CIVIL WAR in the OZARKS by Phillip W. Steele and Steve Cottrell

Published in 1993 by Pelican Press.
This book was revised and re-released in 2009

I believe I purchased this book nearly 30 years ago at the St. Louis Gateway Arch, before its current setup.

The Arch seems like a cheesy tourist trap, but it is actual a great place for lovers of history. I've been there three times - each about 20 years apart.

The Arch itself is overwhelmingly immense and worth at least one close look. In the current configuration, there is also a first-rate museum under the arch with a gift shop. Sure, the gift shop has glassware and keychains, but it has always had an impressive book store. 

You can also travel to Cahokia Mounds in Illinois and climb on top of the largest Native American pyramid structure in the U.S. and look to the west and clearly see the Arch. Anyone with a sense of history gets a chill down their spine when standing on an ancient monument and looking miles away.

I bring all of this up because this is precisely the kind of connection that this book does not offer.

This is the type of Civil War book that people that say they hate history pick up and try to read and it just reinforces their impression that history is a series of dry facts recited in the order that they happened.

I really couldn't find much to criticize in what is included in this book. It tells the story of armies being assembled, troop movements, battles, and casualty counts and not much jumped out at me as being overtly inaccurate. The authors don't really take one side or the other in their re-telling of the events.

But, they miss the best parts of telling a history. It's not the numbers of the dead and wounded that make the story worth hearing, even though those are essential facts. It's the motivations of the people involved - their relationships to one another, their quirks that make them precisely the person for this moment, or precisely NOT the person for this moment (see below with Frémont.)

The authors make frequent references to how this border area between free and slave states led to a lot of swirling debates about the secession crisis and slavery. Families were split, disputes between families became infused with the external energy of the war and the whole area became a tinderbox of anger and violence. The problem with this book is that they didn't even provide more than what I wrote in the previous sentence - with one exception.

There is an addendum to the book about Jesse James and his gang. There is a lot of heartbreaking detail about the war crimes that were inflicted upon him and his family that turned him into an unflinching partisan, even long after his companions officially surrendered and long after the war was over.

If this sort of detail had been supplied throughout the book - not just about famous people like Jesse James but about regular people and why it made them join the fight, this would have made the book nothing but better.

There is a glaring example of an almost criminal lack of explanation about the most famous person in the theater throughout the entire war - John C. Frémont. Frémont entered the war as literally the second most famous member of the U.S. military, only slightly less famous than its leading general Winfield Scott (maybe even more famous.)

Frémont was famous because had led 5 highly publicized survey expeditions of the West with his wife sending reports back East (in his name) that were re-published in all of the newspapers. He had a nickname - the Pathfinder of the West. He also led an expedition in the Mexican War, was one the first two Senators from California, and the first Republican candidate for President in 1856. He had also married into one of the most powerful political families in St. Louis. He thought he was immune and this controversy and Frémont's independent attitude set the agenda for the Union war effort in the first few months of the war. 

The book notes that Frémont was slow to move, lived an ostentatious lifestyle in a mansion in St. Louis and was removed from command. It fails to note that he was removed from his position because he issued an Emancipation Proclamation for Missouri more than a year before Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation for the entire Confederacy. Lincoln told him that he couldn't have a general making such monumental policy choices on this own, but Frémont refused to take it back.

Not even having a light discussion of the issue is ridiculous for a book called Civil War in the Ozarks and a discussion of this matter would have gone well with a discussion of how this issue pushed some men into this fight.

This wasn't the only topic they failed to discuss along these lines. For example, why did they not discuss why the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma fought alongside the Confederacy. They mention that African American soldiers from Kansas fought in several battles. There was no discussion about these soldiers, except to note that they had heard rumors that they would be murdered if they surrendered in battle. How did pro-Confederate families react to them? How did they end up stationed in Kansas? 

This book could have been so much more. I rate it 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Civil War in the Ozarks by Phillip W. Steele and Steve Cottrell.

FIGHT OLIGARCHY (audiobook) by Bernie Sanders

Published in 2025 by Random House Audio.
Read by the author, Bernie Sanders.
Duration: 2 hours, 41 minutes.
Unabridged.

When I picked up this book, I had forgotten all about Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' cross country "Fighting Oligarchy" tour that he initiated in February of 2025 - just one month after Donald Trump started his second term as President. He intentionally visited places you wouldn't expect Bernie Sanders to speak, such as West Virginia, Montana, Iowa, North Carolina and Texas, often with political allies such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).

This book was designed to accompany that tour. It is a more detailed version of the speeches he delivered on that tour.

When I picked the book I was in the mood for something different. I had seen Sanders on television and social media and thought he was a pretty solid speaker, but I was curious what he would be like in a much larger dose. 

Turns out that Bernie is a compelling speaker, even though he does nothing particularly special beyond giving an earnest speech with his familiar New York City accent. 

