High on my favorites list for this year -- Josephine Tey: A Life, by Jennifer Morag Henderson

9781910124703

Sandstone Press, 2015

426 pp

hardcover

Sterling, superb, and all manner of superlatives -- this book is a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in Josephine Tey.  She is one of my all-time favorite mystery novelists, but her career and her life go well beyond just that of a few books.

As writer Val McDermid notes about Tey in her introduction to this book,

"Biographical information has always been scant, mostly because that's the way this most private of authors wanted it. The brief details on her book jackets reveal that Tey was born Elizabeth MacKintosh and that she also enjoyed success under another pseudonym -- Gordon Daviot, author of the West End hit Richard of Bordeaux, the springboard that launched John Gielgud to stardom.

Sometimes they mention that she was a native of Inverness who lived most of her life there. But until now, Josephine Tey was herself the greatest mystery at the heart of her fiction." (xviii)

Well, that's all changed now with the publication of Jennifer Morag Henderson's  Josephine Tey: A Life.  Henderson has done an invaluable service to Tey fans everywhere through her meticulous research:  as McDermid reveals, Henderson has been through Tey's family papers, as well as material that's never been published before to produce this simply amazing biography that

"gives us the chance to understand what shaped Beth MacKintosh into the writer she became." (xix)

 As the author explains, the book "aims to present the story of Beth's life -- of her many different lives.." and to set her "full body of work" in terms of Tey's life and within "the context of the literary canon."   It seems to me that Ms. Henderson has deftly and most thoroughly accomplished what she set out to do here. Tey was not just an amazing novelist (as most readers of her work like myself consider her), but a well-established, well-respected playwright whose performances featured such actors as John Gielgud, a screenwriter (which I did not know), a devoted daughter who helped take care of the family business and then her father and their home when he became very ill, and through it all, she continuously shunned the limelight, preferring her private life over her public one. The book is structured into three parts:

1. 1896-1923: Elizabeth MacKintosh
2. 1924-1945: Gordon Daviot
3. 1946-1952: Josephine Tey

although as you read it, you come to realize that these divisions are not so cut-and-dried or as rigid  as they look here.  In fact,  there's so much here about this woman's life that frankly, if you're a Tey reader, you will not want to miss a single word.

I'll leave the serious discussions about specific content, etc., to those far more wiser than myself who are skilled in analysis or to those who know much more about Tey than I ever will. Speaking from the vantage point of an avid Tey fan,  sometime after I'd read this book I reread her A Shilling For Candles, and I wrote the following about the experience on the crime page of this online reading journal:

"Having just recently finished Jennifer Morag Henderson's excellent biography of the author,  Josephine Tey: A Life ...  I find myself completely in agreement with her -- the more a Tey reader understands about her life, the easier it is to appreciate  and to understand her work.  I wish the biography had come out sooner; now I feel like I ought to go back and reread more of Tey's crime novels for better perspective."

I genuinely mean what I wrote there -- once I'd read this biography, it really opened my eyes as to just how much of MacKintosh, Daviot, and Tey went into her books.  Josephine Tey: A Life should be a must-read, cannot-miss part of any serious Tey reader's library; it's a book Tey fans will come back to over and over again.  It's a flat-out stunner of a biography, and Ms. Henderson deserves all of the praise that I'm sure will be coming her way because of it.

Thank you once again to Keara at Sandstone for the heads-up.  I absolutely loved this book, and very, very highly recommend it.

real-life Law and Order: Crooked Brooklyn, by Michael Vecchione and Jerry Schmetterer

9781250065186
Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2015
255 pp

hardcover (my copy from the publisher, thank you!)

The Rackets Division of the Brooklyn DA's office was where the author (Michael Vecchione) of this absorbing memoir "always wanted to be."  With co-author Jerry Schmetterer, Vecchione invites his readers to join him in a look back at his career.  Vecchione headed the division for over a decade, and was involved in several very high-profile cases that "struck Court Street like an earthquake."  I have to say that it took me longer than normal to read this book, not because of the book itself but because as I started to become more absorbed in his story, I grabbed my iPad and spent quite a bit of time finding more info on these big corruption cases as I read.

