THE GIRL from the SEA (graphic novel) (kindle) by Molly Knox Ostertag

 

Illustrated by the author.
Published in 2021 by Graphix.
Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel (2022)

Synopsis:

Morgan Kwon's parents have recently divorced. 15 year old Morgan, her annoying little brother and her mom have moved away from the city to an island just off of mainland Canada.

Morgan seems to be doing pretty well. After all, she has a great group of friends. But, there are struggles. Her little brother has become extra annoying, she misses her dad and she can't wait to get off of this island and go to college and be her true self. 

You see, Morgan has a secret that she is afraid to share with anyone - she's gay and she's afraid her friends and family will reject her if they find out.

It all comes to a head when she meets a very cute girl while swimming one day. There is a more than a spark of romance, but it turns out that this new girl has a secret that dwarfs Morgan's secret!

My review:

This is an absolutely enjoyable coming-of-age story. The publisher recommends grade 7 and higher and I agree with that recommendation. The book has two main plots - Morgan's secret and the new girl's even bigger secret. But, it also has an environmental subplot, a strong family message and a tiny sweet subplot that is sort of hidden throughout. This book contains no nudity and nothing sexual beyond a few kisses.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE GIRL from the SEA (graphic novel) (kindle) by Molly Knox Ostertag.

NOTE: I only heard of this book because it was listed in an article about a MAGA parent who is challenging 3,600 books in a county school district in Florida in an effort to, as he describes it, "overwhelm" their challenge procedures. The parent was particularly unhappy about The Girl from the Sea and is quite vocal about it.

MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG (audiobook) by Brenda Woods

 

Book edition originally published in 2006.
Audiobook published in 2019 by Listening Library.
Read by Asmeret Ghebremichael.
Duration: 3 hours, 0 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

This short piece of historical fiction focuses on a slave family in Georgia in the 1790s. The main character is Sally. She has a brother, a mother and a father. The one thing that this family has going for them is that their owners have a policy of not breaking apart families.

That is the policy until relatives of the owners find themselves struggling financially. In a couple of days, Sally and her brother and 3 other slaves are going to be sent to the other plantation to help it get back on its feet again. 

The family decides to run away together rather than be split apart.

After some discussion with a friendly house slave who has done some traveling with the family, they decide not to head north. They haven't seen a map but they know that the trip across northern Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maryland to get to Pennsylvania is just too far.

However, rumor has it that if they can make it to Florida (at the time, Florida was owned by Spain), they would be welcome to live with the Seminoles...

My Review:

The author, Brenda Woods

This short book would be an excellent addition to any history classroom or school library. It has compelling characters, provides details but does not wallow in them, and is very honest about early American history from the point of view of slaves and Native Americans. 

There are a variety of characters and they don't all hit the stereotypes. For example, not all of the slaves are sympathetic characters. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG by Brenda Woods.

Note: I reviewed this book because I read about it an article about Florida book bans in schools. I checked it out and this teacher doesn't find anything objectionable about this book. Here is a link to another article with a list of 176 books that were banned by a Florida county. 

RIOT (audiobook) by Walter Dean Myers

 

Published in 2009 by Listening Library.
Performed by multiple actors.
Duration: 2 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

July of 1863 was the height of the American Civil War. The month contained the Battle of Gettysburg, the end of the long siege of Vicksburg, and the battle at Battery Wagner where the 54th Massachusetts demonstrated that African American soldiers would be an effective and important addition to the Union Army.

It also featured one of the worst riots in American history - the New York City Draft Riot.

The riot was ostensibly a violent reaction to the imposition of a draft to fulfill state military quotas, but it was more than that and this short audiobook does a very good job of looking at those reasons.

The draft was unpopular for more than just the fact that the men who were drafted did not want to join the army. Rich people could afford to pay $300 to avoid military service if they were drafted. It took most workers more than 6 months or more to earn this sort of money. This encouraged that common refrain that happens in many wars - It was a rich man's war but a poor man's fight.

About 25% of New York City was made up of immigrants from Ireland. Those immigrants were at the bottom of the social and economic heap, but they were afraid that newly freed slaves would work their way to New York City and be willing to work for less, meaning that their wages would have to drop just to compete. 

