AGE of REVOLUTIONS: PROGRESS and BACKLASH from 1600 to the PRESENT (audiobook) by Fareed Zakaria

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024.

Read by the author, Fareed Zakaria
Duration: 13 hours, 2 minutes.
Unabridged.

Fareed Zakaria's Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present is exactly what the title says it is.

Zakaria writes about the beginnings of capitalism, multi-cultural societies, globalism, democracy, the industrial revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Fascism, the failed Arab Spring, LGBTQ+ rights, and the rise illiberal democracy and the return on authoritarianism and the forces that pushed back (or overturned) them.

The author

Zakaria has clearly done his research and writes in such a way that it flows from one topic to another almost as if they entire book was just one big story (which it is, if you look at it as the story of humanity, especially The West.)

If you find yourself wondering how we got here, this is a good place to start. Zakaria breaks down complex movements and ideas and makes them understandable.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria. 

FOR LIBERTY and GLORY: WASHINGTON, LAFAYETTE, and THEIR REVOLUTIONS by James R. Gaines

Published in 2007 by W.W. Norton and Company.

First a bit of traditional blogging. I was going through some old receipts because I had plenty of time on my hands thanks to the Coronavirus lockdowns. This pile of receipts was 12 years old. It included some golden oldies like a Blockbuster receipt. I also found a receipt for this book. I had gotten a great deal on For Liberty and Glory - and it sat in my To-Be-Read pile for 12 years.

I had no idea it was in that pile for that long. If you had asked me before I found the receipt, I would guess it had been 4 or 5 years at most. At that moment, this book moved to the top of my To-Be-Read pile. I should have read it long before now - it was an excellent read.

Originally, I picked up this book because I simply didn't know much about Lafayette. I've read plenty of biographies of Washington and histories of the American Revolution. Lafayette always comes into the story somewhere in the middle. There's always a build up, with the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere and Patrick Henry and so on and then this kid from France comes over. He and Washington bond, Lafayette makes a good showing and he helps bring the French military in to help fight the English. And, at some point Lafayette goes away and doesn't come back until 1824.

I knew Lafayette was involved with the French Revolution, but my interest in the French Revolution is not strong (to me, it's a story that starts out well and then, all of a sudden, mobs are carrying heads and body parts around screaming for more blood and ends with a dictator that attacks every country in Europe, parts of Africa and even Haiti). So, I simply lost track of him. I asked someone who was a French Revolution buff what happened to Lafayette and the short answer was: "It didn't go well for him" with no elaboration.

So, this book looked like it would answer that question. It is a double biography of Washington and Lafayette as well as a double history of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. It is certainly not the definitive biography of either man or the definitive history of either revolution. But, it is immensely readable. I enjoyed it.

Turns out that I learned a lot about Lafayette. For example, his first name is Gilbert. Yeah, that seems trivial, but I've never heard him referred to as anything but Lafayette or the Marquis de Lafayette (almost like "Marquis" was his first name).

Lafayette was in love with the concept of the American Revolution from the

moment he heard of it. This teenager was so excited by the prospect of assisting in the war that he came here against the orders of the King's advisors - they had ordered all of the potential volunteers to stay in France. But, Lafayette and a few others crossed the border to Spain. Lafayette bought his own ship, sailed to South Carolina and eventually became an American hero - a Founding Father of sorts with more than 400 towns named after him. In my own state (Indiana) we have two cities and one county named after him.

Lafayette returned to France and was caught up in the French Revolution. The phrase "caught up" makes it sound like he was passive. Hardly. He co-wrote the most famous document of the French Revolution - the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. He created the modern French flag by combining the flag of Paris with the flag of the King of France. He helped save Louis XVI's life at one point and ended up languishing in a foreign prison for five years because of his role in the Revolution. He was offered the chance to be dictator at one point, and like his friend and hero George Washington, he turned it down. Bonaparte would not turn it down when he was offered that chance. But, Lafayette had a hand in Bonaparte's political demise in 1815 (after Waterloo). The luster of his name helped to carry the day.

Speaking of Bonaparte, Lafayette knew him personally. He knew so many big names in his life - George Washington, Victor Hugo, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Victor Hugo, Louis XVI, Andrew Jackson, Alexis de Tocqueville, James Monroe, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and more.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. A must read if you are a student of the American Revolution and the early years of America's independence. Gaines has made this very approachable and writes in a lively manner.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: FOR LIBERTY and GLORY: WASHINGTON, LAFAYETTE, and THEIR REVOLUTIONS by James R. Gaines.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOSEPH ANTON: A MEMOIR (audiobook) by Salman Rushdie

Published in 2012 by Random House Audio
Duration: 26 hours, 59 minutes
Read by Sam Dastor
Unabridged

For most people, Salman Rushdie is, and will always be, that author that the Iranians tried to have killed all of those years ago. I freely admit that this is an accurate description of me. Although I am an avid reader, this is the first Salman Rushdie book that I have even contemplated reading. 

