THE FEARLESS BENJAMIN LAY: THE QUAKER DWARF WHO BECAME the FIRST REVOLUTIONARY ABOLITIONIST (audiobook) by Marcus Rediker

Published in 2017 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by Cornell Womack.
Duration: 7 hours, 2 minutes.
Unabridged.

As the title states, Benjamin Lay (1682-1759) was indeed a Quaker and a dwarf. He grew up in the Quaker faith in England, learned how to spin cloth and sew gloves and then took those skills to see and became a sailor. Eventually, he settled in Barbados and became a merchant. Barbados was a plantation colony and Lay got to know several of the slaves and their owners and the experience turned him into an abolitionist, a concept that was nearly unknown in a world where slavery was commonplace.

Lay moved to Philadelphia and naturally joined the local Quakers. Lay had always been an agitator back in England and was often in trouble with local church officials for questioning what they were teaching. Now, he ramped things up considerably in the hopes of convincing the Quakers that slavery was an evil that should not be tolerated in their midst.

He published an anti-slavery book that was published by Benjamin Franklin - a fact that Franklin kept secret because being anti-slavery was a radical idea. Later, Franklin himself became a public face for anti-slavery but Lay was far ahead of him.

Lay also protested physically and verbally at every Quaker meeting (service) that he attended. He called out the slave owners by name and was often punished for it.

He ended up living in a little hut on the edge of Philadelphia where he refined his beliefs ever further and became a vegan because he did not want to harm any living creature.

This bare bones outline of his life seems radical and interesting, but the presentation in the book was not. This is one of those biographies that seeks to include every detail of its subject's life and in doing so becomes his or her definitive biography. It's a worthy goal, but the first 2-3 hours of this book featured a whole lot of citations of church paperwork about whether or not Benjamin Lay was in good standing or not and what he would have to do to return to good standing. It was tedious. 

The reading by Cornell Womack was subpar. He has a distinctive voice, but he often reads mundane things (like lists) as if they are dramatic moments. It got old, especially when combined with the excessive detail.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.

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 PRESIDENTS' WAR: SIX AMERICAN PRESIDENTS and the CIVIL WAR THAT DIVIDED THEM by Chris DeRose

 

Published in 2014 by Lyons Press.

This is my 142nd Civil War-related review. When I heard about this book, I found myself wondering how no one else thought to write this book before.

Former presidents have their own political power and impact current events. Nowadays, you can see this with Jimmy Carter's modeling of volunteerism and his attempts to be a peace mediator in the 1980s and 1990s, Bill Clinton's maneuvering to remain relevant, George W. Bush's refusal to endorse or approve of anything done by Donald Trump, the calls that the Biden Administration is really just the third Obama Administration and, obviously, the 45th President's refusal to admit he lost the 2020 election.

DeRose starts with a rundown of the political careers of each politician involved: John Tyler, Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Abraham Lincoln. 

Then, he discusses how they reacted to Lincoln's candidacy, the break up of the Democrat Party in 1860, Lincoln's election and the Secession Crisis. 

John Tyler, the 10th President (1790-1862)

To a man, they were all critical of Lincoln's handling of the Secession Crisis. John Tyler surprised me, though. Tyler was from Virginia and owned slaves and had a working slave labor plantation so he was never going to be supportive of Lincoln who was philosophically against slavery but only against expanded it into new territories and/or states as a matter of policy. 

Tyler left the presidency politically unpopular and seemed to have relished in the attention he received during the Secession Crisis. Suddenly, people were seeking his opinion on the most important issue of his lifetime. Tyler came to D.C. and led a peace conference hosted by Virginia in the Willard Hotel. 

Nothing came from the conference. Tyler operated as a proxy for the Confederacy, in my opinion, and his proposals were ridiculous. Tyler was elected to the Confederate Conference and served in the Provisional Confederate Congress until his death. He remains the only President that ever served in a government at war with the United States. 

I was amused by the constant thread of James Buchanan's post-presidency - he was going to write a book to explain his actions during the Secession Crisis. He claimed over and over again that he would be vindicated once everyone knew all of the facts and ... he never was. It was almost like a running gag throughout the book. Even today, he is universally acknowledged to be the one of the worst presidents of all of the presidents. 

The book continues on with reactions from each of the surviving presidents to the events of the war such as Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg, the fall of Atlanta, Lee's surrender and, finally, the assassination of Lincoln. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE PRESIDENTS' WAR: SIX AMERICAN PRESIDENTS and the CIVIL WAR THAT DIVIDED THEM by Chris DeRose.