Bernie's message is simple: “Oligarchy is a system in which a small number of extremely wealthy individuals control the economic, political, and media life of a nation. It is a system in which ordinary people have very little power to determine the future of their country. If you’re an American, it is the system in which you’re living. That must change. In the wealthiest nation on earth we must build a political movement that creates a government that represents all Americans, not just a handful of billionaires.”

On tour in West Virginia

He describes the problems we face, then he tells his audience that America has always faced tough problems and has often successfully dealt with them in the past (with examples), and then he tells how he thinks they can be dealt with. 

The problems he identifies include unlimited political spending by billionaires and corporations and severely lagging wages when compared to the growth of worker productivity (translated - you create more at work than ever before but you get paid the same).

I finished the audiobook in almost no time. Bernie was an engrossing speaker.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars our of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Fight Oligarchy by Bernie Sanders.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Kindle) by Hourly History

Published in August of 2026 by Hourly History.

Hourly History specializes in producing short histories that they typical person can read in about an hour. I like them for two reasons: 1) they offer free e-books EVERY weekend (get on their email list) and 2) there are some people and events I want to know more about, but I am not interested in investing the time required for a full scale biography.

For me, Harriet Beecher Stowe is one of those people. I am a long-time student of the American Civil War, so she is frequently mentioned in these circles. Her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was an international bestseller and helped fuel a lot of agitated discussion leading up to the Civil War.

I knew four or five important points about her pre-Civil War life, I knew about her family connections to the anti-slavery movement, and I read Uncle Tom's Cabin (see my review here) but I'd never had it all put together in one place. 

This was an interesting biography and paced well. I rate it 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life from Beginning to End. 

Q is for QUARRY (audiobook)(Kinsey MIlhone #18) by Sue Grafton

Published by Random House Audio in 2002.
Read by Judy Kaye.
Duration: 12 hours, 38 minutes.
Unabridged.

I have bounced through the Kinsey Milhone series for my entire adult life. I come and go with no discernible pattern - just popping in and out at random times in this 25 book series. It's pretty easy to do with this series because, while there are larger plots going on concerning Kinsey's family and sometimes here landlord, they don't move very quickly so I can just figure out what's going on with the family drama and then get to the mystery and enjoy how Kinsey solves it.

Synopsis

The mystery in Q is for Quarry was inspired by a real life cold case from the late 1960s. The author and the local police were hoping that the book might inspire someone to come forward with some new information. Sadly, that didn't happen in real life.

In the novel, two retired cops in ill health decide to reopen a cold case that has always haunted them and solve it before they die. They hire Kinsey to help. She will act as a set of fresh eyes and be much more physically mobile than either of them.

The case is about the body of a young woman that was found murdered and tossed into an old quarry. No one was able to identify her and there were precious few leads so the case just dried up. One of the retired cops wants to prove a felon with a long violent rap sheet did it (it fits in this m.o. pretty well) while the other retired cop is basically hoping that working the case will reinvigorate his sickly old friend. 

Kinsey is into it basically because she's got nothing else going on and she really wants to see what these two old dogs can do once they get back into the hunt.

What they find is nothing like what they expected...

My Review

They mystery is excellent. I would rate it 5 stars. The teamwork between the three of them is fun and watching these two old guys snipe and gripe is half of the fun. Of course the sniping and griping comes from mutual concern and the love that comes from a decades-old friendship. 

I quickly grew weary of the ongoing story line about Kinsey's past and a possible rapprochement with her extended family that she didn't know anything about when she was growing up. Those people are super-annoying and I'd just as soon not waste my time hearing about them. In a 12+ hour audiobook, they probably took up no more than 2 hours - but it felt like it was almost half of the book! This part of the story took a 5 star score down to a 4 star score.

Judy Kaye is excellent as the reader for this series.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Q is for Quarry by Sue Grafton.

VENUS on the HALF-SHELL by Philip José Farmer

Originally published in 1975 under the psuedonym Kilgore Trout. 

I read the 2013 edition published by Titan Books.

While suffering a bit of writer's block, Philip José Farmer (1918-2009) was inspired to write a book as Kilgore Trout. If you are not familiar with Trout, he is a fictional science fiction author in several of Kurt Vonnegut's (1922-2007) books.

Vonnegut often changes the details about Trout's life but one constant is that Trout is a prolific, but not well-known author because his books are often published by publishers of pornographic novels because he can't ever seem to make a breakthrough with mainstream publishing houses. The porn publisher put racy covers on Trout's books and then sell them with the rest of their books in porn shops.

A popular assumption is that Vonnegut meant Kilgore Trout to be a stand-in for himself and his early struggles to get published and make a breakthrough as a mainstream author. By using Trout in his books, Vonnegut was putting a rather pathetic version of himself in his own books.

