WHAT DOES ISRAEL FEAR from PALESTINE? (audiobook) by Raja Shehadeh

Published by Tantor Audio in June of 2024.
Read by Khalid Abdalla.
Duration: 2 hours, 26 minutes.
Unabridged.

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer, human right advocate, and author. Shehadeh grew up as a Christian and Palestine has been occupied his entire life. This short book is an extended essay of sorts on the state of Palestinian/Israeli relations. 

The book is often critical of Israeli policy and actions, especially under Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is hardly a justification of the October 7 attacks.

Shehadeh does question the sincerity of Israel's attempts to work out something with Palestine - be it a two state solution, a common government with Israeli and Palestinian representatives, or some other system. Ignoring the situation does not make it go away. There are more than 5 million Palestinian refugees and they are not going anywhere - mostly because they are not really allowed to.

It was an interesting listen, providing a lot to think about. It was read very well by Khalid Abdalla.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?

THE OTHER SIDE of the WALL: A PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE of LAMENT and HOPE (audiobook) by Munther Isaac.

Published in 2020 by ChristianAudio.
Read by Neil Shah.
Duration: 8 hours, 5 minutes.
Unabridged.

I heard about The Other Side of the Wall on The Holy Post podcast. I knew that there were Palestinian Christians in Gaza, but I hadn't given it much thought. Generally, I find the Palestinian/Israeli conflict too intractable to think about. It's not that I don't care, it's that simple solutions (or even insanely complicated solutions) don't even seem to be on the horizon at all and in a world with so many problems close at hand, it's easy not to think about problems half a world away. My bandwidth is just not that big.

But, the interview was good - it came from an unexpected source in this conflict. The podcast host interviewed Munther Isaac, a Lutheran pastor and teacher. He is also a Palestinian from Gaza. There has been a continual Christian presence in Gaza as long as anyone can tell, although it is dwindling as Palestinian Christians opt out of the conflict zone by moving away. 

Isaac brings a long list of observations and complaints. He has reasonable complaints, like his family's farm and home being grabbed by the Israeli government to make space for Israeli settlements. But, he is also bothered by fellow Christians who refuse to let him speak at conferences because he offers a different point of view than the standard American Christian (pro-Israeli government) point of view.

The author

The author is not anti-Jewish, but he is against so much that the conservative Netanyahu government has done over his long time as Prime Minister.

The book was obviously written before the brutal Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. Many of the places he mentions in his book were headlines in the Hamas-Israel War as I was listening to the audiobook. Some might say that the book is outdated since those terrorist attacks were a profound pivot point, but I think the book still has tremendous value, especially with his discussions about the applications of Jesus' teachings in a world in a continuing cycle of violence and retribution.

A tough listen, but a very good one.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope by Munther Isaac.

THE GOLEM'S VOICE (graphic novel) by David G. Klein

 

Published in 2015 by
Now What Media, LLC

Synopsis:

Set in Czechoslovakia during World War II, The Golem's Voice is the story of a young Jewish mom and her two sons trying to escape relocation by the Nazis. This was in the time when the Nazis were still telling Jews that they were relocating them to alternate settlements rather than just taking them to work and death camps.

As they are being loaded onto trains, the mom gets a bad feeling and tells her boys (Yoakim and Yakov) to just run. She does not join them because they are much faster than her and she just wants them to escape and live. Her boys run under the trains and, at first, things look good. But, soon enough, Nazi soldiers are in full pursuit and Yoakim is shot providing cover for his little brother.

Yakov continues to run to the only place the knows - the Jewish ghetto neighborhood that he just came from. He hears a voice in his head calling him to the home of a long-dead rabbi named Yudah Loew. Legend has it that Loew was much more than a prolific author, philosopher and academic - he was also the creator of a golem. 

Loew was supposed to have studied so much that he worked out how to create a man in clay and bring it to life. This creature is not truly a man and could not speak for itself because only God can do that. But, it is alive and follows the orders of the one who created it. Medieval legend said that if things got bad enough for the Jews, a golem could be created to defend them.

Yakov is led by the voice to a hidden room in the house and discovers everything one would need to create a golem - and if there were ever a time that the Jewish people could used a golem to defend them, this was it...