Those factors combined to make this riot an ugly mix of economic, racial and anti-governmental violence that lasted for 4 days until Union troops arrived fresh from the Battle of Gettysburg to help New York State Militia restore order with gunfire.

This audiobook reads like a television script, including directions for camera cuts and the like. The actors who read the audiobook read it like an old-fashioned radio play. A narrator read the direction for the cameras and introduced the characters as they came into the drama.

This drama explores the complicated reasons for the riots and gives the listener a surprisingly nuanced view of the riots. This is especially noteworthy considering that the drama is so short.

The last half hour or so of the audiobook is a podcast-type discussion of the drama and the riots between the author and a history professor. This was especially well-done. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: RIOT by Walter Dean Myers.

PROHIBITION in the UNITED STATES: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2019 by Hourly History.

Hourly History publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for larger topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it works out about right for this topic.

This history goes all of the way back to the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620. Turns out the Puritans brought hundreds of gallons of alcoholic beverages with them to the New World and immediately set up the means to produce even more.

The book then goes on to show the ups and down of America's relationship with alcohol. When the reader gets to the temperance movement, there is a solid context to understand why the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1919 and why it was eventually abolished by the 21st Amendment a mere 14 years later.

For a short read, this book provides a lot of good, basic information. 

I rate this e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PROHIBITION in the UNITED STATES: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

TEAR IT DOWN (Peter Ash #4)(audiobook) by Nick Petrie

 

Published in 2019 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Stephen Mendel.
Duration: 11 hours.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Peter Ash served multiple tours of duty with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he left the service, he wandered the roads of America - partly because he could not find a place to settle down and partly because he suffers from claustrophobia as a form of PTSD. He can't sleep indoors. He has a very tough team being inside unless it's a spacious room or has lots and lots of windows. 

The author, Nick Petrie.

Peter has been living with his very serious (and very rich) girlfriend helping maintain her compound and recuperating from the misadventures of the last book. But...he's getting bored.

His girlfriend gets word from a friend named Wanda in Memphis that people are threatening her in her new house that she bought in a tax auction. They are throwing bricks through windows and the like. Peter drives across the country in his restored work truck to help keep an eye out. When he arrives he discovers that things have gotten a lot worse.

They're not just throwing bricks any longer - they've driven a dump truck right into her house...

My review:

This owes a lot to Lee Child's Jack Reacher series (lone drifter who is retired from the military who works very well with smart, talented, independent women) and to Robert B. Parker's Spenser series (man with a moral code, a girlfriend and an African American friend with a brother-like bond of questionable background that comes in with things get tough) but it has a distinct voice of its own.

The series also has a formula that I happen to like. It would be wise of Petrie to shake it up a bit, but it is a formula that is working for me.

Petrie's descriptions of a musician in the grove approached poetry. Nicely done. It more than makes up for the touch of the paranormal that was throw in.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TEAR IT DOWN (Peter Ash #4)(audiobook) by Nick Petrie.

CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut

 

Originally published in 1963.

Synopsis:

Cat's Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut's fourth novel. The narrator is a writer who wants to tell the story of the first atomic bombing by telling what various people did that day. One of the people he is interested in is one of the creators of the bomb, a researcher named Felix Hoennikker. 

Hoennikker has already passed away so the author reaches out to his three children and finds two of them. They describe a man with no real emotions. He is not a cruel man, he is utterly detached from everything except research. 

During his interviews with a colleagues at the laboratory he worked at in Ilium, New York (also the setting for his first novel Player Piano, but these books are clearly not in the same time line) the narrator discovers that Hoennikker may have invented a more dangerous weapon than the atomic bomb - a substance called "ice-nine."

Ice-nine was created as a simple thought experiment that came from an offhand comment from a general who had complained about how the U.S. Army kept getting bogged down in the mud. Ice-nine solidifies all of the water it contacts - freezes it at room temperature. And, it keeps spreading. Ice-nine creates more ice-nine as it freezes. Theoretically, if someone dropped it into a body of water it would just keep on going until it runs out of water to freeze. If you dropped it into a river it would just keep going until it got to an ocean and then keep going around the world.

