Brave Companions, portraits of history by David McCullough’s 2022 232 pg.

 

 A historic subject is always many subjects combined.  Below are the most importand people and objects mentioned in this book.    26/1/26

1804 The painter Charles Wilson Peale, a young German explorer bachelor  aged 30. Journeyed through Central South America. He had read every book he had seen . In Virginia he worked on teeth of a mammoth that he had discovered in the Andes.

 Alexander von Humboldt born in Berlin 1769 to 1859 can be regarded as the high priest of 19C science. He had been a government inspector of mines in Prussia.  His travels through South America overshadowed the Lewis and Clark expedition

(1804 – 1806 the Lewis and Clark Expedition journeyed over 3,700 miles sent out by Jefferson, just after the Louisiana purchase in 1803)

Due to an outbreak of typhoid were put off at Cumana on the coast of present day Venezuela. There is a connection between the Orinoco and the Amazon Rivers. They classified more plants than any other explorer  before them. He kept the most copious notes imaginable on tides , soils , petroleum , chocolate , rubber and missionaries. His description of the earthquake in Caracas. Darwin would confide that Humboldt's description of the tropics had inspired his whole career . From Venezuela Humboldt and Ponpland sailed for Havana Cuba in 1800 where he saw the institution of slavery and considered in the greatest of all evils.

They went overland to Bogota. In 2 years the toured Colombia Ecuador and Peru. They went over the Ades by foot and cris crossed it, and recorded the plant life according to the elevation. Hecanbe regarded as an early ecologist and in Quinto Equador the spent time sorting their collective they had gathered. The ingenuity of the Inca Road was way above any roman road and later became the present day Pan American Highway. In Lima he made notes on the local use of guano that was still unknown in Europe. He is known for the Humboldt Current.  he was the first European to sense the scale and greatness of the ancient civilization. Later the Maya temples of Yucatan were written about.

In Philadelphia the first mammoth skeleton was mounted in America by  Charles Wilson Peale. Humboldt went to Monticello and founded a lifelong friendship with Jefferson. He spent the  next 32 years and his personal fortune to publish 30 volumes of his tours of 1799 to 1804. Amongst other things in discussed the ships canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific and named 5 likely routes for this. He was convinced that there was no difference between the level of the 2 oceans only the difference in tides. This was confirmed in 1850. He also wrote that the felling of trees would bring a disaster in the future. He was the first to recognize that the physical features and the planets affect on the weather. He laid the foundation for  descriptive geography. Observed the Earths magnetism and vulcanism in the role of mountain building. Simon Bolivar sought   him out to talk on political freedom . Charles Lyll the great English geologist had a long interview. with him. In 1851 his books were big sellers and Emerson considered him the greatest living man.

Louis Agassiz born in Switzerland 1807 to 1873. became a doctor and research the Alpine glaciers. In 1840 published a study on Glaciers. He spent 13 years in the US and published a series of lectures. Charles Lyell was most influenced by his lectures. America was in the throes of an educational awakening. Libraries were being established and schools were training teachers. 1847 he got the chair of natural history at the Lawrence School of Science. he did not see     any reason for excluding young women. He said facts are stupid things until brought into conjunction with a  law. You have to works out things without a teacher. On an expedition to lake Superior the Indian guides would sing the same 2 or 3 songs over in French. He coauthored Principles of Zoology his first publication in the US. He contributed to American Geology and a guide to the birds and fish of Lake Superior.. On the death of his first wife he remarried and sent for his 3 children. His wife opened a private school for girls on the top floor of his house. He wrote 10 volumes of the entire natural history of the USA. he announced he planned to open a museum of Comparative Zoology the cornerstone was laid in 1859, the same year that \Origen of Species was published  in England. Agassiz who was not a church goer denounce the book and its theory as atheism. The study of nature was considered a study of the works of God. In 1869 he embarked on a venture around Cape Horn and to California on a coastal survey. He was not alone in being mistaken on his views of evolution. 

Calvin Stowe 1802 to 1886  This is the story of the family of Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

 

The Real West Teddy Roosevelt had set up a ranch in the North Dakota badland and the winter of  1886 was so sever that with the spring of 1887 the carcass  of dead cattle surged downstream like cordwood. The French Canadian trappers had been here a 100 years before and called this les mauvalses terres a traverser - bad lands to travel across. Custer on the way to Little Bighorn in 1876 called this worthless country. However the grass  was all free for the taking and there was water. So why not put a beef packing plant where the cattle were  and avoid the Chicago middlemen. The French Marquis bough up al the land he could and equipment for packing. Lots of cattle sheep bought. Roosevelt wanted to become a cattle baron.

Fred Remington born in Kansas City. Enrolled at Yale School of Fine Arts 1879 on the death of his father dropped out of Yale and returned to Kansas. His success was sudden and extraordinary. and established himself as a magazine illustrator in NY. He received a commission to illustrate Theodor Roosevelt articles. By 1890 he was the best known artist in America. Illustrated Longfellow's Song Of Hiawatha. The pictures convinced the public they was authentic about the west. His endurance was tested when he rode with the cavalry and documented what he saw. Willa Catcher books documented the west. With the frontiers disappearing he went west to chase the disappearing past. The Virginian  by Owen Wister 1902  was the first true Western in US literature.

He was very much against immigration and said the countries was being flooded with trash, he hated Jews, Italians, Huns. In 1897 he sailed to Cuba to cover the rebel uprising on assignment for Rudolf Hearst and what he saw he described as horrible hopeless, bloody bodies and helpless suffering. He painted the charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill.

With photography his painting could now be published in color. He now realized that the days of the cowboys were over and build a big statue of a Cowboy on Horseback at Fairmount park Philadelphia in 1908.

Panama Railroad completed in 1855. Later we had saw the completion of the Suez Canal 1869, the Union Pacific 1869, the Brooklyn bridge 1883.

In 1850 as a result of the California gold rush a railway line was started in Panama. This cost more per mile in human life and money, than any railroad ever build, later the canal followed this route. 1846 the Bidlack Treaty was the basis for US involvement. Today a railroad still goes from Panama City to Colon, it is different to the original one which was covered by the Getun lake and it is an hour and a half ride. In the 47.5 miles(76.4 Km) it has 170 bridges over 12 feet ling. Swamps had to be bridged or filled. It took 6 days to walk across the isthmus though clouds of insects and pack mules sinking into the mud. Stephens was the president of this wholly US owned stock company. Panama was still part of Colombia or New Granada as its name was then. American troops were used to prevent the transportation of Colombian troops adn a local junta created the Republic of Panama. They found a gap in the mountains only 275 feet above sea level. The sea level on both side of the isthmus are the same but the tides are different. Men began to sicken and die from Charges fever a variety of malaria. Also dysentery , sunstroke, cholera and Yellow jack (later identified that it was fever carried by mosquitos   The work force came from many places West Indies, Colombia , Ireland Italy , China, India and US. Colombian were best adapted to conditions. About 6000  men died and there was a thriving trade of taking bodies with unknown kin and putting pickling the bodies in barrels and selling them to medical schools. around  the world. This finance the railroad hospital at Colon. In these conditions clothes never got dry and the scorpions, sand flies ticks and bad food were all killers. To ease the plight the company brought in opium for the Chinese labourers. There were construction gangs from both ends. Steamship passengers arrived in the morning and could be on a ship at eh other side before dark.