OUR FIRST CIVIL WAR: PATRIOTS and LOYALISTS in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION (audiobook) by H.W. Brand

 

Published by Random House Audio in November of 2021.
Read by Steve Hendrickson.
Duration: 16 hours, 31 minutes.
Unabridged.

When I read the title of this audiobook, OUR FIRST CIVIL WAR: PATRIOTS and LOYALISTS in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION, I was sure that I was going to be listening to an in-depth look at how the population of the young United States dealt with its neighbors and family that disagreed about the question of independence. The most famous example is Benjamin Franklin and his son William Franklin. William Franklin was the last royal governor of New Jersey and their relationship never recovered from the shock of the Revolutionary War. 

This book deals with more of these issues than most histories of the Revolutionary War era, but that is not particularly hard to do - most of them mention the Franklin family situation and use it as a stand-in for all families. But, it does not go in-depth into this concept of Loyalists vs. Patriots. For example, I learned more about this topic from this Wikipedia page than I did from this book. I should not learn more about the topic from 11 pages of text on a Wikipedia page then I did in a 16+ hour audiobook.

So what is this book, if not an in-depth study of how the American Revolution fractured families, cities and populations?

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and William Franklin (1730-1813)

It's a very good political history of the Revolutionary Era that focuses especially on Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and, to a lesser extent, John Adams. The text hums right along and it was a very good listen. This is one of the few Revolutionary War histories that I've read that actually discusses the dilemma that slaves faced in the war and the offer of freedom that the British military offered for males slaves that were willing to leave their families and volunteer. He looked at the stories of two slaves - one who fought for the British and one who ending up fighting for both sides.

All of that being said, I am going to deduct one point from what would have been a 5 star review. This book does not adequately address what the title promises.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: OUR FIRST CIVIL WAR: PATRIOTS and LOYALISTS in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION (audiobook) by H.W. Brand.

CONFEDERATE GENERALS of the CIVIL WAR (Collective Biographies series) by Carl R. Green and William R. Sanford

 

Published in 1998 by Enslow Publishers, Inc.

Part of a series of 8 books, Confederate Generals of the Civil War was intended to be a classroom or school media center supplement for students to use as a resource. It is not a large book - 112 pages including a glossary, some charts comparing the the Union and the Confederacy, 2 maps and a timeline of the Civil War.

There are 10 biographies, arranged in alphabetical order. Each biography is 8-9 pages, including a photograph of the general and a related picture (photo of a battlefield, drawing of a battle scene, etc.). 

The biographies themselves are pretty neutral, although it does take some mild stands on a few controversial items. It states in a matter of fact manner that Robert E. Lee was anti-slavery (It was definitely more complicated than that). It puts a lot of blame for Pickett's Charge on Longstreet, not on Lee. And, it gets sappily sentimental in the last paragraph of Pickett's biography. I would rate it as very mildly slanted towards the old "Lost Cause" theory of the war (the three areas I mentioned are all at the heart of the theory), but not fatally so. 

The featured generals are:

Nathan Bedford Forrest;

William Joseph Hardee;

A.P. Hill;

John Bell Hood;

"Stonewall" Jackson;

Confederate General George Pickett
(1825-1875)

Joseph Johnston;

Robert E. Lee;

James Longstreet;

George Pickett;
J.E.B. Stuart

Other books in the series include a collection of biographies of Union Generals, "Women in America's Wars" and "American Heroes of Exploration and Flight".

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. The biographies are just not all that interesting out of context. This book can be found on Amazon.com here:CONFEDERATE GENERALS of the CIVIL WAR (Collective Biographies series) by Carl R. Green and William R. Sanford.

HOW ROBERT E. LEE LOST THE CIVIL WAR by Edward H. Bonekemper, III

 

Published in 1998 by Sergeant Kirkland's Museum and Historical Society, Inc.

Bonekemper lived the dream of most students of the Civil War - once he retired as an attorney, he created a second career as a Civil War author, college lecturer and a frequent guest on C-SPAN to talk about leadership in the Civil War. He also gave 10 lectures at the Smithsonian!

Bonekemper is an unabashed fan of the Union side in the war, especially General Grant. I reviewed a book he wrote about Grant here. As Bonekemper loves to point out, only 4 armies were captured during the Civil War and Grant captured 3 of them Grant's subordinate Sherman captured the fourth after Lee had already surrendered his army to Grant. The only general on the Confederate side that can compare to Grant is, of Course, Robert E. Lee. Lee is generally celebrated as the best general in the war and Bonekemper dedicates How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War to proving that wrong. 

