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

Published by Hourly History in 2025.

Hourly History specializes in histories and biographies that take a reader about an hour to read. It seems appropriate length for Zachary Taylor, the President with the third shortest time in office (just 16 months).

Taylor had a short and rather vague political career, but his military career was rather lengthy. He fought against the Shawnee under future President William Hentry Harrison on the frontier in the War of 1812 in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. 

He fought in the Black Hawk War and served in what would later become Minnesota and Wisconsin establishing and upgrading a series of forts. Later, he fought the Seminoles in Florida and served as the overall commander of American troops in the War. 

He is most famous for his service as one of the two main generals that led the invasion of Mexico in the Mexican War. Taylor crossed from Texas into Northern Mexico, fighting a series of battles, eventually winning the Battle of Buena Vista in February of 1847. That battle cemented his reputation in the American mind and catapulted him to the Presidency in 1848, despite never having voted before and not really having political opinions that alligned strongly with any political party at the time.

On a personal note - one thing Taylor did have going for him was a working knowledge of the what was the American frontier at the time, having served or lived in Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Taylor was a slave holder but was against the expansion of slavery into the territories taken from Mexico. he knew from personal experience that the climate of those areas were completely incompatible with the plantation style of slavery he practiced at his plantation in Mississippi. 

As I already noted, Taylor took ill in the summer of 1850 and died, probably due to some sort of food poisoning or a form of cholera. This book doesn't look much into the "what ifs" of a longer Presidency for Taylor who was pro-slavery, strongly anti-seccession, and against the spread of slavery. Could he have been the political figure that worked out a great compromise that would have prevented the Civil War?

I rate this short e-book 4 stars out of 5. It's pretty good, considering how short it is. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ZACHARY TAYLOR: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

GRANT and LEE: VICTORIOUS AMERICAN and VANQUISHED VIRGINIAN by Edward H. Bonekemper III

Originally published in 2007.

Edward Bonekemper was a Civil War historian who came to the game kind of late in life - after he retired as an attorney for the federal government. 

However, he brings his skills as an attorney to this book. Imagine a regulatory attorney bringing all of his research to bear in order to win a case by simply  overwhelming the other side with binder after binder of evidence. In this case, the evidence is almost 200 pages of appendices, endnotes, and a bibliography. 

Bonekemper makes an argument in this book that Grant was undoubtedly the superior general when compared to Lee. In fact, he makes the arguments that Grant was the best general in the Civil War by far and Lee squandered his soldiers and his resources by going on the offense almost all of the time.

Being the best general does not mean Grant made no mistakes. It does not mean Grant was perfect. Bonekemper acknowledges mistakes by Grant in every campaign and gives Lee his due from time to time. 

Grant and Lee is really a dual history of these two generals, comparing their pre-war careers and then various stages of the war itself. For example, there is a chapter called May-July 1863 where the Vicksburg campaign is compared to the Chancellorsville/Gettysburg campaigns. 

A constant refrain is that Lee's biggest weakness is that he did not conserve his resources by falling back on the defensive. His argument is that Lee did not grasp the strategic fact that the North had to literally conquer the South while the South just had to stay alive until popular support collapsed in the North and the Europeans recognized the Confederate government. 

Instead of building a series of fortifications and compelling the Union forces to destroy themselves in useless attacks, Lee kept lashing out at Union forces and invaded the North twice only to lose both times and discourage European intervention after both failures.

Lee rarely lost more soldiers than the Union forces he fought, but he did not have a constant supply of new soldiers coming to the front - and the North did. Not only did the North replace soldiers at an amazing rate, they also managed to create all new armies when needed.

I found that I basically agreed with Bonekemper. Grant was the better general. Lee was too focused on Virginia and too eager to go on the offense. He did not save his resources and did not share the ones he had with other theaters of the war.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GRANT and LEE: VICTORIOUS AMERICAN and VANQUISHED VIRGINIAN by Edward H. Bonekemper III.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN by James Daugherty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in 1976 by the Indiana State Museum Society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VICKSBURG, 1863 by Winston Groom

Originally published by Knopf in 2009.

Winston Groom will always be best known as the author of Forrest Gump, but he should be equally well known as the author of a series of well-told American histories. Included in those histories is a trilogy of Civil War histories that focus on the Western Theater of the war.