Farmer took that little bit of information and wrote Venus on the Half-Shell. At the beginning of the edition that I read, Farmer explains that he sought permission from Vonnegut to write a novel in the voice of Kilgore Trout and received a rather vague permission to do so. Farmer proceeded on a "better to ask forgiveness than really clarify that you had permission" basis and Vonnegut got pretty irritated about the whole thing when the novel first appeared.

I really like Vonnegut, but he really only had himself to blame for this. This is why you hire lawyers and work out the details in a contract, even among sci-fi colleagues.

*******

The original cover 

Way back when when I was in high school, my friends and cousins had a copy of this book. I am not sure who owned it, but I eagerly read it because 1) I read everything sci-fi that I could get my hands on and 2) it sounded and looked racy. I mean - look at the cover - it looks racy!!! 

The cover is perfect, by the way, for a Kilgore Trout novel. Doesn't it look like a sci-fi book that a porn publisher would publish?

I remember my friends and cousins and I passing this book around, eagerly reading it (and in my case, re-reading it two or three times.) I might have all of those details wrong, though. It was more than 40 years ago.

I have been systematically reading my way through every Kurt Vonnegut book and I decided that a re-read of Venus on the Half-Shell was in order since it is a) sort of a Vonnegut book and b) the first Vonnegut-related book of any sort that I actually read. 

So, how was it? I remember loving it when I was a kid. Was it everything that I remembered? 

It was decent, but not great. I remembered that it was very racy. It was racy at times, but not in any great detail. I think my teenaged mind filled in a lot of blanks with imgained details that were definitely not based on any experiences I had had. I am glad I re-read it, but I'm not planning on doing it again. 

The book does have a Vonnegut feel to it. It is not a hard sci-fi book. It has a simple writing style, has sex in it, and there is a definite cost to the use of the science and technolgy. In typical Vonnegut style, the price might not be paid by the people who benefit.

I rate this novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Venus on the Half-Shell by Philip José Farmer.

Note: Douglas Adams' much better known novel Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy shares several plot points with this novel. I have no idea if that was intentional or an accident. 

HOW to EAT an ELEPHANT: ONE VOTER at a TIME (audiobook) by Sarah Longwell.

Published in September of 2026 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by the author, Sarah Longwell.
Duration: 8 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

Sarah Longwell is the publisher of The Bulwark media group. It started as a group of Never Trump Republican insiders who were looking to successfully primary Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential election. Most of them had worked campagns or been in Conservative print or broadcast media.

They looked at the resources they had on hand and noted that one of them was a website that collected and reposted Never Trump-related articles and editorials. Someone got the bright idea to create their own content and that blossomed into a media empire with nine different podcasts/YouTube shows, eleven regular newsletters, an overloaded Substack page and more. 

But, that wasn't the original purpose of The Bulwark. They originally wanted to primary Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential election. However, no one would step up to be an alternative to Trump in the 2020 primary unless they could see proof that Republicans were actually interested in an alternative. 

Sarah Longwell decided to do a series of focus groups, complete with the one way mirrors, to figure out if an alternative candidate to Trump was plausible.

Quickly, she found out that her visions of taking down Donald Trump from within the Republican Party were complete fantasy. But, now she had a new mission - use the focus groups to get a handle on how the GOP went from being the party of Reagan and Bush to being the party of MAGA.

During Covid, she turned these focus groups into Zoom meetings and she was able to crank them out in quantity in service of the theory that a single focus group might not be so accurate when it comes to getting a handle on the mood of the MAGA voter, but 50 of them should be enlightening. She has the results of hundreds and hundreds of focus groups, almost all of them discussing an aspect of the MAGA-verse.

The book is many other things besides the story of the focus groups. It's a history of The Bulwark, it's a mini-biography of the author. It's the story of her political journey from a tiny politically conservative think tank in Delaware to heading up one of the leading anti-MAGA media outlets.

Sometimes it's very personal, such as how her decision to come out of the closet. At the time she was working with the previously mentioned think tank to promote a book by Rick Santorum. The book tour included a lot of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in his "defense of marriage" arguments and she really began to feel that she had to decide if she was for this type of specious argument designed to spook the voters or for people that just wanted to live their lives without government harassment.

It turns out that moment of crisis was great preparation for the arrival of Donald Trump.

Longwell goes on to detail what she has learned and how anti-MAGA politicians can use this information to make the 2026 and 2028 campaigns successful.

I enjoyed the book, but I should - I am a fairly regular listener to Sarah Longwell's two podcasts (one is about the focus groups, one is with a rotating crew of attorneys that discuss the legality (or illegality) of various Trump Adminstration actions. If you are a Never Trumper and into political discussions, this will be of interest to you and comes highly recommended.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time by Sarah Longwell.

UNDER the BLACK ENSIGN (Kindle) by L. Ron Hubbard

Originally Published in 1935.
Re-published by Galaxy Press in e-book format in 2008.

