Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman by Marc Tyler Nobleman

Entertaining and an artistic homage

Published by Knopf, 2008.

Illustrated by Ross MacDonald.

Boys of Steel tells the story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the two painfully shy teenagers from Cleveland who created Superman. The two met in school and discovered a common interest in science fiction and fantastic tales. One wrote stories, the other drew. Together they created story after story that never sold. Eventually created Superman and, believe it or not, no one wanted Superman either for three years.

Nobleman tells about their eventual success and their ongoing struggles with DC Comics. He tells the story well but the real star is the art of Ross MacDonald. He has illustrated the entire story in the style of those early Superman comic books and the art just leaps off of the over-sized pages. My eleven year old daughter read it and enjoyed, but probably not as much as me. This one was a winner.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Boys of Steel.

Reviewed on November 19, 2011

We All Fall Down by Michael Harvey

Not as good as the last one

Published by Knopf, July of 2011

Michael Harvey's Chicago-based series features Michael Kelly, a one-time cop turned private detective who seems to have connections all over Chicago, from the Mayor's office all the way down to the street gangs. We All Fall Down takes place immediately after the previous book, The Third Rail (which I rated 4 stars out of 5) with very little explanation to get the reader up to speed. I just barely remembered the ending of the last book - I read more than a year and a half ago.

Michael Kelly finds out about a conspiracy to defraud the government of Chicago led by Mafia types and a top man in the Mayor's office. As he looks into it, he stumbles upon a drug dealing conspiracy gone bad and eventually it all links up with the release of a biological agent and an ensuing epidemic into a very tough Chicago neighborhood.

We All Fall Down is best during its descriptions of the epidemic and its impact upon Chicago, even though I have yet to figure out how and down and out ex-cop merited the all-star access he had to the top levels of Chicago's government, the top levels of the Homeland Security's bio-weapons team and a free hand to roam anywhere and everywhere in and out of a quarantine zone. Sadly, this book may be a "jump the shark" moment in this series.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: We All Fall Down.

Reviewed on November 19, 2011.

Beautiful Boy DVD

DVD released in 2011 by Anchor Bay entertainment.

Maria Bello and Michael Sheen star as a decent, upper middle class married couple who are slowly but surely growing apart in Beautiful Boy. Their only child is off to college and they are much more interested in their careers than in each other. They do not fight, but they do not care enough to stop the drift. But, tragedy strikes in the form of their son who goes on a shooting rampage at his college and then committing suicide.

And then we get to the story itself: What happens to those families who are left behind by these spree shooters? Of course, the denial, the shock and the horror at what their son has done overwhelms the couple. Soon enough, the national media follows them everywhere and camps on their doorstep hoping for a quote or a bit of telling video.

Bello and Sheen both shine as they take the viewers through the amazing array of emotions and behaviors that this shell-shocked couple experience. There are no fakey moments. No contrived scenes. Instead, this battered couple do their best to deal with the feelings of loss, shame and failure as they try to start over again. Interestingly, their shared loss pulls them closer to one another.

I rate this film 5 stars out of 5.

This DVD can be found on Amazon.com here: Beautiful Boy.

Reviewed on November 6, 2011.

Two Nero Wolfe Mysteries: The Golden Spiders & Murder by the Book by Rex Stout

Read by Michael Prichard
Duration: 13 hours, 5 minutes
Published August 23, 2011 by AudioGo

As an avid reader of mysteries, I am sorry to say that I waited so long to check out Nero Wolfe and all of his valuable and useful assistants. If you are not familiar with Nero Wolfe, let me introduce you. Nero Wolfe is an obese genius who solves mysteries but rarely leaves his New York City Brownstone home. His true passions are meticulously prepared meals, orchids and keeping to his routine. Instead of leaving his home and doing the legwork himself, he has several trusted and talented investigators who serve as his eyes and ears. The Nero Wolfe stories are told by Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's number one employee.

Goodwin is an interesting character himself. He is Wolfe's employee, but not a toady. He speaks his mind, sometimes too freely. He is flippant, clever, tough and quite the ladies man. When I heard these stories, I realized how much a debt the late Robert B. Parker owes to Rex Stout - Parker's Spenser character is Archie Goodwin with his own detective agency.

