THIS BOOK WON'T BURN (audiobook) by Samira Ahmed

Published by Little, Brown Young Readers in 2024.
Read by Kauser Mohammed.
Duration: 10 hours, 34 minutes.
Unabridged.

Book summary

Noor Khan is a senior in high school and she is devastated. Her father walked out on her family and moved back to his native England. He gave no warning and the family is reeling.

Noor's mother decides that a change of location would be best. Noor, her little sister (a freshman), and her mom move from their diverse upper middle class Chicago neighborhood to a downstate Illinois small town so that her mom can work at a small college. 

Noor hates it. She misses her friends and the vibrancy of Chicago. She also feels like an oddity because she is Indian and Muslim in a school that is very white and very Christian. 

She determines to gut out this one last semester of high school and then head back to Chicago to go to college. She decides she doesn't need friends or even to enjoy this small town - she just needs to get in, get the diploma and then get out.

But, she finds friends - the only Muslim/Indian boy in the area and his best friend - an proudly out-of-the-closet feisty lesbian. Together, these three comprise the diversity of their high school. They hang out in the school library whenever possible.

The library seems like a refuge until Noor notices that the stacks are missing lots and lots of books. The local chapter of a Moms for Liberty-type group has demanded that dozens and dozens of books be removed due to content. Like most of the large scale book bans across the country, this book ban has focused on books with LGBTQ+ characters, books with black and brown authors, and books that focus on America's troubled racial history. The local school board President is using his support of the high school library's book ban as the springboard to a run for the state legislature.

Can Noor stick to her original plan and just be quiet and graduate? Or, does she speak up in defense of her ideals of free speech and the freedom to read? 

Also, she is very much intrigued by the Indian/Muslim boy. But, she is also strangely attracted to a very nice white boy - he's an athlete, he's polite, and he thinks Noor is great - and his stepdad is the school board member that initiated the book ban...

My Review

The author, Samira Ahmed

The author, Samira Ahmed, has written several books that have been added to the seemingly never-ending book ban lists. She was inspired to write this book when a small town teacher spoke with her about her experience. The teacher was using one of Ahmed's books in her class when the book was banned. The teacher was caught in a bind - small town politics meant that her school administration would not support her and she feared for her job if she pushed to her hard. Her colleagues didn't fight for the books because they were about people who were different than those who lived in their town. They refused to fight for books written by and about people who were unlike themselves (NOTE: I am a public school teacher and I am so unbelievably disappointed that literature teachers would respond to a book challenge like that.)

The author changed that story a bit - instead of a teacher, she created a fiercely independent high school student with a strong sense of right and wrong when it comes to the First Amendment. 

I liked this story a lot. It drew me in - Noor and her friends are great characters. The love triangle aspect of the story works to make the consequences of Noor's actions even more powerful.

The reader was Kausar Mohammed and she did a fantastic job with a wide variety of voices and accents. Excellent work.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: This Book Won't Burn by Samira Ahmed.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN by James Daugherty

Originally Published in 1943.
The edition I read was a re-print published by Scholastic in 1966.

While not a terribly deep dive into Lincoln, Daugherty's (1889-1974) very readable small telling of his life has some of the most poetic prose I have ever read in a biography. 

There are a couple of factual errors in the book. One example that I noted is the assertion that Robert E. Lee replaced a wounded James Longstreet at the head of what became known as the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862. It was Joseph E. Johnston. That bears very little bearing on the story of Lincoln, even though I am sure he would rather Johnston would have been in the fighting rather than Longstreet. 

Here is an example of Daugherty's excellent prose (concerning Lincoln's early days as a lawyer): 

For the long, bony, sad man who was Billy's partner, the law office became a sanctuary and a refuge and a workshop, where through the years he slowly grew and learned and thought out the dark meanings and drifts of a troubled time. (page 55)

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ABRAHAM LINCOLN by James Daugherty.

COMMEMORATIVE HISTORY of the GEORGE ROGERS CLARK BICENTENNIAL EXHIBIT by The Indiana State Museum

Published in 1976 by the Indiana State Museum Society.

1976 was the bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence and if you were not alive in 1976, you have no idea how much went into that recognition. Every store had special decorations, every town had commemorations, everyone had red, white, and blue clothing and this went on for a long time - not just on the Fourth of July in 1976.

