HAVOC (Philip Mercer #7) by Jack Du Brul

Published in 2006 by Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Read by J. Charles.
Duration: 12 hours, 43 minutes.
Unabridged audio edition.

Jack Du Brul's Havoc is a techno-thriller that races from the Hindenburg disaster to Africa to Washington, D.C to Atlantic City to Niagara Falls to Russia and back to Africa with hardly any time to take a breath. 

The book features Philip Mercer, a geologist by training that often troubleshoots for the White House. This is the seventh book featuring Mercer, a fact that was not on the audiobook label. However, Du Brul does a great job of catching the reader up on what has been going on - I assumed it was the first book in the series as I was listening to it. 

The Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937.

The action starts with a traveler on the infamous Hindenburg as it flies to its fate with destiny in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937. A crazed man is hiding a secret in a safe in his room and he is afraid that the Nazis know he has it and are plotting to steal it from him. As this man sits and watches his safe he devises a plan to get it safely off of the airship before it lands in New Jersey - he throws it overboard into a farm field with an attached note for Albert Einstein. The note falls off and the safe gets forgotten in the chaos of the Hindenburg disaster.

Fast forward to modern day in the Central African Republic. Mercer accidentally meets Cali Stowe, a fellow American. Mercer tells her he is here to investigate a geological hunch for someone as a favor. She says that she is there to investigate a village that has an extraordinarily elevated cancer rate. They are both telling half-truths. But, most importantly, this village is in the middle of a civil war and a dangerous warlord is on his way, burning and looting as he comes...

As the story progresses, Stowe and Mercer find that they have a mutual interest in this village and in each other. The more they find out about, the more tense the situation becomes. There are a lot of complicated threads in this book but Du Brul does tie them all together at the end

The story is full of action and adventure - some of it fun, some of it believable, some so outrageous that the story borders on silly. Mercer gets to be too much after a while - he is an expert on the Hindenburg, he knows how to fight, he's an expert with pistols, grenades, rifles, knives, swords and even with bows and arrows. He knows about mines, cave-ins, scuba diving, trains, dinosaur bones, forklifts, helicopters, speed boats and bar tending. But, his heart is in the right place and if you just go with the flow and don't think about it it just might not bother you too much. 

The audiobook was read by J. Charles. Charles did a merely okay job with the variety of accents required by this book. He has a hard time with women's voices and Cali Stowe has a lot of lines in this book. His foreign accents all fell into the category of "not an English language accent". Everyone kind of sounded the same. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Havoc (Philip Mercer #7) by Jack Du Brul.

Reviewed on July 22, 2014.

THE EXECUTION (Jeremy Fisk #2) by Dick Wolf

No Sophomore Slump Here!

Published in 2014 by William Morrow

This series revolves around Jeremy Fisk, a detective with NYPD's counter-terrorism squad. New York City has an extensive counter-terrorism unit because New York City has been such a frequent target of terrorism. Fisk is fluent in 5 languages, including Arabic and Spanish. He is frequently a contact person between NYPD and the FBI or CIA.

The Execution takes up where the first book in the series, The Intercept, leaves off. (See my review of The Intercept here) Wolf makes a great attempt to catch up the reader but I think that if you have not read The Intercept you will be a little lost.

The main plot of the story involves Mexican drug lords and an incorruptible member of the Mexican federal police, Detective Cecilia Garza. Garza leads a handpicked task force that is trying to stop the drug smugglers while the bodies of innocent bystanders literally pile up in Mexico. The worst of the worst is a drug lord known as The Hummingbird.

The United Nations in New York City. Photo by Neptuul.

While Fisk helps prepare New York City for United Nations Week (dozens of heads of state show up to give speeches, including the President of the United States) he meets Detective Garza as they both investigate a Mexican drug cartel style mass-killing in New York City. Soon enough, they begin to suspect that this may have something to do with a planned meeting between the President of the United States and the President of Mexico and that all of those dead bodies were intended to be a threat of something worse...

Dick Wolf is best known as the producer and creator of the many different TV series in the Law and Order franchise. I have to say he's learned something about pacing while working in television for all those years because this book moves along quickly, but not at a frenzied pace.  

This is an enjoyable thriller and this series is off to a great start. No sophomore slump here!

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review through the Amazon Vine program.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Execution (Jeremy Fisk #2) by Dick Wolf.

BOY MERCURY - AN ANTEBELLUM ADVENTURE: EPISODE ONE: THE WELDING (kindle) by David Macinnis Gill

Published in 2014 by Amazon Digital Services

This kindle short story is part of a multi-volume series about Amboy "Boy" Babbage, a young man with an unusual skill with machines. He is an engineering genius. Also, he is able to "weld" human tissue and machine together using mercury tears.