My review:

I think this book was well done. The art is moody, as it should be when discussing the dark and dangerous days of the Holocaust. I was curious to see if the book would fall into the temptation of straying into the complete fantasy of having the golem wreak havoc on the Nazis to the point of being able to march to Berlin and take out Adolph Hitler himself (Rest assured, this does not happen.)

There is a very clever angle taken by the author. The idea of a Golem is partially explained by texts found by Yakov and his memory of children's tales. But it is also explained through the Nazi officer who is hunting Yakov. That officer takes the legends seriously even though he hates the Jewish people. He wants to use the knowledge to create Golems to create an army that the Nazis can control. There is a "debate" of sorts between this officer and a spirit (is is Loew or is it God? I think it is God.) that fills in a lot of details.

I rate this graphic novel 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Golem's Voice by David G. Klein.

See a good sample of the book on the publisher's site here.

THE COMPLETE MAUS (graphic novel) by Art Spiegelman

 

Originally published in serial form in Raw magazine from 1980-1991.
Originally published in book form in 1991 by Pantheon Books.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Years ago, the high school where I used to teach had a daily silent reading time. We were encouraged to build a classroom library and I had a great one. Two stand alone shelves (one tall, one short) and a little rug in the corner with a chair. I had a lot of books from a lot of different genres but the star books were Of Mice and Men and the two volume paperback version of Maus. Kids kept on stealing Of Mice and Men (If a kid likes it so much that he doesn't want to return it - fine by me) but so many students read Maus that the paperback binding broke and the pages fell out. It was held together with binder clips and big rubber bands. 

What I remember about that book is that every student reverently took off that ridiculous clip and the big rubber band, spread the pages out and just read. Students who "hated to read" read that book. Afterwards, they carefully put it back together again - in order - when they were done. These two books had power and painful truth. They knew it and they respected it.

I'd forgotten all about Maus, the binder clips, and the big rubber bands until I heard about a school board in Tennessee dropping this book from their curriculum due to rough language, nudity and a suicide. Funny how war, genocide and untreated PTSD from having almost all of your family and friends systematically murdered leads to a bit of cursing.

Missouri joined in as well. School districts banned the book because they think it fits the definition of "explicit sexual material." State law would punish them for exposing minors to "explicit sexual material" even though state law also mandates the teaching of the Holocaust. There is nudity, but it is rare and it is certainly not racy stuff.

The arrival at Auschwitz

The book is the story of the author's father during World War II. He was a recently married Jewish businessman in Poland before World War II. He had a young son. Their community is forced to move, go into urban ghettos and eventually into the death camp at

Auschwitz. Some hide, some run but they almost all end up in the camps. Most of his father's family and friends die, including his little boy - the older brother that the author never knew.

Spiegelman illustrates his father's story as a series of flashbacks. You can see that his father is miserable and his mother killed herself years earlier. 

There are no "people" in the book. The Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats, the Poles are pigs, the French are frogs and the Americans are dogs. I like the last bit since Hitler regularly referred to Americans as a mongrel people.

This is a powerful book - it is also a tough book. The war still reverberates through our world. We can recognize it and educate our children or we can ignore it.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE COMPLETE MAUS (graphic novel) by Art Spiegelman.

ANNE FRANK'S DIARY: THE GRAPHIC ADAPTATION (graphic novel) by Anne Frank (author), Ari Folman, and David Polonsky (illustrator)

 

Originally published as a book in 1947.
Graphic novel e-book edition published in 2018 by Pantheon.

Adapted into a graphic novel by Ari Folman.

The Diary of Anne Frank is certainly one of the most famous pieces of literature published in the last 100 years. The book the true diary of a young teen Jewish girl that was written as her family lived in a hidden apartment with two other families in an attempt to hide from the Nazi genocide. Before the war ended someone betrayed the families and Anne and almost everyone else in the apartment died in concentration camps shortly before the Nazi surrender.

A page where Anne compares herself
unfavorably to her sister.

Ari Folman adapted the diary into a graphic novel. In the afterword he notes that this was harder than one might expect. This graphic novel is 160 pages, but if he had simply illustrated the entire text of the diary it would have ended up being more than 3,000 pages! The challenge was to maintain the spirit of the print book while editing it down.

I think the book is beautifully illustrated. The moods, emotions, and simple displays of teen attitude come through loud and clear - and make her come to life.