Originally published in the pulp magazine Five Novels Monthly in 1935, Under the Black Ensign is a Caribbean pirate story set in the late 1600s. It is the story of Tom Bristol, a crewman on a British naval vessel who moves from one ship to another and another and another as he has a series of improbably adventures.

While the story is laughably improbable, it is entertaining, and moves very quickly.

Hubbard uses authentic terms for parts and stations of the ship. The e-book is equipped with hyperlinks in the text that go to a rather large glossary. Some of the language involving black characters in the back sound archaic and grating to modern sensibilities, but Hubbard demonstrated very egalitarian racial attitudes in this e-book.

I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. It's a good bit of mindless adventure. It can be found of Amazon.com here: Under the Black Ensign.

GOLDA MEIR: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Part of their series on the Palestine Israeli Conflict) (kindle) by Hourly History

Published by Hourly History in March of 2026.

Hourly History specializes in short biographies and histories that a reader can read in about an hour. They offer free samples every week (whole books!) so I now have several of their e-books on my phone so that I am never without something to read. 

To be honest, I didn't pick Golda Meir: A Life from Beginning to End on purpose. It was in my collection and when I was picking a new book to download my fat finger clicked on this book instead of a a different one. 

I decided to roll with it - I knew precious little about her except that she was an early example of a woman rising to political leadership of a country in the 20th century and she was one of the founders of modern Israel. Clearly I had plenty left to learn, even if I didn't become an expert on Golda Meir (1898-1978.)

I had assumed that Meir had emigrated to Israel/Palestine from Europe. Indeed, she was born in what is now Ukraine and later lived in what is now Belarus (both were then part of the Russian Empire.) I was surprised to learn that she moved to the United States and lived in New York City, Colorado, and mostly Milwaukee. In Milwaukee, she became an American citizen. Who knew Milwaukee public schools produced a Prime Minister of Israel?

Even when she was in elementary school, Meir was an activist and an organizer. She continued that on her entire life - she joined political discussion groups, became an ardent supporter of the Zionest movement, raised funds through speeches and debates, and eventually moved to British Palestine to start a kibbutz.

Meir (center) with President Nixon 
and his wife in 1973.

She was successful there - no one was more driven, but she was often sent back to the U.S. to raise funds. She became intimately connected with people on the ground in what would become Israel and the people that were supporting the Zionest movement around the world. She literally knew everyone that was imporatant to know in what would become the country of Israel in 1948 so she naturally was involved in its national political scene. 

This book creates a picture of a woman who sacrificed a lot of her family life in order to participate in politics, but that is subject to interpretation. I doubt anyone would nominate her for Wife or Mother of the Year, but it was obvious even in her elementary school days that was very much a woman dedicated to public issues and not so much into home life. She and her husband lived most of their married lives as in a state of separation. Most of the men in politics in Israel at the time probably had similar personal lives. 

In sum, this was not the most riveting read, but I learned a lot. I rate this short e-book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Golda Meir: A Life from Beginning to End.

VALLEY of the SUN (audiobook) by Louis L'Amour

Published in 2009 by Random House Audio.
Dramatized performance by a multicast.
Duration: 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

Legendary Western writer Louis L'Amour's (1908-1988) work has been packaged and repackaged in so many ways over the years. There is just so much of his writing to work with - short stories, novels, series of novels, and more. 

In the 1980s and 1990s it was pretty common to edit what would have been a 6 or 8 hour audiobook down to fit onto a cassette or two or three. The assumption was that people would not listen to long audiobooks, but these highly edited audiobooks were often difficult to enjoy - so much was taken out!

Someone at Random House Audio decided that this was a great way to take advantage of the multitide of Louis L'Amour short stories during those days to create a ton of Louis L'Amour one cassette audiobooks. You could tell the whole story without ahving to make confusing edits and you could make some money on the individual short story rather than a collection of stories. They used to sell a lot of these cassettes at truck stops.

L'Amour was all for it, but he insisted that the stories be performed like an old-fashioned radio play so that they would offer more value for the listener. At one point there was even a syndicated radio show featuring these stories.

Synopsis

In Valley of the Sun, the ranch foreman has set off to sell the first cows that have come from the fledgling ranch that he has struggled to get up and running. He was hired by a married couple, but he stayed on when the husband died. Secretly, he is planning to ask her to marry him when he returns.

But, he is ambushed by three men and left for dead in the middle of a desert...

My Review

This is a simple Louis L'Amour story and I mean that in the best way. There is a widow that needs help and a talented cowpuncher who was wronged and left for dead. The reader/listener is just waiting to see how the justice gets delivered. All in all, a good story. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Valley of the Sun.

THE BAT-MAN: FIRST KNIGHT by Dan Jurgens (Author), Mike Perkins (Artist)

Published in 2024 by DC Comics.

Synopsis.