This skill is the crux of the story.

It begins on May 6, 1863 near the Chancellorsville battlefield. In the real world, Stonewall Jackson, the famed Confederate General lost his left arm due to a "friendly fire" episode and was starting to slip away to his eventual death on May 10 due to pneumonia. When he passed, his superior, Robert E. Lee, said, "Jackson has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right". Jackson was sorely missed a mere two months later at the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the major turning points (if not the major turning point) of the war.

Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson

In Boy Mercury Amboy Babbage and his father are brought to Stonewall Jackson's bedside and Amboy attaches a prosthetic robotic arm that operates with a complicated set of gears and pulleys and attaches itself directly to Jackson's nerves in the stump of his arm with the aid of Amboy's tears of mercury. Amboy also removes a pulmonary embolism from Jackson.

Amboy is then taken into custody by one of Jackson's aides and his father is sent to Andersonville Prison to be held as hostage to make sure that Amboy uses his skills to create more weapons for the Confederacy. But, Amboy longs for any chance to escape and eventually he comes upon a surprisingly beautiful opportunity...

I liked the mixing of real history with the steampunk elements and the "what if?" element with Jackson not dying at Chancellorsville. The characters were vivid and the sci-fi elements were strong. I assume as the story progresses over several episodes the reader will discover the secret of Amboy's tears.

My problems with the story come from the melding of the "what if?" elements with the actual Civil War facts. The premise is

1) The story declares itself to be "An Antebellum Adventure". Antebellum means before the Civil War and this story takes place during the war. By definition, it is not an antebellum story.

2) The story makes it clear that Jackson needs his mechanical left arm to be a successful general. At location 255 Jackson says, referring to the mechanical arm: "...the abomination has won too many victories on the battlefield. If not for it, we would've known defeat several times..."

Many Civil War officers suffered amputations and came back to lead their troops just as effectively as they did before because they did not need to physically lead their men into battle firing a weapon or swinging a sword like some sort of barbarian king. Many Civil War generals never actually fired a rifle or a pistol at the enemy during the entire war.

A colleague of Jackson's was General John Bell Hood, always known as a very aggressive general. Hood lost the use of an arm and had almost all of one of his legs amputated and this did nothing to change his fighting style - he was aggressive to the end. Robert E. Lee was in frail health most of the war and this did not make him a weak general and did nothing to damper his men's willingness to fight for him. A one-armed Stonewall Jackson would have been just as difficult for Union forces to deal with as one with two arms.

3) If Stonewall Jackson were so much more effective as a general why is the war still going on in 1867 when the real war ended in 1865? A prolonged Civil War would only help the Union and hurt the Confederacy because the Confederacy was short on all of their resources (less soldiers, smaller population, less horses, little manufacturing capacity, the Union blockade made it difficult to import weapons, powder, shoes, or anything else) and the better supplied Union forces would eventually win by simply starving out the Confederacy. This was their original plan, called the Anaconda Plan. Lee was looking for the big, splashy victories to give the Confederacy a political solution that would allow them to win. That was the reason for the Gettysburg campaign in 1863 in the real world - hit the Union in their own backyard, defeat them and start the peace negotiations while the Confederacy could still field an army. 

4) Andersonville Prison was not open in May of 1863 (it opened in February of 1864).  

So, great sci-fi grafted onto some lousy history makes the whole batch pretty weak. 

I rate this e-short story 2 stars out of 5. 
Reviewed on July 7, 2014.

GAME PLAN: HOW to PROTECT YOURSELF from the COMING CYBER-ECONOMIC ATTACK by Kevin D. Freeman

Published in January of 2014 by Regnery Publishing

In 2012 Kevin D. Freeman published Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It Can Happen Again. In that book, Freeman detailed how America's financial markets are vulnerable to manipulation by foreign powers by creating bubbles (like in the oil markets). Individual companies could also be targeted, individual sectors or the markets as a whole.

The first part of Game Plan is a brief review of the vulnerabilities he described in Secret Weapon. To be honest, if you have not read Secret Weapon, you can read Game Plan and get the general idea. He also includes updates, including letting his readers know that he has briefed the Pentagon on these vulnerabilities. 

The New York Stock Exchange. Photo by Urban.

The rest of the book is devoted to telling the reader about the strengths and weaknesses of various kinds of investments, such as stocks, bonds, gold, etc. in a period of financial crisis. He also discusses how they tend to do in times of natural or man-made disaster. 

