AMERICAN RAMBLER: WALKING the TRAIL of JOHNNY APPLESEED (audiobook) by Isaac Fitzgerald

Published in 2026 by Random House Audio.

I am a fan of books where the author goes on a journey and tells me about what he or she found along the way. I've followed authors on a bicycle journey from England to India, a hike from Mexico to the Darian Gap in Panama, a motorcycle journey around the borders of Chinese Turkestan, a run with a stray dog in the Gobi desert, and a drive along historic Route 66. 

I know I won't get to all of these places, but these authors have and I can learn from them.

However, I have been to the grave of Johnny Appleseed in Fort Wayne, Indiana so I was interested in seeing what else Isaac Fitzgerald could tell about the travels of the legend of Johnny Appleseed/Chapman.

Synopsis

In American Rambler, Fitzgerald starts with a two day hike in the area where John Chapman was born near Leominster, Massachusetts. It was a rough hike, but Fitzgerald basically finished it, with a little help from his parents. He then decides to truly look into Johnny Appleseed and explore the areas where he lived and traveled throughout his entire life. At first, he considered doing it mostly on foot, but he decided that he simply isn't that dedicated of a hiker. 

With the help and advice of his girlfriend, he buys a jeep and starts to explore different areas that are associated his Johnny Appleseed - a site with a tree that he actually planted, an area where he lived for a while, various Johnny Appleseed festivals, a minor league baseball team with a Johnny Appleseed-based mascot, and several stops with friends, and a lot of stories about his parents and his chaotic upbringing. 

My Review

Johnny Appleseed's grave in Fort Wayne.
It is surrounded by apple trees and visitors
pick apples and place them on the grave.
Photo by DWD

I liked the Appleseed-related material, but I quickly grew tired of all of the details about the author's personal life. I had never heard of the author, so when I started listening I assumed that he was a first time author and his editor didn't care enough to talk him into paring down his prose to make the book flow better by cutting out a bunch of the personal stuff.

Turns out that Fitzgerald is actually a minor celebrity - a regular contributor to the Today Show, a regular writer for barious publications, and the author of four books before this one.

He tried to tie in his personal stories to the Appleseed narrative, but I found the connections to be weak at best and found myself wishing he'd get back to the rambling along the trail of Johnny Appleseed that the title promised.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed. 

WASHINGTON'S GAY GENERAL: THE LEGENDS and LOVES of BARON von STEUBEN (graphic novel) by Josh Trujillo (Author), Levi Hastings (Illustrator)

Published in 2023 by Harry N. Abrams.

If you are a student of the American Revolution, you know who Baron von Steuben was. His complete name was Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Freiherr von Steuben, and the title of Baron was most likely an exaggeration. 

If you are unfamiliar, he was a European military officer who was sort of bumming around Europe looking for a gig. He had been with the Prussian military for 17 years and had done well for himself, working his way up to the point where he was an aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great of Prussia. He had worked on creating a unit that might be considered a percurser to today's special forces because of its intense training.

But, court politics pushed him out.

Part of Benjamin Franklin's mission to France was to find competent military officers to come to the newly formed United States and help Washington create an army out of the volunteers. Sometimes, Franklin got swindled, but with Baron von Steuben he got an officer who was way better than anyone expected.

Baron von Steuben was the real deal. He found Washington during that horrible winter at Valley Forge and was appointed the Inspector General of the Continental Army. He went to work and helped train the men he found there into an actual respectable army. He cleaned up the camp based on what he knew from multiple campaigns as part of the Prussian army - latrines, organized cooking areas, standards for cleanliness, etc. 

Then, he trained the men how to properly handle take verbal commands, march, handle their weapons, fire artillery, and more. He wrote the actual handbook that the U.S. military used, at least in part, for the nearly 70 years.

All while not speaking a word of English. Also, all while being gay.

Yes, there have been gays in the U.S. military since the beginning. Baron von Steuben and his entourage of young men (who translated for the Baron) came in and got the U.S. army straight (pun intended.)

This graphic novel biography of the Baron does a thorough job of telling the details of his life, but does not gloss over his sexuality since it is an important part of his career in the Prussian military (there were a lot of gay leaders in what was undoubtedly the most powerful military in Europe at the time) and the reason he was released from a position he held with the tiny Principality of Hohenzollern-Hechingen (they were not so fond of homosexuality) right before he headed for America. 

