It's Monday, What are you Reading? George Washington, Entrepreneur

 

It's Monday, What are you Reading? 

George Washington, Entrepreneur: 

How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World

By John Berlau

https://www.amazon.com/George-Washington-Entrepreneur-Founding-Business/dp/1250172608/

The first of three more Christmas books. I’m always interested in new approaches to these bios of the Presidents and Founding Fathers. I’m now especially interested to see how this one compares to others I have read. Usually learn new tidbits, from the different slants the authors use. 

Amazon’s Description:

A business biography of George Washington, focusing on his many innovations and inventions.

George Washington: general, statesman...businessman? Most people don't know that Washington was one of the country's first true entrepreneurs, responsible for innovations in several industries. In George Washington, Entrepreneur, John Berlau presents a fresh, surprising take on our forefather's business pursuits.

History has depicted Washington as a gifted general and political pragmatist, not an intellectual heavyweight. But he was a patron of inventors and inveterate tinkerer, and just as intelligent as Jefferson or Franklin. His library was filled with books on agriculture, history, and philosophy. He was the first to breed horses with donkeys to produce the American mule. On his estate, he grew countless varieties of trees and built a greenhouse full of exotic fruits, herbs, and plants. Unlike his Virginia neighbors who remained wedded to tobacco, Washington planted seven types of wheat. His state-of-the-art mill produced flour which he exported to Europe in sacks stamped "G. Washington"―one of the very first branded food products. Mount Vernon was also home to a distillery and became one of the largest American whiskey producers of the era.

Berlau's portrait of Washington, drawn in large part from his journals and extensive correspondence, presents a side of him we haven't seen before. It is sure to delight readers of presidential biography and business history.

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Franklin & Washington

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Franklin & Washington

The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson

https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Washington-Partnership-Edward-Larson-ebook/dp/B07RNL7LY5/

Got a Kindle recommendation I could no refuse. Not sure why I had missed this one earlier, but it definitely fits my reading preferences. Thanks, Amazon, you did it again… even tho’ it only cost me $1.02 with credits… Good start to it…

Amazon Description:

"Larson's elegantly written dual biography reveals that the partnership of Franklin and Washington was indispensable to the success of the Revolution." —Gordon S. Wood 

 
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a masterful, first-of-its-kind dual biography of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, illuminating their partnership's enduring importance. 

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • One of Washington Post's "10 Books to Read in February" • One of USA Today’s “Must-Read Books" of Winter 2020  •  One of Publishers Weekly's "Top Ten" Spring 2020 Memoirs/Biographies

Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Vastly different men, Benjamin Franklin—an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north—and George Washington—a slavehold­ing general from the agrarian south—were the indispensable authors of American independence and the two key partners in the attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Constitutional Convention, held in Franklin’s Philadelphia and presided over by Washington. And yet their teamwork has been little remarked upon in the centuries since.
Illuminating Franklin and Washington’s relationship with striking new detail and energy, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Edward J. Larson shows that theirs was truly an intimate working friendship that amplified the talents of each for collective advancement of the American project.
During the French and Indian War, Franklin supplied the wagons for General Edward Braddock’s ill-fated assault on Fort Duquesne, and Washington buried the general’s body under the dirt road traveled by those retreating wagons. After long sup­porting British rule, both became key early proponents of inde­pendence. Rekindled during the Second Continental Congress in 1775, their friendship gained historical significance during the American Revolution, when Franklin led America’s diplomatic mission in Europe (securing money and an alliance with France) and Washington commanded the Continental Army. Victory required both of these efforts to succeed, and success, in turn, required their mutual coordination and cooperation. In the 1780s, the two sought to strengthen the union, leading to the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the founding document that bears their stamp.
Franklin and Washington—the two most revered figures in the early republic—staked their lives and fortunes on the American experiment in liberty and were committed to its preservation. Today the United States is the world’s great super­power, and yet we also wrestle with the government Franklin and Washington created more than two centuries ago—the power of the executive branch, the principle of checks and balances, the electoral college—as well as the wounds of their compromise over slavery. Now, as the founding institutions appear under new stress, it is time to understand their origins through the fresh lens of Larson’s Franklin & Washington, a major addition to the literature of the founding era.