That's when the narrator figures out that each of the three children possesses a chunk of ice-nine and one of them who was missing has just become the head of the military of a very backward third world country in the Caribbean...

My Review: 

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

This book, unlike the previously mentioned Player Piano, has the complete feel of a Vonnegut novel. There is a lot of dark humor that is barely trying to hide Vonnegut's commentary about the insanity of the Cold War and the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction. It fits in nicely with the 1964 movie Doctor Strangelove.

I found the first part of the book to be fairly slow and tedious (the part described in my synopsis), but the second half zips along pretty well and gets better and better as it gets more ridiculous, including the creation of an original religion.

Vonnegut has a habit of mentioning his native Indiana and/or Indianapolis in his books and this book features plenty of those mentions. 

At one point, Vonnegut gave all of his books a letter grade. He gave Cat's Cradle an A+. I think it was good, but not that good. I will give it a B.

I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut.

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

 

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 as a child and is very familiar with southern California. She realizes that she doesn't really know a lot about the rest of her adopted country so she decides to travel the old Route 66.

The author travels with only her little dog as a companion. She is on a tight budget so she often sleeps in her car.

Along the way she sees a lot of interesting Americana, Americans of all types and ponders her relationship with the country and its people. Plus, her dog makes friends everywhere.

I rate this graphic memoir 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE AMERICAN DREAM? A JOURNEY on ROUTE 66 DISCOVERING DINOSAUR STATUES, MUFFLER MEN, and the PERFECT BURRITO: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR by Shing Yin Khor.

DEAR MARTIN (audiobook) by Nic Stone

 

Published by Listening Library in 2017.
Read by Dion Graham,
Duration: 4 hours, 32 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Justyce is a African-American scholarship boarding school student originally from a rough neighborhood.  He attends an elite, almost entirely white prep school in Atlanta. He is a senior and a fantastic student who is clearly headed to a top university once he graduates. Everything isn't perfect, but it is going very, very well.

One evening Justyce gets a phone call from an on-again-off-again girlfriend. She is clearly drunk and is talking about driving home. She's not too far away so he walks to her car, gets into an argument with her and struggles with her a bit for the keys while maneuvering her into the backseat where she pukes and passes out. While he is buckling her in to take her home a police officer pulls up and completely misinterprets the scene for a carjacking and a kidnapping. 

From the officer's point of view, it looks suspicious if you go with all of the worst stereotypes. You've got a young black male in a hoodie and a white female (actually she's mixed race, but very light-skinned) being forced into the back of a very nice car in the middle of the night.

This officer is definitely a man who believes in stereotypes. He arrests Justyce, cuffs him and refuses to listen to anything Justyce says. 

While Justyce knows this type of thing happens - but deep down inside he is shocked because it's never happened to him and he didn't think it would happen to a kid like him.

Justyce decides to write out his thoughts on race, racism, policing and life in general in a series of letters to Martin Luther King over the course of the school year, thus the source of the title of the book.

My Review:

Thematically, this book is very similar to the better known YA book The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. They were published in the same year and are both excellent. The book presents a series of events that are unlikely to all happen to the same character, but do happen all across the country.

The author Nic Stone (left) and the reader Dion Graham.

One thing I very much liked about the book is that it is not literally a black and white book. There is a lot of gray area in this book. All of the white characters aren't racists, all of the black characters aren't saints. Some of the black characters are racist, some the of white characters are pretty saintly. There is also character growth. 

One of the reasons that I decided to listen to this audiobook was a ridiculous news story that I read. A teacher in North Carolina was fired for teaching this book after having sought approval to teach it from the school's administrator. Turns out it possibly violates one of those ridiculous MAGA anti-CRT laws (CRT - the topic that many people are scared of but cannot define.) Not only did the teacher get approval, the principal was enthusiastic about the use of the novel.