The graphic novel often becomes an exploration of being gay in the 1700s and 1800s. At first, this irritated me a bit. I was wanting to get into the story of Baron von Steuben and the Continental Army much quicker. 

But, when I looked back at it, I realized that I learned about a lot of people that I had no idea were gay and that, for some of them, this was a major news to me -a a person that has actively read history for decades. For example, young Frederick the Great of Prussia and John and Abigail Adams' son Charles. In the case of Charles. I knew that he had died at the age of 30, but what I had read described Charles as just a hopeless drunk that died from alcoholism.

This graphic novel implies that Charles Adams died from a broken heart because his father forcibly ended his relationship with the son of Hercules Mulligan (featured in the musical Hamilton) when a bit of research told me that he likely died from a lung infection like TB.

I was going to rate this graphic novel 4 stars out of 5 because it kept wandering away from the topic of Baron von Steuben. But, I learned so much when the book did this that I realized that that what I thought was an annoying waste of time was actually very educational. I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5.

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Washington's Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben.

JOHN BELUSHI: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Kindle) by Hourly History

Published in January of 2026 by Hourly History.

John Belushi has always known as a cautionary tale for me - an amazing talent that quickly rose to national prominence and then died of a drug overdose just when things really got going.

Hourly History specializes in short histories and biographies that take about an hour to read. In this case, this biography gives a lot of details about his early life, but simply fails to give the reader a sense of what Belushi or the characters he created on Saturday Night Live was like. 

It does no better with any of the four movies. Belushi only made 4 movies, but two of them are classics - The Blues Brothers and Animal House. You would think that there would have been a lot more about those movies and a lot less about his first really run-down apartment in New York City.

I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5.

This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: John Belushi: A Life from Beginning to End.

JAILBIRD by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1979.

Synopsis

Jailbird is the fictional story of William F. Starbuck, the least important member of the Watergate conspiracy to go to prison. 

The story begins with the day that Starbuck is released from a makeshift federal prison (and very cushy, for a prison) on a Georgia military base. He has no idea what he is going to do and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he figures that he will be okay - after all, he has a degree from Harvard and he learned how to be a bartender in a correspondence class while he was in prison.

What follows is a wild tale of good and bad coincidences that take Starbuck to a broken-down residential motel in New York City. Like the hotel, Starbuck is a broken man in many ways - he is an ex-con, his wife of many years has passed away, he never speaks to his son, and he feels shame for accidentally ruining the career of one of his friends due to an offhand comment he made during a anti-Communist Congressional hearing lead by then-Congressman Richard Nixon.

But, in just a few hours everything changes...

My Review

In many ways Jailbird is considered to be a comeback novel for Vonnegut (1922-2007). After the overwhelming success of Slaughter-House 5, Vonnegut struggled to "do it again."

He struggled to write Breakfast of Champions. His next book, Slapstick, was too personal and too weird to be a bestseller. Jailbird reminds me more of Mother Night and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater than the three science fiction books that he published from 1969 to 1976.

World War II looms large in each of those books - the main characters are struggling to deal with what they saw and did (also a massive theme in Slaughter-House 5)

William F. Starbuck worked as a part of the prosecution team during the Nuremberg Trials. If it hadn't been for the war, he wouldn't have met his wife. The war made him, and everything about it was accidental - he met his wife on by sheer luck. He was assigned to the the trials because he happened to be around and ht happened to be around because of the education he was given by an old millionaire who was a recluse because someone unknown strikebreaker mistakenly pulled the trigger during a tense moment in a strike when the millionaire was a child.

One unrelated thing leads to another and leads to another like a thread of random events that led us to where we are now. Vonnegut spent a lot of time thinking about this idea. In his science fiction books he often explores it through time travel. This book relies heavily on flashbacks.

Vonnegut's report card for his own books.

Jailbird often looks at the plight of the regular working stiff - restaurant managers, chauffeurs, receptionists, the least important guy in the Nixon Administration, down and out authors, affable guards in a minimum security prison, and so on. There is a lengthy introduction about a real-life event in Vonnegut's life that blends into a fictional story about a strike at an Ohio factory that ended in a bloody massacre.

Vonnegut famously graded his own books in the essay collection Palm Sunday. He gave Jailbird an A. I disagree a bit. I rate it 4 stars out of 5, which I would consider to be a B.

Jailbird can be found on Amazon.com here: Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut.

