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

Published in 2025 by Hourly History.

Hourly History's biography of Franklin Pierce offers a concise but comprehensive telling of Pierce's life. He was a politician, but his wife hated Washington, D.C. and spent as much time away from the capital as possible. 

He had two major foreign policy successes - the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico and opening Japan to foreign trade, but I was really interested in his policies that helped lead to the Civil War.

Franklin Pierce is one of that group of 8 Presidents in a row from Van Buren to Buchanan that did not serve more than one term (two died in office) leading up to the Civil War. Some were stronger than others, but, as a group, these Presidents didn't show the kind of leadership needed to push the nation away from Civil War. 

Pierce was a New England Democrat that vociferously took the side of Southern Democrat slaveholders. His working theory was that there needed to be unity in the country and uniting behind slavery was a way to be unified. 

This was unpopular with his New England neighbors and didn't really generate trust among Southern Democrats because they saw the pushback, especially in Kansas. The fighting grew so severe among pro- and anti-slavery forces that it became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FRANKLIN PIERCE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents).

CHESTER NIMITZ: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2024 by Hourly History.

Hourly History publishes short histories biographies and histories that are designed to be read in about an hour. Most are pretty good, but this one came up as a middling biography for me.

Chester Nimitz was the Admiral of the Pacific Fleet during World War II. He was appointed to the position just 10 days after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and he led the Navy throughout. 

This biography is excellent when it comes to personal details of his early life and even details of his early career. That is great, but this book is too sparse when it comes to the controversies and strategies of World War II. He was there for all of the important decisions and events from 10 days after Pearl Harbor until the signing of Japan's formal surrender on one of his ships and this book just gives the bare facts details that anyone can find on Wikipedia. They aren't incorrect, but they don't tell any sort of compelling story.

I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Chester Nimitz: A Life from Beginning to End. 

MALAYAN CAMPAIGN: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published by Hourly History in 2021.

Hourly History writes short histories and biographies that take the average reader about an hour to read. Sometimes they try to explain too much in a short book (such as the Mayan Civilization, for example.) But, an hour is plenty of time to explain the basics of a military campaign that lasted 2 months and 8 days.

When the Japanese Navy attacked the American naval forces at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 it was actually part of a much larger, highly coordinated push against all Western forces in the Pacific and in East Asia. American forces were also attacked in the Philippines, for example.

This push also included the British-held Malay Peninsula and Singapore that started on December 8.

Britain had not provided much of a defense for this area, which was understandable considering the dire threat Britain itself faced from Nazi forces in Europe.

The Japanese landed with a slightly smaller force than the British had, but the British were completely surprised by the attack and the Japanese pushed hard towards Singapore and never stopped pushing. This did not allow the British to coordinate their forces and led to a quicker defeat.

British forces in this area did not have top shelf equipment, unlike the Japanese. The most surprising piece of military equipment in the campaign was something no one really expected - bicycles. The Japanese utilized bicycles to move their infantry quickly down the peninsula, despite the rugged terrain.

For a reader that is looking to fill in a few blank spots in their knowledge of World War II, this series would be a good place to start. 

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Malayan Campaign: A History from Beginning to End.

FIGHTER PILOT: THE WORLD WAR II CAREER of ALEX VRACIU by Roy E. Boomhower

 

Published in 2010 by Indiana Historical Society Press.

Alex Vraciu (1918-2015) was a World War II flying ace, ranking fourth in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He destroyed 19 Japanese planes in the air and 21 on the ground. 

This short book is very approachable and tells the story of Vraciu's childhood during the Great Depression in Northwest Indiana (now commonly known as "The Region") and his college years at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. 

Vraciu took advantage of a U.S. government program that trained civilians to be pilots with the understanding that if the U.S. went to war those pilots would become military pilots. He trained in Muncie, Indiana and immediately joined the U.S. Navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Vraciu had a remarkable military career over the next 23 years. Besides destroying 40 Japanese planes, he lost multiple planes, including being shot down over the Philippines and leading a group of guerrilla fighters against the Japanese, he became a test pilot, he led squadrons after they navy transitioned to jets and scored the highest in the predecessor to the Navy's "Top Gun" training program in a jet 12 years after the end of World War II. 