Vicksburg 1863 is the second book in the trilogy, but it can be easily read as a stand-alone history. After a short introduction to the war itself, it follows Grant's campaign to take the Mississippi River away from the Confederacy, beginning with a mess of a battle in Missouri that proved nothing of any importance except that Grant was game to fight and push forward, even if the conditions were not perfect.

That, it turns out, was pretty much the key to Grant's eventual success in this campaign and in the war.

From there, we follow Grant through Kentucky, into Tennessee and the terrible Battle of Shiloh. Although ultimately successful, this marked a low point for Grant because he nearly lost his army. His immediate superior came to Shiloh to supervise him and killed most of the momentum of the campaign

Eventually, Grant regained his command (his superior officer was promoted to a desk position in the Eastern Theater) and began his campaign to remove the last major obstacle for Union control of the Mississippi River - Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Vicksburg was a challenge due to its location on an imposing cliff on a massive bend in the Mississippi River. The Confederate military placed cannons on the cliff that threatened any ship that dared to try to pass by. This book details the many efforts he made to bypass Vicksburg, including attempts to build a canal to reroute the Mississippi and an attempt to go through the swamps around Vicksburg. Eventually, he crossed the river south Mississippi and quickly moved his army to cut off Vicksburg, lay siege to it while also engaging and driving away any Confederate troops that could have helped to lift the siege.

Some people will argue with Groom's assertion that Grant did have bouts of drunkenness during the campaign. He describes a rather wild bender featuring Grant cruising through the swampy rivers north of Vicksburg during a lull during the siege, switching boats, and looking for more and more booze. Grant's defenders will deny it all, Grant's detractors will claim it was probably even worse. I go with the simple knowledge that addiction is powerful and Grant often brought along people that kept him accountable. If those people weren't around, I can easily imagine him falling off the wagon. Whether it was a wild run through the swamps or a binge drunk in the corner of a cabin...well, that depends on who told the story back then and who is writing the story now.

I rate this history 5 stars out of 5. It reads as easy as a novel. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Vicksburg, 1863 by Winston Groom.

See my review of Groom's Shiloh, 1862 here. 

GHOSTED: AN AMERICAN STORY (audiobook) by Nancy French

Published by Zondervan in April of 2024.

Read by the author, Nancy French.

Duration: 9 hours, 56 minutes.

Unabridged.

My synopsis:

Ghosted is an autobiography of Nancy French. Nancy French had a career as a Conservative political columnist and ghost-writing for people in Conservative circles. She helped Conservative politicians write opinion pieces, helped them come up with clever lines for radio and TV interviews, and even books. She worked with such Conservative stars as Sarah Palin and Ben Sasse. She even worked with the Romney campaign. 

The book starts with her childhood in Kentucky, including an awful story of sexual abuse at the hands of a manipulative youth pastor and how that sent her life into a spiral into she met her future husband while she was in college.

Nancy French is married to David French, a well-known Conservative political columnist, commentator, and attorney. He worked for two organizations that defended the rights of Christian groups and Conservatives on college campuses and Christian businesses that did not want to support the birth control provisions of the Affordable Care Act. 

This couple epitomized the pre-Trump Christian Conservative movement.

When Trump became the Republican nominee in 2016, they were mortified. He was the opposite of every moral position they stood for in so many ways. They refused to back Trump and their friends refused to support them. Nancy's work dried up and people from their local church began shunning them. They were ghosted by their friends and colleagues.

My review:

This book is an up and down affair. The beginning and the end are very strong, the middle is a bit slow until the Donald Trump campaign throws their lives into disarray. On the whole, I rate Ghosted 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Ghosted: An American Story by Nancy French. 

SHILOH, 1862 by Winston Groom

 

Published by National Geographic in 2012.

443 pages.

Winston Groom is best known as the author of the novel that inspired the classic Tom Hanks movie Forrest Gump. Most people don't know that Winston Groom wrote several histories, including three about the Civil War.

****Synopsis****

Shiloh, 1862 is, of course, about the Civil War Battle of Shiloh, sometimes known as Pittsburg Landing in southern Tennessee very close to where Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi touch. 

The commanders were Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and Don Carlos Buell for the Union and Albert Sidney Johnston, P.G.T. Beauregard and Braxton Bragg for the Confederacy. 

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

Grant was on a roll of sorts. He was the only winning Union commander, having won the Battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Kentucky in the winter of 1861-62. These welcome victories not only buoyed the sagging morale of the Union after the loss of the first big battle of the war, Bull Run, but it also opened up Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama to invasion following the river systems of the area.

