THANKS a THOUSAND: A GRATITUDE JOURNEY (audiobook) by A.J. Jacobs

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio / TED

Read by A.J. Jacobs.

Duration: 3 hours, 12 minutes.

Unabridged.

A.J. Jacobs had been doing some reading and thinking about the concept of gratitude when it occurred to him that he really should be grateful for a lot of things that no one every expresses any gratitude for. He settled on his morning cup of coffee that he buys at a the corner coffee shop. 

On his quest to thank a thousand people for his daily cup of coffee, he starts with the clerk, the barista, and the management of the small coffee chain. He moves on to the people that make the cup lids, the cups, and even the metal of the coffee makers. Eventually, he gets to the guy that chooses the coffee beans that make up his favorite brew. That guy takes him to the farm in Colombia that grows his favorite beans and the bemused and confused Colombians host them for a little get together. 

The whole book is mildly amusing and somewhat interesting, but is not riveting in any way. It's nice, but hardly memorable. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey. 

INCA EMPIRE: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in October 2024 by Hourly History.

Hourly History has published a large catalog of short histories and biographies. The idea is that each book can be read in about an hour. That's not enough to make the reader an expert, but it is enough to make the reader more knowledgeable than most people and it lets the reader know if this is a topic they want to delve into more deeply.

I thought I was pretty well-informed on the topic of the Incas when I started Inca Empire: A History from Beginning to End. I am a Spanish and a history teacher, so I know way more than most people. However, that's not saying much. Let's face it, the average American hasn't heard of the Incas and the ones that have are likely to confuse them with the Aztecs or the Maya.

A short history is not much of a problem when it comes to the Incas. Their Empire existed for only about 95 years before the Spanish Conquistadores arrived in 1532. The Spanish arrived with small numbers (less than 200 soldiers) but superior technology, including horses, a cannon, firearms, and armor. 

A strength of the Incan Empire also led to its downfall. The Inca understood the value of a dependable highway system to move goods, information, and troops. Unfortunately, European diseases spread to the heart of the empire before the Spanish even arrived. The emperor and his designated heir probably died from diseases brought from Europe, kicking off a brutal civil war that meant the empire was ill-equipped to meet a foreign threat, even a tiny one.

Until I read this short history, I was completely unaware that a rump Incan state survived the original conquest and continued on for another 35 years on the Eastern slopes of the Andes and into the Amazon basin.

Map by QQuantum

My review:

This e-book was in serious need of MAPS. It kept of referring to pre-Colombian locations and civilizations I had never heard of and that meant that I had no real idea of the geography of the relative locations. They might as well have been telling me that Group A took over Group B, Group B rebelled and then Group A destroyed Group B city and Group B stopped fighting. 

A MAP would have helped. 5 or 6 MAPS would have been very enlightening. I have included a helpful map that I lifted from Wikipedia. Just seeing the growth of the empire on this map gives the reader a better idea of the extent of the Incan Empire and how quickly it grew. Kindle can easily handle pictures, so not including a map is inexcusable.

The lack of any sort of map is why I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Inca Empire: A History from Beginning to End.

SIMON BOLIVAR: THE GREAT LIBERATOR (World Landmark Series) by Arnold Whitridge

Published in 1954 by Random House.

In the 1950's and 1960's Random House created an extraordinary history series for children called Landmark Books. There were 122 books in the American history series and 63 in the World Landmark series. A very solid description of the series can be found here: link. When I was a kid my little hometown library had what seemed like an endless shelf of these books. I loved these books - I even remember where it was in the library nearly 40 years later! Undoubtedly, these books are part of the reason I am a history teacher.

Simon Bolivar (1783-1830)

This book is part of a subset of the Landmark Books series. If the book took place outside of the United States the book belonged to the World Landmark Books series.

Simon Bolivar was born in the Spanish colony that is now Venezuela. He was educated in Spain but was keenly aware that the government of Spain considered the colonies to be inferior to Spain and incapable of self-government. He doubtless shared that belief until he began to spend time with the children of the Spanish ruling class (including the future King of Spain) and discovered that they weren't all that impressive. Once Napoleon conquered Spain and put his brother on the throne, Bolivar pushed for a revolt. Some, like Bolivar, were pushing for independence no matter who was on the throne, but others who joined him simply wanted to revolt as a part of a general resistance to Napoleonic rule.

Regardless of the initial motivations, Bolivar soon led a multi-colony revolt that went on for 11 years. Eventually, Bolivar helped to liberate the colonies that make up the modern countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

Many have compared Bolivar to George Washington, including Arnold Whitridge, the author of this book. There are surface similarities, but Bolivar's fight was much longer and (I would say) much more of a geographical challenge. Bolivar crossed the Andes range multiple times with armies that suffered horrific losses simply from the geography. In fact, while doing a bit of research on Bolivar while writing this review, I found that the Wikipedia page for Bolivar does a much better job of stating the sheer monumental scope of his accomplishments than this book did. For example, he fought in 79 major battles, traveled 10 times the distance of Hannibal, 3 times the distance of Napoleon and twice the distance of Alexander the Great. If you can be can be compared favorably to that crowd, you are truly a military genius. In this respect, Washington certainly comes up short.

Sadly, Bolivar was not a political genius and he could never figure out a way to unite the former Spanish colonies into one large country that he wanted to call Gran Colombia. This is where Washington's strengths come into play. Not only was he able to win the military fight, he was able to help establish the concept that the colonies were going to become one country and the military would not lead that country.

This book is aimed at students from 3rd to 8th grade. It is a simple read with line drawings. It could use a few more maps. To be fair, it was merely an "okay" introduction to Simon Bolivar and his accomplishments (see above about the Wikipedia page).