Bonekemper ignores the easiest place to go after the iconic image Lee - his betrayal of his oath as an officer of the U.S. Army to go fight for the Confederacy. Literally, no human being is responsible for more deaths of American soldiers than Robert E. Lee. Instead, he goes after Lee's record as a general on the battlefield - the part that is supposed to be unassailable. 

Bonekemper doesn't argue that Lee's tactical skills on the battlefield weren't formidable and sometimes even brilliant. 

Instead, Bonekemper argues that Lee was a failure when it came to national military strategy for the Confederacy. Lee spent most of the war as CSA President Jefferson Davis's main military advisor - oftentimes the only one Davis took seriously. At the end of the war he commanded every soldier in the entire Confederacy.

Yet, he never left the Army of Northern Virginia to see what else was happening. He never demonstrated that he understood the value of any army other than his own except that they might send him extra troops (which they did on a regular basis. The exception was when he loaned out a chunk of his army with Longstreet for a few months to Braxton Bragg in Tennessee and Georgia. Within a few weeks Lee was lobbying to have them returned)

All Lee had to do was not lose. This sounds obvious, but it is much easier than the North's goal. The North had to actually conquer the South - defeat all of its armies, stop it from operating as a government and take away its ability to keep on fighting. Lee's model should have been George Washington in the Revolutionary War. Washington hung around long enough that the British home front got sick of the war and agreed to terms.

Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April of 1865.

But, instead of fighting for time and playing defense, Lee acted like he was trying to conquer the North. Twice he invaded the North (Antietam and Gettysburg) and twice he was defeated and came back to Virginia with nothing to show for it except the worst losses he suffered in the war. After Gettysburg he never was able to gather enough troops to go on the offense in any meaningful way again. 

The Battle of Chanecellorsville is symptomatic of the problem with Lee. Lee was outnumbered by more than 2 to 1 and still won the battle with a combination of speed, daring and confidence. It is an impressive victory by any standard. But it came at a massive cost. The Union had 17,000 casualties out of 130,000 (13%) that were replaced within weeks. Lee had 12,000 casualties out of 60,000 (20%) that were only replaced by pulling troops away from other fronts and causing them to lose. 

If it costs you a greater percentage of your force to win battles and you have the smaller army you cannot win. Almost every battle Lee fought in could be described in that way. 

Bonekemper argues that Lee ground his army to dust, refused to consider the needs of other theaters and kept fighting for months after it had become obvious that he had no hope of winning the war, costing the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.

The research is impeccable and the facts become overwhelming as the pages go rolling along. It almost becomes tedious - another battle, another costly win (usually) that bled away irreplaceable men for a win that did little to further the war effort. Meanwhile, Generals Grant, Sherman and Thomas chewed up every army in the West, conquered or cut off every state except for Virginia and North Carolina until Lee finally surrendered.

Ironically, if Lee had stayed with the Union, the rumor was that he would have been offered the command of Union forces. He would have been the general that that army desperately needed - not afraid to attack, not afraid to strike the enemy to win the war and he would have had the extra men and resources that his fighting style required. It might have been a short war.

5 stars out of 5 because it proves a long-needed point.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW ROBERT E. LEE LOST THE CIVIL WAR by Edward H. Bonekemper, III.

EVERYWHERE that MARY WENT (audiobook)(Rosato and Associates #1) by Lisa Scottoline

 

Originally published in 1994.

Audiobook version published in 2016 by HarperAudio.
Read by Teri Schnaubelt.
Duration: 9 hours, 5 minutes.
Unabridged.

Back in the 1990's, I worked at a used book store. A copy of Everywhere That Mary Went came in. I was intrigued so I read it.  After that, whenever a fan of legal thrillers would come in and ask if we had anything new or a little different I'd hand them that book. Soon enough, we were sold out and we kept on selling them whenever they came in. I even talked a group of ladies to use it for their book discussion group and they loved it. I sort of feel like I had a part in promoting Lisa Scottoline when she was starting out.

Eventually, this one book grew into a series of eleven books and I read most of them (maybe all of them - it's been a while). 

While I was scrolling through my possible choices of my next audiobook, I decided to go back and revisit this series. 

Mary DiNunzio is a lawyer from a working class background about to make partner in a fancy Philadelphia law firm. Things seem to be going well for her, except for the strange typewritten letters and the hang up phone calls at home and at the office. Also, there's the car that seems to be following her. Is it her imagination? Is it related to one of her cases? Is it from one of the other lawyers trying to make partner? Is it the creepy judge? Her supervisor?