This is how Grant ended up at Pittsburg Landing in southern Tennessee in April of 1862 and this is how this almost unknown location became the site of the first truly large battles of the war with casualties rivaling those of later battles such as Antietam and Gettysburg. Much like those battles, there were also a lot of questionable decisions made by the principal generals during this battle.

****My review****

This is one of the finest histories of the early days of the Western Theater of the Civil War that I have ever read. This is the 144th book that I have reviewed that has been tagged Civil War and I honestly cannot think of a more approachable and well-written history as this one. 

Highly recommended.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SHILOH 1862 by Winston Groom.

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

Published in 2016.

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

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

To be honest - nothing.

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

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

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

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

CLEANING the GOLD: A JACK REACHER and WILL TRENT SHORT STORY by Karin Slaughter and Lee Child

Published in 2019 by HarperAudio.
Read by Eric Jason Martin and Jeff Harding.
Duration: 2 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

The title says this is a short story, but the print version of Cleaning the Gold is 129 pages and I would call that a novella.

Karin Slaughter's Will Trent character works with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He is working on a cold case murder based on the activities of the very first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor. Trent is looking for Jack Reacher based on a 20 year old DNA sample.

Reacher is working in Fort Knox and Trent assumes an undercover identity to

Pallets of gold in Fort Knox - they are featured
in the audiobook.

find him...

The book is all written in third person with Slaughter writing the Will Trent sections and Child writing the Reacher sections.

Lee Child is one of my favorites, but Karin Slaughter is certainly not. In fact, she's one of the few authors I refuse to read any longer. Just to compare, including this review I have reviewed 26 Jack Reacher books or short stories and just 3 Karin Slaughter books. This novella suffers from being mostly written by Karin Slaughter.

The readers were okay. One read for Will Trent, the other for Jack Reacher. The reader for Jack Reacher was doing his best to sound like Dick Hill, the reader that has read most of Lee Child's audiobooks.

In the end, this wasn't much of a story. There were amusing observations about Jack Reacher, but the story wasn't much. Reacher did most of the work and even then they made leaps of deduction that I couldn't fathom.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5 (mostly because of the aforementioned observations about Reacher and the fact that I learned a few things about the gold reserves at Fort Knox. I can only recommend it if you are trying to round out your Jack Reacher or Will Trent collection. This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: CLEANING the GOLD: A JACK REACHER and WILL TRENT SHORT STORY by Karin Slaughter and Lee Child.

APOSTLES of DISUNION: SOUTHERN SECESSION COMMISSIONERS and the CAUSES of the CIVIL WAR (A NATION DIVIDED: STUDIES in the CIVIL WAR ERA) by Charles B. Dew

Originally published in 2001.

The greatest argument among people who study the Civil War isn't who was the best general or what would have happened if Lincoln hadn't have been assassinated or even what would have happened if the Union had lost at Gettysburg.

No, the greatest argument is this: What caused the Civil War?

For the better part of the last century, the argument has been that the Confederacy seceded in order to protect "their rights". The counter-argument has always been to protect "the right to do what?"

For me, the answer has always been a simple one - they fought for their right to own people and to keep African Americans at the bottom of the heap in Southern society. For the Confederate States of America, slavery was the reason to fight. For the Union army, maintaining the Union, with or without slavery, was the reason to fight - a goal claimed many times by Lincoln himself. 

There will be arguments that claim that Confederate states seceded over differences in culture and differences in attitude and the disagreement over federal tax policy. If you think so, I encourage you to read the Ordinances of Secession (basically Declarations of Independence) from Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. They are full of all sorts of reasons to secede, but they keep coming back to slavery-related issues. These are wonderful resources because they are frozen in time, before the loss of the war by the Confederacy. Many post-Civil War authors who fought for the South obscure the importance of slavery, perhaps realizing it was a great moral wrong, or perhaps simply being cognizant that slavery had become politically incorrect and it would hurt their overall argument. Let's face it - many Union soldiers became proud of their role in ending slavery long after the war ended, being indifferent to or even mildly pro-slavery during the war.

 Several of the seceding states did more than issue their own Declarations of Independence. Some of these states sent out ambassadors from their newly independent states to try to convince the other slave states to join them. They were generally referred to as Southern Secession Commissioners. The title of this book, Apostles of Disunion refers to them. The Apostles of Jesus were sent out to teach about Jesus. These apostles were sent out by several secessionist states to to convince the other slave states to join them. Just the fact that they were only sent to slave states should serve as a major clue as to what caused the Civil War.

