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Showing posts with the label Connecticut

THE POWER WORSHIPPERS: INSIDE the DANGEROUS RISE of RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM (audiobook) by Katherine Stewart

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  Published by Bloomsbury Publishing LLC. Read by Tosca Hoskins. Duration: 11 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. The book is a detailed look at the Christian Nationalist movement in America. The strength of the book is its meticulous research. It ties together famous names and organizations with less famous names pulling the strings through not-for-profits and political action committees across the country. The author, Katherine Stewart I come to this book as a lifelong, politically aware Christian. I vote, I read about politics and religion, I post about politics and religion and I listen to podcasts that discuss politics and religion. That being said, I am all for keeping politics and religion separate because politics taints and corrupts religion every time and twists it into something it is not meant to be. The book does have its weaknesses, though. One is that the author, Katherine Stewart, does have some degree of anti-religious bias. She is really bothered by religious groups rentin

WILDLAND: THE MAKING of AMERICA'S FURY (audiobook) by Evan Osnos

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  Published in September of 2021 by Macmillan Audio. Read by the author, Evan Osnos. Duration: 17 hours, 7 minutes. Unabridged. Evan Osnos is a reporter for The New Yorker . He was inspired to write about the phenomenon of Donald Trump and the 2016 and 2020 elections when he returned from an multi-year assignment in China and noted that politics, journalism and even economics in the United States had changed. He didn't use this analogy, but I will: Parents don't notice their kids changing and growing because they see them every day. But, the aunts and uncles who only see them at the holidays can easily detect the changes. Osnos went to three places that he used to live to investigate: Greenwich, Connecticut; Chicago, Illinois; and Clarksburg, West Virginia.  In West Virginia, he primarily looks at the changes in journalism such as the loss of local news and small town newspapers. He also looks at government pulling back environmental regulations and business avoiding responsibi

GARBOLOGY: OUR DIRTY LOVE AFFAIR with TRASH (audiobook) by Edward Humes

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  Published in 2015 by Tantor Audio. Read by Joe Barrett. Duration: 8 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. Garbology is the study of garbage. Archaeologists use garbology to learn all about ancient societies - what they ate, their tools, their clothing, their toys, their technology, etc. You can also apply garbology to modern garbage dumps and Humes uses this as an entrance to discussing all sorts of issues about our modern world and our problem with waste. Humes figures that the average American is on pace to create more than one hundred tons of garbage per person per lifetime. This is higher than the estimates you usually find because those estimates don't include the waste created on your behalf by manufacturers and service providers. The book starts out very strong with a look at how landfills and trash removal have evolved over time. Sounds boring but I found it to be very interesting. Later, he moved on to pollution, especially ocean pollution and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -

ZONE ONE: A NOVEL by Colson Whitehead

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  Originally published in 2011 by Doubleday. I don't often read zombie novels. I have reviewed 1600+ books and this is only my second one featuring zombies. They're not really my thing, but I figured that if an author who won two Pulitzer Prizes wrote a zombie book, it must be worth reading. I was wrong. The premise behind the book is quite good, but it is an over-written mess. Mark Spitz (a nickname) is a man who has gone through his life as a B/B+ type of guy. Never the smartest guy in class, never the first guy picked to play for the schoolyard games, but certainly not close to the last. He kind of floats through life being "good enough." The reader meets Mark Spitz well into the Zombie Apocalypse. He is working as part of a mopping up crew in New York City. He and his crew are seeking out Zombies that the military may have missed in their sweep through the city. The worst of the Zombie attacks has passed and a provisional government is working out of Buffalo, New

THE HESSIAN by Howard Fast

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Hessian soldiers. Originally published in 1972. Howard Fast (1914-2003) was a prolific author with a particular love of historical fiction. He is most famous for the novel Spartacus , the book that the famous movie is based on. This book is set in rural Connecticut late in the Revolutionary War. The war has moved on south of Connecticut. The main character is Dr. Feversham, a veteran of the Revolutionary War and wars in Europe who is sick to death of war. He is not a particularly pleasant man. He is a lapsed Catholic while most of his neighbors are Protestants. There is also a scattering of Quakers in the area. A British ship dropped off a squad of 16 Hessians who cause a panic. Hessians are German soldiers hired by the British to help supplement their soldiers during the Revolutionary War. They were particularly hated and feared because they were mercenaries (and they fought very well). The Americans could understand why the British fought, but what was the motivation of soldiers

SERGEANT STUBBY: HOW a STRAY DOG and HIS BEST FRIEND HELP WIN WORLD WAR I and STOLE the HEART of a NATION (audiobook) by Ann Bausum

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Published in 2014 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Pam Ward. Duration: 5 hours, 12 minutes. Unabridged. Sgt. Stubby wearing his medal vest (left), marching in a parade (upper right) and wearing his special gas mask (lower right). During the quick basic training for American forces heading for France in World War I, a stray dog found its way into a Connecticut National Guard training camp at Yale University. The unit was sprawled all over the campus and this Boston Terrier mix wandered around making friends all over. His friendly nature guaranteed a lot of table scraps. He marched with the men, learned the commands and blended in as well as a dog can. Somewhere along the way, someone taught him how to salute and hold the salute until it was returned. When it came time to board a ship and head to France, the soldier that he spent the most time with, Corporal James Robert Conroy, hid him under his coat as others provided a distraction. Once aboard, Stubby ensured he got to stay with his