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Showing posts with the label Texas

ROY ORBISON: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

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  Published in July of 2023 by Hourly History. Roy Orbison (1936-1988) was an early rock singer. As this book notes, the heart of his career is right after Elvis joined the Army and just before the Beatles broke it big. His hits include Pretty Woman  and Only the Lonely . Also, he is one of my favorite singers so I was pretty excited to read this short biography. I have no problems with the facts as laid out in this biography, although I was very disappointed by the disjointed and sometimes just plain old weird writing style. I have to wonder if this was written by an AI program. Because of the writing style I am going rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: ROY ORBISON: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History .

THE MAKING of BIBLICAL WOMANHOOD: HOW the SUBJUGATION of WOMEN BECAME GOSPEL TRUTH (audiobook) by Beth Allison Barr

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  Published by Christianaudio.com in 2021. Read by Sarah Zimmerman. Duration: 7 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. Beth Allison Barr is a professor of medieval and church history at Baylor University. She has written a lot about women in the medieval world. She is also an evangelical Christian and a youth pastor's wife. This puts her in a rather unique position to comment on the role of women in the evangelical church and topics like complementarianism in the more conservative churches. Complementarianism is a church teaching that men and women have very distinct roles in family life, marriage, and the church. These roles are distinct, but of equal value, but men are given leadership roles. In more conservative churches, women are never put into any sort of leadership roles over men. They will not be pastors. They will not lead a board. They won't even teach older boys or men in Sunday school. In some interpretations, they will not teach men or older boys any topic at all. The more

AMERICAN REBOOT: AN IDEALIST'S GUIDE TO GETTING BIG THINGS DONE (audiobook) by Will Hurd

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  Published in March of 2022 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, Will Hurd. Duration: 8 hours, 47 minutes. Unabridged. Will Hurd has done a lot of things in his 45 years. He has been an operations analyst for the CIA (working in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan), he was worked in high-tech (including cyber-security and artificial intelligence), has served 6 years as a member of the House of Representatives from Texas, and is now a Republican candidate for President in 2024. This book was undoubtedly an attempt to introduce Will Hurd to a larger audience. I follow politics pretty well and I had never heard of Will Hurd until he announced his campaign for President in June of 2023 (to be fair, there are 535 members of Congress and most are not well known outside of their districts.) I heard about this book in a political podcast and, lo and behold, it turns out that my library had it. Just to let you know where I am coming from as I review this book, I am a Never Trump Repub

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

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  Published in 2019 by Zest Books. Illustrated by the author, Shing Yin Khor. In another recent review I wrote this: I have a real weakness for oddball travel books. I have read a memoir about a man that hitchhiked throughout Europe and North Africa, a book about a man's bicycle trip from the UK to India, a book about a man who walked across Afghanistan, a book about a man who rode a motorcycle around the edges of Afghanistan, a book about two women who biked from Turkey to China, a book about a man who walked the length of the Nile, a man who walked the Appalachian Trail with his deeply irresponsible friend from high school...and more. And more. And more. This book continues that tradition with a twist - it is done in comic book style. Usually, this is called a graphic novel, but this book is not a novel because it is not fiction. The author calls it a "graphic memoir." Illustration from the back cover The author/illustrator is an immigrant from Malaysia. She came over

WHEN WE'RE HOME in AFRICA (audiobook) by Themba Umbalisi

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Published in 2021 by Next Chapter Audio LTD. Read by Crawford B. Bunkley III. Duration: 4 hours, 34 minutes. Unabridged. I have no idea where I found this book. I think it was a freebie on Audible through Amazon's Prime Reading program. I know that I got it because I am a big reader of Civil War histories and fiction and this sounded like it was right up my alley. Synopsis: The description of this book is accurate, to a point. It is about a freed slave who joins the Union Army and then goes from job to job and place to place with a goal of settling in Africa. My Review: This book is basically a Forrest Gump type of story - one man goes on an epic journey and ends up going through a lot of the historical movements of the era. Warning: Lots of *********SPOILERS********all the way to the end of this review. This audiobook comes in at almost exactly 50% of the run time for FORREST GUMP   and covers maybe even more territory. Our hero (his name changes multiple times) begins as a slave