The graphic novel is excellent, which is why it is too bad that it is on a lot of banned book lists. In Florida, Moms for Liberty asked for the book to be banned because of two scenes described like this by Katie Couric in an article: it features two “sexually explicit” scenes. In the first, Frank walks along a series of nude statues, and in another, she asks a friend if they want to show each other their breasts." The Moms argue that the book does not accurately teach about the Holocaust because of these pages - as if Nazi hatred were only aimed at Jews.

Anne Frank's diary has always been edited to make the story flow better, but it also was edited to take out some embarrassing details about the family. Those edits included Anne Frank's passing thoughts about possibly being interested in women as well as men. In the 1950s this might have been a deal breaker with potential publishers so it was left out. This is ironic considering that gays and lesbians were sent to the camps by the Nazis with just as much enthusiasm as Jews - but, that was the politics of the day.

It turns out that it also the politics of now. A teacher in Texas was fired because those pages were read aloud in her class. 

It must be noted that even if Anne Frank were not Jewish, she would have been sent to the camps for being bisexual.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ANNE FRANK'S DIARY: THE GRAPHIC ADAPTATION (graphic novel) by Anne Frank (author), Ari Folman, and David Polonsky (illustrator).

THE GIFTS of the JEWS: HOW a TRIBE of DESERT NOMADS CHANGED the WAY EVERYONE THINKS and FEELS (The Hinges of History Series #2) by Thomas Cahill

 

Originally published in 1998 by Nan A. Talese/Anchor Books in 1998.

The Gifts of the Jews is the second book in The Hinges of History Series by Thomas Cahill. It is a series of histories that look at important long term movements in history that helped create Western Civilization. 

I read this book when it was first published and I placed it on my shelf and did not touch it for more than 20 years. Over time, I remembered it as remembered it as a dense tome and continued to keep it on my shelf as more of a trophy to my ability to read through difficult books than for any desire to go back and consult it or even re-read it. That changed when we stuck at home during the pandemic quarantine and we came to realize that our extensive bookshelves were overwhelmed and a purge was in order. This book was "purged" from the shelves, but went in to my to-be-read pile after I leafed though it.

I don't know why I remembered this book as hard to read. Cahill has a real gift for writing. This book was usually interesting (often immensely interesting), easy to read and offered challenging takes on the Old Testament. 

Cahill starts with a look at religious worship and religious belief in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. He emphasizes that everything was viewed as an unchanging cycle. This makes sense when you look at nature - the seasons, the lunar cycle, menstrual cycles, the unending cycle of birth and death and more birth and so on. The individual is not particularly important to society (everyone has a place and stays in their place and does what is expected) and the big gods don't particularly care about the individual (sacrifices are done by professionals to the bigger gods). Household gods do care about the individual, but they are limited in power and are prone to capricious behavior. Think about the Greek myths or even the famed literary character Conan the Barbarian who worships Crom - a god who does little to encourage or discourage his followers and mostly just watches over things in a generally disapproving way. 

Cahill asserts that the Old Testament is a change in that pattern. He is not unique in this thought - I have heard it at my church on a pretty regular basis. The argument is that Abraham changes the mold by stepping away from Ur, a Mesopotamian city state at the behest of God. Abraham leaves the faceless masses and becomes a known personality. The cycle stops and instead becomes a timeline following Abraham and his descendants and a relationship between a deity and his people. 

Cahill builds on this theme and shows that, over time, it becomes more than a relationship between a whole people and God and becomes more of relationship between God and individual people in that group (as typified by David).

During the exile in Babylon, the relationship changed again. Judaism had been forced to return to its roots in Mesopotamia and had to come up with a new paradigm or whither away. The temple and its sacrifices were literally gone. 

He dates the book of Ruth as being written in post-exile times (even though it describes pre-kingdom times) and notes that it is a story of regular people trusting in God and doing what is right. Even more importantly, Ruth - the title character - is not even Jewish. It is an effort towards inclusion. One does not have to be a literal child of Abraham to join his people. Judaism is no longer about blood or the location of a temple or even having a temple.