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Ten Lessons

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? 

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World 

by

Fareed Zakaria

https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Post-Pandemic-World-Fareed-Zakaria-ebook/dp/B08BWRX6H5/

I saw Rachel Maddow on MSNBC interview Fareed Zakaria of CNN about this new book, and knew I had to have it, for reference, at least… got the Kindle edition. Their discussion on “Good Government” in Lesson Two seemed especially relevant. Can’t wait to check it out. It is on my Kindle right now. Should go read some more!

Amazon Description:

COVID-19 is speeding up history, but how? What is the shape of the world to come?

Lenin once said, "There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen." This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps readers to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Written in the form of ten "lessons," covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of "digital life" to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century.

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? A History of the Ozarks, Vol 2

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? 

A History of the Ozarks, Vol 2

The Conflicted Ozarks

by Brooks Blevins

https://www.amazon.com/History-Ozarks-Conflicted/dp/0252042735/

I’ve had this book nearly a year, it appears…a busy year, not much reading, really. It was two years ago this week that I wrote about Volume 1. Sept is important for this series, it seems.

Description at Amazon:

The Ozarks of the mid-1800s was a land of divisions. The uplands and its people inhabited a geographic and cultural borderland straddling Midwest and west, North and South, frontier and civilization, and secessionist and Unionist. As civil war raged across the region, neighbor turned against neighbor, unleashing a generation of animus and violence that lasted long after 1865. The second volume of Brooks Blevins's history begins with the region's distinctive relationship to slavery. Largely unsuitable for plantation farming, the Ozarks used enslaved persons on a smaller scale or, in some places, not at all. Blevins moves on to the devastating Civil War years where the dehumanizing, personal nature of Ozark conflict was made uglier by the predations of marching armies and criminal gangs. 

Blending personal stories with a wide narrative scope, he examines how civilians and soldiers alike experienced the war, from brutal partisan warfare to ill-advised refugee policies to women's struggles to safeguard farms and stay alive in an atmosphere of constant danger. The war stunted the region's growth, delaying the development of Ozarks society and the processes of physical, economic, and social reconstruction. More and more, striving uplanders dedicated to modernization fought an image of the Ozarks as a land of mountaineers and hillbillies hostile to the idea of progress. Yet the dawn of the twentieth century saw the uplands emerge as an increasingly uniform culture forged, for better and worse, in the tumult of a conflicted era. 

The Ozarks of the mid-1800s was a land of divisions. The uplands and its people inhabited a geographic and cultural borderland straddling Midwest and west, North and South, frontier and civilization, and secessionist and Unionist. As civil war raged across the region, neighbor turned against neighbor, unleashing a generation of animus and violence that lasted long after 1865. The second volume of Brooks Blevins's history begins with the region's distinctive relationship to slavery. Largely unsuitable for plantation farming, the Ozarks used enslaved persons on a smaller scale or, in some places, not at all. Blevins moves on to the devastating Civil War years where the dehumanizing, personal nature of Ozark conflict was made uglier by the predations of marching armies and criminal gangs. 

Blending personal stories with a wide narrative scope, he examines how civilians and soldiers alike experienced the war, from brutal partisan warfare to ill-advised refugee policies to women's struggles to safeguard farms and stay alive in an atmosphere of constant danger. The war stunted the region's growth, delaying the development of Ozarks society and the processes of physical, economic, and social reconstruction. More and more, striving uplanders dedicated to modernization fought an image of the Ozarks as a land of mountaineers and hillbillies hostile to the idea of progress. Yet the dawn of the twentieth century saw the uplands emerge as an increasingly uniform culture forged, for better and worse, in the tumult of a conflicted era.

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? You’re Fired

 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? 

You’re Fired:

The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump by Paul Begala

https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Fired-Perfect-Beating-Donald/dp/1982160047/

 

I’ve been a Paul Begala fan since 1992… political operative insight is something I seek out, since working for Gov. Ray in Iowa in the 1970s… could not pass this one up. Enjoy! I will! ;-)

Amazon Description:

“You’re fired!” Donald Trump became famous bellowing those words in a make-believe boardroom. In November, tens of millions of Americans want to yell it right back at him. Yet Trump has seemed to almost defy the laws of political physics. Paul Begala, one of America’s greatest political talents, lays out the strategy that will defeat him and send him and his industrial-strength spray-on tan machine back to Mar-a-Lago.