This audiobook contains two short Nero Wolfe novels. The Golden Spiders was first published in 1953. The story starts when a 12 year old who makes a little extra money cleaning car windows at stop lights comes to Nero Wolfe with the story of a woman in a Cadillac who mouthed to him through the windshield that he should get a policeman to help her. She is wearing earrings shaped like golden spiders. The kid finds Nero Wolfe instead. Wolfe takes his story and starts to look into it. The next day, the boy is run down by a Cadillac. Soon, two more people are run over by a car and all of the deaths seem related and Wolfe is on the case...

Rex Stout (1886-1975)

First published in 1951, Murder by the Book is the stronger of the two stories. Wolfe is hired by a Peoria grocer to find out what really happened to his daughter. She died in a New York City park, but her father thinks she was murdered rather than accidentally killed in a hit-and-run incident. As Goodwin starts to dig they discover links to even more deaths and it all seems to be tied to an unpublished novel. Goodwin shines as he comes up with one clever way after another to pull the information from a variety of sources.

Veteran reader Michael Prichard captures the voice of Archie Goodwin perfectly  - he shows just the right amount of respect and sass for his boss, Nero Wolfe.

I rate this audiobook set 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Two Nero Wolfe Stories.

Reviewed on November 18, 2011.

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag by Robert A. Heinlein

Creepy Change of Pace for Heinlein

Originally published in 1942 in "Unknown Worlds" magazine.
Published by Blackstone Audio in 2009.

Read by Tom Weiner

Duration: 3 hours, 54 minutes.

Unabridged

Multiple Hugo Award winning author Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) changes his tone with the novella The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.

This audiobook seems much more like a Philip K. Dick story than a Heinlein story since it features none of the themes that Heinlein is well known for, like space travel, alien contact or time travel. Instead, we get an extra helping of creepy with a surprise ending that truly demonstrates Heinlein’s ability to master a variety of styles.

First published under a pseudonym in the now-defunct magazine Unknown Worlds in 1942, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag features Ted and Cynthia Randall, a husband and wife private detective team based in Chicago. They are approached by a fastidious little man with a topcoat and silk gloves named Jonathan Hoag. He has an odd proposition – he offers them a preposterously large retainer to help him figure out what he does for a living. Mr. Hoag knows that he has a well-paying job that pays him cash, but he does not have the faintest idea what that job is. The crisis began while he was at a dinner party and another guest commented on the reddish stains under his fingernails and asked what he did for a living to leave such a residue behind. He was very bothered to find that he did not know.

Ted and Cynthia agree to help him and find that this may not be as easy as they thought.  They find that everything about Mr. Hoag seems to be a mystery and the more they interact with him, the more they doubt their own eyes and ears. Soon enough they discover that “the whole world might be just a fraud and an illusion.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

The story suffers a bit from age, which is to be expected. After all, this story is nearly 70 years old. Some of the expressions that are used may have been very hip and stylish in 1942 but they sound a bit clunky to the ear nowadays. Also, some aspects of the story such as elevator operators and doctors making house calls may be totally foreign concepts to some listeners. That being said, the underlying story overcomes all of that window dressing. Rumor has it that a movie version of this story is in the works as well.

Award-winning narrator Tom Weiner skillfully handles a variety of different voices throughout. He voices Mr. Hoag perfectly, catching his prissy, fussy nature throughout, but adding a different tone once we discover his true profession. His characterization of the story’s bad guys (I am intentionally not describing them so as not to ruin their scenes) has the perfect amount of menace and mystery.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.

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

Reviewed on September 3, 2011.

NPR American Chronicles: World War II (audiobook)

Absolutely Fantastic

Original Radio Broadcast by NPR
Duration: 3 hours
Published 2011 by HighBridge Audio

NPR's American Chronicles: World War II is a 3 hour collection of 27 stories broadcast over the radio network from 1982 to 2010 around the topic of World War II.

This collection is not designed to introduce the reader to the war or to its causes - it assumes the listener has a basic grasp of the facts. But, what it does do is delve deeply into certain topics that are associated with the war, such as the life of Londoners during the Blitz, the story of a young Japanese man who was in an internment camp, the Doolittle Raid, Bill Millin - the "Mad Piper" who played the bagpipe for his Scottish regiment as they landed at Normandy (because tradition demanded it), women on the home front, artists who may have used their skills to help the Americans to trick the Germans, and an interview with one of the pilots of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

The atomic mushroom cloud over Nagasaki

This is an exceptionally strong collection - even the worst stories are quite good. My favorite is the story of Tuskegee Airman Alexander Jefferson who tells his story with a lot of zest and hauntingly tells of visiting the death camp at Dachau and noting that the ovens used to cremate the victims were still warm. The reports are well narrated and  include lots of music from the era and bits of radio reports to give the listener more of a feel for the time.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: NPR American Chronicles: World War II.