The texts of their letters and speeches make it very clear that their main arguments were these: fear of the abolition of slavery by "Black Republicans", fear of slave revolt, the loss of the investment of money in their slaves, fear of former slaves having the power to vote and the fear of race mixing. William L. Harris, the Commissioner from Mississippi sent to reach out to the state of Georgia said on December, 17, 1860: "Mississippi is firmly convinced that there us but one alternative: This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery; or, slavery under old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us. If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate." (p. 87)

He followed up with a comment about how Mississippi would "...rather see the last of her race, men, women and children, immolated in one common funeral pile, than see them subjected to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race." (p. 89)

Stephen F. Hale (1816-1862. He served Alabama
as a Secession Commissioner and as a Lt. Colonel
in the 11th Alabama. He died of wounds sustained
during the Battle of Gaines' Mill in 1862.
Hale County, Alabama is named for him.

Stephen F. Hale of Alabama sent a letter to the Governor of Kentucky to convince him to push for secession. In the letter he calls Lincoln's election "...nothing less than an open declaration of war, for the triumph of this new theory of government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassination and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans."

He continued: "What Southern man, be he a slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters in the not distant future associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white stripped by the heaven-daring had of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed?" (p. 98)

The author of Apostles of Disunion included plenty of similar quotes throughout the book and also includes the entire text of the Harris speech and the Hale letter. He found snippets of speeches and letters from the other Commissioners in newspaper articles and journals and found similar comments to the ones in the complete texts. Combine these texts with ambassadors hand-picked by the newly-seceded states and the Ordinances of Secession and you have the answer to why the Civil War started.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: APOSTLES of DISUNION: SOUTHERN SECESSION COMMISSIONERS and the CAUSES of the CIVIL WAR (A NATION DIVIDED: STUDIES in the CIVIL WAR ERA) by Charles B. Dew.

BROTHERS in ARMS: THE EPIC STORY of the 761st TANK BATTALION, WWII's FORGOTTEN HEROES (audiobook) by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton

Published in 2004 by Books on Tape.

Read by Richard Allen.
Duration: 9 hours, 39 minutes.
Unabridged.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is most famous as a basketball player - in high school his team won 71 games in a row. He won three national championships in the three seasons he was allowed to play in college (freshmen had to play on a freshman team back then so his first season doesn't count). No one scored more career points in the NBA than Abdul-Jabbar. He is arguably the best basketball player ever.

Turns out that he is also a thoughtful, active man with an interest in social justice and history. That's where this book comes in. The 761st Tank Battalion was brought to his attention because, it turns out, he knew one of its members growing up - he just didn't know his story.

The problem is, no one really knew the story of these young men - and they should. That is why Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote Brothers In Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes.

The 761st Tank Battalion was one of the lead elements of General Patton's push into Germany during the last months of World War II. They were sort of a hybrid unit that was spread out among infantry units, designed to work with infantry. This simple fact would have hurt their unit's fame if they had been an all-white unit - their actions were just tossed in with other unit's statistics they fought with for just a few days. But, when you toss in the obvious racism of the day (multiple citations were sent up the chain of command, only to be tossed in the trash or ignored. This was corrected in the 1990's by an independent commission), you can see why no one heard of these soldiers.

Abdul-Jabbar focuses on just a few soldiers in this unit in this history. Many of these men wanted to be fighter pilots when they joined up, but were told that African-Americans were not allowed to fly. But, they could be in tank units. So, an all African-American tank unit was created. Eventually, the unit ended up in Camp Hood (now Fort Hood) in Texas. They were trained and then never sent to either front. Instead, they became the decoy team that other units trained against. They pretended to be the Germans in practice maneuvers - over and over and over again for nearly TWO YEARS - much longer than white units.

After D-Day, Generals Patton, Bradley and Montgomery pushed the Germans across France and approached Alsace-Lorraine in France near the German border. It was tough on the tank units, though. Experienced, intact tank battalions were at a premium. They sent for the 761st and they fit the bill perfectly, even though Patton had no confidence in African-Americans as soldiers. He kept those thoughts to himself, though, and actually visited the 761st and spoke with them, saying:

"Men, you're the first Negro tankers to ever fight in the American Army. I would never have asked for you if you weren't good. I have nothing but the best in my Army. I don't care what color you are as long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sonsofbitches. Everyone has their eyes on you and is expecting great things from you. Most of all your race is looking forward to your success. Don't let them down and damn you, don't let me down! They say it is patriotic to die for your country. Well, let’s see how many patriots we can make out of those German sonsofbitches."