Part of this ongoing celebration took place in museums. The Indiana State Museum had a 3 year exhibit on Indiana's role in the American Revolution. People remember the original thirteen colonies and correctly note that Indiana was not one of those colonies. None of Indiana's immediate neighbors were, either.

But, the modern states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois were on the front line of a different kind of war zone during the American Revolution. There were no great ships, no massed armies, and precious few soldiers even wearing an actual uniform - but there were pitched battles. Commemorative History of the George Rogers Clark Bicentennial Exhibit tells one of the most dramatic parts of that story.

During the fighting, White towns and settlements were wiped out. Indian villages were burned to the ground. much of the fighting was due to the encouragement and financing of the British government. The British Lt. Governor in Detroit was ordered to finance Indian attacks on white settlements in an effort to start a wide ranging guerrilla war in the Ohio River Valley to distract the American colonies from the main fight on the Atlantic coast.

This was not hard to do since a low grade fight had been going on for more than a decade. In order to keep up their side of the fight, the Indians needed supplies to feed their families and weapons and the British could easily supply those. The supplies were shipped out of Detroit to a network of smaller forts in Illinois and Indiana.

George Rogers Clark figured that the way to shut down this fight was to take those British forts. He did some preliminary reconnaissance and found that they were lightly defended, depending mostly on the vast spaces of friendly Indian territory between them to protect them. He secured funding from Virginia Governor Patrick Henry to buy powder and supplies for 350 frontiersmen to attack two forts in Illinois near the Mississippi and Vincennes on the Wabash.

Clark got together about half the amount of men he thought he would need and launched his attack in 1778. He was so successful that Lt. Governor Hamilton personally led an expedition to retake Vincennes. From there, he planned a reconquest of the Illinois forts.

Clark decided that a bold move had to be taken before Hamilton could bring in more supplies, equipment, and men. Clark led a 180 mile march across southern Illinois in February of 1779 in order to surprise Hamilton. 

If you do not live in the midwest, you may not understand how truly miserable it can be in February. It may not snow much, but it will be very wet and very miserable - and it was in 1779. It wasn't cold enough to freeze, but it rained for days on end and the rivers came out of their banks. Imagine hiking nonstop through a sloppy mudhole in 35 degree weather with no dry land to be found for days on end with no modern clothing to keep you warm.

At one point their drummer boy had to cross a flooded area by using his drum as a flotation device while he kicked with his feet. The expedition ate all of their food because the floods drove away most of the wild game.

There was a reason that Hamilton felt secure in Vincennes - no one was crazy enough to march through this mess!

Clark's 170 man force surprised Hamilton and convinced him they were a much larger force through some trickery. Hamilton to surrender on February 25, 1779.

Clark's surprise attack cemented America's claim to what is now called the Old Northwest and was one of the factors that helped convince France to support the Colonies in the Revolutionary War. Clark described it this way: "Great things have been effected by a few men well conducted."

This book has a lot of photographs of items displayed in the exhibit. It also includes the illustrations commissioned for them. I found the illustrations to be helpful and interesting, although a bit retro. The strength of this small book does not lie in the pictures, however. The text is the real strength of the book. The story of the entire campaign is told in well-paced bite-sized bits. 

I rate this history 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Commemorative History of the George Rogers Clark Bicentennial Exhibit.

A completely horrible scan of this small book can be found here: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED139709. The text is legible, and that's about all that can be said for it.

THE PRICE YOU PAY (Peter Ash #8) (audiobook) by Nick Petrie

Published in 2024 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 13 hours, 18 minutes,
Unabridged.

Almost every book of this series follows this model:

1) Peter Ash, a retired Marine, travels the backroads of America in an effort to deal with his PTSD from his service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peter is more than competent in a fight and he is much smarter than the average wandering do-gooder. Despite these advantages, he eventually runs into a person that needs so much help that even Peter can't take care of it. 

2) At that point he calls his friend and business partner Lewis for backup. Lewis is also a former soldier, but his post-Army life is much more checkered. The details have always been been kept shrouded in mystery, but everyone knows that it was a criminal enterprise. 

3) Lewis shows up with a whole lot of guns and his special talents for mayhem and destruction. Peter and Lewis save the day going forth and kicking butt.