WAR on the BORDER: VILLA, PERSHING, the TEXAS RANGERS, and an AMERICAN INVASION (audiobook) by Jeff Guinn

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  Published in 2021 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by Timothy Andres Pabon. Duration: 10 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The famous expedition into Mexico led by "Black Jack" Pershing to punish Pancho Villa in 1916 and 1917 is the stated topic of this book. However, this book is much more than that. It is a look at the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and World War I (1914-1918) and America's rather aggressive foreign policy in Latin America. Within most Americans' living memory the United States had taken on the responsibilities of empire by defeating Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898. The United States took the Philippines, Guam, Cuba and Puerto Rico and immediately got involved in a fight against Filipino insurgents and independence movements that lasted more than a decade. The concept of foreign intervention was not a new one and the impulse to intervene remained strong. With war in Europe looming, the Mexican Revolution made America nervous. An

WILLIE NELSON'S LETTERS to AMERICA (audiobook) by Willie Nelson and Turk Pipkin

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  Published in 2021 by Harper Horizon. Read by co-author Turk Pipkin Duration: 3 hours, 6 minutes. Unabridged. During the Covid-19 lockdowns Willie Nelson decided to write a book. This is not an unusual thing for Willie - he has written a handful of memoirs focusing on various parts of his almost 80 years as a professional musician (he was paid to play in a local band at the age of 10) and this book almost certainly overlaps with other books.  The format of the book is that Willie is writing thank you letters to various people, places and things that influenced his life and his career. He has a letter to his hometown, his grandparents, his sister, various members of his band over the years, his ex-wives, his wife, his kids, the members of The Highwaymen, among others. Nelson's guitar, Trigger There is also a letter to his guitar, Trigger. Nelson bought Trigger, sight unseen, in 1969 because he needed to replace his guitar after someone accidentally damaged the guitar he was using.

HOW the WORD IS PASSED: A RECKONING with the HISTORY of SLAVERY ACROSS AMERICA (audiobook) by Clint Smith

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  Published by Little, Brown and Company. Read by the author, Clint Smith. Duration: 10 hours, 6 minutes. Unabridged. Clint Smith decided to explore several key historical sites that have ties to American slavery and how the consequences of American slavery has echoed down throughout American history. He is looking for constant threads in American history from the perspective of African Americans. He visits Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, New Orleans, Angola Prison, a plantation in Louisiana that emphasizes the lives of the majority of the people that lived and worked there (the slaves and the Jim Crow era labor that was trapped there), a Confederate grave yard, the place were Juneteenth happened in Texas, New York City (a slave stronghold in the North for a surprisingly long time) and finally a fortress used as a slave market in Africa. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Sally Hemings (c. 1773-1835) This is a difficult book in many ways. Smith intentionally digs into difficult questi

MESSY GRACE: HOW a PASTOR with GAY PARENTS LEARNED to LOVE OTHERS WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVICTION (audiobook) by Caleb Kaltenbach

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  Published in 2015 by ChristianAudio.com Read by the author, Caleb Kaltenbach. Duration: 6 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. I checked out this audiobook from my local library using the Overdrive app. I highly recommend this app, but it does have a small failing - it does not include any sort of reviews of the digital ebooks or audiobooks. It only includes the publisher's description and the publisher's description of this audiobook only tells part of the story.  The author and narrator, Caleb Kaltenbach As the title says, Kaltenbach did indeed grow up with gay parents. They married young and divorced after a few years. His mother lived life as a married couple with another woman (this was pre-gay marriage) and his father lived as a closeted gay man. His mother hated Christians because of Westboro Baptist Church -type protesters, but to be fair to his mother, there are plenty of people that express the same thoughts that they publicly proclaim in private situations. Kaltenbach do