The book is very readable and full of interesting photographs. It would be good for a well-read student of World War II or an interested newbie. I rate it 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FIGHTER PILOT: THE WORLD WAR II CAREER of ALEX VRACIU by Roy E. Boomhower.

THE BOMBER MAFIA: A DREAM, A TEMPTATION and the LONGEST NIGHT of the SECOND WORLD WAR (audiobook) by Malcolm Gladwell

 

Published in 2021 by Pushkin Industries.
Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell.
Duration: 5 hours, 14 minutes.
Unabridged.

Before there was a U.S. Air Force, there was the U.S. Army Air Corps. Before the Army Air Corps (re-organized as the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942) built the largest collection of flying fighting machines to relentlessly bomb the Axis Powers in World War II, they had a tiny budget and a few air bases. One of these was Maxwell Field, a training facility in Alabama. That facility became the intellectual home of a group of pilots who espoused the concept of precision bombing. They were known as The Bomber Mafia.

Precision bombing is the theory that teaches that you don't have to blow an enemy's entire military to pieces, you can just hit certain key industries and choke out their ability to produce more weapons/feed their people/move soldiers and so on. This was intended to be a more humane way to wage war - an antidote to the mass slaughter the world saw in World War I. Precision bombing could end wars before they got to that point by simply forcing an opponent to stand down. The invention of the Norden Bomb Sight convinced them that bombers could fly as high as they wanted over the enemy and could still drop bombs precisely where they wanted them

The other argument when it comes to bombing is strategic bombing. Strategic bombing, in simple terms, is brute force bombing. It is simply dropping bombs on enemy territory to inflict maximum mayhem and damage with the goal of breaking the morale of the enemy. Think of it as something like Sherman's infamous March to the Sea from the Civil War, but delivered from the air.

In the European Theater, the U.K.'s Royal Air Force followed a policy of strategic bombing. They flew at night in order to give their pilots cover and they indiscriminately dropped bombs on German cities. The Americans flew during the day and used the daylight to try to hit certain high value targets as part of a precision bombing strategy. 

This audiobook is about the debate over the two points of view, specifically in the Pacific Theater. For months, the United States tried precision bombing, but a combination of things made it difficult, including factors like the weather was much more erratic and the manufacturing base was more diffuse (a lot of parts were actually made by small-time family-based manufacturers).

US Navy Grumman TBF Avenger aircraft dropping
bombs on Hakodate during July 1945

When Curtis LeMay arrived in the Pacific Theater, he brought a different plan. He had personally flown and led precision bombing missions and was not impressed. He brought massive fire bombing campaigns to Japan and leveled city after city.

Gladwell comes up with a mixed bag of conclusions. He gives the impression that strategic bombing was the obvious choice, but it clearly wasn't that simple. LeMay leveled huge chunks of 66 Japanese cities and the Japanese kept on fighting. Tokyo was hit so hard that it was actually removed from the official target list. 

Imagine of the situation was reversed and America was subject to such attacks. New York City would be hit so hard that it was effectively gone and so would the next 65 cities by population. That would include Chicago, Los Angeles and Dallas, of course. But that would also include the destruction of such smaller cities as Indianapolis, Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Fresno, San Juan (Puerto Rico), Tulsa, Corpus Christi, Tampa and Cincinnati.  Would we have kept fighting?

I say we would have kept right on fighting. Strategic bombing was used against England at the beginning of the war and, in the end, it seems to have made England all the more determined to fight and inflict as much strategic bombing as possible on Germany. One could argue that the Germans and Japanese surrenders owed more to fear of Soviet occupation than a desire to end the firebombings. 

Gladwell brings the discussion into the modern world with discussions of cruise missiles that can hit specific GPS locations and drones that can target individual people. He gives the impression that precision bombing is actually the way to go. 

But, did our targeted "Shock and Awe" campaign in the Iraq in 2003 make the Iraqi people decide to just go along with America's plans? Did the Taliban just quit even though we killed who knows how many of them with drone attacks that demonstrated we have the ability to sift through all of the data, figure out who they are and find them no matter where they hide?

What were are left with is an unresolved question even though Gladwell gives the impression that he did provide them.

But, the discussion was interesting.

This audiobook was produced by Gladwell's podcasting company. He includes special effects and audio from the time period and interviews that were conducted after the war. It was a really slick production.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BOMBER MAFIA: A DREAM, A TEMPTATION and the LONGEST NIGHT of the SECOND WORLD WAR (audiobook) by Malcolm Gladwell.