I liked the audiobook, but I remember absolutely loving this book 25 years ago. It had funny scenes and endearing characters and it had been so long that I really didn't remember the plot at all. 

I rate it 4 stars out of 5. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: EVERYWHERE that MARY WENT (audiobook)(Rosato and Associates #1) by Lisa Scottoline.

MURDER at GETTYSBURG (Miranda Lewis #2) by Leslie Wheeler

Published in 2007 by Worldwide Library (Worldwide Mystery).
Originally Published in 2005.

Historian Miranda Lewis has been invited to a Gettysburg re-enactment on the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3) by her old college roommate, Ginny. She accepts for two reasons - she wants to see her old friend and she has a serious crush on her friend's father, a retired judge and amateur historian who will also be there. She has been nursing this crush since she was 19 years old and he took her on a tour of the battlefield and taught her all about the battle.

Things get complicated, though, when Ginny's estranged husband Wiley shows up. He is a hardcore Civil War Confederate reenactor, the sort of man who starves himself to the point of being ill just to look more authentic. The sort of man who decorates his personal vehicle (called the "Battlemobile") with little plastic Civil War army men. Wiley has been gone on the reenactor circuit for a while, traveling from place to place and never checking back in with his family.

Even worse, Ginny's old college boyfriend comes to the reenactment looking for her. And, Wiley's friend Dred Davis is lingering around, with his menacing attitude.

But, when Wiley gets shot during the reenactment of Pickett's Charge and then dies of a heart attack things are just starting to get complicated...

Worldwide Mystery  is a big publishing house you have probably never heard of. They are in imprint of Harlequin (yes, the folks that sell the romance novels). When I used to work at a used book store we used to get a lot of these books in because they come in the mail - 2 per month. I have read more than my share of these books - some were really horrible, some were pretty good. But, they sure crank them out.

So, this mystery was not very good. It wasn't horrible, but it suffered from an amazing amount of characters. Every 20 pages or so, a new character was introduced with another subplot. So many subplots and so many characters that it was hard to keep track of them all. You have the historian with the daddy issue crush on a patronizing man at least 20 years older than her that she has maintained for all of these years without ever seeing the man in between, (*****Spoiler alerts for the rest of this paragraph*****) a gun-running operation, a guilt-ridden woman, 2 plots to recover lost love, a plot to foil lost love, multiple weird reenactors, nice guy that fixes cars (and his wife and his sun-bathing niece), a creepy guy that the protagonist sort of likes who likes to flash his EMT patch like he is a cop, a creepy cop and a cop that somehow doesn't arrest the confessed murderer because he wants to comfort the widow of the man he killed (yes, that is right) and somehow lets him take enough pills to kill himself instead. Explain that one back at the station.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MURDER at GETTYSBURG (Miranda Lewis #2)
by Leslie Wheeler.

MILTON HERSHEY: MORE than CHOCOLATE: HEROES of HISTORY (audiobook) by Janet Benge and Geoff Benge

Published in 2015 by YWAM Publishing.
Read by Tim Gregory.
Duration: 4 hours, 55 minutes.
Unabridged.


YWAM Publishing offers a series of biographies of Christian "heroes of history" aimed at home school students. The fact that this was part of series about "Christian" heroes was a surprise to me since this book didn't mention Hershey's faith at all. Nevertheless, this is an interesting and enjoyable biography of one of America's most successful businessmen, Milton Hershey (1857-1945).

Milton Hershey: More than Chocolate is a book showcasing the value of persistence. Starting with a failed attempt by his father in the oilfields of Pennsylvania in the late 1850's, the first half of this book is a series of business failures from Milton Hershey and his father, Henry.

Henry Hershey was more of a dreamer sort of entrepreneur - prone to rash decisions, excited by new technology and not very good on doing the follow up work to make sure that the venture succeeds. They traveled from Pennsylvania to Colorado to Louisiana, chasing the next big thing. Turns out that the next big thing was something that Milton Hershey learned from a baker in Colorado about how to make caramel that tastes better and stays fresh longer - milk.

So, Milton Hershey headed home to Pennsylvania and sets up his kitchen and everything just falls into place - except that it doesn't, at least not right away...

The stories of Hershey's struggles are by far more interesting than the story of his success. That being said, Hershey's commitment to charity once he became a success is extraordinary and worthy of note.

