THE LANNY BUDD SERIES – A WORLD TO WIN by Upton Sinclair

Note: I am not a paid reviewer, and I have purchased this title to read for my personal enjoyment.

Sinclair’s historical spy yarns in The Lanny Budd series have our debonair socialite moving only in the highest circles. In A World To Win, set in 1940 to 1942, Lanny takes his orders from FDR and navigates Vichy France, infiltrates Germany and the appeasers in England, and has vivid encounters with Hitler, Goring and Hess, William Randolph Hearst, and even Albert Einstein. Hindered by skeptical French resistance and a life-threatening plane crash, Lanny convalesces on a yacht that moors in Hong Kong on the eve of Pearl Harbor, and he needs Mao’s help to escape China and make a date with Stalin to get Uncle Joe’s report on war with the Nazis and his reflections on the Soviet system. Escapist, sure, but the prose deftly gives character voices a contemporaneous vibe in exploring prevailing attitudes of the times: French pragmatic fatalism concerning Nazi occupation; to appease or not appease in England; the isolationist debate in U.S.; and the German view that the Brits should stand down because the Nazis are willing to take care of the red menace for the betterment of all of Europe and the West. I have Pulitzer Prize-winning Dragon’s Teeth from the series, and will add it to the list one day.