CHINESE CIVIL WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (Chinese History) (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2022 by Hourly History.

Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour.

The first half of the twentieth century was a time of great turmoil for China. There were multiple wars, political chaos, multiple governments. There was also 15 years of civil war in two distinct phases, interrupted by the Japanese invasion of China during World War II.

From 1927-1937, Chaing Kai-shek's Nationalist government and Mao Zedong's Communist government fought a civil war. When Japan invaded China, the civil war was suspended (sort of) and a united front was formed. Soon after the end of the war, the civil war resumed and the communist faction won, with the exception of the island of Taiwan.

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) and
Mao Zedong (1893-1976)

This short history suffers from a couple of problems. There is simply too much to cover. The book attempts to describe Mao's politics, but never even tries to explain the Nationalist program, such as it was. 

The book also suffers from an abundance of clunky writing. For example, this is from a paragraph about 2/3 of the way through the book: "...the next stages of the Chinese Civil War would commence. This state of civil war would last for more than three years, sending China into a state of warfare once more."

In two sentences there are three references to the civil war starting up again that state nothing more than the fact that the civil war was starting up again. Space is tight in a book that is only supposed to last an hour and also tell the story of almost 20 years of warfare. Cleaning up this sort of writing would make more room for other important items, like an explanation of Chiang Kai-shek's policies. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found at Amazon.com here: CHINESE CIVIL WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

HOW to HIDE an EMPIRE: A HISTORY of the GREATER UNITED STATES (audiobook) by Daniel Immerwahr

 

Published in 2019 by Recorded Books.
Read by Luis Moreno.
Duration: 17 hours, 25 minutes.
Unabridged.

If I asked you to think of a map of the United States you would almost certainly imagine the contiguous 48 states and maybe imagine the little inset maps of Alaska and Hawaii. 

But, you probably would not imagine other areas like American Samoa being a part of that map. How about Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands even though the people who live there are American citizens? How about Puerto Rico? Puerto Ricans are citizens and Puerto Rico has a population bigger than at least 15 states.

How to Hide an Empire is about how America has maintained an empire of sorts from the very beginning. At first, it was by continually moving out of the official states into Indian territory, Mexico, Spanish territory and English territory. The United States took several strategic "guano" islands that were not claimed by anyone in the late 1800s. The United States has held a traditional empire since the Spanish-American War in 1898 when it took the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and Cuba. It went on the acquire other properties by trading and conquering during the World Wars (the World War II section of this book is excellent).

Nowadays, the United States maintains a hybrid empire. It has kept some territories and turned others into states (Hawaii and Alaska) but it has also tried something new. 

The United States seems to have learned a lesson with its experience in the Philippines. The United States spent a lot of time, treasure and blood pacifying the Philippines only to have it become a liability during World War II - the Japanese attacked it within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. quickly granted the Philippines its independence and changed its "business model".

Rather than conquer and hold other countries, the United States has maintained an immense series of bases and installations across the world. The most famous is probably Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but others include Ramstein Air Base in Germany with 53,000 people.

On the other end of the spectrum there are also tiny little properties that house radio listening stations or broadcasting stations.   According to this article by the Libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, the United States has about 750 foreign military installations around the world -  three times as many installations as all other countries combined. Note the article is an opinion piece and the Cato Institute is generally of the opinion that the U.S. military should pull back. They always write with a political point in mind, but I don't usually find the Cato Institute to be untruthful.

This was an interesting look at American history. Some of it is shameful - such as the medical experimentation that has done on unsuspecting Puerto Ricans. Some of it is amazing - such as the immense supply chain that the U.S. used to supply Chinese forces and help keep the Japanese bogged down in China throughout the war. The supply line flew through 4 continents, over two oceans, the world's largest desert and over the world's tallest mountain range. It supplied the model for the base system the United States uses now. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW to HIDE an EMPIRE: A HISTORY of the GREATER UNITED STATES by Daniel Immerwahr. 

SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published by Hourly History in 2020.

I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time in. The long history of India is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of ignorance.