To whet potential reader appetites, here's just a very brief preview of a few cases that readers will find in here, most of which had repercussions that spread outward like a ripple in a pond:

• the crooked ADA known as the Undertaker, "the nephew of a community political leader"  
• a judge who held up the disbursement settlement in the case of a "permanently brain-damaged" baby by demanding $250,000 from the family's attorney before signing any papers
• another judge who ruled on the side of whoever would pay him the most, took bribes and gifts from attorneys (this one just killed me -- a woman's custody of her children hung in the balance)
• a huge case that brought down the "corrupt Democratic county leader and number three man in the New York State Assembly," which Vecchione notes would expose "the dirty political machine that ran Brooklyn politics -- a huge eye opener for me as Vecchione reveals how things worked in Democratic party politics at the time (and face it, probably still works on some level in the same way even now) 
• two "Mafia cops," NYPD detectives who were "carrying out hits for the Mafia" 
• the case of the theft of bones from a funeral home used to build a doctor's fortune

and more.  Personally,  the corruption doesn't surprise me -- I'm sure that these sorts of things continue to happen on a daily basis in cities throughout the United States.  

Crooked Brooklyn makes for compelling reading.  Some of the cases in this book would also make for great movie material.  The downside is that I found it to be a little disorganized in the writing itself -- for example, Vecchione would be talking about a particular case and then in the middle of the story, would go back in time, most of the time talking about something in his personal life that would bring us right up to where he'd left off.  To be very honest, from a reader point of view, when he would do that it was a bit distracting when all I wanted to do was to get back to the cases that to me were the high point of this book.

I have to say that I disagree with the reviewer who wrote about this book in Kirkus Reviews, who stated

"However, the author’s focus on courtroom maneuvering and investigative procedures can become tedious without greater context regarding New York’s labyrinthine government and history of corruption."

I didn't find this to be the case -- a) he does briefly touch on the Tammany machine in this book, b) it is certainly not at all tedious; in fact, the opposite is true, and c) "New York's labyrinthine government and history of corruption" are not the focus of this book, so I don't think that the reviewer is playing fair here. The dustjacket blurb says that this book is "perfect for fans of television shows like Law & Order, readers of true crime, and those hungry for details about the system that keeps us safe." Having watched hundreds of hours of Law and Order  in my day (the original -- not the spinoffs), and cheering on Jack McCoy in his long-running crusade for justice, I'd say that the blurber gets it right.

Recommended.

Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads, by Paul Theroux

9780544323520

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015

441 pp (followed by photos)

hardcover

Paul Theroux has written some incredible travel narratives -- my favorites (of the ones I've read) are his Great Railway Bazaar and Riding the Iron Rooster, but there's something to enjoy about all of his books. In Deep South, it's the author's ability to a) reflect the beauty of the southern landscape through his writing and b) encourage strangers he meets to open up about their lives that really made this narrative work for me.

Theroux has traveled all over the planet, but in this book he's changed directions and stays in his own country -- more specifically, he makes several tours through the "deep south," discovering and examining the paradoxes that exist there. Making his way through South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta area by car, he spends four seasons visiting some of the poorest rural areas in this part of the country. He takes to the "proud highway, the rolling road," starting from Cape Cod with no specific destination in mind, at least on the first trip.  What he discovers (among many other things) is that, as Faulkner noted in his Requiem for a Nun, "the past is never dead. It's not even past."  I will leave it to others to find out why and how this is true, because I could go on at some length about what he encounters on his various sojourns -- there's a lot packed into these pages.  