This audiobook was sent to me for free by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Reviewed on November 18, 2011.

The Boat of a Million Years (audiobook) by Poul Anderson

Ambitious idea but it tends to drag.

Read by Tom Weiner.

Duration: 20 hours, 16 minutes.

Published by Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Unabridged.

Multiple award winner and science fiction legend Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years did something that science fiction all-too-rarely does when it was published in 1989 – it got the attention of the mainstream literature critics. The New York Times named it a “New York Times Notable Book.” Besides mainstream recognition, it was also nominated for multiple science fiction awards as well.

The Boat of Million Years follows a group of immortal people through their lives. These are regular people in every respect except that they never age. They were not all born at the same time – some were born earlier (as early as 5,000 years ago), some later but there seems to be no pattern that explains their immortality. Their ancestors are not necessarily long-lived, their descendents do not inherit their immortality. They recover quickly from injury (their teeth grow back, for example) but they can be killed by accidents, disease and battle.

Poul Anderson (1926-2001)

The book is not a traditional novel. Rather, it is a series of vignettes – snapshots of these characters at some moment in time, usually a time of great change or opportunity. We follow characters as they explore new trade routes with the Ancient Greeks, or narrowly escape being lynched for being a witch or have a meeting with Cardinal Richelieu (a rarity – the book mostly avoids the temptation of having these characters meet celebrities throughout time).

There are themes and patterns that Anderson develops throughout the book. The immortals are lonely. This is understandable since there are not many of them (and they rarely encounter another one – and if they do, how can you be sure? There is inherent danger in revealing oneself) and the people they grow up with and live with all age and die while they look like they are still 25 years old. Their children and their grandchildren grow old while they remain young. Anderson reminds us of this loneliness over and over again with every character. Anderson does not have these characters come up with much in the way of Great Truths. Yes, they have lots of experience, but are not necessarily wise.

While ambitious, nearly every vignette drags. Perhaps it was the audio format that made certain qualities of Anderson’s writing style leap to the forefront but I quickly grew tired of his frequent descriptions of landscapes by way of lists. I kept imagining bullet points on a PowerPoint presentation rather than the landscapes themselves. The writing is often clunky, almost like everyone is participating in a low budget drive in movie gladiator movie from the 1950s. Tom Weiner’s narration is solid – he does a lot with multiple accents, for example - but he can do little to breathe life into this audiobook. 

I rate this audiobook 1 star out of 5.

This audiobook can be purchased on Amazon.com here: The Boat of a Million Years.

Note: I was sent a free copy of this audiobook by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Reviewed on September 18, 2011.

Tribe by James Bruno

Power plays in Afghanistan and in D.C.

Published in 2011.

When I first picked up the book Tribe, I assumed that the title referred to the complicated loyalties of local Afghan politics that create the hard-to-decipher undercurrents that permeate Afghan politics. After all, the cover photo features the silhouette of what looks to be a mujaheddin soldier brandishing an assault rifle. My assumption was wrong on multiple levels.

If I were more adept with my weapons identification skills, I would have known right away that the soldier was brandishing an American M16, not the omnipresent AK47 favored in Afghanistan - which is a clue to the direction of the book. While wild and hairy adventures in Afghanistan and Yemen exist in the book, this is not really a book about American adventurism in the Muslim world. Instead, the tribe referred to is the brotherhood of intelligence agents - Russian, Afghan, American who do the secret work of their governments but really have more in common with one another than they do with the people who issue their orders.

Bruno would know something about this, having served in the diplomatic corps and as a military intelligence officer for many years. In Tribe we see that ground level CIA operatives and their bosses at the top of the political food chain in Washington, D.C. live in two different worlds with different sets of goals and neither may be quite based in reality.

CIA officer Harry Brennan has a game-changing operation that is about ready to swing into action in Afghanistan - a plan that might very well destroy the Taliban. Suddenly, his superiors pull the plug on his operation and his decision to go ahead with it on his own has spectacular but mixed results that result in his being called back to D.C. and put on a very short leash. But, political winds shift and Brennan becomes involved with major elite power players - the kind that craft grand  policies. Through Brennan we see policy created and implemented from the White House level on down to the dusty mountain roads of Afghanistan - we see operatives that are unaware of larger issues and top level officials that create grand plans for Central Asia that have no basis in ground-level realities.