FORGET the ALAMO: THE RISE and FALL of an AMERICAN MYTH (audiobook) by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford

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    Published in June of 2021 by Penguin Audio. Read by Fred Sanders. Duration: 12 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged. This is the second book that I have read because a governor took steps to keep people from hearing about the book. The story of the first is detailed here .  In the case of this book, the Governor and especially the Lt. Governor of Texas had an event featuring a discussion of this book removed from the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, Texas. They acted in early July of 2021 because they were not happy about how it questioned the way the history of the Alamo (in San Antonio, Texas) is traditionally taught at the Alamo itself and in textbooks, classrooms, movies and books. Here is the text of the Lt. Governor's Tweet from July 2, 2021: " As a member of the Preservation Board, I told staff to cancel this event as soon as I found out about it. Like efforts to move the Cenotaph, which I also stopped, this fact-free rewriting of TX history has no place @Bull

DAY ZERO (audiobook) by C. Robert Cargill

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  Published in 2021 by HarperAudio. Read by Vikas Adam. Duration:  8 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. Pounce is a top-level nannybot in an unspecified future time in the combined city of Dallas and Austin, Texas. The world is an unsettled place because robots like Pounce replaced people in all of the repetitive and unskilled jobs all over the world. But, those people didn't go anywhere, they are simply given a Universal Basic Income and left to live their lives without any sort of work. Some find productive ways to live their lives, some turn to drinking, drugs or even fringe political movements.  The author If you can imagine that Frosted Flakes' Tony the Tiger character as a robot, you get the idea behind Pounce. He was purchased to be the caregiver for an eight year old boy named Ezra.  Pounce works with Ezra's parents and the older housekeeper robot to help maintain a safe and supportive environment for Ezra. Pounce walks Ezra to and from school and is his constant compan

THE COLOR of LAW (audiobook) (Scott Fenney #1) by Mark Gimenez

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  Published in 2005 by Random House Audio. Read by Stephen Hoye Duration: 12 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged Scott Fenney has it all. The former college football star is a partner in the premier law firm in Dallas. He has a beautiful wife, a daughter that adores him, a Ferrari and a house in an elite neighborhood.  Dallas, Texas One day, a federal judge asks Fenney to take on a tough case. The son of a prominent resident of Dallas is alleged to have been murdered by a prostitute that he had picked up earlier in the evening. He was shot in the head by her pistol and her pistol was found by his body. Fenney was asked to defend the prostitute in court because the judge was convinced by a speech Fenney gave about how Atticus Finch from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird should be the role model for all lawyers. Plus, Fenney's big-time law firm actually has access to the resources needed to defend a death penalty case It is a federal crime because the victim held a federal job. He held that

TULAROSA (audiobook) (Kevin Kerney #1) by Michael McGarrity

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  Published by Recorded Books in 2012. Read by George Guidall. Duration: 8 hours, 16 minutes. Unabridged. Kevin Kerney is a retired police detective living in New Mexico. His former partner has come to him with a plea for help. His former partner's son (Kerney's godson) has gone AWOL from White Sands Missle Range in New Mexico. He had been a model soldier up to the time of his disappearance with clear plans to attend art school once he left Army career.  Here's the difficulty. It wasn't Kerney's choice to retire - he was at the top of his game when he was shot twice in the line of duty in his gut and his knee. This happened because his partner and best friend was out of place -- drinking.  It has been three years. It took Kerney a long time to physically and mentally rehabilitate and he never forgave his former partner for letting him get hurt. Kerney is not asked to forgive his former partner, but to put aside his dislike to go and find his godson. Kerney agrees an