The Bat-Man: First Knight is an alternative Batman story set in 1939. Gotham City is struggling - a lot of people are on the street due to The Great Depression, Nazi sympathizers are on the move, a crime wave is sweeping over the city, and someone is mudering the top city officials. 

Rumors of a crime-fighting vigilante are spreading across the city. He hides in the shadows and wears a costume that looks like a bat. Of course, it's our old friend - The Bat-Man with a slightly different take.

My Review

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. I found it at the library and checked it out on a whim. I almost didn't read it because I had just read Spider-Man Noir and I did not enjoy it. I figured if a Spider-Man comic can be too dark to enjoy, a Batman comic is naturally going to go darker and be even less enjoyable.

But, I gave it a chance and it turns out that it was a great read all the way around. The art is easy to follow, the story is coherent and it doesn't require any sort of special Batman knowledge.

There is one scene that's way over the top, but just that one scene. The rest of it makes sense, in a Batman sort of way. It's a good story and I was pleased to see that they released a second book in this series last year. 

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Bat-Man: First Knight.
 

BATMAN: SECOND CHANCES by Jim Starlin (Author, Artist), Max Allan Collins (Author), Dave Cockrum (Illustrator, Artist), Jim Aparo (Artist), Denys Cowan (Artist)

Published in 2015 by DC Comics.

Over the years, Batman has had multiple Robins. But there was a first replacement to the original Robin (Dick Grayson) and that was Jason Todd. He was first introduced in 1983, but was completely revamped as a part of the 1985-1986 Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline. 

Batman: Second Chances is a collected reprint of the original comics of the revamped post-Crisis on Infinite Earths version of Jason Todd. The collection includes how Todd and Batman met (the way they meet is literally on the cover.)

The first half of the collection is properly told as one big story, although DC kind of released the story in an odd way - they show Jason Todd in action before they tell how he becomes the new Robin.

Batman meets an orphaned street urchin named Jason Todd who literally was stealing wheels off of cars in order to sell them, including the Batmobile. In order to keep Todd out of trouble, Batman places him in a boarding school in Todd's neighborhood that is headed up by a sweet old lady who is known to be the only real advocate for the unfortunate people that live in the neighborhood.

Turns out that her boarding school was an advanced training academy for young criminals, including training in weapons, hand to hand fighting, and more.

Jason Todd runs away to avoid being bullied and having to commit major felonies, but tells Batman all about it when he is tracked down. Batman decides its time to start taking in youthful wards again and teaching them the family business.

Later, Todd finds out why he was orphaned and the fact that Batman had the truth. This should be a major trauma point, but Batman resolves it with two or three sentences. Batman should have been a therapist, even though he's been unsuccessfully dealing with unresolved trauma for almost all of his life. The whole thing was written in a very stilted way that just got wrapped up too easily. Plus, Two-Face seems much more like a goofy villain from the Adam West TV show rather than a supervillain of substance. 

Even weirder - the Batmobile keeps changing. Sometimes it looks like a Lotus Esprit (see the cover at the top) and sometimes it looks like a Corvette (see the panel just above.) To me, this just shows that the whole thing was put together in a clumsy way. That explains the unsatisying conclusion to Todd's trauma.

In a different comic, Jason Todd keeps making puns about a series of thefts. Batman and Commissioner Gordon are not amused. To me, it hearkened back to Adam West's Robin with his "Holy This" and "Holy That, Batman!" comments. Don't get me wrong, I love the Adam West series, but it's hard to take this character seriously when he does that.

The best story is issue number 414 "Victims!" In this story Batman gets to be an actual detective but he always ends up one step behind because of crime-fighting interruptions and his own presuppositions. For once, the World's Greatest Detective does not get his man.

The collection is up and down and ends up with a collected score of "meh." I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Batman: Second Chances.

Observational note: You'd think that Batman would have a better anti-theft system for his lug nuts. It's so lackadaisical that a homeless kid stole his rims and tires.

SPIDER-MAN NOIR: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION by David Hine (Author), Fabrice Sapolsky (Author), Roger Stern (Author), Carmine Di Giandomenico (Illustrator, Artist), Richard Isanove (Illustrator, Artist), Bob McLeod (Illustrator, Artist), Paco Diaz (Illustrator, Artist), Patch Zircher (Cover Art)

Published in 2019 by Marvel.

When people watched Sony's fantastic Spiderverse cartoon they were treated to the vision of multiple versions of Spider-Man teaming up to save the the world of Miles Morales. One of the most talked about versions of Spider-Man was Spider-Noir, a hard-bitten detective version of Spidey that was voiced by Nicholas Cage. Spider-Noir came with a trench coat and a fedora and lives in a black and white universe with dramatice lighting, much like a character in a Sam Spade movie. 

In the summer of 2026, Nicholas Cage played a live action version of that character in a popular streaming series and I was thrilled to discover that Spider-Noir wasn't just a character made up for the Spiderverse cartoons, but was actually part of an existing series of comics that reimagined multiple popular Marvel characters in the 1930s.