OUR SUBWAY BABY (audiobook) by Peter Mercurio

Published in 2020 by Listening Library.

Read by the author, Peter Mercurio.

Duration: 7 minutes.

Unabridged.

I first heard about this story and the book Our Subway Baby in a social media post so I searched out the book. I didn't realize it was a book for children when I started searching, but it's a sweet little book.

The book starts with Danny Stewart spotting a newborn infant boy that was abandoned in the corner of a New York subway station. Stewart contacts the police, but also his boyfriend, Peter Mercurio, wondering if this was somehow fate. After all, they could never have children, but here is a child in need.

The couple keeps tabs of the baby and eventually adopt him. Their families and friends help them gather all of the things parents would need and baby Kevin finally joins his family.

The story is told from the point of view of Peter, as if he were talking to a young Kevin and telling him how Kevin found his way to his home. The language is simplified and the tricky details of an adoption are glossed over. The events in the story actually took place in the year 2000, so Kevin is a grown man nowadays.

This is a super heartwarming story. I give it an enthusiastic 5 stars out of 5.

Unfortunately, there are people that are against this book. It tied for the 12th most banned picture book in 2023-2024. Some people are not happy that an abandoned baby was saved and found a family. They are upset that the parents are gay men. Ugh. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com: Our Subway Baby.

SLAPSTICK or LONESOME NO MORE! by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1976.

Synopsis

In the essay that serves as the prologue to Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut writes about family, connection, and acceptance. He spends a lot of time talking about his older brother - more than he usually does in his essays. He also talks about his sister - a topic of frequent discussion in his essays. She and her husband both died with days of one another, one of an accident and the other of cancer. Kurt Vonnegut and his wife adopted three of their four children. 

In his essays Vonnegut makes frequent mention of the lack of family connection in our modern world and he thinks we are far the worse off for it. This novel is all about family connection, featuring two physically deformed twins who who are psychically connected.

The twins were kept apart from society in an old mansion on a large estate in order to protect them from society and to protect the reputations of their elite, ultra-rich parents. After all, the "right sort of people" don't have freaks for children.

It was assumed that the children would have mental disabilities. It turns out that they were geniuses, especially when they were physically close to one another...

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

My Review

This is a truly bizarre novel, even by the standards of Kurt Vonnegut. I liked the book in many ways, but I really can't say that it was a great or even a particularly good novel. There are times when it just gets so weird that the story gets buried in its own absurdities.

In one of his essays, Vonnegut graded all of his books up to that point. He gave Slapstick a grade of 'D.' I will do better than that - I give it 3 stars out of 5 (a solid 'C') because it has a lot of heart. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. 

THE INSTINCT for COOPERATION: A GRAPHIC NOVEL CONVERSATION with NOAM CHOMSKY (graphic novel) by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson

Published in 2018 by Seven Stories Press.
Written by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson.
Art by Eliseu Gouveia.

Jeffrey Wilson interviewed Noam Chomsky for The Instinct for Cooperation and the results probably would have been a typical interview with Chomsky. The interview was about the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the little groups that organically formed within the protests, such as the food tent, the medical tent, and the library. 

Wilson wove in interviews that he had done with people who participated in the Occupy Movement, students and teachers who had bad interactions with education "reform" movements, and other topics like student loan debt. 

This could have easily been a mess, but Wilson does a very good job of weaving together all of the interviews so that it felt more like a natural free-flowing conversation. The illustrations helped move everything along to make this very digestible. There is a lot of food for thought.

Well done.

5 out of 5 stars.

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: The Instinct for Cooperation: A Graphic Novel Conversation with Noam Chomsky.

BOUND for CANAAN: THE EPIC STORY of the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, AMERICA'S FIRST CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (audiobook) by Fergus Bordewich

Published by Harper Audio.

Read by the author, Fergus Bordewich.

Duration: 5 hours, 29 minutes.

Abridged.

The abridged version of Bound for Canaan hits the highlights of the Underground Railroad movement, but leaves quite a bit out. This is a radically abridged audiobook - fourteen hours of a nineteen hour audiobook were cut out - more than 70% of the book. I did not realize how much it had been abridged until I had already listened to it.

What remains is solid, but more of traditional hero study. The reader learns about the Quakers, Levi Coffin and Harriet Tubman and a few other stalwarts of the movement. Frederick Douglass shows up as an example of the Underground Railroad in action. There is a nod to the importance of women in the movement and how that led to the Women's Suffrage movement. 