Here is a quote from an ABC News story about this case:

Davis claimed that ahead of Black History Month, Gray had a "very intentional conversation" with Rock about what would be an "appropriate curriculum" and that she "specifically said to Mr. Gray that ["Dear Martin"] would be a good book to teach."

What do I think of the audiobook? It is an emotionally engaging book that drags the reader right into the story. It is an excellent book paired with an excellent reader - Dion Graham.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DEAR MARTIN by Nic Stone.

Update: Dear Martin was also placed on a massive book ban list in Florida.

SOVIET-AFGHAN WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (The Cold War) (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2023 by Hourly History.

In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in an effort to stabilize their neighbor. In theory, Afghanistan had a communist government and the USSR had a policy of not letting any communist government fall. 

Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan in 1989 via
a bridge that was special built for the purpose of
letting the USSR withdraw from Afghanistan
even quicker.

In 1989, the Soviet Union finished withdrawing its armed forces from Afghanistan. On paper they had negotiated a stable pro-Soviet government to lead Afghanistan after 10 years of frustrating fighting an elusive enemy that specialized in hitting the much better equipped Soviet army within guerilla hit-and-run tactics. 

Within 3 years both the government of Afghanistan and the government of the USSR had collapsed and Afghanistan became a haven for international Muslim terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

As I read about the difficulties that the Soviets had in fighting against the mujahedeen guerrilla fighters, it struck me that in many ways you could have removed the word Soviet and replaced it with the word American and have a fairly decent description of the American experience in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021.  

This series is designed to give the reader a solid grasp of a topic in about an hour's worth of reading. Some topics are really too big for this self-imposed limit, but I thought this was a pretty good length for this topic. 

I rate this short e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SOVIET-AFGHAN WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (The Cold War) (kindle) by Hourly History.

BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE: DC ICONS SERIES (audiobook) by Alexandra Monir

 

Published in 2020 by Listening Library.
Read by Kathleen McInerney.
Duration: 8 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

The DC ICONS series tells alternate origin stories for DC superheroes, focusing on them in their high school years. This is the fourth in this YA series that I have listened to as an audiobook. My previous ones were the "big three" of the DC Comics Universe - Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. This time I listened to an often overlooked character, Black Canary. 

To be clear, this book focuses on Dinah Lance, the daughter of the original Black Canary. Black Canary was talented at martial arts but her main power was the ability to use her singing voice as a weapon.

The book is set in a dystopian future Gotham City. Think Gotham City meets The Handmaid's Tale. It is a generation after Batman and Commissioner Gordon have passed away. 

Based on a single comment from one of the characters, women's rights have been rolled back across the country. That being said, Gotham City is the most regressive city. Women have to wear approved types of clothing. Girls have only recently been allowed to go back to school, but they have a limited curriculum and will not go on to college. Women are not allowed to speak out in public, create art, or perform. All records of women in any sort of leadership position or performing musically have been expunged from all public records.

Gotham City is controlled by a group descended from some of the original founding families of Gotham City called The Court of Owls. Their leader is Mayor Cobblepot. DC Fans may remember that Cobblepot is the family name of The Penguin. It turns out that Mayor Cobblepot took some of The Penguin's research to create a chemical that robs women of their power to sing. Of course, this ended the power of the original Black Canary.

Dinah Drake is unhappy. She is a senior in high school and she feels restricted by the She knows that women used to be leaders, used to wear what they wanted and used to sing. She discovered a hidden treasure trove of old magazines and has seen photos of women singing on stage.

And now a new boy named Oliver Queen has moved to Gotham City...

My Review:

The first 90% of this audiobook was the most compelling of the 4 books I have read in this series.

***********Spoiler Alert************

The book had the makings of the beginning of a series with Dinah Drake pushing back against the totalitarian rule of the Court of Owls. I was imagining a reverse of the traditional Batman role. Black Canary and Green Arrow would not be the enforcer of laws, instead this team would make sure unjust laws were not enforced.

Instead, the book very neatly clears out the totalitarian rulers and everything is fixed ( the rest of the country was too?) Too bad - this could have been a great series. I am removing 1 star for ruining a great series.

***********End Spoilers**************

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE: DC ICONS SERIES by Alexandra Monir.