To be very honest, there were parts of this book that were repetitive that I didn't care for much -- the repeated visits to gun shows and the discourse on why there are so many Patels who own seedy motels in the South are just two examples of overkill here  -- but if you can get past that, he does have some very good points to make in this book.  Most eye opening to me is the idea that many of the poorest areas in the southern United States are that way because of the ongoing legacy of the South's racist past combined with the loss of industry (moved to foreign countries after NAFTA was passed) that put huge numbers of people who had decent, steady jobs out of work and into the margins of society. There's another thread running through this narrative about how the US Government spends way more money on helping people in third world countries with housing, etc., while ignoring its own people; the upside, however,  is that there are a number of people in these small pockets of rural poverty who are there to help the locals through various programs supported by grants and other sources of funding. It's not enough, but it is definitely a move in the right direction. Here, as he notes,  the poor are "less able to manage and more hopeless than many people...in distressed parts of Africa and Asia," and that the United States, "singular" in its "greatness," "resembles the rest of the world in its failures."   

Maybe Deep South isn't perfect, but I've been on some of those roads in Alabama when we did an African-American  Heritage Trail roadtrip and I have to say, he's captured the landscape, the poverty and the racism that I witnessed for myself along the way. He has also captured the cautious but overall warm attitudes of the people he meets on his travels that I  experienced as well.  Let's just say that whoever says we're living in a post-racial society hasn't seen what I have during my own travels.  There is at least one professional reviewer who sees this book as reopening "Deep South cliches,"  and there are several naysayers among readers who complain about Theroux's "agenda", but this is a book a reader must judge for himself or herself. To me it was a real eye opener of a narrative -- strengthened  by the stories of people who live the realities of the Deep South on a daily basis. 

Recommended but watch out for the ongoing repetition that just sort of needlessly weighs this book down.  And maps would have been helpful -- but the photos at the end of the book are just amazing. 

Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire, by Shane White

9781250070562
St.  Martin's Press, 2015
360 pp

hardcover -- my copy from the publisher, thank you!

"Jeremiah Hamilton took New Yorkers on at their own game and beat them at it." -- 317

It's very interesting that Shane White would choose Jeremiah Hamilton as the subject of his study, since there is very little information on this man to be had. Even though he was "Wall Street's First Black Millionaire," "sui generis, typical of nothing," almost nothing is known about him, which seems quite odd -- after all, in the 1850s, an African-American man with the kind of wealth Hamilton had amassed was unusual; given that he was also a "Wall Street adept, a skilled an innovative financial manipulator," it seems to me that there would be a LOT of material out there from which White could pick and choose.  But it didn't turn out that way -- Hamilton, in White's words, "became all but invisible" for over a century, even though he'd lived and worked in New York for more than forty years. No dissertations, no articles, and not even a mention in the African American National Biography completed in 2008 to be had about this man.  So Shane White had to rely on New York City's public records for his study -- "Newspapers, court cases and government files," as he notes, but there is pretty much nothing directly from Hamilton himself.  I mention the lack of documentation here because it is important to remember this fact as you go through the book.  It is important for the reader to understand that while there is certainly plenty going on in Hamilton's orbit that White carefully puts together, sometimes the book ranges off into looking at other, more influential people of the time rather than staying focused on White himself.  What really sold me on this book though was the combination of what little could be found on the man and the background history of the attitudes of antebellum white New Yorkers toward African-Americans.

from find a grave,  Jeremiah Hamilton, sans the long flowing wig he was known for wearing

Just briefly, Jeremiah G. Hamilton starts in this book as an enigma.  Even his birthplace is unknown -- he either came from somewhere in the Caribbean or from Virginia, both of which he claimed as true on various census reports.  In Haiti he was involved in a huge counterfeiting scheme as a very young man, but managed to escape imprisonment and come to New York, and the people behind the whole criminal enterprise remained a mystery while being grateful.  Hamilton began borrowing cash left and right (spawning several interesting lawsuits since he decided he'd much rather not pay back the money and really pissing off a lot of people), but the kicker came with Manhattan's 1835 "Great Fire" when a number of records were destroyed and Hamilton decided that with nothing legal linking him to anything, all he had to do was to deny that any transactions had occurred, walking away with the cash. This is how he ended up being known as "The Prince of Darkness."  He "never believed in turning the other cheek," was the instigator of several lawsuits himself, using "the fine print in legal documents as a razor." He was also a  man that a person never crossed without some sort of retaliation, as one judge found out the hard way. His eccentricities included wandering the streets wearing a long, dark, flowing wig, but people were used to this.   Hamilton was married to a white woman with whom he had children and lived well; this fact came to a head only during the Draft riots of the early 1860s when a mob took issue with the mixed marriage and stormed his house looking for him. But on the whole, he was a lucky man -- White notes that