In 6 years the railway covered all outlay costs, and in NY this was the highest listed stock. A ride cost $50 and this was the most expensive rail ride in the world. Walking instead would cost $10 for right of way. 1881 the company was bout outright by Compagnie Universelle du Canal inter oceanique for $20 million. In 1912 the line was move to make way for the canal.

Brooklyn Bridge  A German trained in Berlin and was the first to perfect a suspension wire bridge to carry a railway at Niagara Falls.

1876 labourers were paid bonanza wages for working in the pneumatic caissons, they worked 10 hour days 6 days a week. Only men except for Emily Roebling. The was the East River Bridge or New York Bridge or Roebling Bridge. This was a turning point in US history. Roebling was caught on the ice on Brooklyn ferry and envisioned this in 1852. He owned a steel wire factory. 

Roebling suspension Bridge in Cincinnati over the Ohio river was only completed after the civil war in 1867.  This completed he went to German to study  pneumatic caissons. The men could come and go without loss of pressure. The average age of the engineers hired to build this was 31.  The illumination was  candles or limelight and when a fire broke out in 1870 the compressed air cause such a conflagration Roebling was in the caisson 20 hours directing extinguishing it till he felt paralysis caused by the onset of the bends or the mystery caisson disease. One caisson hit bedrock at 44 feet, another one at 78 + feet and when 3 men already died they decided to stop as it was hardpack sand.

Roebling had a house where he could watch the construction and sent his wife out to give instructions and he ran things from his sickroom. Only when the bridge was finished did he emerge with improved health. The grand opening was in 1883. The US president Chester A Arthur(1881 to 1885) as was as Governor Grover Cleveland were there. The bridge had cost double the original estimate and it cost 27 lives.

 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry by Walt Whitman proceeds completion of the bridge but anticipates future generation in the bridge.1856

Hart Crane's "To Brooklyn Bridge" describes it as a  marvel of engineering connecting city life. written in 1930

The Bridge Plan 1969  Because of a problem on the bridge Francis Valentine was set to search for the plans of the bridge. He found the plans in the cities carpentry shop and the each had the initial WAR on them and he realized they were Washington A Roebling own signed drawings. There were 70 draws of them and it cost $15,000 , to clean up by had 65 of these drawing and they were first put on display to the public in 1976 with great success. Brooklyn Bridge once was the most celebrated bridge on earth. Every component was custom made often the very first of its kind, from the masonry of the towers to the manhole covers. All sorts of machines were custom build like hoisting apparatus, compressed air pumps, cable making equipment all custom build for this project. 64 draughtsman and engineers are represented being clearly named. Some the best of their profession and specific parts they played in this 14 year ordeal. Roebling also wrote a book on cable making. Many highly skilled crafts men were illiterate and could not read the plans.

This bridge was a redemption for the "Tweed years" and "Grant years" a period of corruption in New York  the US and the US  after the Civil War.

Long Distance Vision In the 1920s a new breed of pilot as pioneers all in their twenties developed in flying the new airmail service. They flew in every kind of weather by instinct not  instruments. 6 were lost before Charles A Lindbergh flew non stop 3,610 miles NY to Paris in 1927. Many of them proved to be writers Lindbergh wrote 7 books including The Spirit of St Louis while his wife Anne co-pilot and aviator wrote North to the Orient. Antoine de Saint Exupery a mail pilot over the Sahara and Andes wrote Night Flight and other books . Beryl Markham of Kenya who flew the Atlantic  wrote West with the night. Nevil Shute an English pilot who became a well known writer. Flying had stirred them to write like the sea moved  Melville and Conrad to write.

This era was from the mid 1920 to 1937 with Hitler bombing of Spanish city of Guernica and Amelia Erhardt attempting to fly around the world and was lost in the Pacific near the Marianas also in 1937.

Lindbergh was given red carpet treatment and toured the aircraft factories and flew the latest fighter planes in Germany and was given a medal by Goering. Beryl Markham went back to her fathers racing horse trade. Neville Shute left England for Australia and wrote On the beach about a nuclear holocaust.

 Harry Monroe Caudill The first known white man to settle in Kentucky was in 1792 James Caudill and he was the progenitor of a large widespread mountain family. Caudills own lumberyards run for judge, mine coal, win scholarships etc. Lack of jobs causes many to leave, and the word Appalachia is synonymous for inadequate education and few jobs.  Harry Monroe Caudill a great-great-great grandson of the original  Caudill, has spent years fighting for what remains of the Cumberland mountains. In Whitesburg(population 1800) where he worked as an attorney. He had attended the University of Kentucky on the GI Bill. He has written books, articles and lobbied on TV and Washington. In 1968 in at a Senate Committee, he pointed out that in the US there is a crises of destruction of the land.

Big Corporation from outside of Kentucky like National Steel , US steel Bethlehem Steel appoint local operators to do strip mining. This is an extremely profitable business with more power stations needing quality coal. Coal was once a seasonal commodity now it is in demand all year round for air-conditioning.  Those left with the ravaged land get no share of the coal or money made from it. 

They strip off the topsoil, clay and rock that cover the coal and dump it aside smashing an d smothering every tree and leaving a spoil bank.  3Access acres are destroyed for every acre mined. This leaves a danger like the Aberfan, Wales disaster in which 116 children and 28 adults were killed.in 1966. Here thousands of Kentucky creeks and streams are dead nothing lives in them. Abandoned strip pits and used as dumping grounds for garbage and  used cars.

1965 he founded the Appalachian Group to save the land and the people,

Caudill has collected stories about the mountain country for as long as he can remember. Night comes to the Cumberlands 1963 this can be compared to Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath. In the area there used to be enormous maples hickories , beeches, ashes , black gums, pines and hemlocks in abundance. By the 1930 all the virgin trees were gone. 

The loss of the trees was minor  compared to what happened with the coal. After the railways arrived it was possible to take this out.

The mineral buyers came to purchase not the land but the minerals beneath it. They all though this was easy money and put their cross on the broadsheet deed. This authorized the grantees to do what ever was convenient or necessary to extract those substances.

Underground mining men worked 10 hour days and died of black damp methane, cave in explosions or like Caudills father or brother they were crippled for life, but wages were good by Kentucky standards. The unemployment of the 1930 was replaced by good wages in the war years till 1947. With automation and hard time came enormous migration and 250,000 left the mountains between 1950 to 1970. 

Strip mining the farmers were informed that the bulldozers were to rip open the land. When they objected the broad form deed that their grandfathers had signed were brought out and courts ruled in favour of the mining industry. Local started sniping at the bulldozers and even blew up a company ware house with the dynamite they found there.  Strip mining is safer less men to mine more coal faster and men do not get killed in them, A retired man was warned unofficially not to sleep in the room of his house facing the spoil bank. He took the matter to court with  Caudill. The problem of acid mine damage was a thing that the Federal Government did not know how to deal with. Coal operators now said that Caudill and others who speak against them were Communists. They accused outsiders of coming to Kentucky to make trouble the fact that they most strip miners were "outsiders" never occurred to them. The mines claimed they were providing the country with energy by making worthless land pay and providing jobs. Free enterprise implied freedom from moral responsibility.

