CONQUERORS: HOW PORTUGAL FORGED the FIRST GLOBAL EMPIRE (audiobook) by Roger Crowley

Published by Recorded Books in 2015.
Read by Jonathan Davis.
Duration: 13 hours, 7 minutes.
Unabridged.

In the mid-1400s Portugal was poised to be a major world power, despite being a backwater of Europe in so many ways. Portugal sits at the western extreme of Europe, destined to be a minor player in European politics most of the time. All of Portugal's border touches Spain, so if Portugal wanted to interact with anyone but Spain they had to take to the sea.

IThe Portugese developed a new type of little wooden ship called the caravel, armed them with cannons, filled them with food, water, sailors, and stone monuments to mark the areas they explored. They pushed down the coast of Africa, hoping to find a way to the spices of Asia.

They were looking to trade, especially for spices because the Muslim countries had established a stranglehold on the spice trade with the decline and eventual fall on the Byzantine Empire in 1453.  They were also looking to link up with the fabled African Christian king Prester John, join up to defeat the Muslims, spread Christianity, and make a lot of money along the way.

And, with the exception of the Prester John part of the plan, that's basically what happened. Prester John turned out to be the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. It was real, but not nearly as powerful as the Portugese believed - and it wasn't very interested in attacking the Muslims in a religious war. 

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire is a pretty thorough look at the Portugese conquistadores and their escapades in the Indian Ocean. From the first, Portugal came with guns a-blazin'. They laid waste to cities, took slaves, took hostages, burnt ships, and were confrontational with almost everyone. 

Then, they headed home and made plans to return with even more ships. They made annual trips and made plans to make permanent posts from Africa to India. 

At this point, this history bogs down. It's not that it isn't accurate - it just becomes a litany of outrageous attacks by the Portugese, a minor setback, and then an even more audacious attack. It all kind of blurred together for me because Crowley didn't take a moment to pull away from the history to do a bit of analysis.

He didn't even step away to look at what the Portugese were doing in other parts of the world, such as Brazil and west Africa and put the Portugese efforts in the Indian Ocean into a larger context until the literal last three or four minutes of the audiobook. The title says it is a book about Portugal's empire and it ignores a lot of their empire.

The audiobook reader was Jonathan Davis. He is a very good reader and has a flair for accentuating the dramatic moments. But, he is also very slow. I rarely do this, but I set the audiobook player to play at 120% and he was still a bit slow at times.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CONQUERORS: HOW PORTUGAL FORGED the FIRST GLOBAL EMPIRE by Roger Crowley.

GOD IS NOT ONE: THE EIGHT RIVAL RELIGIONS THAT RUN the WORLD - and WHY THEIR DIFFERENCES MATTER (audiobook) by Stephen Prothero

Published in 2010 by HarperAudio.
Read by Paul Boehmer.
Duration: 14 hours, 37 minutes.
Unabridged.

Stephen Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University. The purpose of God Is Not One is to inform the reader of the eight greatest world religions, their philosophies and their way of looking at the world.

Prothero is very aware that choosing just eight religions is fraught with problems. How do you choose? Is it based on influence? Number of adherents? Importance of the countries it is in? He went through all of those questions again once again when he chose the order he would present the religions he picked.

The religions he profiled are: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, Yoruba religion, and Daoism. He spends about 90 minutes discussing each religion and includes nearly an hour on Atheism at the end, on the theory that militant Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens) behaves much like a religion, complete with evangelistic movements and a coherent worldview.

Prothero takes great pains to point out that these religions do not approach the world in the same way. He is pretty irritated at the "all religions are basically the same - they answer the same questions in different ways" view of religion. He thinks it is intellectually lazy. For example, Christianity teaches that the main problem with the world is sin. Daoism doesn't even have that concept - they think the main problem is society polluting people and making them unhappy by making them take on roles that go against their nature. Confucianism thinks the biggest problem is people not knowing their place in society - embrace the role given you and you will be happy. Yoruba religion is all about power, including spiritual power and leveraging it to your advantage. Atheism think religion itself is the problem - but they are usually most vocal against the three monotheistic religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity). They might be okay with Daoist and Confucian philosophy and some Buddhist sects. Of course, all of those summaries are super-simplistic.

Prothero is not making this point in order to say that the religions of the world can't get along. Rather, he is making this point in order to say that if we are going to get along, we actually have to know what the other religions are saying and where they are coming from.