"To a considerable extent, money insulated from the worst of the city racial problems. He could live in his nice house on East Twenty-Ninth Street, looking back down to the city, and feel that he and his family were relatively safe." 

Hamilton didn't really socialize with other African-Americans, and actually at one point had to declare bankruptcy.  Interestingly enough, as White notes, in the census reports of 1850, 1860 and 1870 he "was counted as a white individual;" even when he died of pneumonia in 1875 the doctor failed to fill in the entry for Color. According to White,

"it seems that, neither for the first nor the last time in American history, money lightened the color of an individual's skin." 

Hamilton was indeed lucky -- as White points out, racism was rampant in New York City of the time, and segregation akin to what would later become known as Jim Crow was everywhere.  The background history of racism in New York was actually my favorite part of this book -- a definite eye opener since I'd always thought that  so many freemen and slaves came North and had been welcomed.   And while there was no slavery in New York, white people were still on edge because of the independence of Haiti -- White does an excellent job linking the overthrow of Haiti's colonial masters to the rising fear of African-Americans in the United States of the time, both north and south.

While I enjoyed this book for the most part, the problem with White's account lies in the very fact that there's very little real information about the guy outside of the public records and newspapers and he seems to want to make up for it by adding in more than is technically necessary.   As a result, along with the history of race relations of the time (which as I've stated was quite good and definitely a much-needed part of this book), he tends to expand sections by telling his readers about the growth of the newspapers, the lives of other prominent people in New York (both white and African-American), etc., and sometimes I found myself sort of skimming through hoping to get back to Hamilton.  I'm someone who can sit down with books of history that are not meant for the general public and love them, so I don't think it's my attention span.  

Overall, I don't know if I'd really classify this book as a work of history for the general public, but it is definitely well worth reading on many levels.  If nothing else, just the  fact that Hamilton was the first African-American millionaire but he's not even listed  in the African American National Biography begs the question of why he's been ignored for so long and why historically, he's a forgotten figure. And considering that Mr. White spent years of his life trying to find out who this man really was and had very little to go on, I'd say he's done a fine job here and gave his subject as much life as he possibly could.  You really can't ask for much more.

Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim, by Justin Gifford

9780385538343
Doubleday, 2015
265 pp

hardcover, sent to me by the publisher. Thank you!

I'm really liking my new idea of picking up a book about someone I know absolutely nothing about and letting it speak to me.  Two days ago I'd never even heard of Robert Beck/Iceberg Slim and now I'm beyond eager to read his work; two of his books should be arriving at my house this week.  Street Poison is in a word amazing.  

It took author Justin Gifford over ten years to research and put together this book, and right up front he says that at "first glance" writing about a guy who'd been a pimp for twenty-five years might seem to be "an appalling choice for a biography," since we're talking about someone who "abused hundreds of women throughout his lifetime;" he also describes him as "one of the most influential renegades" of the past century.  On the other hand, even though "he is practically unknown to the American mainstream," Beck went on to write a number of novels as well as his autobiography, Pimp: The Story of My Life.  Robin D.G. Kelley, an historian whose work I respect, also notes in the New Yorker that it's not just in the mainstream where Iceberg Slim's work remains relatively unknown -- he states that he's "amazed" that "well-read people" are unfamiliar with Beck's writing as well.