Rushdie narrates this autobiography in the third person, which is a little weird and gave me the impression that he is trying to distance himself a bit from his own story.

The biggest chunk of Joseph Anton: A Memoir tells about how Rushdie dealt with the fatwa, or ruling against him and his book The Satanic Verses by the leader of the Iranian Revolution himself, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini ruled that the author, the publishers and the editors of the book should die for blasphemy and that anyone who died in an attempt to kill them would be considered a martyr. This caused Rushdie to go into hiding and be officially under police protection provided by the British government. Joseph Anton became his code name.

Rushdie the "icon" - the man who came to symbolize the intolerance of government-sponsored religion and offered a real-life preview to the dangers of radical Islam - and Rushdie the actual man are quite different people. I admire iconic Rushdie, but everyday life Rushdie is hard to like sometimes. Rushdie is often brutally honest about his friends and colleagues and their shortcomings - as he saw them. I can only imagine that many of his friends read this book and were horrified at how they were portrayed.

The book ends with a moving account of the 9/11 attacks on New York City, his adopted hometown. It makes a elegant bookend to a book that basically is about Islamic terror aimed at one person that morphs into terror aimed at an entire city.

The reader, Sam Dastor, was excellent. Interestingly, he is also the reader of the audiobook version of The Satanic Verses.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. Way too long and too many uncomfortable comments about the author's supposed friends.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie. 

A DISEASE in the PUBLIC MIND: A NEW UNDERSTANDING of WHY WE FOUGHT the CIVIL WAR (audiobook) by Thomas Fleming

Published in 2013 by Blackstone Audio.
Read by William Hughes
Duration: 11 hours, 42 minutes.
Unabridged

Thomas Fleming readily admits that he mostly writes about the era of the American Revolution (such as his excellent book Liberty! The American Revolution) but he felt compelled to make a long commentary on the origins of the Civil War by writing A Disease in the Public Mind.

Fleming's take on the causes of the war are based on a comment from James Buchanan's that the furor over slavery was a "disease in the public mind."

Fleming is quite confident that this disease was mostly caused by the North. Shelby Foote alludes to this, in a way, in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary when he notes that there was a war "because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise...our whole government's founded on it and it failed."

An exhibit at the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
Photo by DWD

Foote meant that both sides had to give in to make an agreement. Fleming clearly identifies the North as the side that refuses to compromise and causes the crisis. He compares the North to the Puritans that prosecuted the Salem Witch Trials and Joseph McCarthy. The difference between the Salem Witch Trials and the Abolitionist attacks on slavery is that witchcraft and magic are not real so there were no witches but slavery, slaves and slave masters were all very, very real. 

Fleming excuses the fact that slave families were broken apart on a regular basis through estate sales by pointing out that Washington did not do this sort of thing. He goes on to use Washington as an archetype of what could have been if the Abolitionists had not started pressing the South. If you had to be a slave, being George Washington's slave was about as good as you could hope for. Washington refused to break up families or dump older slaves who couldn't really work. He also freed his slaves when he died.  Fleming writes at length about how Washington was pressed by his own personal abolitionist - his Revolutionary War comrade the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette's efforts were worthy and good but, somehow, the efforts of American abolitionists were the equivalent of the Salem Witch Trial.

Fleming tries to defend slave owners against the charge of taking sexual advantage of their female slaves, saying it was very rare. But, as his narrative continues he points out any number of slaves and former slaves who were mixed race. If it was so rare, how did these people exist? He also completely ignores the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. This "look at this Founding Father as a great example, but not at that one because he doesn't make my argument" type of cherry-picking is pretty typical throughout the book. 

What Fleming does best is point out that there was a genuine paranoia among Southern Whites about the possibility of a race war like Haiti experienced when its African slaves overthrew the French government. When you look at the political cartoons of the era, like this one that decries the evils of the Emancipation Proclamation, you see evil influences upon Lincoln: multiple representations of the devil, a picture of a sainted John Brown and a large painting glorifying the violence in Saint-Domingue (Haiti). Clearly, this was a worry and not without some justification. There were slave revolts from time to time and this was the stated goal of John Brown's raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

But, Fleming uses this fear to justify every action the South made to defend slavery, such as refusing to let people petition the Congress concerning slavery - a right established in the First Amendment of the Constitution. The First Amendment! Not one of those pesky rights with the bigger numbers that get lost in the jumble. Plus, the governments of the South searched the mail for newspapers that they did not like and destroyed them. Clearly, another violation of the First Amendment. But, he excuses it because the White Southerners were scared of the power of the Abolitionist press on its slave population.

Fleming never really formulates a thesis beyond that the Abolitionists were pushing the Southerners too hard. Many historians try to argue that slavery was on the way out in the South and that slave owners were searching for a way to safely end slavery. Fleming does not even make this argument. He acknowledges that there was an attempt to expand slavery to the territories and to new states, but he denies it was organized. He completely ignores the fact that Southern politicians (and even John Quincy Adams, for a while) openly proposed conquering Cuba for the express reason of making it a slave state to keep the balance of free state/slave state power in the Congress. James Buchanan himself authored a proposal to take over Cuba before he became President and had it as a goal when he became President in 1857. There were also proposals to take parts of Mexico and Central America and make them slave states. William Walker invaded both Mexico and Nicaragua with that goal. The pre-Civil War pro-slavery group Knights of the Golden Circle advocated making more than 25 slave states out of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean islands.