PONTIAC'S WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published by Hourly History in 2021.

Hourly History publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for larger topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it works out about right for this short war (1763-1766.)

The war arose directly from unaddressed issues as a consequence of the French and Indian War (1754-1763.) In the French and Indian War, the American frontier became a battlefield. American settlements were wiped out, Native American villages were destroyed. French and English soldiers participated and ultimately agreed to a settlement that ignored the realities of the vast borderlands between the colonies and the Native Americans.

The biggest issue was constant push westward from European (American) settlers into areas that were already inhabited by Native Americans. The colonies were all for this westward push, even if the British government was ambivalent or even against the idea. 

Pontiac was an Ottawa. They were centered in the Great Lakes in and around Michigan. Pontiac wanted the French government to resume control of the area - something that simply was not going to happen.

Pontiac was sick of the English colonies moving westward. He encouraged all of the Native American groups to join together to overwhelm the British forts in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate New York. He led an attack against Fort Detroit that failed, but a number of smaller forts fell, including Fort Ouiatenon near modern-day Lafayette, Indiana. I only mention Fort Ouitatenon because I live in Indiana, have been to the fort, and this is the only time I have ever seen the fort mentioned in a history book.

Once the British figured out that it was a united push against their forts and settlements they slowly pushed more troops into the area. They began with only 500 soldiers to hold an area that comprises all or parts of upstate New York, western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, part of Illinois and nearby areas of southern Canada.  Transportation was horribly slow and more than once the united Native Americans attacked, blocked or diverted attempts to reinforce forts. 

It isn't quite clear how big a part Pontiac had in this war. The British considered him to be one of the big leaders - big enough that they called the war Pontiac's Rebellion. But, seeing the number of other critical errors and misunderstandings they committed during the war, it is entirely possible that they imagined him to be THE leader when he was actually one of a number of leaders.

The agreements in this war didn't last for long and did not resolve the underlying issues. There were three other wars and countless skirmishes in this area with the exact same issues in the 50 years that followed. 

I rate this short e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PONTIAC'S WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

THE CORRUPTION of LINDSEY GRAHAM: A CASE STUDY in the RISE of AUTHORITARIANISM (kindle) by William Saletan

 

Published in May of 2023.

Winner of a 2024 Webby Award

The author of this short book (129 pages) makes it clear that he has no particular grudge against South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham serves as a stand-in for the Republican Party in general. He is a particularly good stand-in because he was there from the very beginning of the Donald Trump phenomenon because he was one of the many candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination. 

President Donald J. Trump and
Senator Lindsey Graham

Graham is also an amazingly frequent guest on the Sunday morning political talk shows, the evening shows on Fox, local TV, and talk radio. Graham loves to talk into microphones and because of that it is very easy to track his gradual moves from being a loudly outspoken opponent of Trump to the most vociferous defender of and apologist for the former president. 

Saletan thoroughly documents this transition and backs up each of these subtle changes with hundreds of actual links to videos, transcripts, and news articles. The reader can check for him/herself. I checked a ton of the links because there were so many ridiculous things that the 45th President has done and said that I simply forgotten about some of them.

This explains the idea behind
the book quite well.

This book is unlikely to change the minds of a MAGA friend of relative so don't even bother. But, if you are wondering how someone like Lindsey Graham could go from saying that Donald Trump was "hateful," a "demagogue," a "kook" and a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot" (page 8) to being his most prominent apologist, this book documents every baby step that Graham and the Republicans took to get there.

I rate this e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE CORRUPTION of LINDSEY GRAHAM: A CASE STUDY in the RISE of AUTHORITARIANISM by William Saletan.

See my review of a that book has a similar theme but looks at several other Republicans in addition to Lindsey Graham: THANK YOUR for YOUR SERVITUDE: DONALD TRUMP'S WASHINGTON and the PRICE of SUBMISSION by Mark Leibovich.

STORM OVER the LAND: A PROFILE of the CIVIL WAR by Carl Sandburg

 

Originally published in 1942 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.