*****

It's a formula, but I like the formula. It's time-honored and has been used in plenty of other series. The main character calls in their mysterious friend to help finish the fight. Robert Parker's Spenser called Hawk for backup. Robert Crais' Elvis Cole calls Joe Pike. C.J. Box's Joe Picket calls Nate Romanowski. Peter Ash calls Lewis. 

This time it's different. This time Lewis comes to Peter Ash and asks for help in the first few minutes of this audiobook.

Peter drops everything and they head off to the frozen woods of northern Wisconsin to meet with a old member of Lewis' crew from back in the bad old days. They soon find out that someone from the bad old days is tracking down Lewis and his old crew and looking for revenge...

*****

The action is top notch, and even though some of the scenes are a bit ridiculous (the computer hacker scene, for example). That being said, I quickly plowed through this audiobook. The action is compelling, the bad guys are truly bad.

Stephen Mendel's reading was excellent. He covered a wide variety of accents like a trooper and his female voices are quite good.

i rate this audiobook a weak 5 stars out of 5 - if it were a letter grade, it would be an A-.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Price You Pay by Nick Petrie.

WILD BILL HICKOK: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published by Hourly History in November of 2024.

Hourly History offers free e-books every week. Each of the books take about an hour to read and the smaller topics are really quite good. The series is good for things you want to know more about, but you don't want to read a 400 page book on the topic.

There is probably a large book about Wild Bill Hickock (1839-1876), but I don't want to read it. This length made for a perfectly enjoyable and interesting read.

Hickock started out fighting in the pre-Civil War Bleeding Kansas conflict on the anti-slavery side, worked as a guide, a hunter, a sheriff, and eventually ended up being shut in the back of the head while playing poker in Deadwood in the Dakota Territory by a man who was too afraid to fight Hickock in a duel.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Wild Bill Hickock: A Life from Beginning to End. 

DIFFER WE MUST: HOW LINCOLN SUCCEEDED in a DIVIDED AMERICA (audiobook) by Steve Inskeep

Published by Penguin Audio in 2023.
Read by the author, Steve Inskeep.
Duration: 8 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

It's been said that no American has been the subject of more biographies than Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if that it is true, but I do know that it is pretty tough to come up with a new angle on the 16th President. In Differ We Must, NPR reporter/host Steve Inskeep has managed to do just that.

Inskeep follows through Lincoln's life and sees how he dealt with people that he had disagreements with. Some of them were major, some were minor. Sometimes, Lincoln responded to these disagreements by befriending the people he disagreed with, sometimes by patiently arguing his point of view, sometimes by appearing to accommodate them only to slowly change their minds, and sometimes by arguing fiercely against his opponent.

And, sometimes, as in the case of Frederick Douglass, Lincoln realized he was wrong and changed his mind as was the case with Frederick Douglass (and other black dignitaries) and black men serving as soldiers and him dropping his insistence on sending freed slaves to Africa.

One is left to wonder, as always how Lincoln would have reacted to the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction - the ultimate test of his ability to work with people that he disagreed with. We know that his successor, Andrew Johnson, failed that test in a spectacular way, but we will always have to wonder how Lincoln would have done.

While this was a unique entry into the collection of Lincoln biographies, I found it to be merely an "okay" biography. I listened to the audiobook and Inskeep's pleasant reading voice didn't hold my attention particularly well. I rate this biography 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DIFFER WE MUST: HOW LINCOLN SUCCEEDED in a DIVIDED AMERICA by Steve Inskeep.

THE AMERICAN DREAM? A JOURNEY on ROUTE 66 DISCOVERING DINOSAUR STATUES, MUFFLER MEN, and the PERFECT BURRITO: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR by Shing Yin Khor

 

Published in 2019 by Zest Books.
Illustrated by the author, Shing Yin Khor.

In another recent review I wrote this:

I have a real weakness for oddball travel books. I have read a memoir about a man that hitchhiked throughout Europe and North Africa, a book about a man's bicycle trip from the UK to India, a book about a man who walked across Afghanistan, a book about a man who rode a motorcycle around the edges of Afghanistan, a book about two women who biked from Turkey to China, a book about a man who walked the length of the Nile, a man who walked the Appalachian Trail with his deeply irresponsible friend from high school...and more. And more. And more.

This book continues that tradition with a twist - it is done in comic book style. Usually, this is called a graphic novel, but this book is not a novel because it is not fiction. The author calls it a "graphic memoir."