There is more, but this is enough to demonstrate that this is a deeply flawed book, albeit an interesting one. Fleming's reminder of the deep-seated fear of a race war like the one in Haiti is an important one. Fleming's argument ends up leaving the American slave population in the untenable position of being involved in a never-ending, ever-expanding slave economy that was, as Fleming himself points out, evolving from a plantation-based system to a factory-based system in some areas and showed little sign of ending. But, if you protested this system from the outside you were in the wrong and most certainly caused the Civil War. These are the reasons that I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This audiobook was read by William Hughes. He did a great job of reading at a brisk, easy-to-understand pace. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: A Disease in the Public Mind.

BY FREEDOM'S LIGHT by Elizabeth O'Maley

Published in 2009 by Indiana Historical Society Press.

Set in Eastern Indiana in 1842, By Freedom's Light is a short that novel does a great job of talking about slavery for a grades 4-6 audience.

The Caldwell family has recently moved to Indiana from North Carolina. They are Quakers. Nowadays, Quakers are famous for their anti-slavery stand and participation in the Underground Railroad in the 1800s. But, in reality, the Quakers are split in two groups. All are anti-slavery but some believe that you should not break the law by helping runaway slaves. Others believe that helping people in need trumps the law.

The Caldwell family embodies this split. Sarah, age 13, is anti-abolitionist and is quite sure her father is as well. However, her new young stepmother is certainly an abolitionist. She is close with Levi and Catharine Coffin, two of the most famous members of the Underground Railroad network who live in Newport, Indiana (now called Fountain City) and Sarah witnesses her helping a runaway slave. Sarah is sure that her father is anti-abolitionist and throughout the book seeks an opportunity to discuss her stepmother's abolitionist ways with him.

In the middle of this family dynamic comes Sarah's sister, Rachel, with her husband and newborn baby. They bring along the baby's nursemaid, a teenage slave named Polly.

The Levi Coffin House. Nowadays it is a museum and
a historic site.

As Sarah and Polly come to know one another they also become friends. Sarah's theoretical views on slavery crash into the reality that her friend is a slave and does not control her own life. Her mother-in-law's comment strikes home when she notes, "I don't doubt Rachel and George treat her kindly...but kindness is no substitute for freedom." (p. 70)

What I like about this book is that teaches without being preachy. My daughter's fourth grade teacher used this book in her Indiana history class this year and I can certainly see why. You can move into the topic of slavery from a non-traditional starting point (which you would have to do in Indiana since it was a free state) and easily talk about larger issues like what do you do if doing the right thing is illegal?

The text of the book is 172 pages, including pictures and maps. In addition, the book also has a glossary and a bibliography.

I rate this novel 5 stars out of 5 stars.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: By Freedom's Light.

A THOUSAND MILES to FREEDOM: MY ESCAPE from NORTH KOREA by Eunsun Kim with Sebastien Falleti. Translated by David Tian

A Remarkable Tale

To be published in the United States on July 21, 2015. 
I received an "Advance Reading Copy" 

Eunsun Kim's tale of her escape from North Korea, along with her mother and her older sister is remarkably easy to read, remarkable engrossing and just a remarkable tale in general.

When Eunsun Kim was 11 years old her mother determined that they could no longer live in North Korea. Eunsun's grandparents were dead, her father was dead, almost everything in the house was sold for money to buy food but there was almost no food to be had because North Korea was in the middle of its Great Famine (1994-1998). Depending on whose statistics you use, the estimates range anywhere from 250,000 to 3,500,000 people starved to death or died from starvation-related causes. Of course, it is hard to say for sure because North Korea is such a closed off society.

Eunsun Kim and her family lived in the northernmost part of North Korea and they decided to cross the Tumen River into China and live as illegal aliens. They would have no promise of safety, no guarantee of work and risked being shot by the border guards on both sides of the border. But, at least they would have chance to eat.

She details several botched attempts at escape and I was pleased to see that at least one border guard was a decent human being. He could see they were starving and desperate and he took pity on them and let them go with a warning - twice! But, he couldn't feed them because there was no food to be had so this small family eventually makes it to China. The family tries to stay together but when Eunsun Kim's mother is sold into sexual slavery (she calls it an unofficial marriage, but the entire purpose of the marriage was to produce a son for her "husband" and no one recognized the marriage as legitimate) the family splits up. The daughters have a better time of it, but it is not easy.

As you can tell by the title, eventually Eunsun Kim makes it to freedom. Their last push to make it to South Korea is tension-filled and her story of how she adjusts to life in South Korea is interesting in and of itself. Now, she lives in South Korea and has lived and travelled all over the world studying (making up for lost years when she had to work to collect wood rather than go to school so they could get food) and promoting her book.

