Imperialism

The Mulberry Empire, by Philip Hensher. Alfred A. Knopf. 512 pages. $26. Among historical novelists there is a class that aims for something superior to your average Michener or Uris potboiler. One thinks of Guy Garcia, Susan Sontag and now, Philip Hensher, author of The Mulberry Empire. Members of this "better" breed are intellectually and aesthetically more ambitious than the best-selling writers but often lack the best sellers' ability to engage us in a tightly constructed story of a faraway time and place.

Mobjack Imperial Crab Whitey Schmidt's "The Crab Cookbook" includes recipes for crab prepared nearly every way imaginable - including this classic take on crab imperial. "Crab imperial is just the dish for a warm summer's evening," writes Schmidt, recommending a light appetizer and fruit kabobs served alongside the crab. Recipe reprinted with permission. Makes 4 to 6 servings 1/2 cup plus one tablespoon milk, divided 1 1/2 teaspoons butter 1 tablespoon flour 1 egg yolk, well beaten 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/4 teaspoon celery salt 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, divided 1 pound backfin crab meat Parsley 1. Preheat oven to 400°.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Her face was splattered with mud. Sweat dripped from her eyebrows. When Kristin Mulhall trudged to Clocker's Corner that morning at Santa Anita Park, her life changed. She was 19, galloping horses at the California track and training three of her own. She was hot and thirsty. At Clocker's Corner, an outside terrace where horsemen and fans gather during morning workouts, she ran into her father and asked him for money to buy water. Her father, Richard Mulhall, a veteran horseman, was talking with a group of men. One took particular interest in Kristin.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a man whose political success is largely attributable to the aura of befuddled incompetence he uses to disarm his adversaries, was a failed Watergate baby. In 1974, a slew of often sanctimonious and very liberal Democratic politicians rode the tide of understandable national disgust with Richard Nixon to Congress. Then the lieutenant governor of Nevada, Mr. Reid ran for the U.S. Senate, hoping to tie his opponent to the "imperial presidency" that had allegedly sprung up ex nihilo under Nixon.

A SATELLITE picture of Africa at night says it all: Most of the continent is dark, except for South Africa, which glitters like a diamond. Indeed, less than 8 percent of Africa's 722 million people have electricity. To Eskom, South Africa's state-owned electric utility, this presents a unique opportunity. In the eight years since the end of apartheid, it has built power installations in Tanzania, Namibia, Mauritius and Swaziland and is evaluating many more projects. Other South African companies are equally aggressive.

TWO MAJOR exit polls scheduled for Mexico's July 2 presidential election offer the best hope the count will be honest. There is no major violence so far to frighten voters into prolonging the status quo, as there was six years ago. There are allegations of coercion and vote-rigging, based on expectation as much as evidence. Two elections ago, in 1988, most Mexicans thought the left-winger Cuahtemoc Cardenas had won. But Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)

Rebecca Carpenter, an English professor at Western Maryland College, has been named "the most promising young [Joseph] Conrad scholar" in the world.Carpenter, 29, received the Prize for Younger Conradians from the Joseph Conrad Society of America for her devotion to studying the work of the British author, who wrote "Heart of Darkness," "Lord Jim" and other novels."

TWO recent events, one unfortunate and one exciting, seemingly unrelated.But maybe not.For through the second, exciting event comes the potential for neutralizing the unfortunateness of the first, and also for correcting one of America's great mistakes.The first event was the regrettable success of the Toronto Blue Jays against the Philadelphia Phillies. And why did so many find this regrettable? Let's be honest. It isn't just that the Blue Jays are bland. Nor is it just that they play in a carpeted mausoleum.

The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, by David Gilmour. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 368 pages. $26. Kipling the poet and Kipling the man with the scarring childhood occupy books elsewhere. David Gilmour is interested in Kipling the imperialist, the poet laureate of Empire, who turns out to be more complex than the blatting jingoist of popular repute. This does not mean that Rudyard Kipling turns out to have been a wooly lamb. He believed that Britain had a right -- and a duty -- to rule lesser peoples, and he was sure which peoples were lesser.

THE INCREASINGLY antagonistic rhetoric traded between the United States and Venezuela has not helped U.S. diplomacy in Latin America, and neither have attempts by the Bush administration to tar that country's president, Hugo Chavez, as a hot-headed, far-left dictator who is a threat to the region. The last thing the administration needs now is a narrow-minded, far-right religious zealot with ties to the White House speaking out of turn about U.S. policy in Venezuela. But that's what the administration has in the Rev. Pat Robertson, whose recent call for the U.S. to assassinate Mr. Chavez was intemperate and irresponsible at a time when the administration has to convince large parts of the world that the war against global terrorism is about democratic ideals and not religious beliefs.

