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).

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

Published by Hourly History in November of 2024.

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

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

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

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

THE BOYS: A MEMOIR of HOLLYWOOD and FAMILY (audiobook) by Ron Howard and Clint Howard

Highly Recommended.

Published in 2021 by HarperAudio.

Read by Ron Howard, Clint Howard, and Bryce Dallas Howard.

Duration: 13 hours, 18 minutes.

Unabridged.

Ron Howard and his brother Clint Howard practically grew up on America's television screens. Ron Howard starred in the The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days for a combined 15 years of his early life. Ron has since gone on to become a prolific director. His credits include Cocoon, Willow, Cinderella Man, and Solo: A Star Wars Movie. His movies have won 9 Academy Awards.

Clint Howard starred in the TV show Gentle Ben when was a little kid and has since gone on to become the quintessential model of a working actor. He has more than 200 acting credits, including the original Star Trek series, Austin Powers, The Waterboy, and a recurring role on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.

The Howard brothers are the sons of a working Hollywood actor named Rance Howard. Rance's credits look a lot like his son Clint's - regular work as guest on show after show after show and sometimes regular work on a TV show. Their mom was an actress who gave up acting for most of her life until the boys were grown and out of the house. 

Ron and Clint Howard

The Howard brothers tell their story, starting with their parents' first forays into entertainment and then through their regular success as child actors. Interestingly, their father often struggled while they had success. If you look at a list of credits, there are years where he had a small roles (sometimes uncredited) that paid the bills but did not lead to the a lavish Hollywood lifestyle. While that had to be tough to swallow, to his credit, he did not let his frustrations get in their way.

The story is told very well, flowing back and forth between the two brothers, but mostly told by Ron Howard. They offer some insight to Hollywood, but mostly they offer insight to a family that loved one another and successfully made it work in a tough industry.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found here on Amazon.com here: The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron Howard and Clint Howard.

BASS REEVES: TALES of the TALENTED TENTH, no. 1 by Joel Christian Gill

 Published by Fulcrum Publishing in 2014.

Artist and author Joel Christian Gill is writing and illustrating a series of graphic novels that look into the lives of lesser known, exceptional African Americans. His inspiration is this quote from W.E.B. DuBois: "The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth saving up to their vantage ground." In other words, some will rise up and inspire/lead the rest. This is Gill's way of providing inspiration.

Bass Reeves was a legendary lawman in the Old West. He was a Deputy U.S. Marshal that chased down bad guys who would flee into Indian Territory (Oklahoma and Kansas) to hide from law enforcement in the neighboring states. If you've seen either of the two versions of the movie True Grit, that is the exact situation. The character Rooster Cogburn would have been real-life Bass Reeves' co-worker if Cogburn were a real person.

The graphic novel tells about Reeves' childhood as a slave in Arkansas, how he escaped during the Civil War (he was brought along to work as a body servant for a Confederate officer) and eventually lived for a while with Indians in the Oklahoma and Kansas Territories. He was hired to help deal Marshals deal with Indians and eventually he was deemed to be so helpful and so good at his job that the local federal judge went against all of the normal conventions and made Bass Reeves a marshal.

It turns out that Marshal Bass Reeves was very, very good at his job - maybe the best.

The book addresses racial issues in a couple of clever ways. Whenever the word n***** is used, a stylized caricature of a man in "blackface" is inserted. Secondly, whenever Reeves is confronted by racists, they are partially or completely illustrated as crows with angry red eyes. There are crows fleeing the law, crows in court, etc.

The problem with this story is that although Reeves lived an interesting and amazing life, the book is kind of flat. 

I rate this graphic novel 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BASS REEVES: TALES of the TALENTED TENTH, no. 1 by Joel Christian Gill.

See my review for a different book in this series HERE.

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

 

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

In another recent review I wrote this:

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

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

Illustration from the back cover

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

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

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

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

CIVIL WAR in the INDIAN TERRITORY by Steve Cottrell

 

Originally published in 1995.
Published in 1998 by Pelican Publishing Company.

The answer to one of the more popular Civil War trivia questions is: Stand Watie. The question is: Who was the last Confederate General to surrender at the end of the Civil War?