Subhas Chandra Bose was one of those people for me. I had heard of him, but only described as sort of an "anti-Ghandi". He wanted independence as much as Ghandi did, but thought the non-violent protests were a waste of time. Subhas Chandra Bose was not only willing to fight - he thought it was the only way India would be free of English rule.

Bose was born in India but formally educated in England. He was poised to take his place in the bureaucracy of colonial India. But, he rejected that offer and became active in the independence movement. 

As World War II loomed, Bose saw it as an opportunity to free India. He approached the Fascist powers for support. Germany and Italy poo-pooed him but Japan saw the potential and financed a army of Indian nationals - but waited too late to make a difference. 

The beauty and the weakness of this book series is the brevity of each book. They are designed to be read in about an hour, which means I can explore a whole new area or person with little time commitment. But, I always end up with questions. In this book, I found myself wondering how much faith the Japanese really had in Bose and his army and why they waited so long to fund it.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  SUBHA CHANDRA BOSE:  A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

THE DECISIVE BATTLES of WORLD HISTORY (The Great Courses) (Audiobook) by Gregory S. Adlrete

 

Published by The Great Courses in 2014.
Lectures delivered by the author, Gregory S. Aldrete.
Duration: 18 hours, 29 minutes.

Unabridged.

As long as there has been war, there has been discussions about which battles were the most important, the most pivotal. This takes some analysis, since the temptation might be to simply discuss the battle that finally ended a long conflict, like Appomattox was the functional end to the American Civil War. 

The temptation might also be to collect a list of the biggest battles of history, but that would exclude Aldrete's tiniest choice - the Battle of San Jacinto. While that battle had less than 2,500 soldiers, he persuasively argues that the battle not only made Texas independent from Mexico, it also set off a chain of events that led directly the the American Civil War, Reconstruction and more.

In The Decisive Battles of World History, Adlrete presents the battles in chronological order and spends at least as much time on the background information of each battle as he does on the battles themselves. A few of the entries are not battles, but are entire campaigns.

The Battle of San Jacinto

Almost all of these lectures are informative and entertaining, but I did find the one set in Medieval Japan to be very hard to follow. I found that to be surprising since I took two classes on this topic back in college. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE DECISIVE BATTLES of WORLD HISTORY (The Great Courses) (Audiobook) by Gregory S. Adlrete.

COUNTDOWN 1945: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY of the ATOMIC BOMB and the 116 DAYS THAT CHANGED the WORLD (audiobook) by Chris Wallace and Mitch Weiss

Published by Simon and Schuster in June of 2020.
Read by one of the authors, Chris Wallace.
Duration: 8 hours, 40 minutes.
Unabridged.

The 116 days referred to in the title is the time between the day that Harry S. Truman became President and the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Chris Wallace quickly catches the reader up on what was going on and then uses a countdown for the chapters to add a sense of drama - will the scientists make it on time?

Of course, we know that they do succeed - the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are one of the most well-known historical facts of the 20th century. Wallace's re-telling of the story in Countdown 1945 is full of facts but not particularly told in an interesting way.

For example, there is a great deal of information about the Potsdam Conference (July 17 - August 2, 1945) that met in Germany. The Conference was important because it included the leaders of the USSR, the United States and the UK and in many ways it paved the path for post-war Europe and the Cold War. But, there was so much detail involved (dinner sets, meals, the weather, the cars they rode in) that it began to feel like filler.

Mushroom clouds from the bombings of the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right)

Of course the Potsdam Conference is an important part of the story, but the main story was the construction, testing and deployment of the bombs. If I had been the editor of this book, I would have pushed for more information on the physical results of the bombs and their effects on the residents of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and less on the mundane details of the Potsdam Conference like descriptions of the meals they ate.

Note: I thought the authors did a very good job of explaining both points of view on the atomic bombings of Japan, but eventually settle on the argument that they were horrible weapons, but their use was justified.

The audiobook was read by Chris Wallace, one of the authors. This makes sense considering that Wallace is a nationally known television personality. At first I thought this was a great choice. I enjoy Wallace's Sunday morning political show and I think he is a tough, fair interviewer and I like his style. But, that unique voice of his started to wear on me after a while. Not a bad book - I wouldn't tell someone not to read it or listen to it - but not as good as it could have been.

