The War of the World

July 17, 2006
Why, if life was improving so rapidly for so many people at the dawn of the 20th century, were the next hundred years full of brutal conflict? Ferguson (Colossus)
has a relatively simple answer: ethnic unrest is prone to break out during periods of economic volatility—booms as well as busts. When they take place in or near areas of imperial decline or transition, the unrest is more likely to escalate into full-scale conflict. This compelling theory is applicable to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda or the "ethnic cleansing" perpetrated against Bosnians, but the overwhelming majority of Ferguson's analysis is devoted to the two world wars and the fate of the Jews in Germany and eastern Europe. His richly informed analysis overturns many basic assumptions. For example, he argues that England's appeasement of Hitler in 1938 didn't lead to WWII, but was a misinformed response to a war that had started as early as 1935. But with Ferguson's claims about "the descent of the West" and the smaller wars in the latter half of the century tucked away into a comparatively brief epilogue, his thoughtful study falls short of its epic promise.

January 25, 2010
A heinous crime that rocks the small Puerto Rican town of Angustias scars far more than victim and perpetrator in Torres’s searing fifth Precinct Puerto Rico novel (after 2006’s Missing in Precinct Puerto Rico
). When Luisa Ferré, “a delicately beautiful high school girl,” wakes up the town with her screams late one night, Sheriff Luis Gonzalo is the first to reach her on the street. At the town clinic, the naked, traumatized girl is treated for assault. Aided only by 70-year-old deputy Emilio Collazo, Gonzalo hunts for clues while Luisa remains silent and sedated, unable to describe her attacker. Luisa’s father, whom Collazo finds in a drunken stupor with bloody knuckles, becomes a prime suspect, though Torres is quick to tell the reader the man had nothing to do with his daughter’s injuries. Gonzalo struggles with a paucity of evidence and overwhelming emotions as the ripples of the crime reach every corner of Angustias. Fans of downbeat slice-of-life mysteries will be most rewarded.