Brennan is a likeable character with an admirable devotion to his daughter, even if he has a wandering eye for the ladies. His network of friends and a (mostly) constant devotion to his own standards of what is right make this an enjoyable trip through the jumbled world that produces American foreign policy. Throw is some behind-the-scenes look at the world of spies and spying and some well-written adventure and you have a solid book.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Tribe by James Bruno.

Reviewed on November 5, 2011.

Following Atticus: Forty-Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship (audiobook)by Tom Ryan

A story of a man and his dog and so much more

Read by the author, Tom Ryan
Duration: 9 and 1/2 hours.
Published: 2011 by Harper Audio
Unabridged

At first glance, Following Atticus is a simple book: A man gets a dog and the dog changes his life. This is true, but this book is so much more than that. Tom Ryan has written a deep, thoughtful book about a man and his dog, but also about a man and his work, fathers and sons, the relationship between man and nature and men and women. In short, this book about a little dog and a lot of hikes in the woods is also a book about life itself.



Tom Ryan is the editor of the upstart newspaper the Undertoad in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He has a full life with plenty of friends, a fulfilling job and all of the challenges of a small business. An exceptional elderly dog comes into his life and he realizes he has been missing some things, especially companionship and love. When that dog passes away, Ryan quickly buys another and he and his new dog, Atticus M. Finch, quickly bond. They literally go everywhere together - board meetings, restaurants, nature walks, business meetings.

Those nature walks grow into full blown hikes up to the peaks of New Hampshire's 48 4,000 foot tall peaks. Tom and Atticus become consumed by the desire to climb all 48 of them and they quickly become the least likely pair to ever accomplish this feat: a middle aged overweight man with no experience and his 20 pound miniature schnauzer. Tom and Atticus roam these mountain peaks seeking the solitude of his thoughts and an escape from the pressures of running his newspaper.

Sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes profoundly sad, Tom Ryan's memoir of their adventures is more than just the tale of their adventures - it is also the tale of his difficult relationship with his father, the difficulties of loosing friends to cancer, the joys of nature, and a running commentary on many of New England's most famous authors and their thoughts on the natural world. I literally knew nothing about New Hampshire's 48 peaks (or schnauzers - I am a beagle man myself, although we currently have a Jack Russell terrier/beagle mix) and I really don't have a lot in common with Tom Ryan. But, he took me into a whole new world and made it alive for me as I drove back and forth across my city this week and for that, I have to thank him. It makes for a fascinating book and one that I am pleased to recommend to all readers (or listeners), not just dog lovers.

Tom Ryan narrated the book and I am glad that he choose to read it himself rather than hiring a professional reader. Usually, the author-as-narrator is, at best, a mixed bag. In this case, Ryan's New England accent made the story work all the better (I love regional accents!) and he is quite adept at portraying the emotions of the moment in his voice. I cannot imagine how it could have been performed any better by a professional and I recommend the audiobook version over the printed version because of his performance and what it adds.

Tom Ryan updates the world on his adventures with Atticus on his blog "The Adventures of Tom and Atticus."

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: 
Following Atticus: Forty-Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship


Reviewed on October 29, 2011.

Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead (audiobook) by L. Ron Hubbard

Three solid adventure stories

Multicast Performance with music and sound effects

Duration: 2 hours, 2 minutes.

Published by Galaxy Press

Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format.



This edition features 3 short stories. The first is Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead, the story of a team of freelance archaeologists that are searching for a lost treasure of Alexander the Great in what is now southern Pakistan. When a down on his luck pilot and a local guide find the map, well, who knows what they will find?

The second story, Price of a Hat, is the weakest. It is set in Siberia at the end of World War I when the major powers invaded in an attempt to weaken the new Communist government. The story features a distinctive Russian hat that everyone is searching for.

The third story was my favorite. Starch and Stripes is set in the heyday of America's Gunboat Diplomacy period. The U.S. Marines are involved in a pacification campaign against a local warlord. Just when they think they have the perfect trap for him, several Senators and a general are on their way for an inspection tour that threatens the entire operation.

The multicast aspect makes these stories very entertaining - very much like the old-time radio shows that were popular when these stories were written. Makes for very compelling listening.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead.