The rest, as they say, is history.

This is an entertaining history, designed for the regular reader. The only real complaint I have with it is the audiobook reader, Richard Allen.  He mispronounces many military terms. There are many German and French cities and towns are named throughout the book and, to be honest, I have no idea how to say most of them. But, I do know some, and when the reader mispronounces the commonly known German and French name places, such as the Danube River, I know that there have to be lots of other problems.

To be fair to Richard Allen, it isn't his fault. Allen has since passed away, but he was a multiple award winning audiobook reader. He was brought in to read, not for his knowledge of foreign languages. The production team in the booth in the recording studio should have brought in someone to coach him how to say these place names. It's not that hard to find a French speaker and a German speaker - almost every local high school has teachers of both that could have coached him.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BROTHERS in ARMS: THE EPIC STORY of the 761st TANK BATALLION, WWII's FORGOTTEN HEROES (audiobook) by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton.

OBVIOUSLY: STORIES from MY TIMELINE (audiobook) by Akilah Hughes

Published by Listening Library in September of 2019.
Read by the author, Akilah Hughes.
Duration: 4 hours, 58 minutes.
Unabridged. 

To be fair to Akilah Hughes, I had never heard of her before I heard her interview on NPR promoting this book. The interview was good enough that I got the book. If you are not familiar with her, she is a comedy writer and YouTuber with a pretty good following.

I really enjoyed the first half of Obviously - the part that talks about her early life. It was fun in tone and sometimes seriously funny, except for the story of her horrible 5th grade teacher. She tells her story in an episodic manner - by theme. Sometimes, the stories overlap and sometimes she (always confusingly, at first) tells them backwards, such as when she detailed her struggles with weight towards the end of the book.

But, when she makes her move to New York, the story changes its tone. It becomes a lot more about name dropping and telling stories about people she is angry with (personally and professionally, but mostly personally because she makes her professional life very personal). One of the most bizarre stories was the one in which she and a friend get into a friendship-killing fight over the relative talent of Rihanna. I like pop culture, but I have never been that into any single pop culture figure. I can't relate.

The audiobook was read by Akilah Hughes, which makes sense - she has a ton of practical acting and speaking experience. She did a good job as a reader.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. I give 4 stars for the first part, 2 stars for the last part for an average of 3 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OBVIOUSLY: STORIES from MY TIMELINE by Akilah Hughes.

THERE I GREW UP: REMEMBERING ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S INDIANA YOUTH by William E. Bartelt

Published in 2008 by Indiana Historical Society Press.

Most know that Abraham Lincoln came from Springfield, Illinois. But, a lot of people are not aware that at age 7, Lincoln and his family moved to Indiana from Kentucky. Lincoln and his family stayed in Indiana until just after his 21st birthday.

In a four paragraph autobiographical sketch written in 1859, Lincoln devoted a little more than a paragraph to these years in Indiana, including this nice little sentence: "There I grew up."

All of the stories of Lincoln's childhood (reading by firelight, the legend of the rail splitter, his aversion to shedding blood of any sort, his kindness to animals and more) took place in Indiana. Hoosiers are happy to claim him.

The author, William E. Bartelt, worked for fifteen summers at the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial as a ranger and historian and was the vice chair of the Indiana Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. There I Grew Up: Remembering Abraham Lincoln's Indiana Youth is the product of a lot of research and familiarity with the source material.

The first part of this biography goes through the autobiographical sketch mentioned in the second paragraph line-by-line and elaborates on them. It is by far the most interesting part of the book.

Most of the rest of the book is going through the notes of

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial -
replica of his boyhood farm.
Photo by DWD.

William Herndon (1818-1891), Lincoln's law partner when he was elected President. Very soon after Lincoln's assassination, Herndon decided to write a biography of his friend and set off to Indiana to find people that he grew up with.

Herndon's interview notes are published in this book. They are not particularly interesting reading. Here is a typical sample from page 128: "The Country is a heavy timbered one - farms are cleared and cut out of the forests. The woods - the timber is hickory - white oak, called buck-eye and and buck lands. The old farm now belongs to Jas Gentry - Son of Jas Gentry for whom, the old man the brother of Allen - Lincoln went to N. Orleans in 1828 or 29. John Heaven or Heavener now lives as tenant on the land: it an orchard on it, part of Which Abm Lincoln planted with his own hands..." 