I got hold of Spider-Man Noir: The Complete Collection and eagerly jumped in - only to be disappointed.

I was not disappointed that the comic differs significantly from the streaming series - that kind of stuff is to be expected. For example, in the streaming series, there is no Peter Parker and everyone's superpowers are the result of a lab experiment gone awry. Marvel simply loves to imbue superpowers via bad science experiments.

The way Peter Parker receives his powers in the comic is much closer to how Madame Web receives her powers in the Madame Web movie. That was fine by me - it doesn't always have to be a lab accident.

What was not fine by me was the art in the original series was often unclear and extremely hard to follow. It is often too busy (see above.) Quite simply, it did not work in too many panels throughout the comic. The art was much better in the smaller follow up comics at the end of this collection.

Even worse, Peter Parker is not Peter Parker in this series. He isn't even like the Nicholas Cage version from Spiderverse movies and the streaming series. He is a humorless, angry character without much of a personality except that he wants to get the guys that killed his Uncle Ben and he wants the poor people of New York to get an even break during the Great Depression.

Those are both admirable goals, but one of the key features of Spider-Man in every comic, every movie series, and every TV show is that Peter Parker is funny and annoyingly enthusiastic. He runs his mouth non-stop and it irritates his opponents. If you remember in the Avengers: Civil War movie, Falcon even tells Spidey that he's talking too much while they're fighting each other.

In this comic, Spider-Man is dour, brooding, and definitely not funny. They're trying to really get into the "noir" vibe, but it would have been much more traditionally character appropriate to have everyone else be super serious while Spidey just runs his mouth and makes smart-aleck comments the whole time (this worked very well in Cage's streaming series adaptation.)

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Spider-Man Noir: The Complete Collection. 

FAULT LINES: A HISTORY of the UNITED STATES SINCE 1974 (audiobook) by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer

Published in 2019 by Audible Studios.

Read by Fajer Al-Kaisi

Duration: 14 hours, 47 minutes.

Unabridged. 

Kruse and Zelizer take a quick look at how we got to our current state of divided and disfunctional politics in Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974.

1974 was picked as a starting point because it was the end of the Vietnam War and the middle of the Watergate scandal - both highly divisive events of epic proportions.

The authors track multiple fault lines, including LGBTQ+ rights, the Equal Rights Ammendment, the Cold War, Monica Lewinsky, the fights over the Supreme Court nominees, 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Tea Party Movement, the Rise of MAGA, and more.

This is a tour through one politically charged moment after another, but it does offer a glimpse at the formation of the ever-widening fault lines in our country's political landscape.

Note: Since this is a political book, I would rate the perspective of this book to be center-left.

Note 2: the narrator of the audiobook mispronounced several names in this 14 hour audiobook. I never consider mispronunciations of names and places to be solely the fault of the narrator, Instead, I view that as the fault of the entire production team. They should be looking out for their narrators and double-checking pronunciations before they come to them during the reading of the book.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974.

BATMAN: UNIVERSE by Brian Michael Bendis (Author), Nick Derington (Illustrator)

Published in 2020 by DC Comics.

Synopsis

Riddler has stolen a Faberge Egg from the local museum. It looks like it's a throwback caper - the kind of thing Batman has been dealing with since the Adam West TV show days.

But, something is off about the case from the beginning. Riddler's riddle is just basic. Alfred calls it "so disappointing." Batman determines that Riddler was "being used" to pull of this crime and now he's got two mysteries to solve - find the egg and find out what's going on with The Riddler...

My Review

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. It literally went all over the place in both space and time. Batman interacts with a number of fellow supers - both heroes and villains. Their interactions are often funny and show good insight to their characters. It's a good story and a lot of fun. Plus, the art is very clear and easy to follow.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Batman: Universe. 

BATMAN & ROBIN: BATMAN REBORN by Grant Morrison (Author), Frank Quitely (Illustrator), Philip Tan (Illustrator)

Published by DC Comics in 2011.

Goodreads Choice Award nominee.

Synopsis

Batman is dead. Nightwing (Dick Grayson) has returned to take over the role of Batman and mentoring the latest Robin, Damian Wayne. With the help of Alfred, Grayson is getting into the mindset of Batman and they are trying to gel into a team.

But, a crime wave sweeps the city in the form of new villains. While Robing and this new version of Batman struggle to counter the crime wave, Red Hood (former Robin Jason Todd) returns to Gotham to fight crime in his own over-the-top super-violent style. Red Hood has picked up a new vigilante sidekick, Scarlet, who is also a mutilated victim of the criminals Batman and Robin are hunting.

My Review

Batman Reborn is a victim of a couple gigantic missed opportunities.

Missed opportunity number one: an in-depth look at why Nightwing is taking over as Batman rather than just being Nightwing. If nothing else, it's a chance to restate the symbolic importance Batman has in Gotham.