Stand Watie is unique because he is the only Native American to become a general during the Civil War. The Cherokee and other Indian Nations living in Oklahoma were drawn into the Civil War and fought in more than 30 engagements - some relatively small and some quite large. 

Slavery was a factor (Watie had slaves and a plantation), but there were also local political issues that were probably more influential. 

Like most of the fighting in the West, the battles were not large by Civil War standards, but the fighting was usually pretty personal. Villages were burned out, refugees fled by the thousands and it was not uncommon for soldiers to know the people they were fighting personally. Also, this front was one of the first to have African American soldiers fight. 

As a history, this book was very readable as an introduction. It is big on the action of the war and doesn't get much into the thoughts and motivations of the regular soldiers. For example, it would have been interesting to read about what white soldiers from Texas, Arkansas, Kansas and Wisconsin (a Wisconsin unit is mentioned throughout the book) thought about fighting alongside and/or against Native American and African American soldiers.

Also, there were a few times when Cottrell's text was over the top. For example, on page 76:

Stand Watie (1806-1871)

"Holding their rifles and cartridge boxes above their heads to keep their powder dry, the dauntless African-Americans sloshed through the waist-deep water to the opposite shore as bullets and buckshot flew around them. With warm adrenaline flowing through their veins, the former slaves followed their Anglo-Saxon colonel into the brush, overrunning the enemy rifle pits in a mad, fearless dash through the timber." 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CIVIL WAR in the INDIAN TERRITORY by Steve Cottrell.

SUPERMAN: DAWNBREAKER: DC ICONS (audiobook) by Matt de la Peña

Published by Listening Library in 2019.
Read by Andrew Elden.
Duration: 7 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

Set in modern America, Matt de la Peña's Superman: Dawnbreaker: DC Icons delivers a traditional Superman origin story with a little bit of a twist. This book follows along the line of the Smallville TV show, with Metropolis being within driving distance of Superman's Kansas hometown instead of basically being a stand-in for New York City.

Big things are going on in Smallville. A tech firm has moved in, bringing in lots of jobs and a new corporate headquarters. They also are buying up farm land. And, a new smaller company has come in as well. Also, LexCorp is sniffing around. Smallville is considering passing a law requiring people suspected of being illegal immigrants (there is a burgeoning Hispanic population who serve as farm workers and work in a meat processing plant) to produce papers on sight and Hispanic men are disappearing.

Clark Kent has always been amazingly strong, but that could be passed off because we all know people that seem to be freakishly strong. But, Clark noticed something was radically different when he played on his Freshman football team. He dominated with an unprecedented number of touchdowns, but decided to quit football when he severely injured a teammate during a practice. 

When this book begins, Clark has no idea that he is not from Earth. His powers are starting to manifest now that he is getting older, often to his dismay, but they are intermittent. So, unlike in most Superman stories, those formidable powers are not dependable - and things are coming to a head in Smallville...

I really liked this audiobook. Matt de la Peña is an experienced YA author and you can tell. DC made a great choice when they chose to hire an experienced author to tell a coming of age story of their most iconic superhero. The story would be a good story if you removed all of the Superhero elements, which is a great place to start.

Andrew Elden did a good job as reader with the voices and the few accents that would be found in Smallville, Kansas.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SUPERMAN: DAWNBREAKER: DC ICONS by Matt de la Peña.

TRESPASSING ACROSS AMERICA: ONE MAN'S EPIC, NEVER-DONE-BEFORE (and SORT of ILLEGAL) HIKE ACROSS the HEARTLAND (audiobook) by Ken Ilgunas

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2016.
Read by Andrew Elden.
Duration: 7 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

In 2012, Ken Ilgunas embarked on a 1,900 mile hike from the beginning of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in Alberta, Canada to its terminus on the Gulf Coast of Texas.  He did this because he is opposed to the pipeline and is very concerned about the expanded use of fossil fuels, the environmental damage caused by the mining of oil sands and the potential for spillage from the pipeline. Along the way, he blogs about his experiences with his iPad in the hopes of creating a little buzz about the topic.

He was inspired to do this by a series of conversations he and a friend had during a stint in the kitchen at a Prudhoe Bay oil drilling site. They were going to hike the entire length together, but his friend begged off and fell into a support role, occasionally mailing him food and replacement pieces of equipment and boots (he went through 3 pairs of boots on this hike).