The book goes off track a bit when it comes to John Brown of Bleeding Kansas fame. Brown did participate in the Underground Railroad movement, but the book follows him to the Kansas and the violence that he committed there as an abolitionist. It follows with a detailed re-telling of John Brown's attempt to instigate a slave rebellion by seizing the national armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).

While these are all things that Brown did, he did them separately from the actions of the Underground Railroad. I know that the author was trying to tie the Underground Railroad to the political climate that led to the Civil War and the eventual liberation of the slaves, but this was clunky. I am going to blame it on the extreme abridgment of the book.

What was left after the abridgement wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything that was groundbreaking, either.

I rate this abridged audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement. 

LULLABY TOWN (Elvis Cole #3) (audiobook) by Robert Crais

Book originally published in 1992.

Audiobook published by Brilliance Audio in 2008.

Read by Mel Foster.

Duration: 8 hours, 33 minutes.

Unabridged.

Anthony Award Nominee for Best Novel (1993)

Shamus Award Nominee for Best PI Hardcover (1993)

Synopsis

Elvis Cole is hired by a very successful young Hollywood director in Lullaby Town to find his divorced wife and his son that he hasn't seen since he was an infant. It has been ten years since the divorce. His ex-wife hasn't been kidnapped or gone missing - she just moved away and the director has lost track of her. Now, he'd like to meet his son. 

The director has to be the single most annoying client that Elvis Cole has ever had. He is pushy, obnoxious, and completely self-absorbed. Elvis notes early on that almost every sentence the man utters starts with "I" as in "I think this" and "I did that." It's pretty obvious why the ex-wife left him and just kept on going with no forwarding address.

So, Elvis takes this job and starts searching. When he finally finds her he discovers that she has a lot more problems than a super-annoying ex-husband coming back in her life...

My Review

The first third of this book is a real lesson in the step by step research and follow through of basic detective work. You'd think it would be boring, but it isn't. The last third has a ton of action.

All in all, this is an excellent detective story.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Lullaby Town by Robert Crais.

EXIT STAGE LEFT: THE SNAGGLEPUSS CHRONICLES (graphic novel) Written by Mark Russell. Illustrated by Mike Feehan

Published by DC Comics in 2018.

Part of the Hannah-Barbera Beyond series.

2019 GLAAD Media Award winner for Outstanding Comic Book

Synopsis:

DC Comics and Hanna-Barbera set out to reimagine some of their late 1950s to 1970s Saturday morning television cartoons, including The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Wacky Races, and Space Ghost. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles is the last installment of the series.

The graphic novel is set in the Red Scare/McCarthyism era. Congressional subcommittees are looking for Communists in all fields, but they are particularly concerned about Communist entertainers who may be negatively influencing Americans.

Snagglepuss is a very successful New York City playwright. He lives in a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals interact as equals. He moved to New York from Mississippi years ago, but he still speaks in a Southern accent and often uses pithy folksy aphorisms. He is married to an actress, but that is a sham marriage. In reality, Snagglepuss is gay.

Snagglepuss has already appeared before the Congressional sub-committee and he did well. He defended the concept of Freedom of Speech and gave them a verbal tongue lashing that they will never forget. 

But, now the sub-committee is digging deeper into the personal lives of the people it questions, including looking into their sexual preferences. Getting outed could easily destroy the career of any actor, producer, or writer... 

Other Hanna-Barbera characters that appear in this graphic novel include Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Augie Doggie, Peter Pottamus, and a very creepy-looking Squiddly Diddly.

My Review:

Imagining Snagglepuss as gay and working in the theatre does not take a lot of actual imagination. I had never really thought about it before I ran across this graphic novel, but it tracked pretty well.

There is a great quote in this graphic novel said by Snagglepuss:

"Sometimes we become so preoccupied with the plot of life that we forget - it's only the characters who matter."

The weakness in this graphic novel is that it tries way too hard to incorporate so much of the Cold War into the plot that it just got confusing. There are nuclear tests, Nixon and Kruschev debating, an Iowa farmer throwing ears of corn at Kruschev, and an ongoing debate about national security. 

I am not arguing that these things were not a part of the anti-gay movement in the 1950s, but it distracted from the main plotline too much. It was too far away from the story of Snagglepuss and Huckleberry Hound. To go back to the quote I thought was so great, the graphic novel got so preoccupied with the Cold War tie-in that it forgot about the characters.