Ironically, A Thousand Miles to Freedom is late to be translated into English (it was published in French in 2012). I say ironically because the United States has had so much involvement with North and South Korea over the last 60+ years. This translation is very good (I teach Spanish and I know how hard it can be to make foreign text sound smooth in a different language). The text flows easily and makes it sound like Eunsun Kim is sitting with you telling her story in everyday, conversational language over a cup of tea.

Last two lines of the book: "The Kim dynasty has so successfully isolated my country that it would be easy for the rest of the world to forget about us. If my memoir can even play a small part in raising global awareness about our suffering and about the tragedies taking place at the hands of this regime, then all that I have endured will not have been in vain."

It can be purchased at Amazon here:  A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

AMERICA'S PROPHET: MOSES and the AMERICAN STORY by Bruce Feiler

Published in 2009 by William Morrow (HarperCollins)

I love the premise of America's Prophet - that America has a special connection with the story of Moses beginning with the Puritans and going right up through Martin Luther King, Jr. He lays out the correlations with some skill but, in the end it just started to drag.

This review (and the book, to a lesser extent) is helped by a basic knowledge of the story of Moses. Feiler provides the necessary background on Moses and then proceeds to make comparisons. For example, the Puritans saw themselves as fleeing a domineering power (England) and taking refuge in the wilderness (New England) like the Children of Israel fled the Pharaoh and went into the Sinai. The Puritans took comfort in the story of Moses because they believed that they would also be led by God.

Martin Luther King, Jr. during the
"March on Washington"

A slight change in interpretation and Moses becomes an inspiring symbol for the Americans in the Revolutionary War, the Abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad, both sides in the Civil War, immigrants, the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement (with the oddly prophetic "mountaintop" speech given by King right before he was murdered). Of course, there is a long discussion about Charlton Heston's portrayal of Moses in the movie The Ten Commandments. Oddly, there is only a very brief mention of Brigham Young leading the Mormons to Salt Lake City, fleeing from the United States in search of religious freedom. I am not a Mormon, but that story has every bit as much correlation to the original story as any of the others do.

Sadly, the story drags in in the later parts of the book with the discussions of post-Civil War immigrants and Charlton Heston. Feiler's attempt to wrap it all up with a discussion of his family's Passover celebrations is well-intentioned but really slow, capping off a solid book with an ending that never seems to end.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICA'S PROPHET: MOSES and the AMERICAN STORY by Bruce Feiler.


Reviewed on November 12, 2013.

Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves (audiobook) by Henry Wiencek

Published by HighBridge Company in 2012
Read by Brian Holsopple
Duration: 11 hours, 5 minutes.
Unabridged

I am a history teacher. My favorite area of study is the American Civil War but the American Revolution comes in at a close second. I cannot even count the number of books that I have read about the Revolutionary Era and I thought that I had a pretty solid handle on Jefferson - until I read Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves.

I had always pictured Jefferson as a Unitarian (who was willing to go "more" religious for political reasons) who wrote eloquently about freedom and tyranny but somehow compartmentalized this in his own life when it came to slavery. Or, was unable to free his slaves due to crushing debts incurred because he was a philosopher and not a businessman.

The debts are always mentioned, usually in conjunction with the renovations to Monticello, reinforcing the impression that the philosopher was happily spending his way to oblivion for the sake of beauty and architecture, thus adding an air of tragedy to Jefferson. Poor Mr. Jefferson, he wanted to free his slaves but his profligate spending on esoterics caused him to have to compromise his ideals and keep his slaves. Poor Jefferson, he always wanted to free his slaves, but he could never get the law changed to make him do it. Poor Jefferson, circumstances made him look like a hypocrite.

Poor Mr. Jefferson, indeed.

Weincek looks at Jefferson's plantation records, the archaeological record, Jefferson's own writings and what other slave-owning planters did to fight slavery or make it more humane. The picture of Jefferson the slave-owner has forever been changed in my mind thanks to this book.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
giving his "I Have a Dream"
Speech in 1963.

Note: I will always revere Jefferson for his ability to point the way, even if he had no intent of going that way, especially in his older years. After all, Jefferson's soaring prose in the Declaration of Independence is America's mission statement and was the catalyst of so much good work. For example, take this line from MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech:

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." 

Clearly, Jefferson inspired this and so much more.

But, back to this book. Wiencek goes into sometimes laborious detail into what Jefferson was up to at Monticello. He looks into his plans to grow his plantation into much more than a glorified farm. Instead, it was becoming a self-sufficient economic unit that actually created and sold manufactured goods to the outside world. My impression was that Jefferson moved from being an idealistic anti-slavery agitator to a feudal lord who outright owned his slaves rather than having to depend on serfs.