I did have one quibble. When it comes to the Hershey strike in 1937, the book doesn't really tell why some of the employees wanted to organize. Now, compared to most other places in the United States during the Great Depression, the workers in Hershey, Pennsylvania had it pretty well. Still, they had lost 1/3 of their hours per week and the worker learders that tried to organize a union were laid off in what looked like retaliation.

The story is well told and well-read by the narrator, Tim Gregory. We listened to this book as a family on a vacation and found it interesting and were eager to start listening again as soon as we hit the highway.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MILTON HERSHEY: MORE than CHOCOLATE: HEROES of HISTORY.

MISSION: JIMMY STEWART and the FIGHT for EUROPE (audiobook) by Robert Matzen

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio.
Read by Peter Berkrot.
Duration: 11 hours, 45 minutes.
Unabridged.

Just a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart was a new recruit in the U.S. Army angling for the chance to fly a bomber in combat. At the time, he was the reigning male actor in Hollywood, having recently received the Oscar for Best Actor.

But, deep down, Jimmy Stewart wanted to continue the family tradition of military service. The Army tried to divert Stewart to a non-combat role, aided by some string-pulling by his movie studio. But, Stewart pulled some strings of his own and eventually found himself training to fly bombers, despite the fact that he was easily at least ten years older than all of the other trainees.

Stewart and his men flew their bombers to England and joined the massive collection of planes involved in the bombing campaign in November of 1943. Stewart's age and extensive pre-war flying experience played a part in him becoming an leader of his squadron of B-24 Liberators. He felt the profound weight of the immense responsibility of leading his men. He was all too aware that a simple mistake on his part could kill dozens of men, including himself.

Maybe it was that sense of responsibility, maybe it was just dumb luck, but Stewart's men did much better than average when it came to getting there and back successfully, although it took a profound toll on Stewart. He visibly aged during those 16 months. He felt like he was losing even his nerve as the mission (and the close calls) added up. Despite his concern, he led larger and larger missions up to the end of the war.

The chief mechanic of the B-24 Liberator
"Nine Yanks and a Jerk" sticking his head out of the hole
blown through the cockpit by a piece of unexploded
ordinance. Jimmy Stewart was in that cockpit on that flight.

Robert Matzen's three-pronged look at World War II in Europe mostly focuses on the early life and military service of famed Hollywood actor, but it also tells the story of German civilians that ended up being near a site bombed by Stewart and the story of another airman that went briefly interacted with Stewart on a shake-down run. His story, though, is used to show what could have happened to Jimmy Stewart since that airman is shot down over Europe and eventually is captured.

This was an interesting audiobook. Peter Berkrot was the narrator and when it comes to narrating the danger and drama of a bombing run of Nazi Germany, there is literally no one better. Berkrot's pacing and dramatic delivery are perfect. But, the problem is that Berkrot never turns that dramatic style of reading down - everything is equally dramatic, including very mundane things like the descriptions of Stewart's childhood. So, it becomes sort of a mixed bag.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: MISSION: JIMMY STEWART and the FIGHT for EUROPE by Robert Matzen. 

FROM a BUICK 8 (audiobook) by Stephen King

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2002
Read by James Rebhorn, Bruce Davison, Becky Ann Baker, Peter Gerety, Fred Sanders, Stephen Tobolowsky
Duration: 13 hours, 21 minutes
Unabridged

Troop D is the name for the troopers in a Pennsylvania State Police post in western Pennsylvania. They are a close-knit bunch, as you would expect. But, it's not just because of their shared struggles as police officers - they share a secret and it's hidden in a shed behind their post station.

In that shed is a 1953 Buick Roadmaster - but it's not any kind of Buick that was ever built in Detroit. It was left behind at a gas station when its driver stepped out of the car, told the attendant that the oil level was fine, headed towards the bathroom and then literally disappeared.

The car is weird. In fact, it really isn't a car. It can't actually drive. It's almost like someone who didn't understand the mechanics behind a car tried to build one. But, that's not the problem - the problem is that it pulses - it pulses deep sounds that people hear on a subconscious level and it calls them...

From a Buick 8 is, mostly, a series of stories told to the son of a deceased state trooper about his dad's investigations into the car. In that sense, it is a lot of sitting around on the "smoker's bench" behind the station looking at the shed across the parking lot and talking. The stories are strange and rather repetitive, but King's strength in developing believable characters shines throughout.

The audio version was read by 6 different voice actors, each taking a turn (or several turns) at telling stories about the car. They do a great job, as they should since each of them are actors that you recognize from television and movies, even if you don't actually know their names. I really liked that fact that the voice of the original driver of the car sounded exactly like that of Flagg from the audio version of The Eyes of the Dragon.