So, I rate it 3 stars out of 5 because parts of the book felt padded and the narrator's voice wore on me.  This book can be found on Amazon.com here: COUNTDOWN 1945: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY of the ATOMIC BOMB and the 116 DAYS THAT CHANGED the WORLD by Chris Wallace and Mitch Weiss.

1942: THE YEAR THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS by Winston Groom

Originally published in 2004.

Winston Groom is best known as the author of Forrest Gump. He is also the author of 14 different non-fiction books and shows a real talent for writing narrative history.

1942: The Year that Tried Men's Souls focuses on the year that Groom considers to be the crisis year for the Allies and America in particular in World War II - 1942.  He starts his story just before World War II with the attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and ends it in February of 1943 with the ending of the fighting on Guadalcanal.

This was a bad time, especially early in 1942 when Japan conquered one territory after another and American forces were seemingly caught off guard or under-prepared everywhere.

Groom focuses primarily on the Pacific Theater in this book (75 % or more), although he does offer a decent look at the North African campaign. His look at the fall of the Philippines and the Bataan Death March was very compelling.

Groom has no problem pointing out incompetent leadership when he sees it. He also looks at the American home front, describes in detail the work to figure out Japan's secret code and how that successful effort affected the war.

Claire Phillips (1907-1960)

Groom likes to point out the stories of individuals in the middle of the war. He looks at a couple of pilots who took part in an extraordinary escape from a Japanese prison in China and eventually worked their way all of the way to India. He also looks at non-military people, like Claire Phillips, a night club owner in the Philippines who provided information to anti-Japanese forces and helped to sneak food and clothing into a Japanese-run POW camp of American soldiers. She believed her husband was in the camp, but continued to help after she discovered he had been dead for months. Her nickname was "High Pockets" because she used her bra to store money and useful information.

Very readable, informative and well-done.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 1942: THE YEAR THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS by Winston Groom.

ALISTAIR COOKE'S AMERICA by Alistair Cooke

Published in 1973.

In 1973, undoubtedly to prepare for the upcoming 1976 bicentennial of the American Declaration of Independence, BBC reporter and author Alistair Cooke released a book and a television mini-series telling the history of the United States to the U.K. The book and the series came to America as well with the book selling nearly 2 million copies. This massive "coffee table" type book has 393 pages and weighs in at 3 pounds, 9 ounces (compare that to a random paperback book I weighed at just 5 ounces).

Photo by Lewis Hine

Cooke presents a straight-forward history of America, skimming over lots of details but getting the highlights. This has to be the case when you cover more than nearly 500 years of history in less than 400 pages. He focuses half of the book on the exploration/colonial/Revolutionary War/Constitutional era and it is by far the strongest part of the book.

This book is filled with beautiful, sometimes profound photographs. On pages 312-313 there is a two page spread of a lynching. Cooke claims that "no one knows who took this picture, or exactly when." (p. 311)   It was taken by Lawrence Beitler in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930. Beitler sold this photo for 10 days straight to sell as souvenirs of the lynching. Here is a link to a great book on the topic: A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in the Heartland by James H. Madison. Here is a link to the Wikipedia page on this lynching: Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith.

The photograph of the girl working in a clothing factory in North Carolina is another great photograph in book full of great paintings and photographs. I have included it in this review.

It is very readable, but clearly a product of its time, and Cooke is a reporter, not an historian. The book has a bit of a racist feel to it. For example, when discussing where the United States lays on the globe (not too hot, not too cold), he notes: "...the United States spans the limits of the climates that white men can live and work in." Cooke mostly skips over the Native American civilizations that inhabited the Americas before Columbus. He spends almost as much time discussing entertaining but mostly nonsensical theories about the Phoenicians settling in the Americas as he does the actual Native American civilizations themselves. Cooke's reasoning is that he is covering a history of the United States itself, so Native Americans get the short end of the stick, except as an impediment to American expansion for the first 2/3 of the book.

Cooke does a similarly poor job dealing with African Americans, a group that he cringingly calls "the blacks" throughout. He does, however, clearly observe (in a clunky manner) that slavery and the continuing racial prejudice against African Americans is an ongoing open sore and has never been dealt with properly.

Final rating - 4 stars out of 5, keeping in mind that this history book is clearly old enough to be an historical artifact itself.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: ALISTAIR COOKE'S AMERICA by Alistair Cooke.

A LIFE of JESUS by Shusaku Endo. Translated by Richard A. Schuchert

First published in 1973.