Cahill notes: If their identity as a nation was gone (or at least fundamentally altered), "what more could he possibly want from them? It was in the midst of this conundrum that the unheeded words of the prophets came back to them. God wanted something other than blood and smoke, buildings and citadels. He wanted justice, mercy and humility. He wanted what was invisible. He wanted their hearts - not the outside, but the inside." (p. 226)

I enjoyed this book, but I think Cahill oversold some aspects. There are certainly cycles to Judaism. For example, the Torah is read in worship in a cycle and the annual religious holidays are a cycle. But, maybe I am nitpicking.

There are parts of this book that dragged, especially in the first quarter. But, the rest of it was well worth my time to read. Turns out that I also had the third installment of this series on my shelf so I will be reading it soon. The lesson? Sometimes, it's a good idea to clear off the old book shelves and re-read a book you haven't looked it in a while.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE GIFTS of the JEWS: HOW a TRIBE of DESERT NOMADS CHANGED the WAY EVERYONE THINKS and FEELS (The Hinges of History Series #2) by Thomas Cahill.

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.

DESTINY DISRUPTED: A HISTORY of the WORLD through ISLAMIC EYES (audiobook) by Tamim Ansary

Published in 2009 by Blackstone Audio.
Read by the author, Tamim Ansary
Duration: 17 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

Tamim Ansary has done something that is very hard to do - he has written a long history of a complicated topic without making it boring and after more than 17 hours of discussion, he left me wishing that it was even longer.

Ansary makes the observation that most histories that people in the West (Western Europe and the Americas) read are written from a Western perspective. That makes sense. But, the history of the world is not just the history of Western Civilization. There are multiple civilizations on the planet. Mesoamerica (the Mayas, Aztecs, Toltecs, etc.) is a separate civilization. China is the historic center of another civilization. So is India. And between the West and India and China is another one. Westerners usually refer to it as the Middle East. This book is a history of that civilization from the beginning of recorded history (empires like Bablyon) to 9/11 and the fallout from that terrorist act.

The strength of this book is that it lets the reader see history from another perspective. For example, the Crusades loom large in European history, but they were mostly an irritant to Muslims of the day since Ghenghis Khan was threatening them from Central Asia at the same time. Compared to Ghenghis Khan, the Crusaders were not an existential threat to their civilization. To make an analogy from American history, the Battle of Lexington and Concord looms large in American history textbooks as "The Short Heard 'Round the World", but most English school children have never heard of it.

The audiobook is read by the author and he does a great job. The book is written in approachable, every day language, literally designed to be an introduction to the history of this civilization. He reminds readers of key concepts throughout, showing how older ways of doing things applied to new situations and were adapted. Ansary's reading is excellent.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. I highly recommended this audiobook. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DESTINY DISRUPTED: A HISTORY of the WORLD through ISLAMIC EYES by Tamim Ansary.

HOLOCAUST: THE EVENTS and THEIR IMPACT on REAL PEOPLE by Angela Gluck Wood

Published in 2015 by DK Publishing. Originally published in 2008. 

DK Publishing consistently publishes strong "coffee table" type books. Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People covers a more serious topic than most of their books, but it is immensely readable and compelling.

The text tells the basic history of how the Nazi party took control of Germany, started to implement their anti-Semitic agenda and eventually invaded their neighbors to start World War II. It also tells the story of a series individual Jewish victims as the timeline unfolds.

The book doesn't just cover the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, but goes out of its way to include the other victims as well.

The liberation of Dachau in April of 1945. This picture appears
as a two-page spread in the book. 

The pictures are excellent, the text mostly consists of captions for the pictures or a couple of paragraphs that go with the theme of the page. Considering how disjointed this approach usually is in these sorts of books, this book kept a surprisingly coherent narrative.

There is a foreword by Steven Spielberg of just three paragraphs. It adds little to the book, but it is advertised on the front cover.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HOLOCAUST: THE EVENTS and THEIR IMPACT on REAL PEOPLE by Angela Cluck Wood.

NIGHT (audiobook) by Elie Wiesel. Translation by Marion Wiesel.

Originally published in 1960.
New translation published in 2006.
Read by George Guidall.
Duration: 4 hours, 17 minutes.
Unabridged.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel's famed book Night is a standard, perhaps THE standard, that all Holocaust literature is judged by. Originally, this was written as an immense memoir in Yiddish, but during the process of translating the book to French, it was pared down to about one-fifth of its original size. The paring down resulted in a more literary work - a work that feels almost fictional because it is so selective as it tells the true story of how Elie Wiesel's childhood, his family, his community and his religious faith was destroyed by the Nazis.