Caudill claimed that as a shortage of free land grows more serious all this magnificent country will have a value surpassing that of coal. A campaign was set up to stop the Red River Gorge from being build. Justice William O Douglas led a hike through the area and the gorge was saved. The press wrote that Caudill is a good man he is the one person who stayed and everyone know that the strip mining damage is wrong.

Mirriam Rothschild 1908 - 2005 she was an acclaimed scientist of entomology and botany who never had a formal education in science and was a mother of 6.  the first female President of the Royal Entomological Society and a Trustee of the Natural History Museum.

Extraordinary Times 80%

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier.1957 348pg

12/7/25

The novel opens in Le Mans where our narrator, John, an English academic, is on holiday. his new friend is a French count, Jean de Gué. taking all of John’s clothes and possessions with him and leaving his own in their place. Jean’s chauffeur Gaston arrives, ready to drive him home to his château. de Gué.

 The glassworks is facing financial ruin. John says he had years of training in French and spoke the language and had studied the history. John had told Jean that his life was empty, Jean had lent me his name, his possessions, his identity.

When Jean gets back to his chateau his wife Francois and sister Blanche had thought he was not coming back from Paris as he had not phoned them. They do mention that his hands are cleaner and he smells different.  Marie Noel the daughter is worried that she may have measles that could cause harm to the unborn baby. Now we learn that Jean and Francois had married soon after liberation. The relationship with his sister Blanche is difficult.

Jean insists on them opening the presents he brought from Paris  at the table but this is an error as one to his brother in law is an elixir against impotence and in Blanches is a message for Bele his mistress. Marie Noel was very happy with her gift a  book The Little Flower  1897 about St. Theresa the making of a saint. Part of this family were devout Catholics.

Jeans mother tells him that her late husband was always in a better mode after he returned from his mistress and so encourages him to keep a mistress.

First he tell them he got a good agreement from Carvelet and then phones Paris and discovers that the only contract he can get they results in  producing at a loss. He knows Blanche heard the conversation on her phone extension.

He goes to the bank to learn about the family assets which are in minus but has  seen the family papers in the bank safe. That If Florence produces a son the Inheritance comes to the family head and if Florence dies the same. The verrerie(glassware factory) was important for the status of the family and the jobs of the workers.

1952 They mention rabbits dying with the plague of myxomatosis this was caused by a French physician, Paul-Félix Armand-Delille, released infected rabbits on his estate as a form of pest control, causing massive decline of rabbit numbers in Europe.

This is 15 years after the German occupation. Jean goes into the master house at the verrerie and sees it just left frozen in time after the death of Maurice Duval. the almanac is showing 1941 and furniture and boxes of books. Duval was taken in the middle of the night and shot by his own country' men, cut to pieces and thrown in the well. Julie tells him that she was accused of being a collaborator as she helped a young German boy soldier launder his uniform so he would not get into trouble about a stain on it. Jean de Gue had been an officer in the underground but left people like Julia to cope with the Nazi's.

His watch strap broke and he threw it into the fire and retrieved it suddenly and  burned his hand so that he could avoid taking part in the hunt the next day. The hunt is led by his brother and amongst other thing Jean is there and has no control of Cesar who ran into the forest and sent the birds up prematurely, wrecking the hunt and then  it rains and not many come to the gathering afterwards.

 Marie Noel had  disappeared and gone down the well but Cesar had stayed with her and one of the workmen saw the dog and realized to bring the sleeping child up with little glass articles she found.

Florence his wife died falling over the balcony and it was considered suicide but the daughter Marie Noel hung over the balcony to retrieve the locket that Jean had given Florence so it was  an accident. At the hospital the doctor told Jean he would have had a son. The countess appears to be pleased at the death of her daughter in law. The Countess had become an opium addict. Jean tells her that she must stop the opium as he need her to  take over running the house. She immediately get stuck in to inviting guest to the funeral. 

Bela had bandaged his burned hand and now Blanche also. He saw the old photos of themselves as children and Maurice Duval was a finer person than Jean. Maurice was killed through jealousy not because he was a collaborator with the Germans as many decent  French were collaborators to stay alive.  With the armistice murder of him was seen as heroic. Papa had given Maurice the position of master of the verrerie and Blanche was attracted to him.    Blanche he tells to move to the masters house and take over running the foundry she is the  capable one. She can be artistically innovative and open it to tourists instead of delivering scent bottles at a loss to Carvalet.

 Paul and Renee can go and live their lives. Paul had taken over the foundry as he felt responsibility to the family business.  Even  Marie Noel says that now that Mamam died everyone is getting what they want.  

" I haven't been saddled with a baby brother and have you to myself. "

A phone call from Jean de Gué who saw the death of Florence in the press. Only a week has passed since Jean left John drugged asleep in the hotel bedroom. John meets Jean at the masters house at the foundry, John says he loved Jeans family. Jean says unlike England their country was invaded by the enemy.   John and Jean change clothes. John gets his car back.  He visits Bele who tells him she realized he had changed.                                                           Jean explains that John hasn’t been whistling to César in the correct way and this is why he hasn’t been obeying his commands.

 What if John and Jean weren’t doubles after all?

 Jean tells John that he has emptied John’s bank account, sold his flat and furniture in London and resigned John’s position as university lecturer – in other words, destroyed John altogether, because John never really existed and is no longer necessary.

The fall of Roman Britain and why we speak English 2022 176pg

 1812/25 

Rome's conquest of Britain started in 77CE with Emperor Claudius and departed in 410 CE . Thus 333 years.

410CE under ineffective Emperor Honorius  of Western Roman Empire was sacked by the Visigoths under Alaric1

The Anglo-Saxon language seems to have been introduced onto the island after the fall from the Roman Empire. Romans conquered territories for glory, not for economic reasons and never really pacified it.

 

Julius  49 to 44 BCE   Vespacius   69  CE  

Augustus 27BCE        Titus  79 CE

Tiberius  14CE           Domician   81 CE

Caligula 37CE          

Claudius 41 CE           410 CE  Rome sacked       

Nero  54  CE               by  Aleric King of the Visigoths.

Galba 68 CE

Otho  69 CE

Aurilus Vitalus 69 CE

Britain is the largest island in Europe. Seas can be both a barrier and a highway. In warmer periods the sea is higher and the last land bridge between the continent and Britain was 8000 years ago. Migration by boat was limited to  carrying one family with essential property children and farmstock. Single raiding vessels could reach the right areas and flee back with the loot. This is different from organizing a fleet. Manufacture of ships requires infrastructure location, materials and technology. The best known invasion is of Julius Caesar in 55BCE. He had 80 invasion ships. Ships were made entirely of oak. Fleets were scattered in storms. They ran out of  food and the ships were damaged.

43ACE Claudian invasion with 40 thousand men and 3,000 tons of grain, but this only was be navigable the right season of the year.

We have evidence that women moved more than me as the "married out." Farming population stayed put. The Mediterranean migrants were fitter as they had better farming technology and could support bigger farming population. 

Cicero quote-To  understand Latin is a mark of Roman Citizen but in England by 700 Latin was  a dead language. Christian liturgy would reinforce Latin. The use of Vulgar Latin had been widespread in some regions like Bath. The presents of 50thousand militia added to the province importance.