Prothero's explanations include Western cultural references to movies and books. If you are a well-read person these can be quite helpful.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GOD IS NOT ONE: THE EIGHT RIVAL RELIGIONS THAT RUN the WORLD - and WHY THEIR DIFFERENCES MATTER by Stephen Prothero.

A SHORT HISTORY of the WORLD (audiobook) by Christopher Lascelles

Published by Tantor Audio in 2016.

Read by Guy Bethell.
Duration: 7 hours, 20 minutes.
Unabridged.

The entire history of the world is less than 7 and 1/2 hours? Yep, that's what Christopher Lascelles purports to offer in his A Short History of the World. He acknowledges that this is not a complete history - he never intended it to be. Instead, his aim is to connect some of the dots that the average reader may have picked up in history class, movies and History Channel documentaries (and hopefully spark a bit more interest).

Lascelles does succeed in hitting many of the high points and certainly does a better job at not being as Eurocentric as other short world histories have been, such as A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. Lascelles spends quite a bit of time discussing China, Japan, India and Mongolia. All that being said, there are entire civilizations that are ignored or get nothing more than a passing nod. That is always the problem when writing a history of the world - what do you leave in? What do you leave out?

Julius Caesar (100 B.C. to 44 B.C.)

England gets a bit more of the limelight than it deserves, in my opinion. Not way out of proportion, but a bit. That is to be expected, thought, since the author is from London.

Really, the only complaint I have about the book is its size limits it - but that is the entire point of the book - it is a SHORT history after all.

Guy Bethell read the audiobook and he did a good job. I blew right through the audiobook in 2 days. It was put together in an interesting and logical way.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found in multiple formats on Amazon.com here: A SHORT HISTORY of the WORLD by Christopher Lascelles.

A LITTLE HISTORY of the WORLD (audiobook) by E.H. Gombrich

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2006
Translated by Caroline Mustill and E.H. Gombrich
Narrated by Ralph Cosham
Duration: 9 hours, 14 minutes
Unabridged

As the title states A Little History of the World is a small history of, well, everything. Sort of.

This history was originally written in 1935. The author was an unemployed art historian and was asked to write a history of the world for children for an Austrian publisher. The first edition was written in six weeks and it sold well and has sold consistently ever since. Gombrich retained the rights and after World War II set out to keep it updated and translated it into multiple languages. He was working on translating it into English when he died in 2001 at the age of 92. The work was finished by others and no one is quite sure how exactly he was planning on ending it.

The chapter on early man is quite memorable in that it gives early men and women a lot of credit for figuring out a lot of important things like agriculture, cooking with fire, stone tools and so on. Think about it - it really is quite remarkable.

The history is told in a kid-friendly, patronizing, but not annoying way. It is definitely a Eurocentric history, especially after the Mesopotamian Empires (Sumeria, Babylon, etc.) are discussed.
India is mentioned, but mostly as an introduction to Hinduism and Buddhism. China gets a lot more attention, but not much more. The Americas, including the United States are barely mentioned. The Native American civilizations (Mayas, Aztecs, Incas) are only mentioned in the context of being conquered by the Spanish and being brutalized. Africa may not have been mentioned again after Ancient Egypt.

E.H. Gombrich (1909-2001)

However, keeping in mind this bias, this is a pretty solid history of Europe. The reader, Ralph Cosham, sounds like a welcoming old grandfather who is telling the story of the world as he knows it to the little ones. It is easy to imagine him in a chair on a cold winter's night with the little ones gathered around and the fireplace ablaze. And, in a way, this translation was exactly that - a 92 year old man telling the story of the world the best he could.

I  rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It is a limited history and I would never make this the only history book that I handed to my child (it has some popularity among home-school parents), but it is readable and interesting. A good place to start.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: A Little History of the World.

YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR THIS TIME, SIR! (kindle) by Danny Bent

Published in August of 2014 by Danny bent, Ltd.

It took me a long time to read You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir. I read it over the course of several months on my Kindle and on my phone's Kindle app. 

The book details the trip of a teacher from the UK who rides his bike from the UK to India in an effort to raise money for charity and to teach his kids something.

I really struggled with the first part of the book because the author seemed so self-absorbed and I never really understood how he was going to raise money for a charity by riding and as a fellow teacher I seriously did not get how this trip was going to do anything for his students besides show them that he could do this outrageous thing. 