I got to the point where I skimmed Herndon's notes and read Bartelt's summary that followed. So many of Herndon's interviews recycled the same information. I assume that he was asking the same questions of each person he interviewed and got a lot of the same answers over and over again.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. Solid work, but dry. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THERE I GREW UP: REMEMBERING ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S INDIANA YOUTH by William E. Bartelt.

THE WAR BEFORE the WAR: FUGITIVE SLAVES and the STRUGGLE for AMERICA'S SOUL from the REVOLUTION to the CIVIL WAR (audiobook) by Andrew Delbanco

Published in 2018 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Ari Fliakos.
Duration: 13 hours, 40 minutes.
Unabridged.

Simply described, The War Before the War is an in-depth look at the slavery controversy in the United States from its very beginnings through the Civil War. I am an avid reader of books that explore American slavery and the Civil War. Anyone that denies that slavery wasn't THE issue that pushed America to Civil War is deluding themselves and simply has not read the statements that five of the seceding states (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia) issued in 1860 and 1861. Slavery was the most discussed item in four of the five declarations (Virginia's brief declaration does not mention many specifics but does refer to "the oppression of Southern Slaveholding states").

As the reader goes through this book it is easy to see that slavery was always a difficult problem for every generation of Americans to deal with. The Founders wrestled with it and ultimately kicked it down the road for later generations to deal with. By the 1850's the problem had come to a head. Interestingly, the thing that brought it to a head was a problem that rarely happened - what to do with runaway slaves.

When compared to the total slave population, very few slaves actually escaped and almost none made it to a free state. But, when a slave was caught in a free state, the media made a story out of it. Who can blame them? It was a riveting story. What was more important - property rights of the individual slave owner or the rights of a man to have his day in court to prove that he was actually a free man in court before he was taken away into bondage? What was more important - the right of a state to protect the property rights of its slaveholders throughout the country or the rights of a free state to declare slavery null and void within its borders?

When a slave was caught in the north and the process started to take him or her back to slavery the political system would often boil over. Both sides came to out, protested, wrote letters to the editor, gave speeches in Congress and generally used the occasion to rally their bases. The author makes a valuable point when he points out this is the same thing that modern political movements do (Black Lives Matter, Pro- and Anti-Abortion activists, immigration, etc.).

The book also looks at what individuals did when confronted with these problems. I was particularly struck by the judge that returned slaves in his courtroom but allowed his home to be used as an Underground Railroad stop by his grown children. He didn't actively help - he just actively ignored the extra people sleeping in his house from time to time.

This is an amazing book. I didn't think I could really learn a lot more about this topic. This will be my 108th review of a book that will be tagged "civil war" and the 77th book that will be tagged "slavery". But, seeing it all laid out in one big sweep is powerful. A great follow-up would be this book: Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865.

The audiobook was read by Ari Fliakos who did a fantastic job.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Strongly recommended.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE WAR BEFORE the WAR: FUGITIVE SLAVES and the STRUGGLE for AMERICA'S SOUL from the REVOLUTION to the CIVIL WAR by Andrew Delbanco.

GET on BOARD: THE STORY of the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Jim Haskins

Published in 1993 by Scholastic.

Get on Board is an introduction to the Underground Railroad aimed at grades 4-7. It is a solid little history of the origins of the abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad and slavery. It mostly focuses on the heroes of the abolitionist movement, but it does its best to try to work in a lot of individual stories of the Underground Railroad.

For example, I enjoyed the letter that Jermain Wesley Loguen wrote to his former owner (he had run away) when she demanded that he pay for himself. It was the perfect blend of snark and indignant refusal.

The longest biography in the book goes to Harriet Tubman with Frederick Douglass coming in a close second. That is appropriate since their stories are extraordinary. Haskins does a real solid job of introducing the two real-life people that the most famous African American characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin are based on and then reminding the reader of them when he discusses the novel and its impact.

However, it is not a perfect book. The pictures are, on the whole, very poor - much like a poor photocopy of a photo.

