is deployed to great effect by the plot, the author fails to explain why, when these disposable bodies are readily available, and fully capable of extending a human's reach well out into space without having to leave the safety of Earth, humans do not simply stay on Terra Firma and allow their mechanical proxies to endure the dangers of both space travel and Blue Remember Earth's plot. Perhaps the humans of Mr. Reynolds' future simply have too strong a desire to explore for themselves, to feel the ground of other worlds crunching beneath their booted feet, but when set against the overwhelming advantages of avoiding the deterioration of the human body in reduced gravity, and given that proxies could obviously possess attributes humans cannot, this seems like a flimsy excuse. Should we develop this proxy technology, I imagine most humans will explore the solar system with their minds, not their bodies.

Beyond the science here, Blue Remembered Earth's plot holds up well. From the rapidly evolving landscapes of Mars to the bohemian refuges of the dark side of Earth's moon, we're introduced to vistas and characters into whom Mr. Reynolds has breathed life. There are missteps, certainly. The author's puppetmaster's strings are allowed to show far too often, with actors just happening to arrive at precisely the right moment to receive clues to a mystery only they are destined to solve, but these are forgivable sins when the goal is so rewarding.

A wonderful, captivating beginning to a trilogy of immense promise... (4/5 Stars)

Political self-destruction in Preston's informative The Spanish Civil War

From The Week of June 24th, 2013

As much as the last few centuries have seen a significant advancement in most forms of human endeavor, we still lack a consistent, feasible strategy for properly harnessing and altruistically deploying the powers of collective action. For thousands of years, charismatic firebrands have rallied mobs with their voices and their deeds, unleashing these crowds in the name of a goal they desire to achieve. Moreover, entire communities have organized along similar lines in hopes of upending the status quo. But in both cases, the ends fail to justify the means. For the act of deploying the power of the collective, in the furtherance of a specific agenda, encourages others to do so for their own agendas. And it never takes long for these different groups to crash into one another, directly or indirectly, creating chaos in their wake. How we improve this dire outcome is beyond the scope of this review, but its consequences are not. They are vividly demonstrated in Paul Preston's excellent history of one of Spain's darker periods.

The consequence of years of political instability, ideological feuds and economic hardship, the Spanish civil War (1936-1939) was as brutal as it was swift. Pitting political leftists, supported by the legitimate government, the Soviet Union and thousands of foreign fighters drawn to their righteous cause, against right-wing nationalists, supported by fascist Italy, Nazist Germany and much of the Spanish military, it was a devastating conflict that not only claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of belligerents and civilians, it ripped apart Spanish society, plunging it into a kind of nihilistic chaos that would become all-too-familiar when the Second World War would break out only a few years later. The war, which saw towns besieged and bombed, soldiers starved and mutilated and civilians raped and murdered, annihilated the Spanish state, replacing it first with discord and then with Franco's victorious iron fist which would remained firmly wrapped around Spain's throat for more than 20 years.

But how could such a horrific conflict be allowed to unfold? Where were the moments of hesitation, of compromise, that would have kept its ravages from Spanish shores? And why was it such a rallying cry for European commoners and intellectuals? For these answers, we turn to the political turmoil that preceded the conflict, a succession of overturned governments, unchecked egos and ideological disputes that were a microcosm for a pre-WWII Europe gripped in a feverish and contentious debate between communism on the left and fascism on the right. These diametrically opposed forces, armed with proxies and adherents, ideas and weapons, were determined to impose their views upon the world, an insistence that succeeded only in tearing it apart.

This complex, factious world is brilliantly captured in The Spanish Civil War. Beginning with the fearsome politics that launched it, and concluding with the long, Francist nightmare that followed it, Mr. Preston details the thinkers and the commanders, the loyalists and the autocrats, the politics and the self-belief that characterized a dispute that would not only act as a harbinger for the wider, European war to come, but demonstrate the true cost of a heavily populated and profoundly divided continent that, seized by the legacies of imperialism and colonialism, eschewed union for nationalism, wisdom for pride. Every human flaw is on display here, taken up and spilled across 400, swiftly paced pages that never succumb to the bondage of that most notorious fetish of historical non-fiction, endless specificity. That Mr. Preston manages to capture such a rollercoaster conflict without completely losing the reader is an achievement all its own. That he does so while engendering both horror and sympathy is remarkable.

Though Mr. Preston primarily focuses on untangling the knotted rivalries that caused the conflict's breakout, the work's strongest moments are taken up with the ways this war bestirred and repulsed the European community. Mr. Preston makes us witnesses to the foolishness of British politicians like Winston Churchill who dismissed the loyalists as murdering propagandists, to the eagerness of Italian territorialists who were eager to extend their influence in Europe, and to the thoughtfulness of German Nazis who were keen to perform a

dress rehearsal of the tactics that they'd soon be deploying against the Europe they intended to conquer. Seeing all these familiar forces arrogantly jockeying for power, while readying themselves for a war from which it would take Europe 50 years to recover, is as eerie as it is sickening. But lest we lose all hope in humanity, the European idealists who came to fight in such an ugly war receive their own lengthy treatment, one in which we see both the selflessness of individuals willing to fight for something bigger than themselves and the terrible price that is paid for that selflessness.

The Spanish Civil War is not a perfect work. It lingers overlong in the esoteric nature of the conflict's background. Moreover, it skims over the fallout from the war, confining it to an all-too-swift epilogue. However, these are but small imperfections on a tapestry that reveals to what tragic degrees humans invest themselves in ideas that, when empowered by collective belief, can set the masses to marching right off the cliff and into darkness. Not a read for the faint of heart... (4/5 Stars)