As Gifford notes, Beck is a "mess of contradictions," --

"student at Tuskegee Institute, Chicago pimp with connections to the black mafia, amateur scholar of psychoanalysis, pulp paperback writer, family man, Black Panther Party sympathizer, Hollywood darling of the blaxploitation era, and godfather of hip-hop...all these things and more..."

 and that this  book "attempts to make sense of these seemingly incongruent identities." I will say I think Gifford does a very good job at trying to make his readers understand what factors went into the making of Iceberg Slim in each of these roles, and he uses Beck's writing to get to the heart of why his life took the path it did.  Two important factors Beck cites in his becoming "street poisoned" and turning pimp are sexual abuse at a very early age and his relationship with his mother after she'd split up with Beck's stepfather, who was the closest thing to a real father  providing the only stable family life he'd had up to that time in his life.

Gifford moves chronologically through Beck's life, using Beck's writings as well as other primary sources to present his readers with a picture of this man,  at times testing what Beck writes about himself "against the historical record."  Readers also get a view of the huge number of  challenges faced by African-Americans  in America's cities from the time of the Great Migration up through  1992 and the Rodney King Riots; the author also takes his readers into the growth of African-American activism and politics in general, but more importantly, directly into how events shaped Beck's politics and his writing, which ultimately inspired and greatly influenced a number of rap/hip-hop artists, blaxploitation films in Hollywood, and most importantly, a huge number of readers of his work. 

Let me tell you here and now that if you want nice-nice and sugar-coated life story, you are NOT going to get it here. Nor is it exactly "true crime," as I see that some people are regarding it.  It is downright gritty, mean  and in a lot of places, just plain ugly -- not solely in terms of the abuse of women, but also in white America's racist policies and tactics that kept segregation and the realities of Jim Crow an ongoing reality.  I'm also walking away with a huge desire to read the work of Iceberg Slim, who as I noted earlier, I had no idea even existed before picking up this book. As soon as I got past the preface and into his childhood, I couldn't look away no matter what, and I did an all-day readathon until I'd finished.  Highly highly recommended; this is the sort of book I just love.

 Please do visit Kelley's  New Yorker article about "The Fires That Forged Iceberg Slim", which is just downright great, in my opinion, and gives Iceberg Slim and this book a much more thorough examination than I ever could. 

"Meet a good husband and make a good life" -- Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The story of women in the 1950s, by Virginia Nicholson

9780670921317
Viking, 2015
with index, 526 pp

hardcover

"Be a good girl

Lead a good life

Meet a good husband

And make a good wife." 

                           ---- (169)

My memory is a bit hazy about how this book came to my attention, but when I first saw the dustjacket cover, it reminded me a bit of the women of the 1950s that Anne Taintor uses as a backdrop for her sarcastic brand of humor that all too often hits home.   However, there's nothing Taintor-ish or humorous at all about Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes, which focuses on the lives of women in the UK from both working-class and privileged backgrounds during the 1950s.   Using a number of different sources -- diaries, interviews, memoirs, archives, newspapers, periodicals, the web etc., -- Virginia Nicholson offers her readers a very up-close and personal look at how women dealt with "some of the conflicting pressures and strains under which they lived" during this decade. For some women, it was a time of "ambitions, dreams and fulfillment," while for others, their stories combine to present a "narrative of fears, frustrations and deep unhappiness."  It is a spellbinding read; I hated having to put this book down for any reason. 

Nicholson examines the "tug of war" that was the "daily reality" of life for women during this decade. As she notes, it was 

"between society and the individual, prohibition and permissiveness, conformity and independence, passivity and ambition. Between identity -- and the empty shell."