Ilgunas got off to a late start and began hiking as Canada was going into winter, meaning that he faced cold weather and snow almost all of the way through his hike. He tried to follow the path of the pipeline as much as possible in order to save time and to cut back on the amount of miles he would have to walk. The pipeline starts out with a south-east direction and he often walked along its proposed path through pastures and empty fields for miles. The new pipeline will follow a smaller pipeline route that currently exists in many places so it was pretty easy to follow. Other times, he stuck to the roads, especially when the pipeline takes a more due south path in the United States. That is because most roads in Plains states run north-south or east-west, like a giant checkerboard.

He meets a lot of animal life, including moose, coyotes, lots of dogs and cows. Lots and lots and lots of cows. He almost gets killed in a cattle stampede at one point.

Different states have different personalities, it seems. In Canada (yes, I know Canada is not an American state, but just go with it), no one seems to care where he walks. Montana and South Dakota have lots of no trespassing signs, but no one really seems to care much. Ilgunas becomes a mini-celebrity in Nebraska, despite a rough start where he is escorted out of the county (well, almost all of the way) by a deputy on the orders of the sheriff. Those few miles are the only part he didn't walk. He attends an anti-pipeline rally, gets a few local media interviews and for the rest of his hike in Nebraska he is welcomed as the "guy who is hiking the pipeline".

In Kansas, however, his celebrity status evaporates and he gets consistently hassled by the police. He is asked for his ID in Kansas more than he is on the rest of his trip combined.  Oklahoma depresses Ilgunas. It has a massive pipeline junction -  a place that should be well off since everyone says pipelines bring jobs. In his mind, the town where all of the pipelnes meets is the saddest town on his whole hike. 

Keystone Pipeline construction in South Dakota

Along the hike he usually avoids discussions of the topic of global warming since this is a very conservative area that doesn't buy into that theory. As he hikes, he is consistently told that the pipeline will create lots and lots of jobs, but he literally doesn't meet a single employee except at the very end and at the very beginning. But, people across Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas swear that it will create jobs all along the way.

Ilgunas doesn't really have an answer to the problem of petroleum's ubiquitous role in our society. His tent, his hiking poles, his shoes, and his iPad all have plastic made from petroleum in them. Nor does he address how radically more expensive energy will affect the poor. He talks about how the Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted by its use to make farming on the Great Plains possible. But, he doesn't talk about how that food would be replaced if we didn't farm on the Great Plains.

It's not that I necessarily disagree with any of his points, but the lack of answers, or even suggestions, by Ilgunas is frustrating.

The area he hikes through is certainly part of the Bible belt and Ilgunas finds his anti-Christian bias challenged by the number of people who offer to help him. He points out that only one person evangelized him (a creepy minister in Oklahoma), but the other people of faith shared their food, their homes, their electricity to charge his devices, their wi-fi and their time because they genuinely loved helping others. Ilgunas would arrive in town and search up the local pastor for help in finding a place to pitch his tent. Often, they offered spare rooms, floor space in the church and even once in a loft area in the sanctuary. This made a much more profound impact than the perfunctory hardball Christian sales pitch he received from the minister in Oklahoma.

Andrew Elden read this book and did quite a good job.

When I started listening to this book, I quickly tired of Ilgunas' writing style, which really should be described as an over-writing style. He over-described everything and really tried too hard to create a mood for every scene. Either I got used to it, or he cut back on it. It's not a perfect book, but I do give this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: TRESPASSING ACROSS AMERICA: ONE MAN'S EPIC, NEVER-DONE-BEFORE (and SORT of ILLEGAL) HIKE ACROSS the HEARTLAND  by Ken Ilgunas.

 

THREE LINKS of a CHAIN: A NOVEL by Dennis Maley

Published on July 7, 2015 by Jubilo

In many ways, the fight over whether Kansas would be a slave state or a free state was the first fighting of the Civil War. 