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SIMON BOLIVAR: THE GREAT LIBERATOR (World Landmark Series) by Arnold Whitridge.

WALKING the AMERICAS: 1,800 MILES, EIGHT COUNTRIES, and ONE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY from MEXICO to COLOMBIA (audiobook) by Levison Wood

Published by Tantor Audio in 2018.

Read by Barnaby Edwards.
Duration: 8 hours, 34 minutes.
Unabridged.

Levison Wood is a British explorer/journalist. He has gone on two other hiking expeditions (one to walk the length of the Nile, the other to walk the length of the Himalayas) before this trip. In Walking the Americas he was joined by a Mexican photographer friend from Merida, in the Yucatan Peninsula. Together, they started walking south to Belize, then on to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and finally Colombia.

The author, Levison Wood

Along the way, they encounter hidden Mayan ruins, a city overwhelmed by drug gangs, poverty, the aftermath of a hurricane, welcoming people, a few unfriendly people, Native Indians, a horrible rainstorm, mansions, a couple of difficult horses and the remains of a lost colony founded by Scotland in the 1700's.

This was a surprisingly short book considering it spans eight countries. It was an entertaining book with some poignant moments, but not the deepest read. Sometimes Wood is too quick to characterize whole countries as having good or bad character (not a fan of Guatemala, but he really likes neighboring Honduras). It is a fun story of two friends going on an adventure.

I really enjoyed Barnaby Edwards' reading, despite his horrendous pronunciation of Spanish throughout.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WALKING the AMERICAS: 1,800 MILES, EIGHT COUNTRIES, and ONE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY from MEXICO to COLOMBIA.

THE TRUTH ABOUT ANIMALS: STONED SLOTHS, LOVELORN HIPPOS, and OTHER TALES from the WILD SIDE of WILDLIFE by Lucy Cooke

Published by Basic Books in 2018.

Zoologist Lucy Cooke explores some of the offbeat bits of the animal world in The Truth About Animals - a book that shows us that most of us think we know a lot about the animal world, but we really don't. None of the animals featured are obscure - they are all well-known, with the possible exception of the eel (at least in the United States). 

The animals featured in the book are: eels, beavers, sloths, hyenas, vultures, bats, frogs, storks, hippos, moose, pandas, penguins and chimpanzees.

Cooke usually begins with a look at the animal in question in historical texts so that we can see that these misunderstandings have been going on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. For example, bats have been misunderstood and mis-classified since...well, forever. The struggle to figure out how exactly bats travel at night was especially gruesome, featuring scientists blinding live bats, plugging up their noses and coating their bodies with lacquer in an effort to determine exactly how they can fly so well in the dark.

All too often, these animals are associated with an human-introduced invasive species of some sort. Sometimes, they are the victims of that species (frogs) and sometimes they are that species, as in the case of hippos. Did you know that there is a colony of hippos in Colombia? Four of them were introduced by the drug lord Pablo Escobar as a part of a personal zoo but they escaped when his drug empire fell. Now, there are more than 40.

A surprising example of an invasive species -
wild hippos thriving in Colombia
thanks to Pablo Escobar.

Every animal description has a long description of the sex life of the animal. Ironically, this usually comes after a withering commentary about how Victorian or medieval writers were overly concerned about the sex lives of animals. Sometimes it is interesting and has a larger point (as in the story of the eels), other times it is simply presented in a vulgar manner that detracts from the book. 

For example, when Cooke is discussing Hyenas she spends a lot of time talking about the fact that the genitalia of a female hyena look a great deal like those of a male - so much so that they are often confused for males without benefit of a very close inspection (which would be dangerous for most people). This setup makes it difficult for them to mate and makes giving birth a highly dangerous activity. All of that is interesting information. But, calling them "the original chicks with dicks" (p. 73) is unnecessarily crude and that type of thing occurs throughout the book.

I learned a lot with this book. I learned how storks are making a comeback and how they they were the species that taught us about bird migration. In the section on eels, I learned that we are still uncovering mysteries about common animals - even animals that are eaten by the millions. I learned that the female hyena is a mighty animals and she may be the leader of a very large pack with an exceedingly complex social order and a large territory. I learned all about how the sloth is perfectly adapted to his environment and his slow-moving ways are actually an immense advantage. But I was bothered by its too-crude tone when discussing the breeding habits of the animals. For that, I deducted a star. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE TRUTH ABOUT ANIMALS: STONED SLOTHS, LOVELORN HIPPOS, and OTHER TALES from the WILD SIDE of WILDLIFE.

Note: I received a pre-publication copy of this book as a part of the Amazon Vine program in exchange for an honest review.

White Cargo by Stuart Woods

Engrossing - pulled me right in

Published in 1988.

There are two Stuart Woods out there, at least in my mind. There's the early Stuart Woods that wrote great books like Chiefs and there's the Stone Barrister-writing Stuart Woods that just writes a formula plot, mail it in and collects a check.

In White Cargo, a wealthy American, Wendell Catledge, is yachting off of the coast of Colombia when he is attacked by pirates and his wife and daughter are kidnapped and end up in the underworld of the narco-traffickers. Catledge goes underground to find his family in Colombia.

White Cargo is definitely an early Stuart Woods book! I found myself pulled into this plot and I just had to know what happened next, despite the fact that the violence and sexual exploitation was a bit too extreme for my tastes. The ending was fairly hokey but the overall strength of the rest of the book more than makes up for that.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: White Cargo by Stuart Woods.

Reviewed on January 14, 2006.