Jefferson encouraged his slaves to breed (their population grew at 4% per year, meaning their numbers would double every 18 years). The slaves were worth more than gold - after all, gold does not reproduce itself and does not literally work for you. Slaves would make more slaves, work for you and serve as collateral so that he could borrow money to expand his operations.

The last third of the book or so is devoted to the Sally Hemings controversy. Did Thomas Jefferson have children with her or not? Wiencek thoroughly covers this topic, but I think he oversteps what can be completely known by declaring Jefferson the father of Sally Hemings' children. The DNA evidence shows that a Jefferson did it and Wiencek eliminates the alibis that would exonerate Jefferson. But, I think that the best assertion that can be made is that Thomas Jefferson probably is the father of her children. However, the topic has to be included in the book because it is about Jefferson and his slaves and the Hemings children were clearly treated differently than the other slaves.

I was particularly interested in learning about Edward Coles and how he freed his slaves. His correspondence with Jefferson is illuminating and is a study in Jefferson's ability to be publicly  for something (ending slavery) but doing nothing to achieve it and even working actively against it.

Brian Holsopple's narration was very good in that I really did not notice it - it was clearly delivered and his reading of the text was free of insinuation, even when Jefferson's hypocrisy was at its most obvious. He played it straight and let the text speak for itself, which should be the goal of every reader of histories.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. I thought hard about this and I just cannot sanction the outright naming of Jefferson as the father of the Hemings children. This is a tremendous book in all other aspects, though and I highly recommend it.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Master of the Mountain.

Reviewed on January 20, 2012.

Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in America by David K. Shipler

Highly Recommended

Published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2012

Last summer I read David K.Shipler's first book on this topic, The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties (see my review by clicking here) and I found it to be the most profound book I read that summer and maybe all year. I began my review of that book with this thought:

"I always tell people that the traditional left-right continuum used to describe someone's politics is so inaccurate as to be useless. Really, what is the difference between an aging hippie living on a hill somewhere  raising some dope for personal use and telling the government to get out of his business and a Barry Goldwater-type conservative (like me) living by himself on a hill somewhere that tells the government to get its nose out of his business? Some dope. Otherwise, they are both determined advocates of civil liberties - keep out of my business if it is not hurting anyone else."

When I read the first book I was expecting to get a snoot full of political commentary that I disagreed with from a New York Times reporter with a left-wing agenda. To be blunt, I was expecting one of those political attack books that Al Franken, Michael Moore, Ann Coulter and David Limbaugh produce with regularity (Well, Al Franken is busy being a Senator now so I suppose he has stopped). Instead, I found the book to be politically balanced and quite remarkable. This book is just as remarkable, if a little less balanced by the inclusion of a half-dozen snide comments that should have been edited out, in my opinion.

Rights at Risk focuses on multiple topics but here are the chapter titles (with descriptions): Torture and Torment (being abused while being investigated), Confessing Falsely (how some people, especially young people and the mentally impaired, are tricked into confessions), The Assistance of Counsel (the defense side of the trial), The Tilted Playing Field (the prosecution side of the trial), Below the Law (the lack of rights of immigrants, legal and illegal), Silence and Its Opposite (freedom of speech in turbulent times), A Redress of Grievances (spying on protesters, "free speech zones") and Inside the Schoolhouse Gate (freedoms of students and teachers).

Torture and Torment includes a discussion of jailhouse torture such as physically abusing suspects and CIA torture. It demonstrates that the famed water-boarding sessions have poisoned several other cases. The good news in the cases of the police abuse is that the system, in the cases Shipler cited, mostly worked to flush out the bad cops. Mostly, but not always. A weaker part of Shipler's argument comes from the discussion of people wanted for trial in America but arrested in foreign countries. He argues, correctly, that many countries do not offer any protection for defendants. But, his arguments are not as tight here and led me to the inevitable conclusion that anyone who confesses to a crime in a foreign country can just claim that they were tortured into confessing and the confession should be dropped. Arrested in Luxembourg? Claim torture and post-traumatic stress disorder. The chapter entitled Confessing Falsely is quite interesting. Shipler discusses the various training methods police learn on how to question suspects and how those very methods can lead to false arrest and false trials and leave the real criminals out on the streets. He also writes about instances in which the rights of the accused were short-circuited in order to facilitate a confession. He includes a recommendations for how to address these problems, including the videotaping of all interrogations and prohibiting the questioning of children without the presence of his or lawyer or a parent.

You know the old adage, "You get what you pay for?" Well, the chapter The Assistance of Counsel was disturbing because it proves it. Public defenders in areas that have professional public defender offices are overwhelmed. In states and locales that have court-appointed public defenders from the general ranks of area defense attorneys there are serious issues of quality. Shipler encountered judges that admit to appointing certain defense attorneys over and over because they don't fuss much in court. Others appoint lots and lots of cases to their political contributors. Those attorneys make a good living on the sheer volume of these cases. But, appointing cases based on these criteria is not a solid foundation for justice. On top of that, court-appointed defenders have almost no budget for experts and in most cases, there are no funds available for appeals. It really is stacked against poor defendants.