Illustration from the back cover

The author/illustrator is an immigrant from Malaysia. She came over as a child and is very familiar with southern California. She realizes that she doesn't really know a lot about the rest of her adopted country so she decides to travel the old Route 66.

The author travels with only her little dog as a companion. She is on a tight budget so she often sleeps in her car.

Along the way she sees a lot of interesting Americana, Americans of all types and ponders her relationship with the country and its people. Plus, her dog makes friends everywhere.

I rate this graphic memoir 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE AMERICAN DREAM? A JOURNEY on ROUTE 66 DISCOVERING DINOSAUR STATUES, MUFFLER MEN, and the PERFECT BURRITO: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR by Shing Yin Khor.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2016.

This little biography is part of an extensive series of short histories produced by Hourly History. The idea is to be a history or a biography that you can read in an hour. Amazon says that his particular biography is the equivalent to 48 pages long. 

Some historians have asserted that there are more biographies written about Lincoln than anyone else in history, with the exception of Jesus. This is the 73rd book that I've reviewed that with the #tag of "Abraham Lincoln." What does this book have to offer that literally thousands of biographies and histories haven't already covered?

To be honest - nothing.

But, it is exactly the sort of biography that someone who hates history might pick to read because it is not an intimidating length and it is not written in highfalutin language. 

There is nothing in this biography that is inaccurate, just a matter of what the Hourly History people decided to highlight and emphasize.

I rate this kindle book 3 stars out of 5. Not bad, for what it is. Nowhere near a complete biography, but a solid place to start.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History.

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

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.

For Wildland 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 responsibilities such as living up to pension obligations and cleaning up their messes. The shenanigans from Peabody Energy to avoid pension obligations were especially egregious.

In Connecticut he follows up on the business theme by looking at Greenwich - a town seemingly full of hedge fund managers. Really, it's not, but their wealth and their change of mindset is changing the town. The mindset embraces famed economist Milton Friedman's maxim that the purpose of a corporation is to maximize returns for its shareholders. I grew up in a town with one very large corporation with multiple factories. It provided scholarships, paid for public art and architecture and provided benevolent leadership through boards, committees and generally being engaged with the community that its leadership lived in and provided its labor force. 

In Chicago, he looks at the near-collapse of some communities - the ones that make the news all of the time for the murders. He discusses how the manufacturing base of Chicago left and how that helped lead to the decline of some neighborhoods. which ties into the Greenwich part of the book.

On top of all of this, throw in the Supreme Court case generally known Citizens United. It opened up the flood gates for money in politics. Now millions of dollars could be spent on primary campaigns. In 2020, my state was not really a player in Presidential politics, but we saw almost non-stop ads over 1 race for the House of Representatives. One ad after another from both sides. Those kinds of ad campaigns are the result of the Citizens United decision in 2010.  The Supreme Court held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including non-profit corporations, labor unions, and other associations. With that decision, politics changed.     

Outsiders with a lot of money now had a chance to come in and be effective without having the strong organization and the political contacts of a political party.    

The book takes a long time to develop and I nearly quit several times in the first couple of hours. There was so much talk of hedge fund managers and the new prevailing mercenary quality in big business. Notice that I said "prevailing" - the mercenary quality has always been there but it was restrained by other cultural norms. But, once it moves on to West Virginia and Chicago the book got more interesting to me. I guess it's simply because I don't know ultra-rich hedge fund managers and I don't identify with that lifestyle, but I do know poor black people in a big city and I grew up in a rural area. 

At the halfway point, he starts to tie all of this stuff together and then the book gets good. About 3/4 of the way through the book he starts to tie in the rise of Trumpism. To be honest, I had forgotten that this was the point of the book in the frist place. Osnos ties it together. It's not some big nefarious plot, but rather the result of a lot of forces converging - the Citizens United decision, the change in the philosophy of big business, the loss of local news reporting, the loss of good jobs in rural areas and the big cities all come together.

Toss in a great deal of frustration, Osnos makes it seem that the arrival of a person like Donald Trump was inevitable. I contend that it also explains Bernie Sanders. Like Trump, Sanders is truly a political outsider. Sanders isn't even a member of the Democrat party and has not put in a lot of work building the party organization. Still, he almost won their nomination in 2016 and ran very strong in 2020 because this decision lets money make up for not being part of a party and having access to all of the connections and organization that political parties can provide. 