I read a 2009 re-print published by Konecky and Konecky.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

In 1940, the famed poet, journalist and author Carl Sandburg won a Pulitzer Prize for his four volume biography Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (published in 1939.)

In 1942, his publishers came to him and asked him to re-work the biography into a history of the Civil War in response to America's recent entry into World War II. 

The result is a pretty solid history of the Civil War from basically the Union point of view. 

Carl Sandburg is best known as a poet and that shines though with some of his prose. From time to time, he comes up with a different and interesting way of telling the story of the war. 

The most obvious weakness to this history is the story of African-Americans in the war - the free, the enslaved, the recently freed, the soldiers and others. He mentions them, but does not look at them very hard. To be fair to Sandburg, this book was published 81 years ago and he covered the topic about as well as any mainstream history would have.

I rate this history 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: STORM OVER the LAND: A PROFILE of the CIVIL WAR by Carl Sandburg.

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

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 in Georgia who is freed by the Union Army. He goes on to:

1. Join the Union Army as an infantry soldier.

2. Participate in the Battle of the Crater.
3. Muster out of the Army.
4. Meet a woman and live with her for a while.
5. Join the Cavalry.

U.S. Army "Buffalo Soldiers"

6. Serve on Indian patrol as a Buffalo Soldier. Fight a number of battles.
7. Serve on the U.S./Mexican border as a Buffalo soldier. Fight a number of battles.

8. Go on trial as a horse thief simply for doing his job.
9. Almost get lynched.
10. Flee into the wilderness to escape the lynching mob.
11. Meet another woman and live with her for a while.

12. Eventually arrive in San Francisco.

13. Get shanghaied onto a ship.

14. Go around the tip of South America to the Atlantic Ocean.

15. Get involved in a mutiny somewhere near the Falkland Islands.

16. Escape the ship with a friend on a little boat with a sail just before the mutineers turn on each other.

17. Sail/Row the boat around the tip of Africa and land on the Indian Ocean side of South Africa.

18. Meet native Africans.
19. Join the British Army in South Africa as a scout. Fight a number of battles.

20. Leave the British Army and join the Zulus.
21. Get married.
22. Become the royal firearms specialist for the Zulu.
23. Watch the Zulu loose to the British and flee to the mountains.
24. Find a group of refugees.

25. Become king of these refugees and make a people out of them.
26. Start a family.

Those are 26 big steps in a 4 hour and 34 minute audiobook. This could have been epic if it were slowed down and each of these steps were explored. I actually skipped things (lots of women end up sleeping with this man) and there were actually steps that were explored in detail, which means that the others got even more of the short shrift treatment.

For example, the women always end up being a side story and the hike from Texas to San Francisco is an epic trip going through multiple Indian territories and crossing the Rocky Mountains and it gets just a few minutes.

This book is really more of a serious treatment of a book series rather than a single book. It is too busy and not filled in with enough detail to make a story. It could have been a decent series.

About the narration. Crawford B. Bunkley III has a great voice, but he read this book too fast. Commas are ignored. Periods are ignored. Just this wonderful voice pushing forward as fast it can while reading a story that just wants to push on as fast as it can.

The only reason that I am giving it 2 stars is because I actually finished it.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: WHEN WE'RE HOME in AFRICA by Themba Umbalisi.

WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM: THE POLITICS of MORALITY in AMERICA (audiobook) by Anthea Butler

 

Published by Tantor Audio in 2021.
Read by Allyson Johnson.
Duration: 3 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

This book takes a short look at how the people that refer to themselves as Evangelicals and their forebears have dealt with race over time.

An interracial marriage protest. The signs
claim that interracial marriage is Communist
and a sign of the anti-Christ.

The book starts with the justifications that religious leaders used to defend slavery. After the Civil War, they modified those justifications slightly to defend the Jim Crow system. Butler contends that the Evangelical movements in the 1900's were worried about things like Communism, but it usually had a racial overtone to it - like when Martin Luther King was accused of spreading Communism to Black communities all over the country when he was just asking for the rights that White Americans already had.