The Old English (Anglo Saxon)spoken in post Roman England is a west Germanic language with grammar more like modern German. Anglo Saxon must have been introduced after the Romans left. Vulgar Latin was only spoken by an elite who disappeared. The Roman army constructed 9,000km of roads in Britain. The embarked on a ambitious building program of  a military nature , like forts at key river crossings, legion bases, ports, lighthouses. Towns grew around the bases.  no great officer of state, or high ranking bureaucrat  can be traced back to British origin. There was an indifference of the Roman authorities to the welfare of their British subjects as Romans still regarded the Britains as semi-barbarians. Later Norman French did not replace English although did influence it. The Roman elite did not accept British born Romans as equals. The indigenous people reciprocated with hostility.

In Rome successful politician were usually also generals. Newly elected consuls were awarded a province and a army. Conquests led to loot and personal glory and hence political power and influence. Slave traders notoriously followed the Roman armies. A Triumph with a Roman street parade was the ultimate acknowledgment of military prowess. The modern word emperor comes from the roman world conqueror. In conquest the importance of glory outweighed economic and  strategic advantages.

It took 37 years and 9 commanders to thoroughly conquer Britain compared of Caesar's conquest of Gaul in 8 years.

It needed a garrison of 55,000men or 12% of the Imperial army all for a province that had 4% of the Empires land. Britain resisted incorporation into the Empire and the sense of Romanization failed.

60/61 BCE Boudiccan Revolt at the  time of burning Londonium it had a population of  10,000 and was a booming mercantile centre.  125 to 130 ACE Londonium was burned down again during Hadrian's reign. Valuables seem to have been stripped before the fire spread but also looters would steal.

 Insurrection came primary from the Roman system itself, there were examples that Legions had mutinied before. Records were not left of the fate of the 9th Legion damnacio memoriae - officialdom erasing problematic people or events. In Rome this practice usually applied to traitors , criminals, religious or political offences. The 9th Legion had been in Britain for almost a century and many men  probably had roots in the province and unofficial wives and dependents and they expected to retire in Britain on grants of land. Marching them south may have caused rumours that they were being taken off the island and caused the mutiny between108CE and 120CE The rebelled attacked London and were put down by loyal forces. Mutineers and runaway slaves attend to attack symbols of authority.

Military engineers may build a wall for a military function but also to demonstrate status like monumental gateways. Greater London was full of high status  buildings. London walls were more than 3 km long and the largest Roman constructions were in London. There were multiple coastal defenses but they have been eroded by the sea. These provided protected anchorages and defense against pirates. They also had strongpoints to tax unofficial ship -borne trade. The army had to be fed and soldiers paid irrespectively. The army in Britain proved to be ill-disciplined and were kept expending their surplus energy building walls.

209 The tried invading Scotland  but the scattered tribes offered no strategic target  so they had a grinding guerilla war.

The Empire never solved the problem of succession and in the 3rd Century was under short reigning warlords. It now had to evolve into something new or cease to exist. It had no constitutional  way of removing incompetent leaders.

Technically the Senate paid soldiers salaries in the name of the Roman people but over time the soldiers relied more on loot. Buying land is an end in itself to enhance dignitas not an investment. The Empire had the habit of press ganging barbarians into the Roman army. With the general collapse of the Empire trade with Britain and the continent declines. 

With the disappearance of Classis Britannica . This was a fleet that protected both sides of the channel.  Rome lost control of the channel and pirates and Saxon sea raiders started.

Climate change at this time also put the Empire into stress. Warm climate was favorable and cold was unfavorable. High precipitation was good, however low precipitation that resulted in decreasing agricultural output caused migration from badly hit regions, bringing , spreading war and disease. Pre-industrial Empires grew in agricultural rich regions. Migration resulted in " barbarians from the fringes moving into the civilized "imperial centres. They lacked the capacity to store food, and moving food to places needed was difficult. 

When at the end of the 3rd Century the rainfall and temperature recovered we see the Roman Republic had a period of expansion

 

 Few Emperors died of old age so they were  inevitably paranoiac. The Empire had been founded on exploitative conquest. Rome attacked Britain for all the wrong reasons, as other was not strategic or economic benefits to be gained, but personal status and loot. The Claudian invasion in 43 CE and battle of Medway succeeded.

London went up in flames twice in the First Century. The first by tribal worriers the second by mutineers. The Romans shut the British elites out of important imperial or provincial positions. Postings to Britain received less enthusiasm as chasing bands gangs of bandits and insurrectionist around Britain would never bring fame glory loot and advancement. Britain became a territory of exploitation of metals and agricultural produce.

350CE  After this disintegration is shown from archeology.  By the 4th Century most soldiers were recruited locally married locally and had children and aged parents .Desertion was common amongst unpaid soldiers and were a source of bandits.

Lenin quote - every society is 3 meals away from collapse. People buried valuables but never returned to reclaim them. Long distance trade collapses and with depopulation and mass migration. The whole monetary and economic cycle existed to serve the army.  With the taxation system collapsing the Romans would settle mercenaries on land with local wives. 406 the Barbarian invasion of Gaul created a crises in Britain.

 541CE Justinian plague, was bubonic plague that started  when he was Emperor.

Ascent to Power by David L Roll 2024, 446pg

How Truman emerged from Roosevelt's shadow and remade the world.  11/12/25

Born 1884 in Lamar, Missouri his grandfather was a slave owner they were Presbyterians.. They moved to Independence Missouri. He acted as a Shabbos goy for Jewish Neighbors. Graduating at  school he worked at a bank as he had no money to go to collage. When  his father died he ran the  farm for a decade.  Aged 33 he went to reenlist  in 1917 leading his Missouri National Guard where he earned respect with the Irish and German Catholic soldiers he led into combat till Armistice day. Returned home and joined Eddie Jacobson in the haberdashery business which failed and he took on himself to pay of the debt. He started his political career as a county judge then got into the senate.

FDR doctor warned him to make a good choice for  Vice President and he would not survive a 4th term. FDR wanted to remain head of the Army to the end he lasted 82 days after the election. He chose Harry Truman as Harry had a reputation in the New Deal where he had dealt with Harry Hopkins and he set up a committee to check that the armaments companies were not overcharging the government and saved the fortune. Harry was 60 when he became the 33rd  President with  no planning for the role. He had been reluctant to accept the position  of  Vice President.

Truman, before Pearl Harbour attack had set up the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program and had saved the taxpayer 10 to 15 billion in military spending. Look magazine called him one of ten most valuable civilians to help the war effort. In FDR forth election campaign he was against Dewey and could not take a chance. The 4th FDR term was with the smallest crowd as it would be an austere no frills affair. Despite FDR  health he went to Yalta at a time when Zhukov was only 50 miles from Berlin. 

On the way FDR met Ibn Saud who told him that the Arabs would never allow a Jewish State however he was the first head of state to form a close relationship with the king and Britain would not control Saudi Oil. 

 1945 April 12,,Truman was inaugurated. He sent the car to fetch his wife and daughter to be present. It would take another 6 month to beat Germany and still a year and a half to beat Japan? This was  the consensus of the army Chiefs. They were already planning Operation Downfall to invade Japan.  The war would only end with Unconditional Surrender.