In a shortsighted move, the Congress of the United States decided to let the Kansas Territory decide for itself if it wanted to be a slave or a free state. It was shortsighted because it put off a festering political problem and let it be decided in a far away territory with little thought to what would happen in that territory. Immediately, this became a real-life struggle, the physical embodiment of the arguments taking place across the country about slavery and its future. Slave states rightly determined that they needed to bring Kansas in as a slave state and they immediately sent financial backing to support pro-slavery settlers and pro-slavery men from neighboring Missouri who would cross the border and illegally vote in the election.

Abolitionists sent settlers, financial aid and weapons to counter. Soon enough, neighbor was fighting neighbor (John Brown of the infamous Harper's Ferry raid got his start here by killing a number of his pro-slavery neighbors with broadswords) and a series of tainted elections were held. Multiple governments claimed to be in charge of the state, multiple federal investigations resulted in nothing but contradictory conclusions, depending on the political affiliations of the investigators. 

Three Links of a Chain starts in Missouri, very close to the border with Kansas. Blanche is a slave working for the local newspaper owner. The town is in an uproar due to its proximity to Kansas. Men are planning to illegally vote one side or another, arms are being sent across the border and ugly fights and arguments are breaking out everywhere.

A slave auction

Blanche is not happy being a slave but figures that he has got things all figured out and will eventually be free due to his careful manipulation of the slave system. He can read, is free to work on the side for extra cash and is confident that he is superior to any field hand slave.

Blanche's plan is simple - he will work for the cash to pay for his freedom or he will simply outlive his master who has promised him that he placed instructions in his will to free him when he dies. But, when his master dies during a fight Blanche finds out that his master may not have done as he promised. When he breaks into his master's widow's house to look for a copy of the will he discovers that she has burned it and she intends to keep him as a slave forever.

Blanche runs at the first good opportunity and heads straight into chaos of Bleeding Kansas followed by slave catchers and encouraged by members of the Underground Railroad. Maybe he can make it if he can determine who is really a friend, who is really a foe.

This is a solid piece of historical fiction. Blanche and most of the characters are composites based on real people. The author's research shows and he is able to give a real feel for the chaos of the times and the precarious life of a slave. The descriptions of Blanche's flight and of the people he meets in Kansas are well done. The only real problem that I had with the book is that Blanche has so many of these interesting episodes and brushes with danger and the same slave catcher over and over again that this middle-aged reader began to doubt that any one person could have so many close calls and still have any hope of escaping. But, I am considerably older than the intended audience and I doubt kids would think twice about it. I took off a star because of it, though.

I imagine that the author found so many great tales of close calls involving runaway slaves while doing his research that he could not bear to cut any of them so he worked them all into Blanche's escape story. I can certainly understand that sentiment. 

As a history teacher, I would certainly recommend this book as a great supplement in a history class. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Three Links of a Chain.

Note: I was sent an advance review copy of this book at no charge so that I could write an honest review.

IT'S SUPERMAN (audiobook) by Tom De Haven

How Hard Is It to Nail Down Superman's Personality?

Published by GraphicAudio in March of 2014
Adapted from the novel It's Superman by Tom De Haven
Multicast performance
Duration; Approximately 7 hours


Let me be clear from the beginning about two things:

1) I am a Superman fan

2) I do not mind re-makes or re-interpretations so long as they are done respectfully of the source material.

However, It's Superman does not do that, with the exception of Lex Luthor.

This re-imagined world of Superman is set in the 1930s, which I liked as a choice because that's when Superman was created. Most of the first part of the book deals with a struggling Lois Lane living with a a freelance photographer named Willi Berg in an apartment in New York City (the book dispenses with the Metropolis conceit). Lois is much more worldly than I have ever seen her, but I was fine with that. 

Willi Berg witnesses Lex Luthor, a New York City politician, in the middle of a crime and discovers that Luthor is muscling out the established crime bosses and using his position in city government to provide him cover. Berg flees the city and eventually winds up in Smallville, Kansas.

Up to this point Clark Kent has definitely been the back burner story in this book. You might has well have called it, "It's Willi Berg!" rather than "It's Superman!"  Clark has been in the story a little bit, mostly to show that he and his father are not racists while the rest of Kansas is. Fair enough, 1930s Kansas was not the center of racial inclusiveness. 