The Tilted Playing Field looks at all of the tools the government has to coerce cooperation, including threats of deportation, violation of probation, plea bargaining and asset forfeiture. I was disturbed by the practice of sentencing based on parts of the case that were dismissed. For example, if you have a gun illegally and are brought up on charges of trafficking drugs and are found not guilty of the drug charge, some courts will still sentence you more severely for the gun charge because of the drug charge, that you were acquitted of.

Below the Law discusses the status of legal and illegal immigrants in the justice system. To be blunt, they don't have much status. I was especially disturbed to discover that a great number of immigration judges have no particular experience in immigration law except for a single short class with an online quiz taken the next day (page 144). This makes for poor justice when the judge is not an expert. Would you go to probate court with a judge who know next to nothing about wills? The case of the political refugee who was arrested for not having his papers and was on the deportation list is especially disturbing. Luckily, the refugee learned from other detainees that he did not need papers as a refugee. He told his attorney who educated both the prosecutor and the judge on this legal point. They were directed to a page on their own website that explained the law. (pages 184-5)

The chapter Redress of Grievances demonstrates that we spend an awful lot of time spying on groups that exercise their right to protest. While most of these groups would be silly to spy on, Shipler seems that there would never be a need to look at any of these groups at all. I don't know where the line is, but it is clear that some law enforcement groups are over-zealous and act spitefully towards protesters. For example, the Maryland State Police surveilled an anti-death penalty group and listed some of its members in an anti-terrorism database despite having no evidence of a crime. (page 229) In at least one case, Shipler does hurt his own argument. He notes the famed WTO riots in Seattle in 1999 (nicknamed the "Battle in Seattle" by some) one page and argues that the Washington, D.C, police had no reason to be worried about planned demonstrations against World Bank and the IMF meetings six months later. (pages 234-236) Shipler ends the chapter with a long discussion on flag-burning, which has been ruled legal for a long time and is still news to some and the Westboro Baptist Church protesters.

Inside the Schoolhouse Gate was the most interesting chapter for me because I am a teacher. It is a maxim that students have the right to express political opinions. But, since attendance at school is compulsory, it is also a maxim that you have the right to attend school and not be harassed. For example, is a Malcolm X t-shirt a threat to white students? Is a Hank Williams, Jr. t-shirt with a Confederate flag on it a threat to black students? Are both, or neither, disruptive to school so that teaching becomes difficult? Can high school newspapers be censored by their schools? (page 274, 278-9) Even worse, in my mind are the speech codes  at universities and designated "free speech zones," especially on public university campuses. Silly me, I thought the entire country was a free speech zone. I suppose we don't want students to discover new and different thoughts while being educated...

Shipler concludes with this thought: "If every American school taught the Bill of Rights in a clear and compelling way, if every child knew the fundamental rules that guide the relationships between the individual and the state, then every citizen would eventually feel the reflexive need to resist every violation. We had better begin now, for rights that are not invoked are eventually abandoned."

As a social studies teacher, I wholeheartedly agree and I worry because we are cutting those very classes across the country in order to make sure we pass the math and English standardized tests. The school I taught in last year cut 20% of the social studies classes in the third 9 weeks in order to provide more time for  English practice (language arts stuff, not English for non-English speakers) with a prescribed, decidedly non-social studies curriculum. I wonder what was cut?

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Rights at Risk.

Reviewed on July 13, 2012.

Marked for Death: Islam's War Against the West and Me by Geert Wilders

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Published in May of 2012 by Regnery Publishing

Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament and the the leader of the third largest political party in the Netherlands, but he is forced to live his life under protection. Since 2004 he has to have armed protection every day, everywhere he goes because of multiple death threats from extremist Muslims. His crime? He dared to take the threats to Western freedom seriously when, in 2004, Muslims killed Theo Van Gogh (a filmmaker whose film Submission criticized the treatment of Muslim women. Van Gogh was stabbed multiple times and a note was stuck to his body with a knife explaining why Van Gogh was murdered) Muslims rioted over the famed Muhammad cartoons in 2005, when they threatened to kill politicians who question why there are "no-go" zones that have basically been ceded to Muslims.

Wilders believes that Islam is more than a religion, it is a totalitarian political ideology that has no tolerance of dissent and is more than willing to use the West's multicultural/pluralistic ways to infiltrate European countries, gain control of the instruments of government and then use those tools to silence critics of Islam.

Wilders tells his personal story and how he arrived at his conclusions. He is especially afraid of a "Trojan Horse" plan to spread Islam - the very plan that Muhammad used in the city of Medina. Move in as friendly immigrants and then, over time, take control of the government and enforce your vision on everyone else.

Geert Wilders

Marked for Death is an extremely well-written book - as a foreign language teacher I was impressed by Wilders' knowledge of English and his repertoire of quotes from English language speakers to make his arguments. Quotes abound from Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan - all making the point that a struggle with Islam has not been a recent thing and, more importantly, free speech is not something you give up because someone might be offended.