Shusaku Endo was a rare thing - a Christian from Japan. He also grew up mostly away from Japan (in China) and spent a considerable amount of his young adult life in France. When he was in Japan, he was different because of his religion. When he was in France, he was different because of his ethnicity.

Endo's re-telling of the Jesus' life emphasizes this idea of being an outsider. Jesus is never what people want him to be. John the Baptist's followers want him to continue to teach like John the Baptist. His early followers want him to perform miracles all of the time. His later followers want him to overthrow the king and drive out the Romans. Meanwhile, Jesus is teaching lessons about love and forgiveness that no one seems to want to hear.

Endo's Jesus is a melancholy man - who wouldn't be when your main message is ignored and everyone wants to you be something you can't be?

Endo chooses to pass over most of the miracle stories of Jesus because he wrote this book for a Japanese audience and he is convinced that his native countrymen will not accept those stories and will reject the entire message because of them. This has been a point of contention with some critics.

Endo also makes some assumptions that are interesting, but not necessarily in the Gospels. For example, he writes an interesting take on the story of Peter denying Jesus three times on the night that Jesus was betrayed by Judas. He looks at a few facts and makes a compelling (albeit completely circumstantial) argument that Peter didn't just deny Jesus, he went to the Temple leaders and made a deal with them that saved the lives of the disciples if they promised to only take Jesus. In effect, this makes them every bit as guilty as Judas and also makes Peter and Judas the very first people that were saved due Jesus' death on the cross. It has a compelling sense of completion and does explain why the disciples were not rounded up in the days following the crucifixion.

An interesting take on Jesus. Well worth the time to read it. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A LIFE of JESUS by Shusaku Endo.

THE RECKONING: A NOVEL (audiobook) by John Grisham

Could Have Been Something Special. Instead, This Book Is a Hot Mess.

Published by Random House Audio in October of 2018.
Read by Michael Beck.
Duration: 17 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

Pete Banning was a decorated World War II veteran and had been home less than a year in 1946 when he took his pistol to town and shot and killed his church's minister. The question everyone had was why this Mississippi-born-and-bred hero would do such a thing.

The Reckoning features romance, betrayal, racial injustice, an execution by electric chair, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare against Imperial Japan, the Bataan Death March, two court cases, a family member committed to an insane asylum, a murder, a suicide, explosions, war crimes, a submarine sinking a ship and marital infidelity. The amazing thing is that, after all of that, this book is a tedious mess - something to be endured more than enjoyed.

The problem with this book is that Grisham spends hour after hour after hour giving excruciatingly detailed backstories all about the Banning's whirlwind romance of his wife, how his farm worked, his sister's pink house, a hotel in Memphis and the in-laws lackluster lives.

The World War II section of the book is actually quite good. But, it just doesn't fit in with the rest of the book and is actually not needed to make the rest of the book work. It's almost like Grisham had two books written - one a Southern Gothic mystery and the other a World War II action-adventure and he just stuck them together. Too bad - he writes a pretty good war story.

This book is a hot mess. As I am writing this review, this book is the #2 on Amazon's best-seller list and #3 on the New York Times list. The only reason that it is there is because of the author's name - not the quality of this book.

I listened to the audiobook, read by Michael Beck. Beck has a pleasing voice, but this book would work against any narrator. It desperately needed hours of text edited out of the book.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Reckoning by John Grisham.  My advice, pick another Grisham book to read - any other book.

THE SECOND KOREAN WAR (audiobook) by Ted Halstead

Published in 2018 by Ted Halstead.
Read by Cody Banning.
Duration: 15 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged

Ted Halstead's The Second Korean War is a multi-country thriller in which North Korea tries a desperate gamble to force South Korea to submit to North Korean rule.

The book starts out on an military base on the far eastern part of Russia. North Korea has found out that Russia has a small nuclear "backpack" weapon (a battlefield nuke) dating from the early days of nuclear weapons that has been lost from the inventory over the years. North Korea acquires the weapon so that they can start a two-pronged effort to force South Korea to surrender and force the United States to withdraw from South Korea without fighting.

But, things don't go as smoothly as they hoped, people die and a Russian police detective starts putting things together. The question is, will he put things together fast enough?