Missed opportunity number two (and the bigger one by far): There are scenes with three Robins and a Robin stand-in. They are all interacting and somehow failing to talk about what they all have in common - being the most famous sidekick in comic history.

Red Hood's new outfit.

Red Hood's outfit was pretty nifty, with the exception of his helmet / face mask. I seriously thought that he was a new character (this graphic novel is full of them) called Red Pill when I saw him. Then I looked up the publication date and realized that "red pilled" was too new of a term  to be used in this book. To be fair to me, Red Hood is pretty danged red pilled. 

Anyway, Red Hood's helmet / face mask looks like the top half of a cold capsule. It makes no sense if you imagine someone's head actually fitting inside of this long narrow tube - unless Red Hood has the widest shoulders in the world and the helmet / mask just looks tiny in comparison (I'm talking Bane level of shoulders.)

What Red Hood's
headgear reminds me of.

The worst thing for me was that the graphic novel revels in being grotesque. Rather than having a mystery for Batman to solve, it deals in grime, grit, gruesome acts, with displays gratuitous and graphic violence. Rather than make a cohesive story line, the plan seems to be to have yet another unique character come to Gotham and commit more insane violence. 

Plus, the horrific act of violence committed by Professor Pyg is literally the same thing done by Joker in the first Michael Keaton Batman movie. No spoliers, but re-watch the movie and read the graphic novel and you will see it. Just me, but if you are going to have someone commit a series of grotesque atrocities, at least make them original grotesque atrocities. 

Note: I liked Damian Wayne in this one. Usually, I don't. 

I rate this graphic novel a generous 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Batman and Robin: Batman Reborn. 

SUPERMAN: AMERICAN ALIEN by Max Landis (Author), Francis Manapul (Artist), Jock (Artist), Jae Lee (Artist), Joelle Jones (Artist), Tommy Lee Edwards (Artist), Matthew Clark (Artist), Nick Dragotta (Artist), Jonathan Case (Artist)

Published by DC Comics in 2016.

Will Eisner Award Nomination – Best Writer

Synopsis

A team of different artists worked with writer Max Landis to come up with a different kind of Superman origin story in Superman: American Alien. It takes a few liberties with the traditional story and really focuses on Clark Kent and how he transitions from Smallville to Metropolis. 

Each story has a slightly different look and tells of an episode in his development, beginning with an elementary school aged Clark discovering that he can fly (but he cannot control it) and ending with Superman sporting an early version of the red trunks outfit confronting Lobo (Lobo was sent to get someone, but was pretty sloppily destroying chunks of Metropolis while doing so.)

The first draft of a
Superman outfit

My Review

Overall, I enjoyed this graphic novel. I didn't particularly enjoy the second story and the Lobo chapter for the same reason - they were disjointed and kind of hard to follow because they were trying to make the action go fast.

On the other hand, the story where young Clark Kent gets confused for young Bruce Wayne at a yacht party starts out weakly, but turns out very strong.

This story goes out of its way to get at the humanity of the man from Krypton. If you liked James Gunn's Superman movie, you will like this graphic novel.

I rate this graphic novel 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Superman: American Alien. 

BATMAN: DARK AGE by Mark Russell (Author), Michael Allred (Illustrator), Laura Allred (Illustrator)

Published in 2025 by DC Comics.

SYNOPSIS

Batman: Dark Age is a sequel of sorts to the award-nominated graphic novel Superman: Spage Age. I say of sorts because Superman: Space Age featured a multiverse problem and how a Superman in one multiverse dealt with it. I do believe that this universe is the universe of the second Superman in the original graphic novel. 

This graphic novel is told as the recollections on an elderly Bruce Wayne who is in the memory unit of an old age home.

It starts with a fairly typical Batman origin story, except that Bruce Wayne is not present when his parents die. Bruce Wayne grows up as an arrogant rich kid who ends up in jail. He is released on the condition that he joins the military during the Vietnam War. He joins an elite military unit led by colonel Ra's Al Ghul who teaches them the tactics of stealth warfare.

When Bruce Wayne returns, he finds a Gotham City ravaged by a drug epidemic and he decides to figure out what is going on...

MY REVIEW

This was a pretty intricate story and I appreciate the world building that went into it, but it simply lacked the drama and tension of Superman: Space Age. It was interesting, especially the origin story of Joker, but I will just rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. 

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Batman: Dark Age.

IRONWOOD: A CATALINA NOVEL (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

Published in 2026 by Little, Brown, and Company.
Read by Will Damron.
Duration: 7 hours, 45 minutes.
Unabridged.

Ironwood is the second novel featuring Los Angeles County Sheriff Detective Sergeant Stilwell. He is in charge of the Sheriff's office on Catalina Island, twenty two miles out from mainland Los Angeles County. The island has about 6,000 permanent residents and hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. 