In the end, that is Wilders' most important point - free speech is the basis of all of our other rights and it cannot be limited by political correctness or by genuine outrage. Marked for Death was written to be a poke in the eye to those who have forced him to live under constant protection and as a warning. As he writes on page 3:

"For asserting our rights to say what we really think...we have been hounded by Muslims seeking to make an example of us. Offend us, they are saying to the world, and you will end up in hiding like Wilders, attacked like Westergaard, or dead like Van Gogh."

No matter whether you agree with Wilders or not (and I do not on some things), the man should certainly be free to speak his mind without fear - otherwise what's the point, really?

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Marked for Death: Islam's War Against the West and Me by Geert Wilders.

Reviewed on June 8, 2012.

Black Like Me (audiobook) by John Howard Griffin

Extraordinarily Powerful As An Audiobook Experience

Published in December 2011 by AudioGO
Read by Ray Childs
Duration: approximately 7 hours.

Unabridged.

In 1959, John Howard Griffin (1920-1980), an author and journalist decided to go check out the serious rumblings of the Civil Rights movement for himself. Griffin was white and he decided to medically darken his skin (and smooth out the rough spots with dye and shave his head) and go as a black man. His plan was to see if things truly were different on the other side of the color line.

Black Like Me is a novelization of his experiences (meaning things were edited and re-arranged to make the story work better) and it starts with him pitching his idea to a publisher and his family. Once he gets funding and permission from his family (after a lot of serious talk about how dangerous this could be) Griffin heads off to New Orleans for his medical treatments. He picks New Orleans because of its more liberal racial attitudes, figuring that it would be easier for him to learn the new rules and expectations (if there were any) in a more forgiving environment. He tours the city, both black and white areas as a white man and once his transformation is complete he makes the same trips as a black man.

John Howard Griffin (left) and Sterling.
Photo by Don Rutledge.

Griffin discovers that the world was indeed a different place for a black man in the south in 1959. He was denied entry to most places. He was routinely given what he called the "hate stare" by complete strangers, and had great difficulty with the basics of life such as getting something to drink and finding a restroom. He was coached in the basics by a shoeshine man named Sterling that he had befriended as a white customer. Sterling was astounded by the change and fearful for Griffin's life if he was ever found out. But, Sterling's lessons become the first real introduction that Griffin and the readers get to the differences between life as a black man and life as a white man.

Griffin spends quite a bit of time in New Orleans and details a lot of inequities in housing, eateries, stores, hotels and so on. In fact, just about the only place that gives Griffin an even break is a Catholic book store. Griffin decides to travel to Mississippi to visit an area that had had a recent lynching.  He also hitchhiked across Alabama, visited Atlanta. He experiences city life, rural life and everywhere there is the pervasive presence of racism. Griffin's prose is oftentimes moving. He commented at the beginning of the book that this book was written quickly and not very polished. Griffin completely underestimated the power of his writing - it may have been quick, but it was very well done.

This edition includes an epilogue written for the 2nd edition of the book printed in 1977. The epilogue details the dangers suffered by Griffin after the publication of Black Like Me in 1961 and his usefulness as an intermediary between white and black members of communities throughout the U.S. However, the epilogue does not end on a hopeful note as Griffin is quite frustrated with the slow pace of racial reconciliation in America. He died in 1980 so we do not know what he would have thought about how things have gone in the last 30 years.

The audiobook reader, Ray Childs, does a masterful job with dialects, creating new voices (voices of different races and different sexes from different regions - all done perfectly). He reads the text with great effect and helps to make many poignant scenes even more profound.

With the exception of just a few minutes of the description of Atlanta (not being from Atlanta, I found the recital of African American neighborhoods and the lengthy listing of their community leaders a bit dry) this is a moving book that pulls the listener in and keeps the listener listening.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Black Like Me.

Reviewed on May 17, 2012.

Note: This book was placed on a censorship list in Tennessee. There is a searchable database in the article because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles. I guess history is scary to some people.

Toward the Light of Liberty: The Struggles for Freedom and Rights That Made the Modern Western World by A.C. Grayling

Strong, flawed, important work with a valuable, urgent message

Published in 2007 by Walker and Company
288 pages.

 I had to pick up this book as soon as I stumbled upon it. One of the themes in my history classes is the expansion of freedom in the West following the same general timeline that Grayling follows. Who doesn't like to have his own thoughts echoed by a major English philosopher?

Strengths:

I do recommend this book - it is a readable, admirable attempt at covering a vast, important topic. Grayling covers John Locke especially well (although he disposes with the views of Hobbes rather quickly by asserting that people are not necessarily nasty and brutal with one another).

Grayling's most important message is quite simple: the rights that we have are the product of a lot of time and a lot of struggles and they should be cherished and well-guarded. When the reader has completed this book it should be quite clear that this inheritance is too valuable to be squandered.

To his credit, Grayling does not treat Marx and Engels as if they were true prophets. Rather, he successfully counters their arguments and, unlike many academics, expresses no sympathy with their devotees in the USSR - tyranny is tyranny, no matter its political leanings with Mr. Grayling.