The descriptions of each of these types of investments are amazingly clear. I am a licensed high school economics teacher and I have never ran across such clear yet detailed descriptions of these various investment vehicles that are aimed at the layman. Freeman is always sure to tell the reader that they should talk to their investment adviser before making any moves.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Game Plan: How to Protect Yourself from the Coming Cyber-Economic Attack.
Reviewed on July 5, 2014

RIPPLES of BATTLE: HOW WARS of the PAST STILL DETERMINE HOW WE FIGHT, HOW WE LIVE, and HOW WE THINK by Victor Davis Hanson

Excellent and Quite Enjoyable.

Originally published in 2003 by Doubleday

We all understand that wars can profoundly change the world. History is full of wars that brought giant transformations, such as Alexander's conquest of Persia (and just about everything else he saw) and the spread of Hellenistic culture, the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and Peru and the Cold War stand off that shaped the world after World War II. If you have ever heard the phrase "In a post-9/11 world..." that tells you that the world has been changed by the War on Terror. 

The simple idea behind Ripples of Battle is that it's not just wars but oftentimes single battles that change things. And, sometimes, it's not the battle that everyone knows, but a lesser-known battle that causes the most change. He uses the familiar image of a rock tossed into a lake with the outgoing ripples from the point of impact being the change. And, he does a pretty thorough job of showing that these ripples can go on and on for a very long time.

Hanson uses three battles in his formal discussion: Okinawa in World War II (April 1-July 2, 1945, Shiloh in the American Civil War (April 6-7, 1862) and Delium in the Peloponnesian War (November, 424 B.C.). He also draws similar conclusions about the 9/11 attacks in his introduction and epilogue.

Okinawa

Damage to the flight deck of the USS Bunker Hill
by a kamikaze near Okinawa on May 11, 1945. 

He begins with Okinawa in World War II. In many ways this is personal because his father's cousin and undoubtedly the author's namesake, Victor Hanson, was killed in battle at Okinawa. This was the first battle on an island that was truly considered to be Japanese and the Americans needed it to continue their aerial assault on the Japanese main islands. The 110,000 Japanese soldiers on the island were dug in and determined to make the conquest of the island so difficult that the Americans would be convinced that an invasion of the rest of Japan would be impossible.
The Americans came with an initial invasion force bigger than that used in Normandy the year before with 1,600 ships and 500,000 American fighting men and the potential use of up to 12,000 combat aircraft. These Americans fought against kamikaze aircraft attacks (a harbinger of the suicide bomber and the 9/11 attacks) and against foot soldiers that were ordered to fight to the death, no matter how terrible the odds. The Americans responded with the flamethrower (literally burning out Japanese defensive positions) and by bombing kamikaze airbases before they could even get the planes in the air. Cold and calculating military measures that were effective and preserved American lives.

And, in the end, they came to the conclusion that the Japanese wanted them to reach - the Japanese main islands could not be conquered by traditional means. So, they decided to use nuclear weapons instead. A cold and calculated measure to preserve American lives. A ripple generated by this battle is the belief that America ought to come at its enemies with unimaginable military force to overwhelm them and prevent long, ugly battles like Okinawa. We tried to bomb North Vietnam into submission (with quantity strikes rather than quality strikes), we called the start of the Iraq War "Shock and Awe" in order to demonstrate we could hit our enemies where we wanted when we wanted.

Shiloh

The second battle is Shiloh. This is my favorite section of the book because I am a giant student of the Civil War. Hanson has not written much on the Civil War, which is too bad because he has an amazing grasp on the issues and personalities of the war. 

Shiloh begins with a sneak attack on Ulysses S. Grant's army camped at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, a few miles north of the Tennessee-Mississippi state line on April 6. For months, Grant and Don Carlos Buell had been defeating and out-maneuvering Confederate armies and had pushed through Kentucky and almost through Tennessee. Buell and Grant were poised to combine their separate armies and there was no way that the combined Confederate defenders could stop it. So, they combined without anyone's knowledge and, using a P.G.T. Beauregard plan and led by Albert Sidney Johnston, they completely surprised Grant's army before Buell could arrive.

On paper, it was a master stroke and for the first few hours it looked to be a complete victory. It would have been but for the rise of William Tecumseh Sherman. Before Shiloh Sherman was largely discredited (he'd had a mental breakdown) and he bears more blame than most for the success of the sneak attack itself. But, he rallied the men, calmly rallying them and turning a rout into an orderly retreat. In the melee he was shot through the hand, he had multiple horses shot out from under him and his coat was riddled with bullet holes. When Grant met up with him during the battle he realized that Sherman had things well in hand (as well as they could be, in any case) and focused on other areas of the field.