However, the book suffered from way too much mood-setting and philosophizing and not enough actual action. It isn't until the listener is more than 10 hours into the book that the story actually gets some real "current day" action. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: From a Buick 8 by Stephen King.

Note: This book was banned from a school library in the state of Florida in the 2023-2024 school year. Here is a link to a story about this extensive list of banned books. UGH! 

THE BATTLE of GETTYSBURG: AMERICAN HERITAGE SERIES (audiobook) by Bruce Catton

Published by Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books in January of 2017
Read by Eric Martin
Duration: 3 hours, 4 minutes
Unabridged

I love Bruce Catton's histories of the Civil War. As a rule, Bruce Catton (1899-1978) wrote histories that are easy to read, thorough enough to give the reader a solid grasp of the issues and peppered with well-told human interest stories. 

Confederate Major General
George Pickett (1825-1875)

This history of Gettysburg feels a bit disjointed, sort of like it was a knitted together from a series of articles that Catton wrote for American Heritage magazine. For example, it spends a lot of time looking at the events just before the battle and skips one of the more dramatic and important moments of the battle on the second day (Little Round Top).

However, the exaggerated emphasis on the first day did not bother me. Too often the first day is sort of skipped over and it's not like the second day was ignored - it just focused on Dan Sickles' horrible deployment and the danger it posed to his own army. That is also important. 

The third day, of course, focuses on the infamous Pickett's Charge. Catton's short history also includes a solid look at Lee's retreat back to Virginia, the consequences of this loss to the Confederacy and a peek at the ceremony in which Lincoln delivered his famed Gettysburg Address, including a reading of the speech itself.

Eric Martin did a nice job with the book. He has a pleasant voice.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BATTLE of GETTYSBURG: AMERICAN HERITAGE SERIES by Bruce Catton.

 

QUINN CHECKS IN (Liam Quinn #1) by L.H. Thomson

Originally published in 2013.

From the opening lines of Quinn Checks In I was hooked. Literally, the opening sequence was so cleverly done that I knew I had see what else L.H. Thomson (new to me, but he has a good-sized list of titles) had to offer in this book. 

Liam Quinn is an artist gone bad but then turned back to the good. He used to make money making copies of someone else's art and then selling it as the real thing. But, once he was caught and went to prison he straightened out and now works as an insurance investigator in his hometown of Philadelphia. He does a little bit of everything but he is really on the payroll as the art expert. He is also working off the court-ordered restitution for his criminal past.

But, things are not all wonderful for Liam Quinn. His father was a beat cop and one of his brothers still is. It is hard for a cop to have an ex-con brother. But, Quinn keeps on plugging along.

Quinn gets a big art case that comes with a big reward for him if the insurance company can find the art rather than pay for it. An art gallery was robbed during the middle of an art showing (there was a party, food, people standing around, etc.) and only one piece of art was stolen, which seems odd because you could make even more money if you stole more art.

So, Quinn gets the case and starts investigating and soon enough finds himself being questioned by the police, a local mafia figure and, even worse, he must answer to his mother about missing her Sunday dinner!

The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the
famed Rocky Balboa statue
 Photo by Bobak Ha'Eri

The mystery in this mystery story is just  so-so. But, the characters are so vivid and Quinn and most of his family (and his should-be but isn't girlfriend who works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) are so likable that you just want to read more. This is a solid book and an especially good start for a new series. This is a self-published effort and that can be a problem sometimes. This book, however, is not one of those times. Thomson has built a very solid foundation to build a series here, and it should be an interesting one.

Nice quote from the book: "You can never undo a wrong; you can only try to do right from there on."

NOTE: I was sent an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: QUINN CHECKS IN (Liam Quinn #1) by L.H. Thomson.

DON'T GO (audiobook) by Lisa Scottoline

Published by MacMillan Audio in 2013

Read by Jeremy Davidson
Duration: 11 hours, 25 minutes

Unabridged

Lisa Scottoline breaks new ground in Don't Go. For years, she has written courtroom dramas and legal thrillers. This time, Scottoline tries to tie together two distinct stories featuring Dr. Mike Scanlon, a podiatrist from Philadelphia.

One is the story of an Army doctor doctor serving in Afghanistan and the other is a murder mystery.

 Scanlon is a member of the National Guard and when the story starts he has been called up and is serving in Afghanistan. Podiatric surgeons are in high demand because of the common use of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that explode under military vehicles and damage the feet of the passengers.