Harry Hopkins was the best person who could tutor Truman on the situation. They knew each other from the New Deal years in 1933 when Hopkins was in Missouri directing laborer's to Public Works jobs. Truman had told the FDR  staff that he was keeping them all on.  Hopkins advised him he must slowly appoint his own people and so the first change he made  was secretary of labour Francis Perkins was replaced by  Clinton Anderson. Truman did not want a women in the cabinet. She had held this post for 12 years and had established Social Security.

The first speech that Truman gave at a join session of Congress and on the radio he scored a triumph despite not having FDRs skills. With Molotov in the Oval office he said the US could not agree to an unelected Polish government, so already there was a postwar divergence between the US and Soviets. Through the Red Cross, Himmler had proposed a surrender on the Western side but to keep fighting the Russians. But Truman, Churchill agreed it has to be a complete surrender.

1945 April 30, Hitters death followed by May 8th V-E day end of war in Europe. Truman gave a solemn speech that day and that the war against Japan has to be completed. The day ended with a birthday party for Truman with some of his pals and the Whitehouse cook presented him with a birthday cake. ~Afterwards Truman went into the kitchen that thank both the black and white staff. The old staff observed this was the first time since Herbert Hoover and it gave them the feeling that he really understood them.

Henry Morgenthau had plans to not rehabilitate Germany's economy and turn them into an agricultural country.

When Truman went to Potsdam he had an afternoon to wander around bombed out Berlin and its stench and saw processions of hundred of old men, women and children wondering aimlessly along the autobahn and the depths of despair. The meeting took place in the Cecilienhof Palace build by Wilhelm II for his son. A council of foreign minister would negotiate the peace treaties. The Soviets realized that they had to speed up making the Atomic bomb as Leo Szilard had warned on Nuclear Proliferation. The Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs had handed over all the information needed on Atomic research. Truman said that they would not recognize of Eastern Europe unless that were  reorganized under democratic lines. Harry Hopkins was sent to Moscow and reported back that it was all window dressing as the Society would never allow free elections in Poland. Truman allowed Poland to take a large swath of Germany as compensation for Soviet land taken from Poland and Germany would permanently be spit in and never unified.

Douglas Mac Author was appointed commander of all Allied forces, ground , sea and air. This he would command Operation Downfall, by FDR over 5 Star General Admiral Nimitz and Truman just accepted this.

Before the atomic bomb was dropped it was discussed if they should warn the Japanese where it would land but were worried that POWs would be brought to that spot. They had to plan 2 bombs to be convincing the the bomb was not a one time thing but there were lots more, even though it would be more than a week for the 3rd one. Truman considered that the saving a quarter of a million young American soldiers was worth Japans loss of a couple of cities. Stimson also warned Truman that they should be wary of the Soviets in the far  east and especially Korea. The same Polish Question of the Far East.  The  Soviets planned to occupy Manchuria, North Korea and the Sakhalin and Kerile Islands. 

1945 August 28 US occupation of Japan began at Atsugi, where a Airforce base was later set up. MacArthur set up  as Viceroy over the 80 million Japanese. In Korea north of parallel were ordered to surrender to the Soviets and south to the Americans. North Vietnam to surrender to the Nationalist Chinese and south to France.

The Reforms that were brought to Japan were amazing and Japan had no way of resisting them breaking up the conglomerates and oligarchs political reforms that would play well in America. The idea was to build Japan into an anti Communist economic powerhouse and later we saw the "Japanese Miracle" 

Back home Truman had to deal with returning to peace time production and demobilizing 12.2 million  active soldiers by the end of 1945. Also 1.8 million workers lost their war time jobs. This was urgent as it had been predicted the war would last another year, even though the conversion to peace  plans were ready. There had been price controls and they could not be eased to quickly. Because of war time wage controls companies had made big profits and unions would press for wage increases. There was a post war demand for consumer products and big war time savings thus inflation could be expected.

The Marshal Plan amongst other things resulted in American products being sold to Europe and forced Europe to cooperate laid the groundwork for economic integration. It created economic stability with democracy. It helped the rebuilding of factories and made communism less attractive.

1944 June The GI bill had been signed by FDR. Truman appointed Bradley revitalized  the Veteran Administration  between 1945 and 1947 before he replaced Eisenhower as chief of Staff. However he did nothing to improve the benefits of African Americans and female Veterans. Vets could get guaranteed loans for farms and businesses, but black veterans had to struggle for the GI rights. The GI bill changed many lives and democratized the country this is what made The Greatest Generation, but it would take another year before Truman addressed civil rights.

Truman wanted Eleonor Roosevelt on his team as she had great influence with Negro voters. She was put on  the US delegation for the first UN conference in London.

Because Congress failed to deal with labour relations and preferred Truman to deal with it through executive orders it resulted in massive work stoppages, inflation and product shortages and Truman approval rating dropped.

Steel was important to the health of the US economy and all the steel mills workers went on strike. An increase in the price of steel was authorized and this solved the problem..

Ernest Bevin the British foreign minister confronted the Soviets especially about their occupation of Azerbaijan in norther Persia. The US realized that it needed sufficient force ready to use and the concept of Soviet Containment started a idea by George Kennan. Churchill said that Russia does not want a war but wants the fruits of war and indefinite expansion. Negotiations should be conducted with strength backing up the west.

Truman had to deal with a coal strike and also a strike of railway workers. Clifford Clark  wrote a speech for Truman where he said this was not a contest between the government and Labour but between Labour and the management of Whitney and Johnson. The result is that thousand will not be able to get back to their loved ones and people will die. He announced that as Commander in Chief he would get Congress to order the army to operate the trains. The strike ended the next day. The Union of mineworkers negotiations between the Union and Operators got nowhere  so Truman ordered the Federal government to get involved. This gave mineworkers federal  safety rules, better wages and health funds and  retirement packages. Thus the union could claim a victory.

By executive order Truman establish in 1946 The Presidential  Committee on Civil Rights. 1947 At Lincoln Memorial, Washington was the first time the US president had addressed a NAACP  platform, next to its leader Walter White, and Eleonor Roosevelt. This event had been coordinated with the White House and Truman promised to deliver a major declaration of government policy in front of thousands of spectators and over numerous radio stations 

 In 1948 he signed an executive order integrating the army, and banned discrimination in Federal hiring.

George Marshall was put in charge of Americas foreign policy because of his stature, judgement and ability. 1947 Marshall arrived in Moscow after stops in Paris and Berlin where he had seen the winter of 1946/1947was the coldest since 1880 with coal shortages in England and throughout the continent, with unheated home , frozen pipes and deaths of exposure. Germanies capacity to produce coal, steel and machinery was the key to Europe's recovery and would provide a market for German goods. The Soviets wanted Western Europe to slide into ruin and chaos rendering it ripe for Soviet influence and domination.  The US had to finance so they could get the supplies to sustain life and stop disintegration. In the end a total of 93 billion worth of surplus good over a period of 3 years was supplied. This was supposed to be the Truman Concept  but Truman said that the worst Republican can vote for it if it is named after the General. The plan was offered to Eastern Europe and Soviet who did not want western influence Molotov rejected it and Stalin forces 6 Soviet satellites not to take it.  At the same time George Kennan in Japan said this same  plan has to stabilize and revitalize Japans economy.