Charlie Sheen was clearly the man of the year. You'll recall that 2011 began with the oafish actor celebrating his own narcotic and sexual crapulence like a victorious gladiator working the crowds. He was egged on by a media with as much decency as the cons on the top tiers of the prison who chant "fresh fish" as the new inmates walk into general pop, their eyes stinging from delousing powder. Mr. Sheen succeeded at turning his own debasement into a national pseudo-event by calling the very definition of losing "winning.

After cranking the engine to circulate its motor oil and spraying a couple shots of starter fluid under the hood, Sherman Taffel held his breath as he inserted the key. His 1962 Buick Skylark — the first car with a lightweight, aluminum V8 engine — roared to life with a single turn of the ignition. After sitting outdoors since November, it rumbled contentedly on a bed of dry leaves, raring to go. "That's how you wake up an engine that's been sitting idle," said Taffel, a retired Baltimore city educator and an expert and vintage cars.

Barbara Ann Griffith, who owned Imperial Egyptian Stud Farm in Parkton, died of heart disease Oct. 21 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 77 and lived on Mount Carmel Road. Born Barbara Ann Boone in Baltimore, she was raised in East Baltimore and was a 1951 Patterson Park High School graduate. She married Douglas Warner Griffith, an automobile dealership owner who went on to have Chrysler, Plymouth, Corvette, Honda and BMW agencies in Baltimore, Westminster and York, Pa. The couple purchased a Brooklandville farm and began raising purebred Arabian horses.

Kaye White of Bloomington, Minn., was looking for the recipe for the Crab Imperial that was served at the now-closed Olney Inn in Olney. Interestingly, I received two versions claiming to be the Olney Inn crab imperial recipe from readers. The only difference between the two versions was that in one the crab was topped with an egg white and mayonnaise meringue and garnished with a mashed potato piping around the outside of the dish. The crab imperial itself was identical in both versions.

Martha Nielson of Trenton, N.J., was hoping someone would have the recipe for a Crab Imperial dish similar to the one she and her husband used to enjoy on their trips to Maryland. It was served at Busch's restaurant in Cape St. Claire. The restaurant closed several years ago and though she has tried many recipes for Crab Imperial, none has come close to the light and fluffy one with a cheesy topping that was served at Busch's. Unfortunately, we did not receive any responses from our readers for a Crab Imperial with a cheese topping.

If an everyday pilsner is a family sedan, then Imperial Pilsner is a turbo-charged sports car. "It is not a beer for beginners," says Jim Koch, brewer and founder of the Boston Beer Co., which brews Samuel Adams beer. Rather, he says, "it is a treat for beer connoisseurs." Samuel Adams Hallertau Boston Beer Co.$10 for four 12-ounce bottles The label promises an intense hop experience, and this copper-colored brew delivers just that. The bitterness initially took my breath away. Something to sip while nibbling a big blue cheese.

Paris -- Power lies in reputation, and American power is in decline because the nation's reputation is in decline. Commentators tend to blame this on the Clinton administration for its inconsistencies, but there is more to it.The Sunday Telegraph in London has always been the newspaper of traditional British conservatism. One of its commentators, John Casey, has just published a criticism of the Clinton administration's Cuban policy that becomes a vitriolic attack on American conduct toward the Caribbean and Latin America since the time, 40 years ago, when Cuba ''was a client state of the Americans and a world center of crime.

Annapolis -- WHEN I BEGAN covering Latin America as a foreign correspondent 30 years ago, even many Latins direly characterized themselves as "the people who never win." The great Mexican philosopher Leopoldo Zea had written typically of the pessimism that seemed to infuse Latin America from its very birth: "We carry our defects in our blood."The Latins' abiding pessimism about their prospects was, of course, always exacerbated by the gnawing successes of their neighbor to the north. And, so, "anti-gringoism" and "anti-imperialism" were added to the Latins' geopolitical vocabulary, as the United States, simply by existing, eternally rubbed in their failures.

For six years, it was a perk Home Depot's chief executive, Robert L. Nardelli, could not do without: a catered lunch for his top deputies, served daily on the 22nd floor of the company's headquarters in Atlanta. But several days into his tenure as Nardelli's successor, Francis S. Blake quietly abolished the free meal, telling senior executives to take the elevator down to the first floor and, on their own dime, eat with the company's rank and file in the cafeteria, according to an employee.