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.

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.

THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6)(audiobook) by Nick Petrie

Published by Penguin Audio in 2021.
Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 12 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis

Fugitive good guy Peter Ash is hiding out in the open in the city where his adventures began in book number one of the series - Milwaukee. In The Breaker Peter Ash has an assumed identity with very good fake papers. His girlfriend June has joined him, resuming her career as a reporter with the local Milwaukee big city paper. Of course, his friend Lewis is around as well.

In the previous books Peter Ash is dealing with untreated PTSD from his time as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too many searches in too many small confined areas has left him with severe claustrophobia.

Peter is working on the claustrophobia, though. Peter, Lewis, and June are at the Milwaukee Public Market for lunch. It is indoors, but it is very open concept with a lot of open space above. He's been eating there to get used to being inside. 

The Milwaukee Public Market

Lewis and Peter notice a figure carrying a hidden weapon entering the crowded Market. That's bad enough - but there's also a bus full of elementary school children unloading for a lunch field trip. 

Lewis and Peter leap into action and things get very complicated very quickly...

My Review

This book was the weakest in the series so far. There was plenty of action - almost non-stop action.

*****Spoilers******

June became a much less nuanced character in The Breaker. Most of her lines consist of her yelling, "Marine!" at Peter and then ranting about how much she loved him and how he needed to take care of himself and how he needed to neutralize the threats facing them without creating any fuss that would bring unwanted attention to him. That was cute at first but it got old.

It also makes zero sense for June, a woman who owns a tech research company and owns an entire mountain valley to put Peter Ash (and herself) at legal risk by letting him wander around Milwaukee all day. Hide that man away until you can figure out how to get Peter out of his predicament.

There is a police stop early on in the book for a burned out tail light that seemed needlessly petty. It was designed to introduce a grizzled old cop character who might see through Peter Ash's elaborate paperwork disguise. But, instead of giving the impression of an experienced cop who has hunches that pay off, I got the impression of a petty man who likes to push people around and make them search for electrical shorts in their tail lights by making them crawl around their vehicles in the rain and get soaking wet and dirty first thing in the morning. 

The book almost approaches sci-fi, with giant hydraulic-powered machines adapted to a wheelchair-bound man, scientifically talented orphans seeking revenge, hundreds of armed robots powered by revolutionary long-lasting batteries, and self-driving vehicles that can travel anywhere on any road.

Throw in a secret government agency and its seemingly all-knowing mysterious representative and it was just too much.

*****end spoilers*****

If this had been the first book in this series, it would have been my last. Hopefully, the next one is much, much better.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BREAKER (Peter Ash #6) by Nick Petrie.

POVERTY, BY AMERICA (audiobook) by Matthew Desmond

Published in 2023 by Random House Audio.
Read by Dion Graham.
Duration: 5 hours, 40 minutes.
Unabridged.

As of the day I am writing this review, 7 of the top 10 richest people in the world live in the United States (the least wealthy has $80 billion.) The rate continues on when you go down the list - 14 of the top 20 live in the United States. 

The United States has 650 billionaires.

But, the official poverty rate in the United States at this moment is 11.5% - the highest rate in the in the leading industrialized economies of the world. This chart shows that it has bounced around between 10.5% and 15%, depending on the economic recessions and the like for the last 30 years. During this entire time, the United States has been the leader in wealth creation for the entire planet.

The author, Matthew Desmond

Sociology professor Matthew Desmond set out to find out why.

It's easy to look at those billionaires and note that they don't pay their fair share. The tax code is tailor made to keep them rich. There are deductions and accounting tricks that people who make less than a million dollars a year cannot imagine. 

But, Desmond notes that people who make less than a million dollars a year take advantage of deductions and accounting tricks that people living in poverty can ever imagine taking.

For example, in my state (Indiana) there is a 20% state income credit for every dollar placed in a 529 college savings account. The growth in value is not taxed and for every dollar you put in up to $7,500 you get 20 cents back. Put in the full amount, the taxpayers of Indiana give you $1,500. Show me a family of four living at the poverty line ($30,000 in 2023 according to this chart) that has an extra $7,500 - or even $500 - sitting around to invest in a college savings account. 

Poor people can receive rent subsidies - if there are enough funds and enough spots available. But everyone with a mortgage receives a mortgage subsidy by being able to write off the mortgage interest. That subsidy has no practical limit. You can get it for financing a tiny home in rural Arkansas or a penthouse condo that looks over Central Park in NYC. That adds up to billions upon billions of dollars every year.

Desmond goes on like this to demonstrate that the system is almost like an inverse pyramid - the higher up you go the more perks and discounts and breaks you get. And, at the bottom, there's some perks - but nothing like you get at the top where some people (like our 45th President) don't even pay federal income taxes some years. Former President Trump paid no taxes in 2020 and only $750 in 2017 and 2018. From 2015-2020 he paid $1.8 million in taxes, which is a lot, but he claims to be a billionaire. A billion is 1,000 million dollars, so he paid about 2/1,000 of his total wealth. I know I paid more than 2/1,000 of my total wealth in my combined federal income taxes for those six years.