In You’re Fired, Paul Begala tells us how Trump uses division to distract from the actual reality of his record. Distraction, he argues, is Trump’s superpower. And this book is Kryptonite. In it, the man who helped elect Bill Clinton and reelect Barack Obama, details:

-The special weapons and tactics needed in the unconventional war against this most unconventional politician
-How to drive a wedge—or, rather, a pickup truck—between Trump and many of his supporters, especially blue-collar workers and farmers
-Where the votes to defeat Trump will come from, and how the Rising American Electorate can catch Trump flat-footed
-How Democrats can run on issues ranging from Coronavirus and healthcare to the economy, as well as climate change and Trump’s long-term plan to dominate the federal judiciary
-There is one chapter called simply, “This Chapter Will Beat Trump.” Find out why Begala is so confident and what issue he says will sink the Trumptanic

Full of memorable advice and Begala’s trademark wit, You’re Fired focuses on the lessons we can learn from the party’s successes and failures—and the crucial tools Democrats need to beat Trump. 

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Exercise of Power

It’s Monday, What are you Reading?

Exercise of Power: American Failures, Successes,

and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World

by Robert M. Gates

https://www.amazon.com/Exercise-Power-American-Successes-Post-Cold/dp/1524731889/

This looks like it would go well with Team of Five… history over several presidential terms from a different perspective. He had both governmental and academe experience to contribute.

From Amazon Description:
From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 best-selling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power in all its manifestations, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world.

Since the end of the Cold War, the global perception of the United States has progressively morphed from dominant international leader to disorganized entity, seemingly unwilling to accept the mantle of leadership or unable to govern itself effectively. Robert Gates argues that this transformation is the result of the failure of political leaders to understand the complexity of American power, its expansiveness, and its limitations. He makes clear that the successful exercise of power is not limited to the use of military might or the ability to coerce or demand submission, but must encompass as well diplomacy, economics, strategic communications, development assistance, intelligence, technology, ideology, and cyber. By analyzing specific challenges faced by the American government in the post-Cold War period--Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Russia, China, and others--Gates deconstructs the ways in which leaders have used the instruments of power available to them. With forthright judgments of the performance of past presidents and their senior-most advisers, firsthand knowledge, and insider stories, Gates argues that U.S. national security in the future will require learning, and abiding by, the lessons of the past, and re-creating those capabilities that the misuse of power has cost the nation.

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Team of Five

It’s Monday, What are you Reading? Team of Five:

The President’s Club in the Age of Trump 

by Kate Andersen Brower

 

https://www.amazon.com/Team-Five-Presidents-Club-Trump/dp/0062668978/

When I became aware of this book about the President’s Club, I knew I had to have it and read it. A favorite subject, for sure. Not disappointed.

Description from Amazon:
 
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence and First Women—also a New York Times bestseller—comes a poignant, news-making look at the lives of the five former presidents in the wake of their White House years, including the surprising friendships they have formed through shared perspective and empathy.

 
After serving the highest office of American government, five men—Jimmy Carter, the late George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—became members of the world’s most exclusive fraternity. In Team of Five, Kate Andersen Brower goes beyond the White House to uncover what, exactly, comes after the presidency, offering a glimpse into the complex relationships of these five former presidents, and how each of these men views his place in a nation that has been upended by the Oval Office’s current, norm-breaking occupant, President Donald Trump.
With an empathetic yet critical eye and firsthand testimony from the Carters, Donald Trump, and the top aides, friends, and family members of the five former presidents, Team of Five takes us inside the exclusive world of these powerful men and their families, including the unlikely friendship between George W. Bush and Michelle Obama, the last private visits Bill Clinton and Barack Obama shared with George H.W. Bush, and the Obamas’ flight to Palm Springs after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Perhaps most timely, this insightful, illuminating book overflows with anecdotes about how the ex-presidents are working to combat President Trump’s attempts to undo the achievements and hard work accomplished during their own terms.
Perhaps most poignantly, Team of Five sheds light on the inherent loneliness and inevitable feelings of powerlessness and frustration that come with no longer being the most important person in the world, but a leader with only symbolic power. There are ways, though, that these men, and their wives, have become powerful political and cultural forces in American life, even as so-called “formers.”
Team of Five includes 16 pages of color photographs.