It is through most of these stories of "fears, frustrations and deep unhappiness"  that the author skillfully finds a connection between these women -- from factory workers to debutantes presented at court to Princess Margaret -- that of being hemmed in by their family backgrounds or  the expectations of society. These women faced a number of "conflicting pressures and strains," encountered through sexism, class pressures, the reality of married life based mainly on the expectations of their spouses,  and in the case of an immigrant from Jamaica, the realities of racial prejudice. Another problem was education: since "society had determined that woman's place was in the home," and that "getting your man" was mattered most, a great deal of emphasis in a young woman's education went into preparing them in skills appropriate to their married futures.  While better-off girls were schooled  in such things as "poise and deportment," many pupils sat through classes in  "dairying, horticulture, cookery, dressmaking, mothercraft, and housecraft."  In one case, the girls were responsible for cleaning a "school flat... where they were expected to entertain the Headmistress to tea, prepare the meals, and to wash up afterwards."  Some girls from "segregated working-class communities" such as mining villages in the northeast,  were lucky if they could overcome their parents' ideas that education was wasted on girls, since "They only get married."  As the author notes, for these families,

"Educational deprivation was cyclical; stay-at-home mums lacked the vision or understanding to see how better schooling might advantage daughters otherwise fated to follow in their footsteps." 

Yet, even for those who managed to make their way through university, the prevailing point of view was that educated women were "NOT sexy," or even perhaps "spinsters or (whisper it) lesbians."  And speaking of gay women, Nicholson also touches on these women who had to fly "under the radar" because of the "almost pathological fear of lesbianism" that existed during these times.  In one case, a woman was committed to an "insane asylum" where after having confessed that she "had feelings for women," was sent for "aversion therapy," that "wrecked her for months."  Another big issue during this time were single girls who became pregnant and the sense of shame that their condition brought to their families; one woman in nursing school  who grew up totally ignorant of sex because her mother never told her anything got pregnant as a young teen and was sent to a home for unwed mothers to have her baby.  On her return, no one talked about where she'd been although most people in her small town already knew she hadn't been away "nursing" as her mom wanted her absence explained.

Many women, having been through the war years and having learned how to be independent,  now faced an entirely different set of standards. A number of women in this book dreamed of having a career, and some did go on to become "illustrious," but as Nicholson points out, "It took luck, talent and a different kind of ambition to break the mould and fashion your own life" in this decade. However, many successful women were often viewed as "misfits," since either they were unmarried (or as seen by society as unable to "find a husband,") or because of their independent natures that left them "unwilling to conform."   Some experienced  a sense of powerlessness and of isolation.   Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes also reveals a decade full of women's angst and emotional turmoil from the highest echelons of British society on down the ladder. The author quotes widely from several women she interviewed (and from other sources, many of these interviews and diaries) and adds in her own commentary to build a picture of the decade.  She makes it clear that while some women seemed happy with their marriages and their lives, there were plenty of others who were not. She also manages to incorporate how communities were built among women for friendship and for support. But, as Nicholson also reminds us, the sixties were right around the corner, and things were on the verge of looking up --  and many of these same women laid the  groundwork for a better life ahead for the next generation.

Ken Russell: The Teddy Girls
from http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/02/10/the-forgotten-1950s-girl-gang/

If you look at some of the reader reviews of this book written by women or men who lived during the 1950s, the majority praises Ms. Nicholson for capturing what women's lives were like at the time.  Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes is a captivating read.  There are parts of this book where the author sort of rambles, and I felt several times that it could have been pared down a bit, but overall, it's a really good, well-written social/cultural history that I couldn't put down. I'm not from the UK,  but the book held my interest and kept me turning pages.  

definitely recommended.

Meno male che Silvio c’è: Being Berlusconi, by Michael Day

9781137280046
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
274 pp

hardcover; my copy from the publisher. Thank you!

"His only value is money and his only objective to save himself."

My introduction to this "Teflon tycoon," believe it or not, was through reading the Salvatore Montalbano novels  of Andrea Camilleri, one of my all-time crime-fiction novelists. I've been reading him for years;  he's another crime-fiction writer who integrates social and political commentary into his work, and Berlusconi has been a target of his for some time.  Then in June 2011 (I just plowed through my back issues to check the date) I was reading my New Yorker and I found an article called "Basta Bunga Bunga" by Ariel Levy which perked up my interest in this man even more,  and I've been following his antics ever since. And trust me, he is a man worth watching.  When I first got this book in the mail, the cover made it look like a tabloidish sort of thing so I was a bit hesitant, but as things turned out, I didn't need to worry at all -- not Day's style.