Mike has left a wife and an infant child back in Philadelphia. His wife dies from a household accident and his wife's sister and her husband care for the child as he rushes back home to make funeral arrangements. They agree to care for her for the duration of his tour in Afghanistan and when he decides to serve another year because they are in such desperate need of doctors with his special skills.

Lisa Scottoline

The problem with Don't Go is that these two stories do not mesh particularly well. The smaller, but much stronger story is the one in Afghanistan. Scottoline has done some research here and she tells it in a compelling and moving way. The characters have real zing.

On the other hand, the Philadelphia characters are very two dimensional and Scanlon's sister-in-law has an obsessive need to keep the baby on its nap schedule (and the never-ending conversations about the nap schedule) that borders on mental illness. When a father returns home from more than a year in Afghanistan with a horrible injury and wants to see the baby you immediately let him see the baby and throw the @$&%! nap schedule out the window for the day!

Scottoline throws in a murder mystery that just does not fit, but it does little to liven up the home front part of the story. However, the investigation by Scanlon is so haphazard and so full of gut feelings that it felt contrived - like a separate story was grafted to the main story just to add length and a little punch. Major family confrontations flare up and are solved so quickly that it seemed clear that Scottoline was trying to pad the story or really had no sense of how she wanted to end it. For what it's worth, I would have been very happy to have had the entire book just about the adventures of  Dr. Scanlon in Afghanistan.

Jeremy Davidson read the book and he did a solid, if not exciting job. He did a good job with the French accents of Scanlon's wife and his sister-in-law. Oddly, it is never really explained how Scanlon meets and marries this French lady (or, if it is mentioned, it was glossed over quickly and I missed it). One of the characters is mentioned as having a North Philly accent. I am admittedly no expert on Philadelphia, but to me it sounded like a combination of California surfer dude and Australian.

Note: I received a download copy of this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this audiobook 3 out of 5 stars. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: DON'T GO by Lisa Scottoline.

Reviewed on August 14, 2103.

Liberty's Children: Stories of Eleven Revolutionary War Children by Scotti Cohn

It just didn't work for me

Published in 2004 by Globe Pequot

Liberty's Children is a collection of stories about the experiences of eleven children during the Revolutionary War (although one is 20 years old, which was definitely not a child in a time when many were married with children at age 16).

The book is well-researched and accurate. I have no complaints with that or the ample bibliography that is sorted by the individual children. But, I just felt like I had to slog through parts of it and I love to read history.

I questioned some of the choices as well. Five of the eleven went off to sea, one of them was 20 years old and one was just a baby. I found myself wondering about the decision not to include the most famous child that served in the Revolutionary War, Andrew Jackson. He served as a courier and had his face slashed by a British soldier for refusing to clean his boots. Or, how about John Quincy Adams, who accompanied his father to Europe during the war to secure supplies and allies and eventually travelled all of the way to Russia. At least Sybil Luddington, the 16 year-old female "Paul Revere" for Connecticut who is featured on Connecticut's quarter coin could have been included rather than another story about a boy gone off to sea.

Not that all of the stories were a chore to read, mind you. I enjoyed the stories of Frances Slocum, James Forten and Sally Wister in particular. If you have read this book and want to know more about Frances Slocum I enthusiastically recommend the novel The Red Heart by James Alexander Thom.

I rate this collection 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Liberty's Children.

Reviewed on August 23, 2008.

Alternate Gettysburgs by various authors

Published in 2002 by Berkley

It's a collection, and like all collections Alternate Gettysburgs suffers from the fact that it was written by a dozen different authors. Some are very good, most are decent. Two are awful.

The gimmick in this alternative history is, of course, 'What if the Battle of Gettysburg had turned out differently?' It is inspired by this Faulkner quote:

Confederate Major General
George Pickett (1825-1875)

'For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble...'

Is it worth reading? If you're a Civil War buff and don't mind 'slumming' by reading an alternative history rather than a normal history book - yes it is worth your time. Personally, I don't think of it is as slumming - I think of it as nice little foray into what-may-have-been. However, alternative histories are often looked down on by more than a few serious readers of history.

I would recommend if you are not very familiar with the facts of the Civil War and general and the Battle of Gettysburg in particular that you read the Appendix (the last section) first - included are the 'Gettysburg Address', three good short histories of the war and the battle and one interesting essay (controversial, but also my favorite) that tells you why the Confederacy never could have won anyway, no matter the outcome of the battle.