In a speech delivered to a joint session of Congress, Truman for the first time called out that the Soviets were the villain of the Cold War.

1947 The Rio Pact, officially the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), was a  collective security agreement for the Americas, Organized by Marshall and Truman delivered a speech. This mentioned Article 5 that later became part of NATO.

1947 To secure these  rights was a long awaited document and became the basis of Civil Rights after that it  that catapulted   civil rights to the forefront and was a political bombshell that spilt the Democratic Party. Even FDR with all his political skills would not have risked alienating the Southern Democrats.

Berlin Crises. to be added 1948/49

 Election of  Truman 

The polls pundits and media were predicting  for of the Republican Thomas Dewey , Governor of NY to win an overwhelming victory so it was not easy to raise money for Truman. The leaders of the Black Americans decided that Truman was really serious when he talked about civil Rights and knew he would not be getting support from Southern Democrats and called for a collection to support him.. Knowing that more women would be voting in the election than ever before and women were worried about rising food prices " Housewives for Truman" was organized. In his whistle stop campaigns Truman accused the "Wall Street big business and glutens of privilege " which was a code name for Tom Dewey. In farming areas he warned the the previous Republican Administration of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover were "do nothing" governments. When their were bumper grain harvest the farmers were forces to sell it immediately at whatever price was offered because the government had not build storage bins. He took part in the Iowa ploughing competition to show he was once a dirt farmer like them. While Dewey knew nothing about growing wheat, corn and soybeans.

In Hollywood Ronald Reagan the president of the Screen Actors guild introduced him. The Berlin Wall Crises was on and Truman claimed that he was the best to deal with Soviet aggression. Dewey also campaigned on trains but only stopped at big cities. The Day after the election the Chicago Daily Tribune came out with headlines Dewey beats Truman. Once Truman won he no longer felt he was under the shadow of Roosevelt. His inauguration speech was meant to be on domestic issues. However his advisors told him he had to talk about  foreign policy for the next 4 years. The setting up of the United Nations,  Marshall Plan and the defense of Europe and by setting up NATO. To contain the Soviets a 4 point plan was set up to improve growth of underdeveloped nation by taking the them technical  assistance, since more than half the population lived in poverty and misery, This was a forerunner for AID and the Peace Corps.

In Japan Mac Arthurs Deconstruction Law where he  wanted reform and  purge the Industrial leaders who had supported the war. However Truman gave instructions must raise production to get the economy going. Joseph Dodge a Detroit banker who had been successful in Germany was sent to  Japan. Truman had supported MacArthur's reforms in Japan between 1945 to 1947 giving women the  vote, free elections , land reform, private property protection and constitutional rights.

Truman now had another reason to recognize Israeli it had taken all Jews from displaced peoples camps in occupied Germany. Now there were Jews and others in these camps who had fled from Eastern Europe. Truman's executive order was to open a  consulate near the camps to allow them to get US visas. Thousand of exiled Polish Army veterans as well as Greek, and German expellees as well as people who had fled from the Far East. Truman had fought hard to help refugees despite the 1924 quota system.

Epilogue-- By winning the 1948 election Truman no longer felt under the shadow of FDR and could make his own decisions. He had been frustrated by Roosevelt dereliction of duty in not informing him of both foreign and domestic affairs before he died. Roosevelt was always to be careful that nobody else took credit for any accomplishment.

Roosevelt was the first President who had a library opened in his name.  Truman had served 8 years minus 82 days.

In 1952 when Eisenhower was elected Truman immediately sent for him to help pass on the office in an organized way.

1965 Lyndon Johnson came to  the Truman Library in Independence Missouri where he sighed the Medicare Bill in Truman's presence. Both Truman and his wife were buried at his Library.

Note: This book  ends with Truman's only election to the Presidency   The transition of power from FDR to Truman was a remarkable success. The term from 1948 to 1952 is not covered.

Daughter of the Bamboo Grove : by Barbra Dermich 2025 300pg

 From China to America a true story of Abduction, Adoption and separation of twins. The harm of the one child policy has done to  China 3/12/25

In September 2000 a woman gave birth to twins in Hunan province, Geofeng village, Fangfang and Shuangjie, notorious one-child policy the rise of international adoption.

2017 The author was a journalist in NY for the Los Angeles Times, but had spent 7 years in Beijing. The story slowly unfolded that's 160,000 Chinese mostly girls had been adopted all over the world.1979 the Communist Party had a mystical belief that population control was the key to jump starting the economy. Slogan on the wall said The economy rises as the population falls and  Later, longer and fewer was another slogan. This was a policy simply not in the Chinese tradition and would only be lifted in 2015. Till mid 20 C 1 in 5 babies died before the age of a year.

Moa Zedong was a  from Hunan  the largest rice producing province in China,  born 1893 in Shoashan. 1927 he joined the Socialist youth league. The diversion of the workforce away from agriculture caused famine. 45 Million died in the Great Leap Forward. Then in the decade long Cultural Revolution caused the death of up to 2 million and displaced and damaged the economy ,only ended with the death of Moa in 1976

2000 In Geofeng village. Till 1960s there were still tigers in the mountains. Zanhau the oldest daughter born 1995 attended school but had to take care of her brothers so dropped out after and never mastered literacy. Second daughter born 1997 According to the law Zehau were supposed to wait 5 years before the second birth. Abortions were a common and inexpensive way of birth control. 

Need for a son A rural women could only be buried next to her husband in the Zengs cemetery only if she had a son. The status of the family in the village suffered by failure to produce a son, and this was a common cause of  a woman committing suicide. Sons were the ones who took over the farm and supported the parents Like with Fangfang she lived under a false name and fabricated age.  Goafeng had a bank a  bus station, cluster of government offices including the Family Planning one, a wet market where the floor was covered with the mess of newly slaughter animal, open 5 days a week for farmers to sell their produce as well as counterfeit Nike athletic shoes. 

1979 Deng visited the US. He embraced socialism with Chinese characteristics all about making money. lifted controls on domestic travel, so you could move outside of the place you were registered. Migrants are expected home for the Lunar New Year and all industry closes for 15 days. Daughters move to the husbands family.

2000 was the year of the Dragon and people born that year would be strong, independent and destined to success and wealth. Citrus grew well and the family had fat quality pomelos, a source of cash. She gave birth to identical twins. Nobody in the family had, had twins. Identical twins comes from a single fertilized egg that splits, often the second child is a breech birth.

Heroes of the revolution were celebrated in the 50s purged in the 60s and rehabilitated in the 1970s

720 to 645 BCE Guaan Zhong and ancient Chinese philosopher boasted of his big nation, with vast territory and strong military forces to attain Supremacy. 1953 China briefly banned the import of contraceptives. The Party did not want to admit that the failed policy caused famine. They saw the booming population not as a miracle but as a nightmare. Thomas Malthus 1768 in Essay of principle of Population said the perpetual cycle of poverty as  population always outpaced food supply. The 1969 UN Population Fund aim was curbing population growth.

One Child Policy 

1968 Population Bomb by Paul Elhrich joined the chorus of doom. Sterilization of millions of men in India was unpopular, that in 1977 Indira Gandhi's Congress Party was booted out of office.