The last thing I want to do is write out a bunch of spoilers, so I won't tell how everything breaks down. Some of the twists and turns were nicely done. I especially liked how the Russians were the good guys and honest brokers throughout. There's a lot of technology (radar-eluding planes, submarines) and geo-political intrigue in the vein of Tom Clancy. It's not as good as the best Tom Clancy, but that is a high bar. I found the North Korean plan for South Korea to be exceedingly implausible simply because of their hardheaded insistence on using a specific vehicle. I get it, the stereotype of military dictatorships is that they are ultra-orthodox and inflexible.

I listened to The Second Korean War as an audiobook. It was not a particularly good production. The reader, Cody Banning, has a clear voice - but, his rhythm is just not there. At times, it sounds like he is trying to imitate William Shatner, with odd long pauses at commas. According to my research, this is just his second audiobook, so that explains a few things. There's a lot of potential there.

The audiobook was poorly edited. Multiple times you can hear the reader clear his throat, shake papers and sometimes start over as he botched a line. Botched lines happen - but things like this are supposed to be corrected and the mistakes edited out. Also, the editor/producer should have caught the fact that Banning mis-read the word "emphatically" as "empathically" throughout the book. This is my 467th audiobook review and this one stood out for its rather poor editing. Too bad.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5, despite the production/editing work. It was a unique take on a potential Korean conflict.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here:
The Second North Korean War by Ted Halstead.

Note: I was asked to give an honest review of this audibook by the publisher in exchange for a free download of the audiobook.

HERE IS WHERE: DISCOVERING AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN HISTORY (audiobook) by Andrew Carroll

Published by Random House Audio in 2013.
Read by the author, Andrew Carroll.
Duration: 14 hours, 2 minutes.
Unabridged

Why are some things remembered in our shared historical memory and others are not? Why do we commemorate some things but others are only remembered by a few hard-core local historians?

For Here Is Where, Andrew Carroll compiled a list of historical locations that he felt have been overlooked. Inspired by the little known-but-true story of how Abraham Lincoln's son was saved from being pushed off of New Jersey train platform by John Wilkes Booth's brother one year before Lincoln's assassination, Carroll decided to hit the road and look at similar locations all over the United States. 

Among the locations he found were the home of a house slave that ran away from President George Washington. Even though she ended up dying in poverty in a rough cabin, she was still an inspiration. When asked if she would have been better off living in the relative comfort of working in the Mount Vernon plantation home, she said she would prefer to be poor and free. 

Carroll also found the birthplace of the man who created a great deal of the vaccinations that the world uses today and had a hand in literally saving millions of lives. And, on the other side of that coin, he tracked down the probable origins of the "Spanish Influenza" (in the American West, not in Spain).

How about the location of the earliest DNA samples in North America that re-wrote the history books? The site of a million graves on a New York City's Hart Island that serves as a giant Potter's Field? The place where the first two-stage rockets were built and fired? Or the place where the modern elevator was built? Carroll talks about all of these and even more.

Some of the locations aren't particularly historical in my mind, but this was an interesting, rambling look at obscure history that often tied in to the some of the biggest historical events of the last two hundred years. Carroll looks into why some of them are forgotten. Many times it is because they are embarrassing, such as Washington's runaway slave or the hospital in California that sterilized more people than any other hospital in the country as part of a pre-World War II eugenics movement. Other times there is no particular reason why they are forgotten - they just get lost in the shuffle of history.

Carroll ends the book with a roundabout reminder that our own lives are filled with personal histories of our friends, neighbors and relatives that we should not let get lost like those other stories have.

I listened to this book as an audiobook. It was read by the author, a fact that I didn't know until I began writing this review. I think that says all you need to know about his performance - he was so solid that I had no idea that a professional reader was not reading the book.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: HERE IS WHERE: DISCOVERING AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN HISTORY by Andrew Carroll.

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.

ASIANS and PACIFIC ISLANDERS and the CIVIL WAR by the National Park Service

Published in 2015 by Eastern National

A year and a half ago I visited the Lincoln home at Springfield, Illinois (a great place, by the way) and in the visitors center I found this book. I was intrigued for three reasons: 1) the Park Service books are always beautifully put together, like a National Geographic with lots of color pictures; 2) I knew nothing about any Asian participation in the Civil War - I figured there had to be some because the war was so vast and involved so many people - but I knew nothing about them; 3) This was the physically largest book in the series - even bigger than the books on the Underground Railroad and American Indians in the Civil War - two areas that are well documented.