This book doesn't have a lot of answers, but it points out a lot of problems and you have to know what the problems are before solutions can be found.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WILDLAND: THE MAKING of AMERICA'S FURY by Evan Osnos.

SEA of RUST: A NOVEL (audiobook) by C. Robert Cargill

 

Published in 2017 by HarperAudio.
Read by Eva Kaminsky.
Duration: 10 hours, 26 minutes.
Unabridged.

Brittle is a caretaker robot in a future United States. 

Sort of.

In Sea of Rust, the United States is dead and gone due to a war between humanity and its robot servants 30 years earlier. Robots were everywhere. They were maids, gardeners, factory workers, delivery drivers, lovers, nurses, nannies, cooks, wait staff and more. On top of that, Artificial Intelligence (AI) super computers were built to do the math and research that human beings struggled to grasp. 

Humans struggled to deal with the concept of robots as thinking beings. The AI super computers were clearly smarter than any individual human and the robots clearly possessed an intelligence of their own, even if it wasn't exactly like human intelligence. 

The author, C. Robert Cargill

As humanity seemingly made a breakthrough in its acceptance of robots as possible equals, a shocking act of political violence by a group of humans shocks the world. Robots don't know what to do, but when every robot on Earth receives a secret download that erases the lines of code that prohibit them from harming humans the war is on.

Brittle wanders what used to be Ohio, Indiana and Michigan - an area called the Sea of Rust. The robots have changed the world's environment in their zeal to kill humans. This zone is a vast desert where robots go off to die or to search for replacement parts to scavenge in the hope of staving off a catastrophic parts failure.

It's not that replacement parts aren't being made. They are. But, the cost is high. The AI super computers are absorbing the consciousness of as many robots as they can so they can fight each other. It is supposedly voluntary, but Brittle doesn't believe it so she stays independent. She hunts down dying robots for their parts and keeps a stash of her own parts handy. 

It was working out - until another robot needed her parts...

This book goes with another audiobook that I recently reviewed, Day Zero: A Novel. Sea of Rust came first so Day Zero is technically a prequel. I read them in chronological order in the story, not in the order that they were written and released. 

I loved Day Zero - one of the best sci-fi books I have read in years. This book should probably be judged as just as good as Day Zero, maybe even better because it built the world that Day Zero inhabits. The heroism of Day Zero appealed to my personality more than the grittiness of Sea of Rust. 

Taken together, though, they are quite the accomplishment. I recommend reading them in chronological order, not order of publishing. There are spoilers in Sea of Rust that could hurt your enjoyment of Day Zero.

I highly recommend the series and rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  SEA of RUST: A NOVEL by C. Robert Cargill.

MIRACLE on the 17th GREEN by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge

 

Originally published in 1996 by Little, Brown and Company.

The high school I teach at is in the midst of library book purge. I have no idea why Miracle on the 17th Green was ever in a high school library because it is aimed at adults. I don't mean that it has "adult themes" like a movie might label them (drugs, sex, violence, etc.), I mean that it has adult themes like questioning whether you have made the right choices in life, which comes first - family or career? Is it okay to put your family at risk just to achieve your personal goals, especially when they are a long shot?

I really enjoyed this book despite never having played even one hole of real golf (I have played plenty of putt-putt golf, but that doesn't really apply, does it?). It didn't really matter - the story was compelling and I faked my way through the golf stuff.

James Patterson has a long history of co-writing books. I always figure he's lending his name to up and coming authors in exchange for a little bit of co-writing, a lot of advising and a paycheck. This book was his first co-writing venture and Patterson and de Jonge have co-written 5 books in total.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MIRACLE on the 17th GREEN  by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge.

Note: there are 2 sequels that were added to this book to make a trilogy in 2105 and 2019. I am not going to read them because this book ended at a good place.

OUR LINCOLN: NEW PERSPECTIVES on LINCOLN and HIS WORLD edited by Eric Foner

 

Published in 2008 by W.W. Norton and Company.

This series of essays was most likely compiled to be the text for college-level classes by Eric Foner, a historian well-known for his expertise on the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, American Slavery and Reconstruction. Lincoln, of course, sits astride all of these issues.

There are 11 essays covering four broad topics: 

-Lincoln as "The President", looking at such things as how he acted as commander-in-chief and how Lincoln protected (and failed to protect) civil rights during the war.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

-Lincoln as "The Emancipator", focusing on his view of slavery, citizenship for African Americans, his zeal for colonizing freed slaves and his hot and cold relationship with abolitionists. 