China's was poorer that many African countries at the time. China's GDP was $164 as against Taiwan $1,917 and the US of  $11,164 Reducing the population was considered easier that increasing the countries output. and in 1979 China's population just passed the billion mark. Family planning morphed into a monstrous organization and by 1990s it was estimated that eight three million Chinese worked at least part time for Family Planning. After giving birth to the first  child women were required to have a IUD inserted that could not easily be removed without the medical profession.  A second child received a fine and a civil servant could lose their job. It could result in punishment of their house being set on fire or pigs, chickens and oxen being confiscated. their tractor could be taken - you violate the policy your family could be destroyed. Forced abortions, and planning officers had quotas to meet. 

People were exhorted to exterminate class enemies that is anybody less poor or better educated. Rural china were not among the people clamoring for democracy in 1989 at Tlemamen Square. A pregnancy without a marriage certificate could be terminated and a fine had to be paid. $314 Billion was collected in fines and many rural jurisdictions were dependent on those fines for their budgets like small American town who set up speed traps to raise revenues. Legal marriage age was also raised in 1980 the wife had to be 20 and husband 22. In Hunan Province the law allowed for a second child if both parents were farmers.

If a child was not registered it could not receive an ID card to receive medical insurance open a bank account or even buy a railroad ticket. These were "black children" till 2015 when the One Child Policy was lifted and 30 million people belatedly received them. With parents getting jobs in cities 61 million children were left behind in villages.

Migrant women made up to 60% of the workforce, since they were not as useful for work on the farm, could be sent to earn cash for the family.

Female infanticide  was noted way back and was more common in times of famine as families did not want to pay a dowry or for the foot binding at the time. Sometimes things backfired as folktales tell of angry ghosts returning to kill sons. Under the Communist Party, Marriage law in 1950 explicitly banned killing newborns, prohibited polygamy, concubinage or forced marriage. However with the One child policy killing newborns returned. After 1991 China opened  up to International adoption. In some provinces there were 140 boys to 100 girls, thus 60 million girls were missing. No quite as large numbers of girls were hidden and not registered until 2015. Mothers were aunts, aunts were mothers, as people became adept to circumventing the rules.

Note 19C Europe up to 40% of babies were abandoned. The philosopher Rousseau disclosed that he had dumped 3 babies at a foundling home likely most died.

Enforcement of one child policy took place where the family was registered. Trafficking's was a long standing plague in China with thousand being kidnapped. In 2008 the year of the Beijing Olympics China boasted double digit growth. Family planning had taken  pigs and tractors now it was taking children. The issue  started when in 2005 when they dared to take a boy, and the parent was a well off person who stood up. The boy was returned malnourished covered with sores, but this opened up the floodgates. Families started to talk and organize. Their next miscalculation was when a girl was taken from a farmer who had married a young women  who was pregnant. He had been an early member of the party. he had kept the obligatory poster of Mao on his war long since. A big group brought a petition and there was an office in Beijing accepting petitions. A great rage against the local officials and challenged the system. There was a suspicion that the children had been trafficked for their organs.

2005 Kidnapping on a tip stopped a van with 12 sedated  babies which were taken to a hospital and the suspects arrested. Later 27 a total suspects were arrested mostly belonging to the same family. The suspects claimed they were selling to welfare institutions that were run by the government thus legitimate. 1991 China enacted a Adoption Law as children were piling up in orphanages. Most babies headed to the US. Like the Panda diplomacy where they supplied foreign zoos so this was a friendship building program. By 2005 the number explorted  was  7,906 babies the top country to adopt out, US ,Spain, Canada , France, UK, Dutch  and Australian were also destinations. The families wanted girls not boys and 95% of the babies were girls offered from China. Initially singles could adopt that opened the way to gay couples to adopt, and most came from the countryside where women tended not to drink or smoke, so were children of choice. 

At this stage young women leaving the countryside to work in industry were earning nearly as much as men and sending home the money. Finally the policymaker began to grasp the demographic catastrophe and even before 2015 stopped enforcement and fewer babies were abandoned. But there was big money in adoption. By 2006 the secrets of the adoption business spilled out into the public. Orphanages were required to look for birth parents for 60 days before putting them up for adoption and found a way of laundering these trafficked babies. The government temporary suspended adoptions from the Hunan Province while they investigated.

1997 Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule, but still enjoyed self rule.

The family got their first TV in 2007 and soon after that the 3 wheeled motorized cart that families used as it was cheap and could take produce to market. Most Chinese adults at this stage had cellphones. A fortune teller told them Fanfang was  alive would have a good future and one day they would see her. In adult life at 20 or 30 these women would want to know where they came from and how they got there.

The writer moved to Beijing and was the China correspondent she was a career women who put off having children till after 30. In 1979 the US normalized relation with China and news organization opened offices there. During the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics journalist had freedom to travel around the country. She interviewed people with AIDS caused by unnecessary blood transfusions. On one assignment she reported on lead poisoning in Hunan province.

1949 The Communist Party standardized Chinese but local dialects persists. In rural China the further up the mountain you go, the scarcer the facilities and shabbier the houses and  smaller the agricultural plots. Fangfang had a identical twin sister a look alike and perhaps she would succeed in finding her. By 2024 when China ended her international adoption over 160,000 had been sent out. Fangfang would have been 2 and a half a full year older than most adoptees.

1968 The Population Bomb by Paul Enrlich failed to materialize, the Chinese economic miracle caused hungry migrants to leave the countryside. In 2011 China's working population plateaued at 900 million. There were 7 males to 5 females. Sexually frustrated people are not conducive to social stability. Educated women , many chose to remain single. The one Child policy of 1979 was a billed as a temporary measure. In 2008 the Sichuan Province earthquake killed 69,000 people and thousands of children in shoddily build schools leaving rural families childless. People forced to get sterilized now mobilized a campaign to reverse vasectomies'. Fertility treatment was offered to menopausal mothers to get "replacement babies." In other disaster where parents were separated from babies and searching for them some ended up being kidnapped.

Urbanization had been more effective in keeping down birthrates than coercion. Thousands trashed Family Planning offices. In 2012 Mo Yan won the Nobel prize for the book Red Sorghum. A portrayal of rural China and its history, the same year that Xi Jinping became head of the CCP.

2013 couples were allowed to have a second child if one of the parents was an only child, finally they pulled the plug in 2015 as an active response to the aging population.

In Romania Nicolae Ceausescu had banned abortion and contraception believing that a high birth rate would lead to economic growth. After he was shot in 1989 by firing squad it was discovered that orphanages had  more than 170,000 children. As a religious Christian she felt a mission to adopt babies.

Till WW2 international adoption was rare, Noble Prize 1938 writer Pearl Buck who wrote  The Good Earth adopted 7 children in 1920s and advocated transracial international adoption. Italy sent 3000 children to the US as war orphans. In reality they were babies taken from unwed mothers by the Catholic Church. The largest program was from the Korean War1950 to 1953 under the help of an Evangelicals couple who sent abroad 200,000 Korean children half to the US. many of these children had been fathered by US soldiers. As the Vietnam war was winding down Operation Babylift brought 3,000 babies to the US. 