The Levi Coffin House in Fountain City, Indiana

There is a problem when Haskins discusses Levi Coffin, who is sometimes called the President of the Underground Railroad as a testament to his commitment to the cause and the number of runaway slaves that he helped. Haskins makes it sound like Coffin's home is near Cincinnati (on the East Fork of the Ohio River - which doesn't exist, according to Google) but he discusses and shows a picture of his home in Fountain City. I have been to the Levi Coffin house many times in the last few years (they have a tour and a visitor's center -it's worth your time to visit) and I know that the Coffin family lived near Cincinnati at one point in time but then moved to Fountain City, Indiana. Google tells me that it is 79 miles from Cincinnati, which means that Haskins has confused the two locations.

But, on the whole, this is a nifty introduction to the Underground Railroad.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GET on BOARD: THE STORY of the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Jim Haskins.

FOLLOW the RIVER (audiobook) by James Alexander Thom

Published by Tantor Audio in 2010.
Book originally published in 1981 by Ballantine Books.
Read by David Drummond.
Duration: 16 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

As the American frontier pushed ever-Westward during the Colonial Era, there were multiple major conflicts between the new White settlers and the various Indian groups. The last, and the biggest, was the war that Americans know as the French and Indian War (1754-1763). It was truly a global war involving not only France and England, but also a variety of countries around the world such as Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Russia and the Mughal Empire in India.

The war began as a power struggle between French and English colonists along with their Native American allies. Technically, a young Virginia militia leader named George Washington started the war when he tried to remove French Canadians who were building a trading post in what is now western Pennsylvania. The entire frontier was soon at war and little settlements on the extreme frontier, like Drapers Meadows, Virginia, were exposed - even if they had only the faintest idea there was a war going on.

In 1755, a group of Shawnee warriors attacked Drapers Meadows, a settlement of just a few families and killed or kidnapped about half of the inhabitants and took them to a large Shawnee town near the Ohio River in what is now northeastern Kentucky. One of the victims was Mary Draper Ingles (pronounced Ingalls) and this novel is the fictionalized story of her capture (along with her children), her life among the Shawnee and her escape with a fellow female captive who spoke mostly German. Mary had watched as she was taken to the Shawnee village and she realized that all she had to do was simply follow the river system back to her home. If only it were that simple. It turned into a 42 day walk back to an English frontier cabin across some of the roughest terrain in the Appalachians. They left in mid-October and arrived on December 1, 1755.

Photo by DWD

Their escape covered more than 500 miles and crossed an estimated 145 rivers or creeks, with little or no food. Oftentimes, they had to get soaked in water, climb cliffs or rockfalls and starved as they walked and the temperatures dropped. This terrain is difficult nowadays with modern equipment. Their accomplishment is astonishing when you consider their physical condition and almost complete lack of tools, equipment, nutrition and warm clothing. This book was thoroughly researched by the author who walked as much as their route as he possibly could. You can tell - the landscape is as much a character in the book as any single character.

Follow the River is an amazing book. It is not a happy book - how can it be when it is full of suffering, violence, death and tragedy? But, James Alexander Thom told the story so well that I felt like I was along for the whole tragic trip. It is sobering and compelling. It is all the more tragic when you consider that she left her children behind with the Shawnee because there was no way that they could survive this extremely difficult trek.

The audiobook was read by David Drummond. He does an excellent job with the accents throughout the book (the area was quite international considering how hard it was to get there) and the rest of the book overall. I do think it was a bit odd to chose a man to read the book considering that most of the dialogue of the book is spoken by women. A great deal of the book also deals with the internal thoughts of Mary.

This was a re-read for me, although it had been 26 years between readings. I remembered it as an excellent book and I am pleased to say that I still think it is excellent.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Follow the River by James Alexander Thom. 

HILLBILLY ELEGY: A MEMOIR of a FAMILY and CULTURE in CRISIS (audiobook) by J.D. Vance

Published in 2016 by HarperAudio.
Read by the author, J.D. Vance.
Duration: 6 hours, 49 minutes.
Unabridged.

Sometimes, I find it hard to write a review of an audiobook, especially an audiobook like this one. I find it hard - not because it is a bad book but because it is so good and I don't know how to convey my thoughts without giving a blow-by-blow book report of the book.

So, in short, J.D. Vance tells the story of his upbringing in Hillbilly Elegy. He calls his family hillbillies but also calls that same group rednecks or poor white trash. When I was a kid in southern Indiana, we called them poor white trash. His family came from eastern Kentucky (as did part of my own a hundred years ago) and was part of an exodus from the area in the 1950s. These hillbillies brought their culture with them and Vance spends the rest of the book telling a dual story - the story of his family and the story of how this Appalachian culture is struggling in modern America.

