Below is an excerpt from the authors web site , an introduction to the book. This book was just released in August of 2017, and I happened upon it at the local library. Being a fan of Paris, and loving French history, this seemed the perfect read for me.
 
Although the story is fiction, its based on a "maybe this happened" and is loosely based on real events during World War 2. The book was of course a GREAT READ, and I love when the author provides notes at the end, explaining or giving the book more context. In fact I will post the notes and research references here, this one book can lead to so many areas of interest!.

This book is part of a series, so its great to discover a new author, with more to read!!!!

Reposted from the authors web site
 
The Paris Spy
(Bantam Dell/Random House, August 8, 2017)

Maggie Hope has come a long way since serving as a typist for Winston Churchill. Now she’s working undercover for the Special Operations Executive in the elegant but eerily silent city of Paris, where SS officers prowl the streets in their Mercedes and the Ritz is draped with swastika banners. Walking among the enemy is tense and terrifying, and even though she’s disguised in chic Chanel, Maggie can’t help longing for home.

But her missions come first. Maggie’s half sister, Elise, has disappeared after being saved from a concentration camp, and Maggie is desperate to find her — that is, if Elise even wants to be found. Equally urgent, Churchill is planning the Allied invasion of France, and SOE agent Erica Calvert has been captured, the whereabouts of her vital research regarding Normandy unknown. Maggie must risk her life to penetrate powerful circles and employ all her talents for deception and spycraft to root out a traitor, find her sister, and locate the reports crucial to planning D-Day in a deadly game of wits with the Nazi intelligence elite.

Photo by Dave Sidaway, Montreal Gazette

It was one hundred and seventy years ago, that 6000 Irish immigrants perished in Montreal, due to Typhus fever. They had fled their homeland, Ireland due t the great famine of 1847-1848. Most where the very poor and many were already sick on the voyage over, thus why is also called "ship fevor"
 
In the year of 1859, bridge workers working on the Victoria bridge uncovered the mass grave, many of them, themselves Irish. At the time they erected a memorial, so that future generations would not forget. Officially named the Irish Commemorative Stone, it is more commonly known as the Black Rock and also has been referred to as the Ship Fever Monument.
 
Today, the Irish community has been lobbying for a more substantial monument and better preservation of the "Irish Commemorative Stone" As the land has been purchased by Hydro Quebec, lets hope that the Quebec Government cares about preserving its patrimony and the telling of this important historical event, so that the story is never forgotten.

Photo by Dave Sidaway, Montreal Gazette

I confess, I myself was not aware of the amount of people who perished, as when I think of the Irish Famine, I always think of Grosse Île, near Quebec City, that was a quarantine station for the Irish immigrants arriving in Quebec. Indeed many a thousand perished there as well due to Typhus fever.
 
This is however, not just an Irish Story. Sickness Sheds had been erected to take care of and segregate those who contracted the fever. Many people helped and cared for the sick, even knowing how contagious  and how dangerous this was. John Easton Mills, the then Mayor on Montreal tended to the sick and he himself caught the fever and died.

The order of the grey nuns also tended to the sick, as did many francophone's and native Indians. Over 1000 Irish orphans were adopted by French families and helps explain why over 40% of Quebecers have some Irish ancestry. Outside of Ireland this is the largest burial ground of Irish famine victims outside of Ireland.
 
Notes: As this was in today's newspaper here, I read up on the topic, from various sources. Any errors in fact are mine, and if anyone wishes to either correct or provide more detailed accounts of any part of this narrative, I would love to hear from you.

The Falklands War

I found this book in a used book store in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia! I was surprised and intrigued as to the connections with France and New France. The book is very detailed and thus may be boring to some; however, I found this to be a unique and interesting part of history. The devil is in the details, and this book certainly takes a reader through the war, day by day. I think what is also interesting is no one at the time thought such a small insignificant peace of land would cause such a conflict. Argentina learned this the hard way.

Now, I know most will not have the time to read the book and may not be interested in that moment in history. However, one of the things I try to do when writing poetry is to see things from the human element, or a particular person's point of view. I think humanizing these events helps us to create empathy and understanding of all things, not in terms of right or wrong, but in terms of realizing that humans inflicting pain on humans is a terrible thing. And by no means do I have any answers, only by viewing problems with lots of empathy, may one soften his thoughts towards any perceived enemy.

I have included a short video of Simon Weston, a veteran of the Falkland War, with the Welsh Guards. This is a short one but he has appeared on many shows and has given many interviews. He is a man who currently advocates for better treatment for War Veterans. This is an issue that most countries fail to recognize. It was interesting to hear him speak and added the human touch to the book.