Slave Laborers liberated by U.S. Army soldiers under the command
of General Patton. Photo taken by Private H. Miller.
Wiesel is in the picture. He is on the second row from the floor,
the seventh prisoner from the left (by the post)

The book begins with his little Jewish neighborhood in Romania that had been relatively unaffected by the war. But, as the Germans are retreating from the Soviets, they implement their Final Solution and start liquidating all of the Jewish communities while they still can. The Jews in Wiesel's neighborhood are divided into groups and loaded onto trains over the course of several days.

The trip, in cattle cars, is horrific. The camps are no better, of course. Wiesel and his father are separated from the women in his family at Auschwitz. They never see each other again. Wiesel and his father go from one work detail to another in different camps, slowly retreating away from the Soviet advance. Their only hope is to stay healthy enough to work so that they might be allowed to live until the end of the war...

I read this book because it is read by students in one of the English classes at the high school where I teach. I have never heard a student speak poorly of the book, which is itself a solid endorsement.

The audiobook was read by George Guidall, one of the most experienced audiobook readers of all time. Not only has he won two Audie Awards (the Oscar for audiobook readers), he has also read more than 1,200 audiobooks. Guidall, of course, was quite good in this presentation.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: NIGHT by Elie Wiesel.

ST. PAUL: THE APOSTLE WE LOVE to HATE (audiobook) by Karen Armstrong

Published in 2015 by Brilliance Audio.

Read by the author, Karen Armstrong.
Duration: 5 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged.

Also published under the title St. Paul: The Misunderstood Apostle.

Karen Armstrong is a multiple award-winning author of more than 25 books, the great majority of them exploring religion. She is particularly interested in Islam, Christianity and Judaism. 

St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate is aimed at the informed layman - not at other historians or religious experts. I read A LOT of history and have gone to church my entire life, but I can get lost in the weeds pretty quickly if too much professional jargon is used. Armstrong assumes  basic knowledge of the Christianity and of the New Testament. Nothing too complicated or deep and most of my Bible knowledge comes from Sunday school and small group Bible studies led by layman with a workbook. Armstrong takes care to explain things along the way because she is not out to impress the intellectuals - she has written a history for regular folks.

Born c. AD 5. Died c. AD 64-67

Paul has always been interesting to me. His writings have always seemed to me to be the first real attempt to move Jesus' teachings into a formal religion. There are times when I find his writings to be quite inspirational. At other times, he strikes me as obtuse and misogynistic. But, I wanted to get into the book to have a better understanding of what he was teaching and when he taught it.

The first thing that surprised me was the concept of Deutero-Pauline letters. Many scholars are now assuming that nearly half of the New Testament letters from Paul were not actually written by Paul, but by writers that came after him and used his name. This was a fairly common practice in Roman times - if you liked an author, you just borrowed his name. The evidence for this comes from analyzing the vocabulary used, the writing styles and changes in theology.

For me, this mostly cleared up one of my major frustrations with Paul - his inconsistencies. I say mostly because he still had some, but not nearly as many.

Her biography of Paul was interesting, but a bit skimpy since the audiobook was only a little over 5 hours long. But, it does hit the main points and I ended up feeling much more informed than I was before I started. I wish she had added more about his impact on the development of the Church over the nearly 2,000 years since his death.

This audiobook was read by the author. Sometimes, that can be a problem because being a great author is not the same thing as being a great audiobook reader. However, Armstrong has considerable experience with public speaking and her performance was quite good.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ST. PAUL: THE APOSTLE WE LOVE to HATE (audiobook) by Karen Armstrong.

THE JOURNEY that SAVED CURIOUS GEORGE: THE TRUE WARTIME ESCAPE of MARGARET and H.A. REY by Louise Borden

Originally Published in 2005.

Published in 2016 by HMH Books for Young Readers.

This book is really three stories all wrapped up in one.

#1) It is the early biography of two authors and how they got started.

#2) It is also the story of how Curious George, the iconic children's book character came to be.

#3) And, most importantly, it is the story of how these authors and this character were almost snuffed out at the beginning of World War II because of their religion.

This edition of the book is designed to be used in a classroom. Not only is is wonderfully illustrated with both photographs and original drawings reminiscent of H.A. Rey's work, it also includes assignments and discussion questions at the end of the book.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Journey that Saved Curious George.