The subtitle of the book, "The Rise and Fall from Cosa Nostra to Bunga Bunga" is an apt descriptor of what this book covers. Author Michael Day has tracked Berlusconi's rise from his first inroads into his multi-billion dollar empire (reputedly with money from the Mafia)  through his being banned from ever seeking political office again and the sex scandals which became very public  --  a) a colorful story to say the least and b) a reminder of exactly what can happen when one man (and his cronies) abuses his power of office.    Just to set the record clear, in answer to one reader-reviewer's comments, Being Berlusconi is not meant to be the ultimate biography of this Italian former prime minister; rather, it is exactly as stated in the title: it is the story of Berlusconi's rise as a businessman (through real estate and sleaze TV)  and politician and then his decline and fall from political grace. Day takes the reader through his subject's  three terms as prime minister, clearly evoking the high levels of corruption emanating from his office ( For example, in the face of legal trouble, Berlusconi's parliamentary supporters simply came up with laws designed to make it nearly impossible for any decisive court action to touch them, or they bought off magistrates), but also examining the hot-ticket items (taxes, especially) that would convince voters to keep this man in office, despite everything he's done.  Day also puts Italy's politics and culture into perspective, explaining why people were so taken with Berlusconi.  He explains  the existence of Italy's "all-pervasive" culture of

 "partisanship and cronyism -- with family, friends and tribe doing everything in their power  to keep their their grubby grip on social financial advantage,"

and how Berlusconi "exploited Italians' adherence to the creed," taking "its grip on the country to a whole new level," causing him not to work "in the best interests of the nation," but rather to keep alive "the friendships and loyalties" he needed to sustain his "business interests, runaway libido and legal battles."

 While most people probably are aware of Berlusconi for his sex-related scandals with young girls (including the notorious "Bunga Bunga" and Rubygate scandals), Day clearly shows that there's more to this guy than just being a lecherous politician  -- while he certainly delves into Berlusconi's amoral side,  he reveals exactly how intelligent and savvy this guy really was, literally stopping at nothing to increase his political and economic clout. While "Bending the rules and benefitting (sic)  from friendships, acquaintances and associations is endemic to Italy," Berlusconi clearly made it an art form.  As Day states, the reality was that  Berlusconi "simply -- and very skillfully -- exploited ambivalence toward the rule of law that was already there."    At the same time, the author shows his readers a Berlusconi who is plainly an idiot. As just one example, he showed up uninvited at a Holocaust memorial ceremony held in Milan,

"...which marked the opening of the commemorative site at the city's Central Station.It was from this forbidding fascist-era structure that thousands of Italian Jews were sent in trains to the death camps" 

Berlusconi snoozed through the entire ceremony, then when it was over, took to the press to say that Mussolini "hadn't been that bad -- apart from those slightly draconian race laws -- and had done some 'good things.' " Or then there's the time, after the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake where he said something along the lines of how people made homeless because of this devastating quake should look on it as an adventure -- a sort of camping trip.  As one person summed up Berlusconi so nicely, "His only value is money and his only objective to save himself."

at the Milan Holocaust ceremony from The Guardian, Jan. 13, 2013 (photo by Daniel Dal Zennaro)

Being Berlusconi is a fascinating look at this "trash-TV mogul" who over the course of three terms as Prime Minister "left Italy to economically stagnate, morally decay and in some cases, physically fall apart."  If you have to ask who is Berlusconi, it is either not the book for you OR it is a great place to start if you're at all interested in the people behind the scenes of international politics.  It is in no way boring -- and seriously, every time I'd turn a page I'd wonder just what this guy was going to do next.  To answer reader's criticisms of this book, it is definitely not meant to be a tabloidish sort of exposé or a trashy beach read, so if that's what you're expecting, forget it.  This guy, plain and simple, is a living example of the perils of letting personal interests come before the needs of a nation.

my thanks to Palgrave Macmillan for my copy.