The title of the book tells you that this is often a somber book since an elegy is a sad poem or song to praise and express sorrow for the dead. Vance's family history is not a particularly happy one, but it is far from universally tragic. I think that Vance is expressing sorrow for working class whites as a whole. Their culture is leaving them poorly equipped for the America they are born into.

Vance touches on this at one point, but as a teacher in an urban school system, I found that a lot of what he was talking about applied to what I see every day at school. What he talks about in this book can certainly be extrapolated out to apply to other cultures. In this case, what is more important is not race but poverty. It reminded me of the little bit of training I have had with Dr. Ruby Payne and her insights into generational poverty and its own unique culture. 

What works best with this book is Vance's technique of telling his own story and using it to illustrate larger insights into his own culture of generational poverty. You learn precisely because you start to care for people like his profane and loving grandmother - a woman that should not have been the impetus for Vance's success based on her track record with family relationships but ended up being the one person that made all of the difference.

This audiobook was read by the author. That can be tricky, especially if the author is not particularly a good reader. Vance is hardly a professional reader but his accent and tone make it better than a professional reader really could have.

I rate this audiobook an enthusiastic 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.

Note: I wrote this review 7 years before Vance became the MAGA Republican Vice Presidential candidate. Despite enjoying the book, I am profoundly disappointed in his politics since I am a Never Trump Republican, like Vance used to be. Why did he change? I can only refer you to this short book about another Republican politician: The Corruption of Lindsey Graham.

The Iron Will of Jefferson Davis by Cass Canfield

A flawed biography of a man who is often overlooked

Published in 1981 by Fairfax Press.

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) is an oft-overlooked figure in American history, especially when compared to his presidential counterpart in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln. This biography is not recommended as a place to start by this history teacher, though. It has too many flaws.

First, there are strong points:

1. The basics of Davis's life are correct.

2. Lots of good pictures and maps.

Weak points:

The Iron Will of Jefferson DavisThe Iron Will of Jefferson Davis is replete with factual errors, such as claiming that Lexington, KY was "in the East" (pg. 8) in 1823, when this was clearly considered the "West" by Americans of the time. He claims that Southern slave plantation farming was more productive than Northern agriculture - this has been proving to be untrue, unless you consider that you can get extended growing seasons and get multiple crops in Deep South, which is all about climate, not slavery (pg. 11). He also erroneously claimed that "slave trading had almost died out by mid-nineteenth century." (pg. 11) International slave trading was nearly dead (but still in existence as demonstrated by the Amistad incident), but internal trading was alive and quite healthy.

He comments "if all plantation owners had treated their slaves as Jefferson did, slavery might have been considered a beneficent institution." (pg. 20) If this were a biography written in the early 20th century, I could understand such an ignorant statement about slavery. Not for a book published in 1978! Slavery as a positive!

He claims that plantation managers were among the first to be conscripted in 1862 (p. 22) - untrue. They were given exemptions throughout the war.

He claims on page 50 that all of the slave states were united in the war when Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri never left the Union and West Virginia split from Virginia to stay in the Union.

He contradicts himself: On page 92 he notes the the choice by Lee to go on the offensive in September 1862 was poor because it was "a bad moment to wage an offensive in the North..." On page 93 he comments, "Had the Confederates won decisively at this time, Great Britain would probably have intervened on the side of the South and forced mediation." It was either a bad time or it wasn't.

Canfield blames George Pickett for Pickett's charge and excuses Lee (pg. 96). In reality, Pickett was all for making the charge but the decision to go rested entirely on Lee.

On page 102 he claims the Union had 100,000 African-American soldiers in 1864, and on page 104 claims it was 200,000.

In sum, the basics of Davis's life are correct, but so many other errors force me to recommend that those interested in Jefferson Davis look elsewhere.

I rate this biography 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Iron Will of Jefferson Davis.

Reviewed on March 25, 2008.

Slow Storm by Danica Novgorodoff

A rather depressing tale

Published in 2008 by First Second.

Slow Storm is a rather depressing tale of a sexually-harrassed female firefighter with family issues in Kentucky that encounters an illegal alien named Rafi during a thunderstorm that has spawned tornadoes. Rafi's home gets burned due to a lightning strike.

That's about it for the plot with the exception of some clever writing comparing sneaking across the border to climbing over the "pearly gates" to get into heaven, this is an entirely forgettable graphic novel.

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5.

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Slow Storm.

Reviewed on October 5, 2008.