Weaknesses:

Grayling has intended this book to be an answer to 19th century English historian Lord Acton's incomplete "History of Liberty" - a work that is friendly to the role of religion in Liberty and Freedom in the West. Grayling is most definitely not agreeable to that point. It is too bad that this bias runs throughout the book. This work is strong in so many ways, but this attitude is over-emphasized

John Locke (1632-1704)

Grayling begins with Martin Luther and the Reformation. The longest argument that Grayling makes is against the uniform power of the Catholic church during those dangerous times, especially the Inquisition. Grayling overplays his hand by painting all religions with the taint of the Inquisition over and over throughout the book. At one point (p. 234) he even argues that religious people are not good citizens because their loyalties are divided between the "secular state" and their religion. Too my mind, his argument comes dangerously close to swinging to becoming zealous opposite of the Inquisition - an anti-religious inquisition, if you will.

The book gets bogged down for about 20 pages in a detailed look at the labor movement in England in the 1800s. I am not quite sure why he focused this intently on reciting this story because it stands in stark contrast to the philosophical and idea-centered writing that fills the rest of the book. My advice - skim and move on to the meatier portions that follow.

Grayling includes photos in the center of the book. Oddly they include photos of Martin Luther King, anti-segregation protestors in both America and South Africa and Algerians being hassled by French troops in the 1950s - these topics are not actually addressed in the book.

A pet peeve - Grayling has lots of end notes - many of them with comments. Why not make them footnotes so the reader does not have to flip to the back so often?

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Toward the Light of Liberty: The Struggles for Freedom and Rights that Made the Modern Western World.

Reviewed on January 30, 2008.

Free To Choose: A Personal Statement (audiobook) by Milton and Rose Friedman

A prototype of the current crop of approachable books on economics

Originally published in 1980.
Duration:12 hours, 15 minutes
Read by James Adams

Unabridged.

Free To Choose: A Personal Statement is the manifesto on the power of capitalism and freedom (and how they go hand in hand) that was designed to be read, digested and discussed by the common man, not the economist. In fact, this is the book that was designed as a follow-up companion to a 10 part PBS mini-series that fleshed out the ideas in the series and addressed issues and further questions that came up in the making of the television program.

Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1976 (he always credited his wife for helping develop his theories so I would imagine he considered it a shared prize).

The audiobook follows the lead of the mini-series and has 10 broad areas that it covers, including:

-The Power of the Market;
-The Anatomy of a Crisis (an in-depth study of the Great Depression);
-Created Equal;
-What's Wrong With Our Schools;
-Who Protects the Consumer;
-Who Protects the Worker;
-How to Stay Free

The Friedmans were very much an advocate of the free market. For example, in a topic not discussed in the book, Friedman is famous for advocating the all-volunteer army we have now. It uses incentives rather than the draft to get people to join and that seems to have worked out quite well.

Rose Friedman (1910/11-2009)
and
Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

I will comment in detail on the only topic that they discuss that I know intimately: Education. I have been a teacher for 21 years in tiny rural schools and large urban systems and now I am in a suburban system that is becoming more urban every day.

The Friedmans rightly decry the gigantic bureaucracy that sucks money right of the system, all of the way from the Secretary of Education to his 50 counterparts in the various states and all of their myriad ways of creating even more positions to look over the shoulder of school corporations, school boards, superintendents, assistant superintendents, principals, department heads and all of their office assistants. You would be amazed how many people it takes to make sure I have chalk and staples in my class. Actually, I have almost always had to buy them for myself.

So, just what do all of these non-teachers do anyway?

I take great issue with the Friedmans' assertion that bad schools create bad neighborhoods and crime rather than bad neighborhoods and crime creating bad schools.

The Friedmans also too quickly dismiss the costs of private schools and parochial schools. They claim that they are cheaper for any number of reasons than public schools. They blithely comment that they are cheaper because they have to compete and they move on.

But, are private and parochial schools really cheaper? My church has a new school. It was built at a cost of several million dollars, almost none of which is passed on to the consumer because this is looked upon as a mission for the church. We also provide absolutely no transportation in any way - not to and from school, not for field trips, not for sporting events. That is a cost borne by the parents and not typically figured into the bill (but public schools MUST provide transportation to and from school). My church's school has contracted with a caterer to provide meals, but the costs are not subsidized. Subsidized meals are part of the cost you always see when you hear how expensive public schools are. Private and parochial schools also rarely deal with severely mentally or physically handicapped students. That is an expensive part of any school and public schools are required to educate all students - even those who have little or no hope of ever learning how to write their names and require aides to help them do the simplest of tasks.

Anyway, I have done a lot of complaining about what was a pretty solid economics book. Some of it is dated, some is a little arcane and jargon-filled but most of it is presented in plain, easy to understand English. This is the grandfather of more recent and more accessible books like Naked Economics and Freakonomics, and for that it has to be respected.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on February 25, 2011.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Free To Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton and Rose Friedman.