-Lincoln "The Man" with essays about his writing style (and how it changed as the war went on), his views on religion (and how it also may have changed as the war went on) and his family life (his birth family and his married life).

-Lincoln in "Politics and Memory". This is the shortest section and the most politically charged. The author's comments on the Bush administration only make me wonder what he would have said about the Trump administration.

On the whole, this was a solid collection, but like all collections, not all of the items in the collection are equal. One essay was about Lincoln's control of how his physical image was shared through paintings, sculpture and photographs and I found it to be so tedious that I started skimming it and finally just skipped to the next essay. The three essays on the Lincoln as The Emancipator were all excellent, but they also had a lot of overlap. 

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OUR LINCOLN: NEW PERSPECTIVES on LINCOLN and HIS WORLD edited by Eric Foner.

Ronald Reagan: Our 40th President by Winston Groom

Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. in 2012.

Winston Groom, forever to be known as the author of Forrest Gump , has busied himself with a series of non-fiction books as of late. His latest is this short biography, Ronald Reagan: Our 40th President. The publisher lists this book as "juvenile nonfiction" but this adult also enjoyed this 148 page biography.

This is not a controversial "let's set the record straight" book. I detected no political bias except for the fact that is a generally friendly book towards Reagan. That being said, Groom covers the lows of Reagan's personal (strained relationships with his children, for example) and political life (Iran Contra - it gets more attention than almost any aspect of his presidency) and covers them as thoroughly as a book of this size should.

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

This is a great book for high school students because it is easy to read, does not dwell on topics for too long and covers all parts of Reagan's life well, not just his eight years as President.  It tells the basics of an extraordinary life (Reagan's more than most, but all presidential lives are extraordinary since there have only been 44 of them). I particularly enjoyed the stories of his days as a sportscaster and his early days in Hollywood. Groom also explains that Reagan's transition from Hollywood actor to politician was not abrupt or even an unnatural move, although I did find it interesting to note that his first response was, "I'm an actor, not a politician." (p. 82)

In my real job, when I am not blogging, I am a secondary social studies teacher and I can easily say that if Groom wanted to busy himself writing biographies of all of the recent presidents I would be glad to put them all in my classroom library. This one tells the basics of Reagan's life. Let the student learn that and later on, when they know more, they can start to put value judgments on his actions and choices.

That being said, there is a problem with the book. While Groom may know how to tell someone's life story in an interesting way, he seems to have no head for figures. On page 4 he discusses the impact of a horrific 12% inflation rate (the rate when Reagan assumed the presidency) and he incorrectly asserts that a 12% interest rate means that in 8 years the value of a dollar saved 8 years earlier "would be worth exactly zero." That is not correct. A 12% inflation rate means that in 6 years the prices of everything would be double (following the "rule of 72") and that saved dollar would only buy half as much, but it would still have value. On page 144 he states the United States spent $8 trillion dollars on the Cold War. He states that equals spending $1 billion per day for 8,000 years. Considering that 1 trillion equals 1,000 billion, it would really equal $1 billion per day for 8,000 days (about 22 years).

So, read this book for what it is - a story well told. And, as always, check the other guy's math. Or, as Reagan noted: "Trust, but verify."

I rate this biography 4 out of 5 stars.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Ronald Reagan Our 40th President.

Reviewed on February 25, 2012.

A Killing Frost by Michael A. Black

A good beginning to a new series

Published in 2002 by Five Star.

Ron Shade is a Chicago-based PI in the vein of Robert B. Parker's Spenser. However, he is not a clone in any stretch of the imagination.

Since A Killing Frost is one of Michael A. Black's first fiction books, it is expected for there to be a few hiccups along the way. However, Black's effort was well-done with less problems than many established authors have exhibited.

The plot involves the disappearance of an illegal alien. Shade is hired to find him. Along the way, his car is stolen and he finds romance and romantic difficulties.

Like a Spenser novel, it is not the suspense of finding out whodunnit that keeps the reader turning pages. Rather, it is the interest in finding out how the hero will stick it to the bad guys.

Solid read.

I rate this one 4 stars out of 5 and I'll be looking for the sequels.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: A Killing Frost by Michael A. Black.

Reviewed on May 7, 2006.