 

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.

FINDING JESUS: FAITH. FACT. FORGERY: SIX HOLY OBJECTS that TELL the REMARKABLE STORY of the GOSPELS by David Gibson and Michael McKinley

Published in 2015 by MacMillan Audio.
Read by Peter Larkin.
Duration: 7 hours, 55 minutes.
Unabridged.

Finding Jesus is not a deep book theologically, but it does take a balanced look at 6 things that are associated with Jesus and a few related topics and is respectful of the faithful while doing its exploration. If you are expecting a book that is out to burst religious bubbles, this is not your book.

The topics are:

1) John the Baptist. Who was he? Is he in the historical record? Are the relics of John the Baptist in scattered across Europe actually him?

The James Ossuary.

2) James, the brother of Jesus. Who was he? Was he Jesus' half brother through Mary or a step-brother from a previous marriage of Joseph? Is the James Ossuary (a casket to hold bones) that was discovered a few years ago real?

3) Mary Magdalene. Who was she? Was she a disciple or simply a follower of Jesus? Why is she not mentioned after the four gospels? Was she the wife of Jesus? Was she really a reformed prostitute? Was she written out of the New Testament?

4) Judas Iscariot. Who was he? Why would an all-knowing Jesus pick a man to be one his disciples when he knew he would betray him? Was Judas actually a hero because he led Jesus to his death so that he would sacrifice himself for everyone? What about the gnostic Book of Judas? This section includes an excellent discussion of gnosticism.

5) The True Cross. There are dozens of dozens of artifacts that purport to be the true cross, but are any of them really that one cross? For me, this was the most boring of all of the topics.

6) The Shroud of Turin. This one was surprisingly interesting to me. Even if you doubt if the shroud is the actual shroud that Jesus was buried in (I know that I doubt that it is real) the discussion of crucifixion and the history of relics like the shroud were very strong.

This is a great audiobook. The reader, Peter Larkin, does a great job of keeping the text lively. A very enjoyable and informative listen.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: FINDING JESUS: FAITH. FACT. FORGERY: SIX HOLY OBJECTS that TELL the REMARKABLE STORY of the GOSPELS.

UNHOLY NIGHT by Seth Grahame-Smith

Brilliant!

Published in 2012 by Hachette Book Group

Seth Grahame-Smith is, perhaps, most famous for his books Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, two books that I have never read and probably never will because I care not one wit for vampire or zombie tales. But, this book intrigued me and I am very glad that I read it.

As in the other books I mentioned, Seth Grahame-Smith has a talent to take an existing story and put a twist to it. Unholy Night takes the traditional Christmas nativity story and makes this little change: What if the Three Wise Men were actually not three learned scholars but three criminals posing as three learned scholars?

That's it - that's the heart of the book. But, what a twist!

Here is all anyone really knows about the the Three Wise Men from the Biblical account, from Matthew 2, verses 1-12:

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." 

A 6th century mosaic of the Three Wise Men
 in Ravenna, Italy.

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'" 

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." 

When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another path.

They are mentioned in one other verse in which King Herod is angered because the Wise Men do not report back to him and he proceeds with his plan to slaughter all of the male infants in Bethlehem. That's it. The traditional names (Balthazar, Gaspar and Melchyor) are not named. Their actual number of Wise Men is not named. 

This book covers all of these aspects without skipping a beat - so long as you look at things from a certain point of view.

In Unholy Night, Balthazar is a master thief and pickpocket who has no problem killing Herod's soldiers to stay out of jail. But, he is caught and brought to King Herod in Jerusalem for judgment. While awaiting execution he is held with Gaspar and Melchyor, two violent men awaiting execution for a variety of major crimes. Balthazar engineers a chance for a final meeting with three religious scholars in order to set himself right with God, overwhelms them, switches identities with them and escapes into the night towards Bethlehem with some goods that they managed to steal along the way: gold, frankincense and myrrh. 

Of course, they meet up with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus (the three criminals are looking in the stable for fresh mounts) and it does not go well. However, once Herod's men arrive to start slaughtering the infants these three criminals are moved to rescue this clueless family and the real adventure starts.