Reviewed on October 23, 2011.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe (audiobook) by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

A glimpse behind the veil in Taliban-held Afghanistan

Read by Sarah Zimmerman
Duration: 6 hours, 16 minutes
Publisher: Harper Audio, 2011

Unabridged.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon had an interest in how women survive in male-dominated war zones. In the modern world, the war zone is, all too often, not a distant battlefield, but instead includes cities, small towns and plenty of women and children. She was interested in the types of businesses women might open in order to feed their families and she was given the name of Kamila Sidiqi, a college-educated woman who lived through the Taliban invasion of Kabul.

Kamila Sidiqi (right)

Kamila Sidiqi considered fleeing to Pakistan or Iran but decided that she would stay in Kabul with most of her family. Women were mostly confined to their homes, unless accompanied by a male "minder" to do the shopping. They were certainly not supposed to attend school, have a job or own a business. Kamila Sidiqi does all of these things during the Taliban occupation, and of course her dressmaking business is the true topic of the book. Through a combination of prudence, grit and diplomacy she is able to open a dressmaking business and add employee after employee in her home-based factory. She is the CEO, the head salesman and a quiet spokesperson for women's rights in an environment that treats women more like cattle than equals.

Kamila Sidiqi's story is inspiring, even if Lemmon's telling of it is understated. Sarah Zimmerman's narration adds a surprising depth to the story, invoking a sense of warmth as she reads.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Dressmaker of Khair Khana. 

Reviewed on October 22, 2011

Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls by Rachel Simmons

An Eye-Opening Book - A Must for Parents and Teachers

Published in 2011 by Mariner Books.
This is revised and updated from the 2002 edition.

Rachel Simmons' Odd Girl Out helped open up a mostly hidden world for me, a dad and 22 year teacher. Sure, I have lots of experience dealing with kids, but I was missing some of this subtle meanness because I am a guy and the minds of  most guys just don't work this way.

Since Simmons completed her original work she has become a teacher and she can now add the perspective of an outsider to the tone of her original book which was based on a series of interviews with girls from around the country in a variety of schools.  The basic concept of the book is that girls bully one another in a way that goes under the radar in schools and at home. Unlike the overt taunting and physical violence that often happens in male bullying, girl bullying is more sly and includes such actions as shunning, sharing secrets, building alliances of friends against other girls and more.

Simmons provides personal stories that illustrate her points - these are the product of hours and hours of interviews with groups of girls and individuals and even her own experiences (she was bullied - an experience she vividly remembered and she also participated in a bullying, an experience she had forgotten, but was vividly remembered by her victim). The book is immensely readable and tragically depressing - it is the most profound and the saddest book I have read this year. It has given me  more clarity on the experiences of my daughter and of the girls in my classroom.

While these actions are not nearly as visible as overt classical male-type bullying, they can be just as devastating because the very people that these girls trust the most end up betraying them. Simmons includes a helpful "What to do if..." type guide for parents and for teachers that is organized by topic.

Rachel Simmons

Simmons and I disagree as to the root causes for this style of bullying. She consistently blames American culture's expectations for how "good girls" behave which means that aggression and  disagreement are shunted into less overt channels because good girls do not argue, do not fight and do not bring up unpleasant topics of conversation. That may well be true, but the only way to determine it would be to undertake research like she has done here in other cultures. She thinks she has done this by looking at Hispanic and African American girls in a couple of schools, but as a teacher who has spent half of my career in urban school districts, I think she has missed the mark on that one. I think that it may be more of an innate thing in girls. In some girls, the need to keep a relationship, even a hurtful one, may be more important than the need to live without fear. Of course, my thoughts also would need to be proven in cross-cultural studies.

Regardless, this book is a must-read for parents, teachers and administrators.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Odd Girl Out.

Reviewed on October 22, 2011.

The Most Dangerous Thing (audiobook) by Laura Lippman

A different kind of book

Read by Linda Emond
Duration: 10 hours, 45 minutes
Published by Harper Audio.

Unabridged.

Laura Lippman's The Most Dangerous Thing is a superbly deep character study that looks into the lives of 5 suburban children in the 1970s and follows them into the present. These kids are the best of friends for a couple of summers. They consist of three brothers, a beautiful tomboy and a chubby girl who blossoms. They come from three different families, go to three different schools but all live in the suburban neighborhood of Dickeyville, near Baltimore. They spend hours exploring the woods near their neighborhood and what they find there becomes part of a secret that eventually drives the least stable member of their quintet to commit suicide as an adult decades later.