If I were part of the discussion with how to make this an effective graphic novel, I would have dealt with more with the "morals" argument and less with the Cold War argument. It would have been more relevant to nowadays with all of the book bans and boycotts over LGBTQ+ issues.

The nice thing about this graphic novel is that it ties in to the actual Hanna-Barbera TV shows that feature these characters and makes sense, as if the readers that remembers those classic shows is a part of Snagglepuss's world.

I rate this graphic novel 4 stars out of 5. Interesting read, thought-provoking, but flawed. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles.

THANKS a THOUSAND: A GRATITUDE JOURNEY (audiobook) by A.J. Jacobs

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio / TED

Read by A.J. Jacobs.

Duration: 3 hours, 12 minutes.

Unabridged.

A.J. Jacobs had been doing some reading and thinking about the concept of gratitude when it occurred to him that he really should be grateful for a lot of things that no one every expresses any gratitude for. He settled on his morning cup of coffee that he buys at a the corner coffee shop. 

On his quest to thank a thousand people for his daily cup of coffee, he starts with the clerk, the barista, and the management of the small coffee chain. He moves on to the people that make the cup lids, the cups, and even the metal of the coffee makers. Eventually, he gets to the guy that chooses the coffee beans that make up his favorite brew. That guy takes him to the farm in Colombia that grows his favorite beans and the bemused and confused Colombians host them for a little get together. 

The whole book is mildly amusing and somewhat interesting, but is not riveting in any way. It's nice, but hardly memorable. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey. 

BREAKFAST of CHAMPIONS or GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Originally published in 1973.

Breakfast of Champions, to me, is the second most well-known Vonnegut novel after Slaughterhouse-Five. 

The plot of this story is deceptively simple and the writing style is not complicated - but this story has a lot going on.

There are three main characters. One is Dwayne Hoover, a very successful owner of a Pontiac car dealership from Midland, Ohio and numerous other small businesses. He is by far the most successful man in town. He helps bankroll a fine arts festival that the town helps will make them known as a cultural center. He is also going crazy.

The fine arts festival has invited Kilgore Trout, a recurring character from other Vonnegut novels, to be the star of the arts festival. Trout is a prolific, but unsuccessful author. He is published, but only by publishers of porn novels. They use his books as a way to make their books seem more legit, kind of like Playboy used "the articles" to make the magazine seem classier. Trout iis so unsuccessful as an author that he literally has to hitchhike from New York City to Midland. 

The third character is the narrator. The narrator is the author of the book and, I presume, the narrator is Vonnegut himself. The narrator has filled the book with his line drawings. Sometimes, the narrator uses the pictures to move the plot along, sometimes he uses it to avoid describing something, and sometimes he just throws in an illustration for the heck of it. 

The book is constantly moving to the point where all three characters meet in a hotel bar...

Vonnegut famously graded his own books in report card style. He gave Breakfast of Champions a C. 

I disagree, even though I have had a hard time coming up with a rating for this novel. This novel is too unique to be a middle of the road "C". It is often juvenile (Vonnegut spends a lot of time talking about penises, he has a drawing of his anus) but it is very Meta in the way the author is a character in his own story. Plus, the quirky illustrations add a certain charm.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Breakfast of Champions. 

BETTY WHITE: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2024 by Hourly History.

Betty White was a staple of the American entertainment scene for literal decades. She was on multiple highly-rated TV shows, was a regular on several classic game shows, guested on dozens of TV shows, and even made one of the most popular Super Bowl commercials of all time. 

This short e-book gives the outline of her nearly 70 year career. It's pretty much a "just the facts" sort of book due to the limitations of this book series. Eech history and biography published by Hourly History is designed to be read in about an hour and the sheer length of Betty White's career means that the depth of this biography is fairly limited. 

Even if it is limited, I still found this biography to be enjoyable. I rate this e-book 4 stars our of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Betty White: A Life from Beginning to End.

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

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

Almost every book of this series follows this model:

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

BEAT the REAPER (audiobook) by Josh Bazell

Published by Hachette Audio in 2007.
Read by Robert Petkoff.
Duration: 6 hours, 49 minutes.
Unabridged.