Jonathan Kent has, as far as I can tell, always been described as a fantastic father figure.  Think of the 1977 movie version played by Glenn Ford or the Man of Steel version played by Kevin Costner. So much of what Superman is comes from being raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent. In this story, though, Jonathan is inconsistently described an indifferent man (with a hint that he is mentally ill due to a reference to his own father who cut his own abdomen open in front of a mirror) who hates churches with a passion and shows sporadic flashes of being a great father. 

Clark is shown as an earnest cub reporter who hates being treated as a small town rube. He and Willi partner up and head to Hollywood after being tramps for a while, cruising America and doing odd jobs. During this middle part of the book Clark has to be encouraged to use his powers to help people or be restrained from using them to hurt people. This is not Superman's character, at all. I know it's a re-write of the basic story but this is too much of a re-write because now it is not a Superman story. Superman's character is what makes him Superman. He is the constant Boy Scout, the living embodiment of an ideal. Take, for example, this quote from the Man of Steel movie: "You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But, in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders."

This version of Superman has no compass except for the external one provided by his friends. Rather than being a leader, he is a follower. How can he inspire anyone when he cannot even move himself? Superman is not nuanced. He is not filled with gray areas.

Positives:

The characterization of Lex Luthor is well done and interesting. His evil nature is obvious from the start but his true nature only becomes more obvious as you go along. Funny how Lex's character remains a constant but Clark Kent/Superman does not.

I liked the way 1930s current events and people were peppered in throughout the story. 

As always, the performance by the GraphicAudio team is amazing. My complaints with this audiobook have nothing to do with the way they performed it or with their adaptation of it. If you adapt a weak text you will have a weak adaptation.

My rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
Reviewed on October 13, 2014.

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank

Entertaining but fails to live up to the title

Published by Metropolitan Books in 2004.

Thomas Frank's stated purpose in What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America is to tell how Conservatives won the hearts of the working class, the middle class and the rich all at the same time. His answer is that rich, Republican elites throw up red herring issues (abortion and gay marriage are two that he mentions frequently) that bamboozle the working poor and the middle class into supporting them and their greater cause of Free Market Capitalism and International Free Trade even though Capitalism and treaties such as NAFTA inevitably beat the little guy into a pulp (his thought, not mine).

Thomas Frank

Yep. That's about it, although Mr. Frank says it much better than I just did. He also never goes into detail about why Capitalism and Free Trade are both evil (he just assumes you agree, I suppose), although he is very critical of Bill Clinton for supporting NAFTA throughout the book. Big business, especially Wal-Mart, are also to blame for de-populating the Kansas countryside. Apparently, Wal-Mart has some larger agenda in which they plan to drive their customers away from the stores they build in the country...

Seriously, the book would have been helped by further explanation as to why Mr. Frank is such an opponent of Capitalism. He has another book on just that subject, according to a tiny bit of research on my part. It might be a help if readers read that book first, especially in light of Mr. Frank's view that all politics is based in economics: "Most of us think of politics as a Machiavellian drama in which actors make alliances and take practical steps to advance their material interests." (p. 121)

Mr. Frank's fails to properly tell us "How conservatives won the heart of America" because he does not really believe, deep down, that people will vote in ways that he sees that are economically disadvantageous (Free Trade, etc.) unless they are tricked into doing so. People really believing in other issues, such as abortion,  and voting for them are foreign to his way of thinking. Frank may be from Kansas but he certainly does not understand his state and he demonstrates precious little respect for its inhabitants, treating them more like cultural oddities to be put on display.

Thomas Frank really fails to adequately address the thesis of the book, as expressed by the title. Interesting reading, nonetheless.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank.

Reviewed on July 7, 2007.

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (audiobook) by Tony Horwitz

A compelling look into one of America's (misunderstood?) icons

Published in October 2011 by Macmillan Audio
Read by Daniel Oreskes
Duration: 11 hours, 9 minutes

John Brown is one of those well-known yet elusive figures in history. He is literally in all of the American history books, but most people know almost nothing about him except for a few headline snippets like "Bleeding Kansas" and "Harper's Ferry" and "Slave Revolt." More knowledgeable readers may remember he used a sword to kill pro-slavery settlers in Kansas and worked with several prominent anti-slavery figures before his raid into Harpers Ferry, including Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and that his raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry was an utter failure and undoubtedly proved that he was insane.