Laura Lippman

As the friends gather for the funeral the secret is slowly drawn out for the reader through a series of flashbacks (through the eyes of all five of the friends and their parents) and current time discussions. The characters are developed in extraordinary detail, which can be frustrating because the book seems to go nowhere, but eventually it does pay off - family secrets are exposed and the true faces of some characters finally come to light. Along the way, Lippman delivers some interesting observations about family life, relationships between men and women and careers. Well worth your time.

Narrator Linda Emond did a great job with a variety of different accents, ages and characters, including the same characters decades apart.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman.

Reviewed on October 20, 2011.

Sherman: The Ruthless Victor by Agostino Von Hassell and Ed Breslin

A troubling biography.

Published in 2011.

Thomas Nelson Publishers has stepped out and published an attractive series of short biographies of American generals - all nicely bound and immensely readable. But, I found Sherman: The Ruthless Victor to be more than a little troubling for what really amounts to just a few sentences in a 163 page book.

Clearly von Hassell and Breslin are not writing this biography as fans of Sherman - they dislike the man as a person and do not respect his accomplishments on the battlefield. That is fine. I can live with a negative biography of an historical figure, but this book has moments that stretch the limits of responsible biography. For example, on page 22 the authors note that Sherman's difficult childhood may have caused strains in his relationships with his wife and his children. Reasonable assumption. But, then they go on to say that his "revulsion from scenes of domestic happiness" caused him to be particularly rough on the South during the Civil War. Why? "The South, unfortunately, presented such scenes in abundance. This prevalent and blissful state of domesticity seems to have ignited in Sherman a gratuitous pyromania, justified within himself as an exigency of war."

Really? The man went insane and burned the South because it was home to lots of happy families?

Sherman near Atlanta in 1864

This is scholarship at its worst - psychoanalysis of a patient 135 years in the past. It calls into question much of the rest of their analysis of Sherman's thoughts and motives. Later in the book they acknowledge that Sherman's use of slash and burn warfare against civilian populations was probably adapted from the Seminole War that he participated in right after he left West Point, not due to pyromania inspired by hatred of familial bliss. But, the damage to his reputation was already done. His style of warfare is a perfectly debatable topic - in fact it was so brutal that it should be discussed, but they set it up so poorly that there cannot be any debate - Sherman did it because he was crazy. End of discussion.

Another problem - on page 81 the authors were discussing pre-Bull Run conditions in D.C. in 1861 and how impatient the men were to fight. They write: "...they were ready to return home and that if an attack was not launched soon, they would simply defect." I looked up defect in several online dictionaries to see if it meant more than what I thought it meant and, like I thought, all indicated that defecting was leaving one side for its opposition (leaving the Democrats to join the Republicans or leaving the old USSR for the USA). Can you imagine that tens of thousands of Union volunteers wanted to fight so badly that they would join the Confederates just for the chance to fight? That is a serious error due to a simple incorrect word choice - I assume they meant to use "desert" rather than defect.

Like I noted, this is not a bad biography except for a few words here and there amounting to less than a paragraph, really. They should have been caught in the editing process but they were not. Too bad - there was a lot of good information here but those few words change the tone and quality of the text so much that I cannot recommend this biography.

I received this copy of the book from Thomas Nelson publishers as part of the BookSneeze program in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Sherman: The Ruthless Victor.

Reviewed on October 20, 2011.

Act of Deceit (Harlan Donnally #1) by Steven Gore

A very busy book that just didn't do it for me.

Published in 2011.

 I enjoyed meeting retired detective Harlan Donnally in Act of Deceit. Donnally was forced to retire due to an injury sustained during a shootout. He goes about his business with a battered body but a world class commitment to following the trail to wherever it leads.

But, the book has so many twists and turns that it felt like the author was whipsawing the story around just build an artificial sense of tension. We start out with an investigation that dates back to the Haight Ashbury Summer of Love movement in San Francisco but the investigation soon veers into other territory: Catholic priest sex abuse and international sex trafficking as well as the dynamics of the dysfunctional relationship between a father and son. The first part was interesting to me, the last part - old and tired territory.

Gore notes at the end of the book that his wife is involved in investigating Catholic priest sex abuse accusations in the San Francisco area, which is the inspiration for involving that angle in this story. However, I for one am tired of having that brought into so many stories. Was every priest a pedophile? Hardly, but you wouldn't know it from the bestseller list.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Act of Deceit by Steven Gore.