Berlin Diary by William L.Shirer

This non-fiction book is without a doubt a GREAT READ! This basically covers the build up of Nazi Germany and you get the perspective and views from inside the country. What I liked about this book, as it covers not only the historical context and content, but it’s basically from a personal point of view and describes the day to day life people had to live under. You get to see both the he right and wrong assumptions of someone who is living the period without the benefit of hindsight. I found the book very refreshing and a stark reminder of how this could come to be, even in our times.

With the election of Donald Trump, I found this book very relevant, and I certainly hope in this case history will not repeat itself, however its certainly a wake up to call to be on guard. I hope the American system can withstand the likes of Trump, and regardless of whether his intentions are the same or simply the actions of a psychotic egomaniac, the sad part is the outcome could be the same.

Below is a summary of the book by Wiki.
 
Berlin Diary (1934–1941) is a first-hand account of the rise of Nazi Germany and its road to war, as witnessed by the American journalist William L. Shirer. He was a radio reporter for CBS, covered Germany for several years until the Nazi press censors made it impossible for him to report objectively to his listeners in the United States; feeling increasingly uncomfortable, he left the country. The identities of many of Shirer's German sources were disguised to protect these people from retaliation by the German secret police, the Gestapo. The contents of this book provided much of the material for his landmark book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
 
In 1947, End of a Berlin Diary continued and finished the story of the Third Reich, from July 20, 1944, to the Nuremberg Trials.

As a side note, Donal Trump has banned Syrians from the USA, I wonder how much the American economy would have suffered had he prevented STEVE JOBS from entering the USA, yes he was a Syrian!

This is a great Non Fiction book that reads quite frankly like a novel. It is on of my favorite books about Lebanon, in fact this book was a gift to me by Samir Harfouche when I was in Beirut. Thank you deeply Samir. Lebanon is indeed a small state, the ancient land of the Phoenicians, and this book gives you a play by play score of today’s recent history. I might add that many facts outlined in this book, I have verified with many second sources, and I thank them for showing me another way of viewing the world!

Let me introduce Ron Wilson, a poet and writer, I have asked him to be a guest contributor because this story, was both entertaining, but also resonated with me, having studied the history of the middle east. Its refreshing to hear accounts of every day life, rather than from someones political point of view. I wish to thank Vee wholeheartedly for contributing here!

Sputnik - The Joke
This will be, when finished, a blog about the very first satellite in history, Sputnik. This being an event that happened well over 50 years ago, I think, cruising southward through the Suez Canal on board a US Navy Destroyer, I may have a few if the details a little wrong and in conflict with one of me sources, to aid in my memory gathering, being Wikipedia. Some times we must have to trust our memories.

It was HOT, and of this I am very certain, Wikipedia does not even mention that. We had just seen the wreckage of many ships, some of them their masts sticking out of the water at Poet Said. Or was it Port Suez, of that I am really uncertain right now, but it was the one at the North end of the Suez Canal. I saw my first camel that morning, with a rider on board, it was then that I wished I had a camera, a feeling I did not correct until a few weeks later in Genoa Italy.

About noon, the Captain came on the ship's intercom, announcing, of course, that "This is the Captain speaking..." But of course, what else could the Captain say, being that he never, ever had come on the ship's speaker system before about anything, and so we all knew that this just had to be some big news. To be sure, it was so rare that many of us wondered if we even had a Captain.

His announcement, to wit being, "I want announce that the Soviet Union has just launched the first satellite in history, the Sputnik Satellite. Carry on."

"Soviet Union? " we asked ourselves, "Isn't that in Russia or someplace?"

The rest of the afternoon was spent making up stream of Sputnik jokes that seemed to have no end. Even when, 2 days later, playing softball in Eritrea, which was known to be the hottest place on the planet. We even called our softballs "Sputnik," to the joy and excitement of hundreds of Africans who had obviously never seen softball before.

When our batters got a hit, we shouted, "There goes Sputnik..." and the excited native Africans, many of them scantily dressed, caught on and began shouting, "Sputnik! Sputnik!" when the balls were hit.

But it all ended a few days later, when President Dwight Eisenhower decided to give military support to Lebanon, during its most recent crisis. So, our Persian Gulf tour, to everyone's sincere and great disappointment, was abruptly ended.

And so, our course was reversed and we sailed back through the Suez Canal, (Or is that the Said Canal?) back past the same wreckages of ships that Israel had just sunk the year before, and when we got off the coast of Lebanon, we put the first of a stream of US Marines ashore in full battle dress and gear.

The Marines were great, and there were dozens of beautiful, bikini clad Lebanese girls watching them and cheering them on. This in itself made the whole tour of duty with the 6th Fleet worthwhile and it was probably the strangest invasion in history.

But it did not stop the Sputnik jokes. 

This is story is also an intro, into the next "GOOD READS" blog!!!!!