Or, was he? And, was the raid really a failure?

Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising is an excellent biography of John Brown as well a well-rounded look at the politics of slavery in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s. I have studied the Civil War for years (and I must recommend Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic as well) and Brown always gets a cursory look (if any look at all) in most Civil War histories. If nothing else, Horwitz has shone a light on a most interesting life - the life of a man unwilling to bend on the issue of the inherent evil of slavery.

John Brown (1800-1859)

But, Horwitz has done more than that - he has also shone a light on the fragile nature of the political compromises that were brokered to paper over the cracks in America's political foundation - a foundation that John Brown completely shattered when his men stormed into Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859.

Clearly Brown's attempt to spark a slave revolt totally failed. Most of his raiders were shot or executed. Brown's hurried trial was a farce (he had 6 different defense attorneys in 5 days of trial!), but Horwitz demonstrates that that time in prison awaiting trial, sentencing and execution allowed John Brown the legendary opponent of slavery to become John Brown the monster throughout the south or John Brown the martyr in some parts of the north. He became the focal point of public opinion. For example, here is a prophetic poem written in 1859 by Herman Melville called The Portent:

Hanging from the beam,
Slowly swaying (such the law),
Gaunt the shadow on your green,
Shenandoah!
The cut is on the crown
(Lo John Brown)
And the stabs shall heal no more.

Hidden in the cap
Is the anguish none can draw;
So your future veils its face,
Shenandoah!
But the streaming beard is shown
(Weird John Brown),
The meteor of the war.

Whether John Brown really intended to become "The meteor of the war" by allowing himself to be caught and put to death or if it just turned out that way...we will never know. Horwitz is not sure, either - he flirts with both possibilities. But, we can be certain that this event does not deserve the short shrift it often gets.

I was fascinated by the number of well-known personalities that ended up being involved with John Brown in one way or another. Brown knew Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. He tried to get Douglass and Tubman to participate in his raid. A number of famous personalities participated in the trial or the capture of John Brown, including Robert E. Lee, Thomas (soon to be) "Stonewall" Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, John Wilkes Booth, and Edmund Ruffin (widely credited with having fired the first shot at Fort Sumter). Any man that is the nexus of so many interesting people is bound to have an interesting story and Horwitz tells Brown's story very well.

The audiobook is very well read by Daniel Oreskes whose deep, resonant voice adds a feeling of somberness and importance to this history. Oreskes actually developed different voices to read the various direct quotes in this history. Horwitz often lets the historical figures speak for themselves and this is enhanced by Oreskes.

On a lighter note, the audiobook begins and ends with a bit of music from the Battle Hymn of the Republic - here are some lyrics as a reminder: 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on. 

This song was more famous during the Civil War for these lyrics:

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave; (3X)

His soul is marching on!

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah! his soul's marching on!

He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord! (3X)

His soul is marching on!

Somebody has a sense of humor at Macmillan Audio.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on January 21, 2012.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Midnight Rising.

The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (abridged audiobook) by Jane Smiley

An interesting look at the 1850s in the Kansas Territory through the eyes of a young woman.

Published by Random House Audio in 1998.
Read by Mare Winningham.
Lasts about 5 hours.
Abridged.

I purchased the abridged version of The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton on tape (5 hours) and found it to be quite enjoyable. The listener is treated to a ground level view of the politics of slavery in the 1850s and how violence based on the 'goose question' (code for the slavery issue) swept through households, towns and eventually the entire Kansas Territory.

Smiley's characters are not simple cardboard cutouts - some of the pro-slavery people are quite nice, some of the anti-slavery people are quite insane (she mentions 'Old Brown' and his atrocities and his actions cause some dissent in Liddie Newton's household).

Many readers have complained of the plodding pace. Although my version was abridged from 18 hours to 5 hours, there were still some plodding moments. However, the superb reading by Mare Winningham spared the listener from most of those moments. She is able to express so much emotion and humor with her voice that I found myself forgetting that Mare Winningham is a modern actress. She sounds like she is an older woman telling of her sad, profound trip through a bit of American history.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley.

Reviewed on May 30, 2006.