While Catalina is a beautiful place, a sheriff department posting on the island is often considered to be a punishment of sorts and the department jokes that deputies on the island are posted on "the island of misfit toys." Stilwell is sent there as a punishment, but has found a new life on the island. He is living with a local woman and is getting a real feel for rhythms and politics of the island.

The story starts with a three deputies waiting for a plane to make a surreptitious middle of the night landing. A deputy who was recently posted on Catalina received a tip from a mainland conidential informant that a Mexican drug cartel plane would be making an illegal quick landing on the island's lone landing strip. When the deputies move in to make the arrest, all hell breaks loose and Stillwell's two deputies are gunned down...

My Review

One of the best things about the Catalina novels is that they are big city crime novels and small town crime novels at the same time. Stilwell is looking into vandalism cases while also investigating a murder. This book has five different cases at various phases of development going on at the same time. Some are very local, some involve the mainland.

A Sheriff's Jeep on Catalina Island

Stilwell ties in to the larger Harry Bosch universe. I can't think of a single Connelly book that is not at least indirectly tied in to that universe, but I may be wrong. In this novel, Stilwell stumbles across evidence that reopens a cold case with Renee Ballard's team. 

I don't want to make any spoilers in a police procedural book, so I won't go on about the plot. The book is well-paced and enjoyable. I listened to the whole audiobook at a very brisk pace. I intentionally slowed myself down and took a break for almost an entire day because this book just came about and there won't be another Connelly book for a while. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. Very enjoyable as an audiobook.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Ironwood: A Catalina Novel by Michael Connelly. 

FREEDOM FIGHTERS: RISE of a NATION (graphic novel) by Robert Venditti (Author), Eddy Barrows (Illustrator)

Published in 2020 by DC Comics.

SYNOPSIS

Freedom Fighters takes place on Earth X - the part of the DC multiverse where the Nazis won World War II. In this case, Superman landed in 1930s Czechoslovakia and became part of the Nazi military machine. 

Not much can stand up to the might of Superman, so the Allies fell.

In the early 1960s the last bit of American resistance died when the last American superheroes were captured and later executed on live television. When Americans stop believing in freedom, Uncle Sam disappears from Earth and goes to a netherworld called The Heartland - the extradimensional realm of ideas.

The Nazis move their headquarters to the United States and use their genetically modified squad of SS men to terrorize the population. These new SS men have all taken an injection that shortens their lives but makes them into clones of the original Plasticman. They are know as PlaSSticmen. 

But, a new generation of superheroes is determined to reignite the spirit of freedom by starting a new resistance movement to push the Nazis out of America and eventually liberate the planet...

My Review

This graphic novel seems like a great idea in theory, but the actual graphic novel that was produced leaves so many logic holes that it doesn't even make sense following its own comic book rules.

****Warning - lots and lots of spoilers.

The whole concept of Uncle Sam just fading away like a Star Wars force ghost only to return later has its own internal logic problems. He fades away on the night of the executions because the ENTIRE population of America loses its faith in the spirit of freedom. It has to be that the entire population 100% loses its faith because long after he has faded away he is stirred back to life by the belief of just a few people, much like Tinker Bell. 

Why did he ever disappear? He is powered by the people's belief in an American ideal. They can believe in these ideals even while they are under military occupation by a foreign power.

When Uncle Sam is awakened he laments that his friends have all died and been buried like he was. They are a lion (England), a bear (Russia), a fighting bull (Spain), a beaver (Canada), and so on.

Why are they all animals and if they are all animals, why isn't Uncle Sam an eagle, or at least be able to take the shape of an eagle? After all, the UK also has a human representation - John Bull. Why is ther no John Bull?

Also, the artist's drawing of a fighting bull makes it clear that he has never laid eyes on a fighting bull. It looks more like a horse with elephant tusks coming from its head rather than the truly fierce-looking fighting bull.

Where is there no German character to take its place among Uncle Sam and the Russian bear and the Canadian beaver? Is this living avatar of a country's spirit only a thing that the Allies get? If that is the case, why would Spain have a fighting bull in this graveyard? After all, Spain was a nominal ally of the Axis powers during World War II. During World War II, Spain stayed neutral because they were so weak after the Spanish Civil War that put the fascists in power that Hitler figured the Allies would invade Spain in a very easy D-Day type of invasion and use Spain to invade the Nazi-dominated Europe. Hitler told them to lay low and join the Axis powers later.

Why do all of the PlaSSticmen speak with a German accent? They are supposed to be American volunteers that turn into physical clones of the original Plasticman - why would they suddenly become Germans?

Why would the Nazis move their headquarters to the United States? They were turning Germany into a 1,000 year Reich to dominate the world from GERMANY. That was pretty much the point of starting World War II. 

*****End spoilers

I really was expecting a lot more from this graphic novel. The same writer wrote the Superman '78 series and I liked it quite a bit.

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Freedom Fighters: Rise of a Nation.