NEWS of the WORLD (audiobook) by Paulette Jiles

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  Book originally published in 2016. Audiobook published by Harper Audio. Read by Grover Gardner. Duration: 6 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. News of the World is a pretty simple book - on the surface. Set in 1870 Texas, a 70+ year-old veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War is asked to travel more than 300 miles to deliver a 10-year old girl to her extended family near San Antonio, Texas. When she was 6, she was adopted by the Kiowa after they killed immediate family in a frontier attack. Their journey starts in Wichita Falls (near the Oklahoma-Texas border) and faces a lot of difficulties.  The author Jefferson Kyle Kidd goes by the name Captain Kidd because that was his rank in the Mexican War, where he served as a messenger. That is appropriate since his true love is bringing news to others. He worked on newspapers, he owned newspapers, he edited newspapers and now he is out of the newspaper business completely due to post-Civil War Reconstruction rules.  Kidd can't stay

THE HOUSE of DANIEL: A NOVEL of WILD MAGIC, the GREAT DEPRESSION, and SEMIPRO BALL by Harry Turtledove

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  Published in 2016 by Tom Doherty Associates (A Tor Book) Harry Turtledove specializes in alternate histories. Usually, he has a big twist - what if the South won the Civil War? What if Atlantis were a real continent? What if the Colonies lost the Revolutionary War? What if MacArthur actually dropped atomic bombs during the Korean War? The House of Daniel is a different kind of story, with a twist. To be perfectly honest, I read the description of this book, with its references to The Great Depression, baseball, "hotshot wizards" and zombies and missed the fact that it was actually referring to actual wizards and zombies, not metaphorical wizards (the whiz kid experts that FDR hired) and zombies (the unemployed masses who are desperate for work). I really thought that Turtledove had just written a straight book about semipro baseball in the Great Depression. And, basically he has. 85% of this story is about baseball. Jack Spivey does odd jobs, plays semipro baseball for a f

THE GOOD KILLER (audiobook) by Harry Dolan

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  Published in 2020 by Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books. Read by James Patrick Cronin. Duration: 9 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged . Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living under assumed names around Houston, Texas. They are in hiding (the story eventually lets the reader know why) and live off of the grid as much as possible.  Tennant is a retired soldier who served a very rough tour in Iraq. He still has the skills that helped him survive: he is hyper-vigilant and always carries a weapon and tourniquet. On a trip to the mall to buy a new pair of boots a man attracts his attention. When he moves away, Tennant is relieved. When the man opens fire in a clothing store, Tennant leaps into action. He kills the shooter and saves a mother's life with his tourniquet.  And he runs because he knows he will be on the news and the people who desperately want to find Sean and Molly will be coming... I am a big fan of what I call "the chase book." That is a book where the hero

GREENLIGHTS (audiobook) by Matthew McConaughey

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  Published in October of 2020 by Random House Audio. Read by the author, Matthew McConaughey. Duration: 6 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged, Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey's memoirs are a unique blend of life lessons, reminiscing and bumper stickers that he admired. The title, Greenlights , refers to life giving you opportunities to move forward that you need to take. The life lessons and bumper stickers are laid out as he tells his life story. He decided to acknowledge his 50th birthday by going through his diaries and notebooks full of observations that he has kept for decades. It is not a true biography, but it is not a true philosophical discussion. What he ends up with is a rambling, yet endearing story. Some observations: -His childhood was more than a little concerning. -I loved his decision to go on the road for a year.  -John Mellencamp. He's a fan - he quotes his songs several times. I get it.  I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.co

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

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Published by Blackstone Audio in 2016. Read by Andrew Elden. Duration: 7 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. In 2012, Ken Ilgunas embarked on a 1,900 mile hike from the beginning of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in Alberta, Canada to its terminus on the Gulf Coast of Texas.  He did this because he is opposed to the pipeline and is very concerned about the expanded use of fossil fuels, the environmental damage caused by the mining of oil sands and the potential for spillage from the pipeline. Along the way, he blogs about his experiences with his iPad in the hopes of creating a little buzz about the topic. He was inspired to do this by a series of conversations he and a friend had during a stint in the kitchen at a Prudhoe Bay oil drilling site. They were going to hike the entire length together, but his friend begged off and fell into a support role, occasionally mailing him food and replacement pieces of equipment and boots (he went through 3 pairs of boots on this hike). Ilgunas g