This book could have gone wrong on so many levels but, somehow, Grahame-Smith manages to change the story but yet maintain the commitment to the religious aspects of the story. It does treat faith and religion seriously. The Christmas Star is there. The virgin birth is there.  There are miracles and struggles with the concepts of faith and forgiveness. And, it does not all get wrapped up in a neat little bow in the end and everyone does not live happily ever after. And, I enjoyed it immensely.

Be warned, this book is often violent and gruesome, like the story that it comes from. Let's face it, if you are telling the story of a diseased old tyrant who orders the murder of babies, it's bound to be gruesome. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Unholy Night by Seth Grahame Smith.

1944: FDR and the YEAR THAT CHANGED HISTORY (audiobook) by Jay Winik

A Review of the Audiobook

Published in 2015 by Simon and Schuster Audio
Read by Arthur Morey
Duration: 21 Hours, 10 minutes
Unabridged

The premise of 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History is that 1944 is the most important year of World War II - the year that the Allies grew certain that they were going to win the war, the year that post-War plans were laid out, the year of the D-Day invasion and more.

This effort by Jay Winik is very readable and was an informative and entertaining listen. There are times when he creates fabulous images in the listener's mind that are worthy of any novelist. His description of the extent of anti-Jewish operations throughout Europe and particularly in Auschwitz and other death camps are so vivid and so striking that I can readily recommend this book as a good place to start for anyone who wants a serious look.

The book focuses on FDR, his personality and how he shaped the war effort and post-War institutions like the United Nations. Winik details Roosevelt's health problems and points out how Roosevelt's health affected his efforts and possibly affected his judgment.

However, there is a problem with the book and that is the title - what he wrote about does not match the title.

Josef Stalin (1878-1953), FDR (1882-1945) and Winston
Churchill (1874-1965) at the Tehran Conference in 1943.

He has written an excellent book, but I don't think that he proved his assertion of the title that 1944 was THE YEAR. The book covers all of FDR's life and spends a lot of time in every year of the war but 1944. The topics he covered were important and he covers them well. A great deal of the book covers the holocaust and FDR's response to the proof that the "final solution" was underway. I have no problem with this as a topic (I already noted this above) but I do have a problem with a book that purports to talk about the importance of 1944 to world history and goes on to literally spend more time talking about Anne Frank than the entire Pacific Theater of World War II. I am not kidding. Don't get me wrong - Anne Frank's story is compelling, but it is not, in and of itself, worthy of more mention than all of the fighting in Korea, China, the Philippines, the attempted invasion of Australia, the use of the atomic bombs, the war atrocities throughout the theater and the millions of soldiers and sailors involved in fighting throughout the theater.

The reader, Arthur Morey, did an excellent job, even going so far as to mimic the voice of FDR when he read quotes from him.

This is a well-written and immensely informative book that is simply mistitled. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 because of the misleading title.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History.

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.

SELECTED SHORTS: EVEN MORE LAUGHS (audiobook) by Symphony Space

Humor, Like Food, Is Highly Subjective

Published by Symphony Space in October of 2010
Multi-cast performance
Duration: 3 hours, 6 minutes

Here is the premise behind Selected Shorts: Even More Laughs - get a collection of funny short stories and have them be read by great performers such as Stephen Colbert and Alec Baldwin.

There are eight stories of varying quality. As I noted in the title of this review, humor is very subjective. What I can really tell you is that this set is designed to appeal to a wide variety of tastes - not by being middle of the road but by bringing a true eclectic mix to the production. That is certain to guarantee that the listener will not enjoy everything.

Stephen Colbert begins the collection with "The Lie",  the story

Jerry Zaks (b. 1946), one of the
performers in this collection.

of a man who is just overwhelmed with being the father of a new baby. In fact, he is overwhelmed with everything - his dead end job, his wife's new confidence and his lack of free time. In his desperation, he lies. And, he builds upon that lie until he goes way too far...

Alec Baldwin delivers a great performance in a story that I found mostly sad rather than funny. There is a story about an obscure recipe from central France that is funny but it extends the joke for so long that I tired of it and skipped to the end.

For me, the two best stories were "The Swim Team" written by Miranda July and performed by Parker Posey and the last story of the collection: "The Conversion of the Jews", performed by Jerry Zaks. Both were laugh out loud funny.

I rate this collection 3 stars out of 5. This collection is certainly a mixed bag.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Selected Shorts: Even More Laughs.