Reviewed on October 20, 2011.

Sky Birds Dare! (audiobook) by L. Ron Hubbard

Lots of Fun!

Duration: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Multicast Performance
Published by Galaxy Press

First published in 1936, Sky Birds Dare! is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format.



Sky Birds Dare! is the story of Breeze Callahan, a young glider pilot who is convinced that the U.S. military's pilots could learn a lot from learning how to pilot gliders before they fly motorized aircraft. A glider is like a small plane that has no engine and is towed into the air by a motorized plane or by a car with a rope (much like a person running with a kite trailing behind). Callahan and his mentor Pop Donegon are thwarted over and over again by Badger O'Dowell, a rival that wants to sell the military his conventional motorized training planes.

This is not a subtle story - there are no shades of grey. But, it is a fun story and there is plenty of adventure, danger and brawling - all of which was surprisingly entertaining for me, a listener with absolutely no experience with flying a plane. Hubbard's extensive experience as a glider pilot shines through as he explains it all while telling the story. I was particularly intrigued by his suggestion that gliders could be used to insert soldiers behind enemy lines. We did that 8 years after he published this story during the D-Day invasion in June of 1944.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Sky Birds Dare! by L. Ron Hubbard.

Reviewed on October 19, 2011.

Germline (The Subterrene War, Book 1) (audiobook) by T.C. McCarthy.

Wow!

Read by Donald Corren

Duration: Approximately 9 hours.

Published by Blackstone Audio, 2011.

Unabridged.

T.C. McCarthy’s Germline is a non-stop military techno-adventure set in the middle of a war in Central Asia in the 22^nd century. Russia and the United States are fighting over the resources of Kazakhstan. It turns out that Kazakhstan is rich in rare metals that are needed for the 22^nd century’s technological devices. They have to be mined deep in the mountains of Kazakhstan and the mines, countryside, little villages and cities of Central Asia become battlefields.

Oscar Wendell is a washed-up, drug-addicted reporter for Stars and Stripes. He is the only reporter in the entire theater of war and he is not quite sure how he was picked over better-known reporters. But, he is determined to make the best of his opportunity, already envisioning the Pulitzer Prize as the world’s biggest story unfolds in his lap. He is given some very basic training sent to the front, attached to a unit and outfitted with the latest gear – a self-contained mechanized body suit that provides heat or cooling and even has a rather gruesome system of self-contained waste disposal.

T.C. McCarthy

I mention that system because this book excels at putting the reader (in my case, listener) at the ground level – what famed World War II reporter Ernie Pyle called the “worm’s eye view.” McCarthy’s characters are vivid, earthy and exposed to one insane situation after another – which they can only respond to by going crazy themselves. Some decide to drug themselves, some decide to retreat into themselves, some decide die in battle and others kill themselves. The wide-ranging battlefield leads Wendell from one complicated scenario to another as he drops all pretense of being a reporter and simply fights alongside the men he was supposed to be covering – not because he believes in the cause but because he is so tied to these men that he can that he cannot leave them.

An added dimension is America’s introduction of genetically modified soldiers – all identical and all grown from a test tube and all 16 to 18 year old females (the males were too aggressive) who have been raised in an environment that worships death and sacrifice. Their bodies are programmed to begin to die at the beginning of their 18^th year. The title of the book, Germline, comes from a slang term for the military program that developed these super soldiers. Soon, the Russians have their own genetically modified soldiers (all males) and the war takes on a whole new face. Wendell decides to get close to an American “genetic” and soon finds himself falling for her despite the overt prejudice against them.

Donald Corren reads Germline and he does a great job of covering an amazing number of accents. His voice characterization of Oscar Wendell is perfect – he is loose and jaded and wound too tight all at the same time. The only problem was his inexplicable mispronunciation of the word “corpsmen” – he pronounced it “corzman” when it is pronounced "coreman".

This is a roller coaster of a read. The technology is advanced, but this is not a gizmo-based story. Instead, it is character-driven story and it is well worth the read. It is the first in a trilogy about the war that is supposed to follow the separate experiences of three different characters that interact briefly in all of the books but have their own stories.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Germline (The Subterrene War, Book 1)

Reviewed on September 26, 2011.

Click here to see the review of the second book in the series, Exogene.