This book continues in the tradition of being beautiful visually. It is written as a series of articles, each telling a part of the overall story and each article is illustrated with high quality photos. However, the articles are often overlapping, with mentions of some of the same men in multiple articles, sometimes repeating the same information.

I did learn a few things, though. I had never heard of the "Pacific Pig Trade" before this book. It was an attempt to circumvent the official international prohibition on trade in African slaves by bringing in contract labor from China. Many of them went to Cuba. However, many of these laborers did not voluntarily sign these labor contracts and they were bought and sold like the African slaves were. Many were tied up for their trip in the same nets that were used to haul pigs, thus the name Pacific Pig Trade.

There was also a lot of confusion as to how to classify the Asian volunteers that stepped forward. This was a world that categorized everyone by race and nationality, sometimes even measuring people down to 1/64 of African blood in order to properly classify people. Were Asians to be considered people of color, forced to serve in segregated units? Where they white? Did it matter? Turns out, there was no official policy, most likely because there weren't enough Asian volunteers to force the government to make one. So, it depended on the local recruiting officer and the men that the Asian volunteer would serve with.

For me, the most interesting story was that of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874). These brothers were the origin of the term Siamese Twins. After touring the country in an exhibition, they settled in Mount Airy, North Carolina (later it served as the inspiration for Andy Griffith's fictional Mayberry) They married, bought  plantations and had lots of children - two of whom served in the Civil War as Confederate soldiers. Between them, the brothers had 33 slaves and were outspoken supporters of the Confederacy.

The main issue that I have with the book is that it is very repetitive. There were simply is not enough original material to fill a book of this size so the articles tend to overlap, as I already noted above. This book would have been well-served to have an editor put together articles and make the book tighter.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Asians and Pacific Islanders and the Civil War.

WHAT WOULD SHE DO? 25 TRUE STORIES of TRAILBLAZING REBEL WOMEN by Kay Woodward

Published by Scholastic in 2018

What Would She Do? is collection of very readable short biographies of women - which, after being factually correct, is the most important thing. As David McCullough said, "No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read." 

Woodward writes in an informal, approachable style that I enjoyed quite a bit. Each biography is accompanied by a full page illustration of the woman and a little chart with basic biographical information. There is also a large pullout quote from or about her. For example, for Emma Watson there is this quote: "The saddest thing for a girl to do is to dumb herself down for a guy."

Generally, I did not like the "What Would _____ Do?" section that was included at the end of each biography. The author was clearly trying to make a connection between the women in the book and the typical American student with typical American student problems. But, trying to connect Cleopatra to a student who is being laughed at for their fashion choices or Rosa Parks to a girl being left out of group texts was just too far of a stretch for me.

Otherwise, though, this is a strong book. I am gladly handing it over to my 6th grade daughter to read and then we are going to pass it on to her teacher for her classroom library.

The publisher recommends this book for ages 8-12. I would say ages 10-15.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be purchased on Amazon.com here: WHAT WOULD SHE DO? 25 TRUE STORIES of TRAILBLAZING REBEL WOMEN by Kay Woodward.

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

SOLDIER! DISCOVER 15 WARRIORS THROUGHOUT HISTORY by Paul Beck

Published in 2015 by Scholastic 

Paul Beck's SOLDIER! looks at 15 examples of soldiers throughout history, starting with Imperial Roman infantry and ending with a U.S. Navy Seal. It is composed of 48 8.5 x 11 inch pages and includes a full-color tear-out poster of every soldier. 

Most descriptions are 4 pages, including a map where the soldiers would have operated. It also includes a full page drawing of the soldier with notes about the weight and length of their weapon(s). The third and fourth pages include more information about optional weapons, training or tools. 

The only complaint I have about the book is that it could have included a little more diversity. 12 of the 15 soldiers came from Europe or America. For example, the Aztec warriors that confronted Cortes had unique weapons and armor and would have been a great addition. 

That being said, the book was well-done. The pictures were interesting as were the factoids. This would be a good book for students from 4th to 8th grade.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: SOLDIER! DISCOVER 15 WARRIORS THROUGHOUT HISTORY by Paul Beck.