The heart of her book is about Billy Graham and what she calls out as a wishy-washy approach to racism. I am a bit more forgiving of Billy Graham because there was no model in American history for true racial equality, including (and sadly) in the church. Graham probably felt like he was taking giant steps, but nowadays he was clearly taking baby steps. What if he had taken bigger steps? Would he have lost his place as America's Evangelist or would he have moved the country forward?

I have no qualms with her look at Trump Era White Evangelicals. She calls out the hypocrisy correctly (including well-deserved criticism of Billy Graham's son Franklin Graham.)

However, I am only going to give this book 3 stars out of 5. Not because it is incorrect and not because it is not well-written. It is simply too short and does not include a wide enough net in its discussion. For example, women's rights are not discussed in any meaningful way.

The reason I am giving it 3 stars is because this topic has already been dealt with better and more extensively in the book JESUS and JOHN WAYNE: HOW WHITE EVANGELICALS CORRUPTED a FAITH and FRACTURED a NATION by Kristen Kobes du Mez.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM: THE POLITICS of MORALITY in AMERICA by Anthea Butler.

TEN CAESARS: ROMAN EMPERORS from AUGUSTUS to CONSTANTINE (audiobook) by Barry Strauss

 

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2019.
Read by Arthur Morey.
Duration: 12 hours, 52 minutes.
Unabridged.

Barry Strauss is a professor of the history of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. As the title clearly says, Strauss tells his reader/listeners about what he judges to be the ten most important Roman emperors and ends up telling a decent political history of the Roman Empire along the way.

Bronze statue erected c.175 AD of 
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), one of
the Roman Emperors featured in 
this book.

When I say he chose the ten most important emperors, that doesn't mean he chose the ten best emperors. He has more than one emperor that demonstrates how a bad leader can abuse the political consensus, damage the political system, and leave a lot of confusion in his/her wake. But, change is not necessarily a bad thing - especially when handled by talented leaders like Augustus and Constantine. 

This was an interesting listen and well-read by Arthur Morey. I did enjoy how the book was not merely about the interactions of a few well-connected families at the top (although there are a few emperors that were hyper-connected to past and future emperors) but it was also about how emperors reacted to outside movements like rebellions in Judea, the rise of Christianity and foreign wars.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TEN CAESARS: ROMAN EMPERORS from AUGUSTUS to CONSTANTINE by Barry Strauss.

THE LAST ENGLISHMAN: THRU-HIKING the PACIFIC CREST TRAIL (Thru-Hiking Adventures #2) (kindle) by Keith Foskett

 

Published in 2014.

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 fits in best with my book about the 2,190 mile Appalachian Trail because it is set on the American West's counterpart to that trail: The 2,650 mile Pacific Crest Trail. This trail runs from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington State. 

Foskett is an experienced long-distance hiker but this hike is a challenge for any hiker to complete in a single attempt. The threat of snow in the mountain passes doesn't let hikers start very early up north so hikers start down south and hope to catch a break with the weather. They hike north and try to keep up a good pace so they don't get caught by snow up in the mountains in Washington State as winter comes on.

A great pace is 30 miles per day and even if a hiker can keep that pace up through the worst of the passes, that still makes a 3 month hike. But, hikers don't keep up that pace. They have to take time off of the trail to resupply, pick up pre-mailed packages, rest, and tend to injuries or illness. One can't discount the need to pop off of the trail to literally eat thousands and thousands of calories or simply take a break.

A major theme of the book is Foskett's constant push to make enough miles but this reader was dismayed at how many times he turned a day off of the trail into two or three days in a hiker friendly hotel. I kept on saying, "Go! You're going to get caught in the snow!" Turns out, that's where the title comes from - he ends up so late on the trail that he calls himself "The Last Englishman."

But, my worry about his wasting time and not making it is really a sign that I was invested in this story. It was good enough that I went ahead and bought another  book by Foskett that tells the tale of another long-distance hike. Plus, I am a sucker for oddball travel books. 

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE LAST ENGLISHMAN: THRU-HIKING the PACIFIC CREST TRAIL by Keith Foskett.

Follow this link to see my review of another book by this author. In that book, he hikes the Camino de Santiago in Spain and France.