Desmond goes on with other things. For example, you can get approved to pay a $1,700/month rent so much easier than to pay a $1,200/month mortgage on the same property. Profit margins on rentals are the highest in poor neighborhoods - even after factoring in things like more maintenance on the (typically) older homes in poorer neighborhoods.

The audiobook was read by Dion Graham who is simply one of the best audiobook readers on the scene right now. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It will certainly give you plenty to think about. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond. 

This article from NPR does a very good job of reviewing this book as well.

THE DRIFTER (Peter Ash #1)(audiobook) by Nick Petrie

 

Published in 2016 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 9 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Peter Ash is a veteran that has seen multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan serving as a Lieutenant in the Marines. He is struggling with what he has seen and what he has done and is having a hard time integrating himself into the civilian world. It doesn't help that he has claustrophobia so intense that he has a hard time even walking into a building.

Peter gets word that his best friend, the sergeant that served with him every step of the way, has killed himself. Ash is torn up over his death and sees his failure to keep up with his best friend as a betrayal on his part. He decides to try to make amends by approaching his friend's widow and his two young sons by offering his services as a carpenter to try to fix things up a bit. He knows that she won't take any charity so he tells her he is from a (fake) government program that sends out retired Marines to work on the homes of widowed Marines.

While he is dismantling their decrepit front porch he discovers two things:

a) the biggest, smelliest dog he has ever seen;

b) a beat up old suitcase containing $400,000 in cash and 4 bricks of plastic explosive.

His friend's widow has no idea why the money is there and wants nothing to do with it - but there is a man with a disfigured face and a big SUV spying on the house...

My review:

I stumbled upon this book series and I couldn't be more pleased. I have read all of the Jack Reacher books written by the original author and it fills that niche pretty well. 

I very much appreciated the portrayal of PTSD and how the Great Recession really hurt a lot of regular people and seemed to benefit the "to big to fail" financial institutions that helped cause it because of their foolishness.

The audiobook reader, Stephen Mendel, did a fantastic job. 

I am looking forward to continuing on with this series!

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE DRIFTER by Nick Petrie.

JANESVILLE: AN AMERICAN STORY (audiobook) by Amy Goldstein

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2017.
Read by Joy Osmanski
Duration: 10 hours, 1 minute
Unabridged

In Janesville: An American Story, Amy Goldstein tells the story of Janesville, Wisconsin after its large General Motors SUV plant closed and thousands of employees lost their jobs. On its surface, this book has the potential of being one of the most boring books that you have ever read. But, Goldstein has a real talent when it comes to storytelling and makes this story very compelling.

With the beginnings of the Great Recession, General Motors found itself in serious trouble. They had invested in manufacturing large, expensive, gas-guzzling SUV's when the price of gas was more then $4/gallon and the credit market was getting so tight that it was hard for people to qualify for loans for a $40,000 SUV.

When GM closed this plant it caused an economic shockwave to tear through the community, closing most of the other factories in town that supplied the GM facility. Housing prices fell with the housing bubble and fell even more as people tried to sell their homes and move away.

The closed GM factory in Janesville

But, most didn't move away - most had a strong sense that Janesville was home and it was important to stay and try to make a go of it no matter what. Some transferred to other GM plants in other states and left their families behind and returned to Janesville on the weekends. Others tried to retrain for new jobs with the help of government grants only to discover that there weren't a lot of jobs out there, no matter how well trained you were. Others just picked up as many hours as they could in as many part time jobs as possible and GM buyout plan.

Some families make it work. Others struggle mightily and come up a little short. Some just disintegrate and a few parents literally leave their children to fend for themselves while they move out and start over - a shocking development for a town that prides itself on its family connections, generosity and industriousness.

Goldstein tells the story with much sympathy. She keeps her politics out of the story for the most part (tough to do when 2012 Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan  is Janesville's local political star and his run for VP comes right in the middle of this story).

Janesville: An American Story goes nicely with another book that I have listened to recently: White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America. Something is clearly not working for the American working class.

I rate this audibook an enthusiastic 5 stars out of 5. It was read well by Joy Osmanski - she helped make this story come alive.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Janesville: An American Story.

Black Cadillac (DVD)

Pretty good small budget movie

Released in 2003.

While not the best movie I've ever seen, this movie does what it sets out to do - draw the viewer in for some thriller action.

Two friends and a little brother have travelled to Wisconsin for an evening of booze and girls at a backwoods bar in the winter. After a barroom brawl a 1950s Cadillac menaces them and eventually pursues them - but our 3 protagonists have no idea why.

Randy Quaid as the local yokel good ol' boy sheriff is the only actor you're likely to recognize but, in my mind, young, pez-consuming Josh Hammond steals the show

I am unwilling to be a spoilsport, so I won't go into great details, but you can imagine the tension that develops with car chases in the winter on twisty country roads, a hitchhiking sheriff in the backseat spouting off platitudes and asking pointed questions and a general feeling that things are spinning out of control make the movie work.

The DVD commentary is interesting, especially discussions of the inspiration of the story and making a movie with budget constraints.

I rate this DVD 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on June 8, 2005.