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Front Row at the Trump Show

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? 

Front Row at the Trump Show

by Jonathan Karl

 

https://www.amazon.com/Front-Row-at-Trump-Show-ebook/dp/B07X7SF9N9/

This post is the one-hundred and seventy-third entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]


I got this one in Kindle Edition, hoping for a good story from a respected journalist who has covered and known Donald Trump personally for over 25 years, long before he ran for President. And, he literally does sit in the front row of press conferences… and is often called on by the President. This is a very even handed report of what it is like to be there, and have been there. Good read.


Book Description from Amazon:

An account like no other from the White House reporter who has known President Donald Trump for more than 25 years.

We have never seen a president like this...norm-breaking, rule-busting, dangerously reckless to some and an overdue force for change to others. One thing is clear: We are witnessing the reshaping of the presidency.

Jonathan Karl brings us into the White House in a powerful book unlike any other on the Trump administration. He’s known and covered Donald Trump longer than any other White House reporter.  With extraordinary access to Trump during the campaign and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Karl delivers essential new reporting and surprising insights.

These are the behind-the-scenes moments that define Trump’s presidency--an extraordinary look at the president, the person, and those closest to him. This is the real story of Trump’s unlikely rise; of the struggles and battles of those who work in the administration and those who report on it; of the plots and schemes of a senior staff enduring stunning and unprecedented unpredictability.

Karl takes us from a TV set turned campaign office to the strange quiet of Trump’s White House on Inauguration Day to a high-powered reelection campaign set to change the country’s course. He shows us an administration rewriting the role of the president on the fly and a press corps that has never been more vital. Above all, this book is only possible because of the surprisingly open relationship Donald Trump has had with Jonathan Karl, a reporter he has praised, fought, and branded an enemy of the people.

This is Front Row at the Trump Show.


Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Missouri Timeline

It’s Monday, What are You Reading?

Missouri: An Illustrated Timeline 200 Years 

of Heroes and Rogues, Heartbreak and Triumph

by John W. Brown

 

https://www.amazon.com/Missouri-Illustrated-Timeline-Heartbreak-Triumph/dp/1681062550/

This post is the one-hundred and seventy-second entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]


A new coffee-table book prepared for the Missouri Bicentennial. Interesting narrative along with great collection of photos and illustrations.


Book Description from Amazon:

Aptly named the Show Me State, Missouri has shown the nation its past, present, and future for more than two centuries. Representing the state’s 200 year history in a way that is both educational and entertaining, Missouri Timeline offers a look back even as it looks ahead to a fabulous future situated perfectly in the middle. As a state, Missouri blends everything our country has to offer, just the way we like it. As Missouri recognizes its 200th Anniversary as a state, it's important to look back at the amazing history that has had an impact far beyond the boundaries of the Show Me State. From successes in business, sports, and cultural events, to struggles against Mother Nature and failures of civil rights, a retrospective study paves an even better path for the future. This Missouri Timeline highlights the important moments in Missouri's history that have defined the state and notes the parallels in the state s trajectory as only a timeline can. Not long after the first skyscraper was built in Missouri, Laura Ingalls Wilder moved to southern Missouri where she wrote about life on the prairie. At the same time Lake of the Ozarks was filling up, Prohibition was ending, Bonnie and Clyde were having shootouts, and a golfer from Springfield was winning the first Masters Golf Tournament. This book allows readers to see Missouri s defining moments and provides a new understanding of how it all lines up historically.


Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Thomas Paine

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? 

Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence

by Harlow Giles Unger

 

https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Paine-Clarion-American-Independence/dp/0306921936/

This post is the one-hundred and seventy-first entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]


This was the other book I got at Christmas time. I’ve not read a full biography on the controversial Thomas Paine, so this is that opportunity. Unger is a good writer/historian.