So, I struggled through the first half of the book because I kept on coming back to the premise behind his trip and wondering about it (how is he raising this money? Is it by the kilometer? Is it a lump sum and will be donated so long as he makes a solid effort? These are the types of questions my overly-practical mind had).

But, after a couple of months of on and off again halfhearted efforts I basically forgot the school-related aspect of the book and read it as simply the adventures of a skinny Brit riding his bicycle to India because that's the kind of crazy thing that some Brits do from time to time. 

Basically, once Danny Bent enters Russia I thought the book became much more interesting and became more fascinating the further he went. It became a travelogue and a grand adventure and I was glad to go along because I know there is literally almost no chance that I will ever travel to these places and I will certainly not be staying in the places he stayed in. Heck, I have a hard time trying new things on the menu at McDonald's, let alone eating strange, steaming bowls of mystery stew handed to me by toothless old ladies in a hut on the side of a mountain in Pakistan.

But, thank goodness I can get a glimpse of that from adventurers like Danny Bent. The second half of the book is certainly worth your time to read.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir!

THE HISTORY of the ANCIENT WORLD: FROM the EARLIEST ACCOUNTS to the FALL of ROME by Susan Wise Bauer

Published by W. W. Norton in 2007

Susan Wise Bauer is well-known in the home school community for her well-written histories. I am not a home school parent but I do recommend her History of the Ancient Word for history buffs who would like a long-term general overview of history.

Bauer mines lots of types of sources to build a view of the earliest cities and their beliefs. Bauer's history focuses on political leaders and religious/philosophical beliefs of different civilizations. One thing that I really like was her ability to take myths and legends (like Gilgamesh) and tie them into actual history and demonstrate why those myths and legends mattered to those ancient peoples and give the modern reader a way to have a better understanding of these ancient peoples. 

The book starts with a focus on four major civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus River Valley (India) and the Yellow River Valley (China). As these groups grow, other areas are added (such as Ancient Greece and Rome).  

The text of this book is 777 pages long and it has almost 90 pages of works cited, notes and an index. One of the real strengths of this book is the inclusion of nearly 100 relevant maps. I was also pleased with the timeline included at the end of every chapter was helpful as well. Each timeline included the civilization just discussed and another of the groups as well so they can be compared.

For all of the strengths, the book does have weaknesses. It rarely discusses technological changes or different agricultural techniques. The book focuses on leaders, wars and battles, the common man of the past is rarely spoken of. To be fair, this book is a chunk as it is - if more detail were included it would be an unwieldy tome. 

Constantine the Great (272-337).
Photo by Jean-Christophe BENOIST

Bauer does delve into philosophical movements, as I mentioned earlier, but, surprisingly, leaves out the entirety of the philosophical movement of Ancient Greece except to quote them when talking about other cultures. Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, the Stoics - their ideas are not discussed at all. I found that to be so odd that I literally searched the book's index to see if I had just skipped the chapter they are in. Along with Judeo-Christian beliefs, Greek thought was (and is) one of the pillars of Western thought. 

The book does not actually go to the Fall of Rome, which has been traditionally dated at 476 AD. Instead, it ends at 312 AD when Constantine the Great became the sole Roman Emperor (prior to that he was a co-ruler). That is an interesting date to choose because that is the moment when Christianity stopped being a persecuted religion in the Roman Empire. 

NOTE: This book is the first in a multi-part series that is still being published. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome.

The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life by Steven Pressfield

'It's not about golf,' said the student to this teacher.

Originally published in 1995.

The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life was on the shelf in my classroom. I hadn't read it yet and was discussing it with one of my students who was looking for something to read. I had suggested it to him since he is a fan of many sports. He said he'd already read it. I told him I had not, since I am not a fan of golf. He looked at me like I was a small, silly child and said, 'It's not about golf.'

At that moment, I determined to read this book. So, this was my first free choice of a book this summer and I enjoyed it.

First things first. You do not have to understand golf to understand the book. The golf match is merely the vehicle to move the story forward. When Bagger Vance encourages his pupil to find his 'authentic swing' I simply inserted my own experiences with baseball to understand the feeling.

Steven Pressfield

Secondly, the book is full of eastern philosophy. It's an interesting dichotomy - the American South during the Great Depression and Hinduism. Search 'Bhagavid-Gita, Bagger Vance' on the search engine of your choice and you'll find it laid out quite nicely on many, many sites.

So, my final grade: 4 stars. Not Pressfield's best work but still quite interesting and well done.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life by Steven Pressfield.

Reviewed on June 4, 2006.