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Alternate Gettysburgs.

Reviewed September 19, 2005.

Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead

"It is a tale ... full of sound and fury; signifying nothing." -Shakespeare

Published in 2007 by Algonquin Books

The above quote tells quite a bit about Olmstead's Coal Black Horse. It is garnish and flair, it is pretty words and gruesome descriptions of the horrors of war, but it is a story without a point, except to say that life is without value and, eventually, someone will end yours and it will all be over.

Olmstead borrows heavily from the styles of Howard Bahr and Stephen Crane to create this book. From The Red Badge of Courage he borrows the stylistic device of never quite letting the reader what battlefields or locations the book is set in - that is until he suddenly tells you that it's in Gettysburg. How Robey avoids tens of thousands Confederate soldiers stacked up along the Potomac River (they massed there for days waiting for flood waters to go down) is a mystery to me. Why Olmstead decides to tell the reader the battlefield at that moment is a mystery as well.

Civil War dead scattered on a battlefield

From Bahr he borrows many of the same style of battlefield descriptions - the chaotic glimpses of a battle that remind me of quick movie cuts. The poetic descriptions of awful destruction, brutality and inhumanity are powerful, and reminiscent of Bahr. But, Olmstead lacks Bahr's ability to tell a story. Coal Black Horse plods along and eventually becomes a dark, depressing novel. It starts with death and ends with 2 murders and two attempted murders and no one seems to care about any of it. No love. No joy. Just dreary existence.

I note in the back cover that Olmstead received an NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) grant to write this book. If this is what we are paying for with government-provided grants, than I suggest we stop. Certainly he can write this stuff on his own. Others write much better works and without government assistance.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on May 26, 2009.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Coal Black Horse.

Think Twice by Lisa Scottoline

This may be the end of this series

Originally published in 2010.

 Bennie Rosato and her law firm full of female lawyers is back in Think Twice for what may very well be the last installment of this long-running series.

This will seem like a series of spoilers, but you can find all of these items on the back cover of the book: Bennie Rosato's long-lost twin (introduced in the book Mistaken Identity) turns out to be an evil twin who kidnaps Bennie, buries her alive and takes over her life.

So, ignoring the fact that seems that the premise was stolen straight from the "Plot Ideas That Ought To Have Been Retired" Hall of Fame, this book just does not have the zing of the others in the series. I love these characters and have been reading about them ever since I read Everywhere That Mary Went back in the 1990s. I worked at a bookstore at the time and whenever a fan of legal thrillers would come in and ask if we had anything new that was a little different I'd hand them that book. Soon enough, we were sold out. I even talked a group of ladies to use it for their book discussion group and they loved it.

Sadly, Think Twice just seems tired. I think it may be the end of the series because 5 major plot issues that have been threaded throughout the series have now been resolved - 2 personal issues for Bennie, one personal/professional issue for Bennie, 1 professional issue for Mary DiNunzio and 1 personal issue for Mary.

I do not recommend this book for anyone who has not read from this series before. I do recommend it for readers of the series because I think that this one was the finale.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Think Twice by Lisa Scottoline.

Reviewed on February 6, 2010.

The Light In The Forest by Conrad Richter

Two incompatible ways of life symbolized by one young man

Some books stand the test of time, so do not. The Light in the Forest was originally published in 1953 and it still rings true - both historically and as a story.

Based in Pennsylvania during the years preceding the French and Indian War, the story revolves around True Son, a young man who had been kidnapped from his family by Lenni Lenape Indians at age four. True Son is adopted by an honorable, respected man named Cuyolga to replace a son who died from disease. Over time, True Son forgets his white parents and becomes a full Lenni Lenape.

However, a treaty is signed that requires that the white "captives" be returned to their white families. True Son is returned and the bulk of the book concerns itself with True Son's reactions to the white society he was forced to leave more than a decade earlier. Eventually, True Son escapes back to his adopted family and settles back into his comfortable way of life.

Conrad Richter

Up until the last few pages, the reader is left with the impression that the conflict between the settlers and the Indians was primarily a war of brutality on the part of the settlers, but True Son discovers, to his horror, that warriors from his own family group massacred a family and even scalped the children - an accusation that he angrily denied when settlers threw it in his face while he was forced to live with them.

Richter leaves the reader with an unconventional ending, but one that feels right, nonetheless.

Makes a great companion to longer, more detailed (but less conflicted) books by James Alexander Thom such as Follow the River and The Red Heart.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Light In The Forest by Conrad Richter.