Book Description from Amazon:

From New York Times bestselling author and Founding Fathers' biographer Harlow Giles Unger comes the astonishing biography of the man whose pen set America ablaze, inspiring its revolution, and whose ideas about reason and religion continue to try men's souls.

Thomas Paine's words were like no others in history: they leaped off the page, inspiring readers to change their lives, their governments, their kings, and even their gods. In an age when spoken and written words were the only forms of communication, Paine's aroused men to action like no one else. The most widely read political writer of his generation, he proved to be more than a century ahead of his time, conceiving and demanding unheard-of social reforms that are now integral elements of modern republican societies. Among them were government subsidies for the poor, universal housing and education, pre- and post-natal care for women, and universal social security. An Englishman who emigrated to the American colonies, he formed close friendships with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and his ideas helped shape the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

However, the world turned against Paine in his later years. While his earlier works, Common Sense and Rights of Man, attacked the political and social status quo here on earth, The Age of Reason attacked the status quo of the hereafter. Former friends shunned him, and the man America had hailed as the muse of the American Revolution died alone and forgotten.

Packed with action and intrigue, soldiers and spies, politics and perfidy, Unger's Thomas Paine is a much-needed new look at a defining figure.


Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? 

Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers: 

The Texas Victory That Changed American History 

by Brian Kilmeade

 This post is the one-hundred and seventieth entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]

https://www.amazon.com/Sam-Houston-Alamo-Avengers-American/dp/0525540539/

This book was a Christmas Gift. Brian Kilmeade is a good storyteller, so I knew there would be some new stories to add to the classic Alamo tales. I've not been disappointed. Easy reading book. Nice explanation in back of how he used the many sources to come with his own version of the stories.


Book Description from Amazon:

A New York Times bestseller.

In March 1836, the Mexican army led by General Santa Anna massacred more than two hundred Texians who had been trapped in the Alamo. After thirteen days of fighting, American legends Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett died there, along with other Americans who had moved to Texas looking for a fresh start. It was a crushing blow to Texas’s fight for freedom.

But the story doesn’t end there. The defeat galvanized the Texian settlers, and under General Sam Houston’s leadership they rallied. Six weeks after the Alamo, Houston and his band of settlers defeated Santa Anna’s army in a shocking victory, winning the independence for which so many had died.

Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers recaptures this pivotal war that changed America forever, and sheds light on the tightrope all war heroes walk between courage and calculation. Thanks to Kilmeade’s storytelling, a new generation of readers will remember the Alamo—and recognize the lesser known heroes who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.


Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Blowout

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Blowout: 

Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the

Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth 

by Rachel Maddow

This post is the one-hundred and sixty-nineth entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]

https://www.amazon.com/Blowout-Corrupted-Democracy-Destructive-Industry/dp/0525575472/

I wasn’t going to get this one, but the topic is so current that I could not resist…

Book Description from Amazon:

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy—Winner Take All

In 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia—including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove—was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry.

With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West’s most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, “like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature.”

Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world’s most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, “Democracy either wins this one or disappears.”


Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? The Sterling Affair

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?
The Sterling Affair (The Forensic Genealogist Book 8) 

Kindle Edition
by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

This post is the one-hundred and sixty-eigth entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]

https://www.amazon.com/Sterling-Affair-Forensic-Genealogist-Book-ebook/dp/B083ZJP7JC/


This was the longest of the 8 books in the series, but it was also the most complex, using DNA extensively in solving the case. I have enjoyed each book by Goodwin, and look forward to #9.

Amazon Description:

When an unannounced stranger comes calling at Morton Farrier’s front door, he finds himself faced with the most intriguing and confounding case of his career to-date as a forensic genealogist. He agrees to accept the contract to identify a man who had been secretly living under the name of his new client’s long-deceased brother. Morton must use his range of resources and research skills to help him deconstruct this mysterious man’s life, ultimately leading him back into the murky world of 1950s international affairs of state. Meanwhile, Morton is faced with his own alarmingly close DNA match which itself comes with far-reaching implications for the Farriers.

This is the eighth novel in the Morton Farrier genealogical crime mystery series of ten stories, although it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story.