In the Post War baby boom pregnant young women in the US without husbands were  forced by maternity homes to sign away  at least 2.7million babies, between 1944 and 1975. In 1970 sex education in schools started and birth control became widely available. Single motherhood gained respectability. 1973 Roe v Wade. legalized abortion nation wide in the US. Less children became available at a time when there was a queue to adopt due to infertility and same sex marriage. 2002 Angelina Jolly adopted from Cambodia , Ethiopia and Vietnam and Madonna adopted 4 of her 6 children from Malawi.

Marsha. Families adopting in China would be in a group with a bus and a guide and she adopting parents receive a certificate of parental rights through abandonment and the birth parents have no legal claim on the child . When Marsha  saw an article in the press about a kidnapped twin she realized where Ester came from and shut down the Website. It was when Esther reached 16 that she was ready to meet her twin and in 2017, 8 years after the author had contacted Marsha that they returned the call and were ready to deal with the situation. Marsha was shocked that she had been an unwitting participant in a system tainted with corruption, a large money making venture. In the US adoptees are allowed to obtain the original birth certificate.2 a half year old Esther. The orphanage gave a story of the child's origin many were not true, everything she had been told about Esther was a lie. Marsha with her son Sam and his wife set  up a nonprofit Adopt a Child with a website. Also the Christian Alliance for  the Child, leading adoption agencies were started by missionaries, Evangelists and Baptists.  

The author organizes for them to visit the family and the all go to China to the village meet the family and the other twin. We learn a lot about China for example from 1949 Mao made China all stay on 1 time line. It is UCT 08.00 which is the Beijing area instead of 5 time zones. Births of fraternal twins are 3 times more frequent than identical twins where the zygote spits. Fraternal twins have 2 eggs and 2 sperms.  Identical twins have the identical DNA. Esther was told she was an early speaker and spoke Chinese which she could not remember at all. They had to visit on the 15 day holiday of the Lunar New year when the whole of China return to their villages to be with family and they travelled in 2019. Meeting her twin sister and finding out she had been loved and not abandoned also she felt she did not look like an American but could not speak Chinese. The Zeng family had the land they farmed even though the communist system did not give them outright ownership. They had no mortgage and no car. They remembered people dying of starvation. Moa death led to an end of collectivization and they were able to eat. Economic liberalization of the 1980s enabled new freedoms, the right to cultivate your own fields and to travel out of the village. Girls married out but boys stayed in the same village. younger Chinese had been forced to learn English at school but nervous of using it. When they visited an orphanage most of the children appeared to be disabled. It appeared that most people build big houses in the village but work in the cities and use them once a year. It is not uncommon for 1 identical twin to be gay and 1 strait. People were earning more than their parents and living longer. With internet is has become very easy to find people across the globe and DNA testing  confirms relationships. However not everybody wants to be found. Many return to China to discover their heritage and learn the language.

DNA is the best means of trying to trace birth parents and siblings. In 2009 the Chinese police set up a DNA system to stop child trafficking. Some adoptees want to be found other don't. Some were worried about the financial expectation of the birth family.

Twins: There is an entire study by academics across the disciplines on twins. Some countries have special register on birth of twins for future research. Twinsburg , Ohio hosts an annual summer gather of twins. The study most liked is of identical twins especially those separated in infancy something rare. Checking the difference of nature and nurture. Jewish twins born in 1933 in Nazi Germany separated when their parents divorces . One brought up in Nazi youth and the other on a kibbutz in Israel. Joseph Mengele experimented on 3000 mostly Jewish twins. Twins raised together will consciously want to be different. Twins raised apart grow more similar with age. No unusual for one of the identical twins to be gay. The challenge of being brought up with people of a different race.

Covid: Trump called this the China disease. China at first seemed to contain it and Xi's rhetoric was of the advancing East adn declining West. However China refused the foreign vaccine in favor of its own and was still in lockdown after 2021 when the rest of the world opened up. When China opened up because of the protests 1.4 million people died in 5 weeks. Covid started in Wuhan China in 2019. Covid Lockdown in US from March 2020 till  May 2023.. Nearly the entire US press core was expelled from China for reporting on Covid . China spurned the MRNA vaccines in favour of its own a product that proved ineffective. It was estimated that 1.4 million died in the 5 weeks after the lockdown ended in China. by 2022 there are more deaths than births. There are not enough women in China today, as many as 20 million bachelors.

Demographics: in 2022 there were more deaths than births in China. The same Family planning officers got a whiplash from the change to now encourage more births. So many girls are missing that there are not enough childbearing age women today. Children left in villages while there parents were working in cities did not have a happy childhood.

The ruling  Communist Party today considers the One Child Policy as one of the unspeakable blunders like the Great Leap forward adn Cultural Revolution. The Zengs congratulated themselves on flouting the one child policy. In the 35 years  it shattered marriages caused countless suicides of parents. Everyone was a victim or perpetrator. Sons know they were the cause of the sacrifice of their older sisters, leaving more than 20 million bachelors.

2023 China's economy can be described as stagflation or a malaise. Xi Jinping cracked down on private education as it promotes inequality. The political climate in China and Donald Trump in the US discourages travel between them.

 Time Line of this books

1921Sun Yat-sen tried to bring a modern democracy

1922 Chiang Kai-shek generalissimo  in 1949 became leader of Taiwan.

• 1949 Mao Zedong   Born 1893
  
• 1958 -1962 Moa's great leap forward resulting in between 30 to 45 mullion excess deaths.  
• 1966- 1976 Cultural Revolution. about 1.8 million of the most skilled people died in this.
• 1968 Population Bomb by Paul Elhrich 
• 1972 Nixon visited Mao in China
• 1973 Roe v. Wade,  US Supreme Court allows abortion. Less babies available for adoption.
• 1976 Hua Guofeng cautiously opened to the world and rehabilitated those purged from the cultural revolution
•  1978 Deng Xiaoping  introducing capitalist practices like Special Economic Zones (SEZs)  decollectivizing  agriculture. Free movement outside of registered place from 1985.
• 1979 Hong Kong reverts to China.  On country 2 systems supposed  to be for 50 years.
• 1979 -2015 One child policy 
• 1989 Tiananmen square massacre 
• 1991 China opened to international adoption
• 1993 Jiang Zemin. Expanded trade to every continent.
• 2000 Twins  Fangfang and Shuangjie, born.
• 2003 Hu Jintao.   Period of freer press, open economy, economic power, and development. 
• 2008 Beijing Olympics with promise of allowing   foreign reporters greater freedom. 
• 2009 Frog by Mo Yan a novel by a social critic. He won the Nobel literature prize in  2012.
• 2013 Xi Jinping current President. Priority Communist party not to lose control.
• 2013 The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the new Gospel of Adoption by Katheryn Joyce
• 2017 Went to take Ester to see her twin sister in Goefeng Hunan, China.
• 2020Jan Covid Lockdown till May 2023
• 2024 China stopped all international adoptions.
• 
  
• Israel had Covid from March 2020 till April 2022. Because Israel's a small country's with health system has been computerized for 30 years and the country would act  as a resource for the inoculation company who were given open access to all Israel information. Israel was the first country to get the vaccination.
• Barbara Demick is an American journalist .born 1959 She spent 7 years in Beijing  and then in Seoul as a reporter. Working for the NY Times and LA Times. Also wrote a book on Life in North Korea, as well as in Sarajevo during the war of 1992 to 1996. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.