The premise of this book is very strong - what if a mafia hitman goes into witness protection, becomes a doctor in a hospital, and then runs into a former mafia colleague who has come to the hospital for a serious surgery. They recognize each other and deadly hijinks ensue.

Sounds good, but the follow through leaves a lot to be desired. The main character is unlikeable almost all of the time - deeply unlikeable. The more you learn about him, the worse he gets. On top of that, the parade of horrible events that happened to him is simply ridiculous - literally stuff stolen from a Timothy Dalton James Bond movie, except even more over the top.

The audiobook reader is great, but the text of the book - not so much.

I rate this book 1 star out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell.

SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2024 by Hourly History.

Hourly History's telling of the events of September 11, 2001 is surprisingly well-told for a history that is supposed to take a person about an hour to read. 

Is this a complete history? Hardly. Why not? Read the first paragraph again.

But, it gets all of the elements across in broad strokes - the motives of the hijackers, the reasons for their targets, and the mass casualties - but not as bad as they could have been thanks to the bravery and professionalism of the NYPD and FDNY.

The book moves on to discuss the aftermath, including tearing down the remains of the buildings, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, beefed up airport screenings, and the invasion of Afghanistan in order to search for the Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists responsible for the attacks. All of it is tied up neatly in a bite-sized e-book that younger readers (not kids, but younger adults that simply don't remember 9/11) could read to grasp the basics.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: September 11 Attacks: A History from Beginning to End.

THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS (graphic novel) by Max Brooks.

Published by Del Rey in 2014.

Illustrated by Caanan White.

Synopsis:

The Harlem Hellfighters is Max Brooks' history of an all African American unit (the 369th Infantry) that fought on the Western Front alongside French units. They mostly came from New York.

This unit was allowed to fight precisely because they were assigned to a mostly French army. The American army would not let African Americans fight and had originally used the 369th as laborers, alongside civilian laborers.

The French were in need of immediate manpower. French white soldiers already had experience fight alongside regiments of soldiers from their African colonies and were eager to bring American troops to the front, no matter their color.

The 369th spent more time than almost any other American unit on the front lines. They may have spent the most time on the front lines. They were the first Allied unit to reach the Rhine River. 

Legend has it that the nickname "The Harlem Hellfighters" was given to the unit by their German foes.

They were among the first units to return to the United States and were given the honor of marching in a tickertape parade in New York City.

My Review:

The story that Max Brooks tells in this graphic novel is a little herky jerky. He tells the story with plenty of emphasis on individual soldiers, the terrible conditions on the front, and the racism they experienced. But, the overall plot of the war is rather poorly told.

The biggest reason that I am giving this book a rating of 3 stars is the illustrations. I truly dislike the art style. I found it distracting and hard to follow. There were details that are included that just filled the page and often made it difficult for me to figure out what I was supposed to be looking at. I bought this graphic novel from an online source without having seen the art. I hated it so much that I didn't read this graphic novel for nearly 7 months. 

Note: The publisher says that this book is aimed at children 8-12 years old. I believe that all of those ages are too young. It has graphic depictions of the violence of trench warfare. There are bullets blasting though heads, spraying bloods and brains across the page. There is a depiction of a bayonet going into someone's mouth and coming out the back of his skull. 

To be clear, I DON'T have a problem with showing the war as it really was. I DO have a problem with showing an eight year old a soldier being vaporized by an artillery shell. I would give this book a PG-13 rating.

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks.

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.

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. 

HAWKEYE: THE SAGA of BARTON and BISHOP (graphic novel) by Matt Fraction, David Aja, and more

Published by Marvel Universe in 2021.

Hawkeye: The Saga of Barton and Bishop is actually two collections in one. The first half of the collection is the text from Hawkeye Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon.

To be honest, the first collection is much better than the newer second half. 

In the second volume, Hawkeye and Bishop are working separately. At the end of Volume 1 she left for California to be an independent Avenger. That's not really a thing, but she's young and hadn't really thought it through.

I found the art and storyline to be convoluted, especially with the main storyline - the Bishop storyline. The shorter Barton storyline is a simple continuation of the actions in Volume 1. Even though it is the shorter part of the story, it feels like it is stretched out and padded while the much longer Bishop story arc feels rushed and poorly explained.

I gave a rating of 4 stars for Volume 1. I give a rating of 2 stars for Volume 2. That makes for a total score of 3 stars. 

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Hawkeye: The Saga of Barton and Bishop.