This is the moment that Sherman became Sherman - the general that became Grant's trusted second for the rest of the war. It is also the last large-scale pitched battle that Sherman fought in, a fact that I had not realized until Hanson pointed it out. When Sherman fought on his own in the Atlanta campaign and the March to the Sea he avoided the large pitched battle in favor of maneuvering his opponent out of position and forcing a retreat. Not that there was no fighting, but there were no more Shilohs. For Sherman, the war would not be won when the South's armies were vanquished but when it's ability to maintain those armies was destroyed. He invented total war on a large scale and he gutted the Confederacy while hardly losing a soldier, especially when compared to the battles that Grant was waging against Lee in Virginia.

It is also the moment when Albert Sidney Johnston died and the Myth of the Lost Cause came to life (within days of the battle). Whether Johnston would have been able to lead the Confederates to victory in the West is a subject to debate. Johnston's skills as a leader are unclear based on what he achieved before he died. He lost giant chunks of the West and any chance to have Kentucky join the Confederacy due to poor initial troop placements. His skill at making his orders clear in battle was excellent but could the Confederates have overwhelmed Grant's men if Johnston had lived?

Confederate General Nathan
Bedford Forrest (1821-1877)

One Confederate general who comes into his own in this battle is Nathan Bedford Forrest - arguably the South's foremost cavalry man. He was truly a self-taught talent. This battle made his reputation, especially his famed escape after being the last man to be wounded after the battle. His reputation as a scrapper and master of guerrilla war tactics served him well as the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan after the war. He was probably the only man with the enough stature, enough venom and enough anger to have led that Klan to any level of success.

Perhaps most interesting is the case of Lew Wallace, the general who arrived late with the Union reinforcements and paid for it (unfairly, in his mind) with his career. But, he used that sense of being wronged as an inspiration to write Ben-Hur, the story of a man who is wrongly accused and loses everything. Ben-Hur was a publishing phenomenon, much like Harry Potter and Twilight have been nowadays. But, this one was one of the first.

Delium

You have probably never heard of Delium. I know I did not know it by name. I knew of two things that happened at the battle before I read this book, but I did not know the name of the battle itself. I knew that Socrates had almost been killed in a battle but was saved by Alcibiades. And, I knew that Athens lost that same battle. 

This battle was part of the Peloponnessian War - the war between Athens and its allies and Sparta and its allies that lasted almost thirty years. Fifty thousand men fought in it, but no great generals were involved. No Spartans were involved. Instead, this was a sloppy attempt by Athens to defeat a confederation of city states under the leadership of Thebes so that Athens could focus on its more powerful enemies in Sparta.

But, in this battle Socrates lived, rather than died. Alcibiades made his reputation and the birth of Western battle tactics may have been born.

Hanson ends with the discussion of tactics, but it is almost an afterthought to the chapter. In this battle, the army that faced the Athenians was considered to be the equivalent of Ancient Greek rustics - unrefined and definitely not the equal of the Athenians in culture. But, in this battle they did more than the traditional giant scrum match of interlocking shields that made up most hoplite battles. Instead, the held troops in reserve and moved them around during the battle. Basics to us, nowadays, but revolutionary at the time.

Socrates (470/469-399 B.C.)

This change in tactics caused the Athenian line to crumble. Socrates was in that line and he nearly died. Pre-Delium Socratic thought was not the philosophy that he is famous for. His best work came after this brush with death and it is that thought that inspired Plato and through Plato inspired Aristotle. What would Western thought have been without Socrates, Plato and Aristotle?

Alcibiades made his reputation as a cavalry officer in this battle. He was already marked to be a future leader of Athens. His beauty, his attitude, his intelligence and his ability to sway the crowd guaranteed that. But, this battle thrust him to the forefront.  If only he had died...

Alcibiades' career defies explanation. He conceived of and led the Athenian attack on Sicily, widely considered to have been a military disaster of the first order for Athens. However, he defected to Sparta rather than face a tribunal in Athens for defacing religious statues. He led Spartan troops against Athens and was successful until he fled Sparta (he had an affair with the king's wife) and joined with the traditional enemy of the Greeks, the Persians.  After advising the Persians, he went back to Athens and served as a highly successful military leader, then went back to the Persians and was then assassinated.  

Of the three battles, this chapter is the one in most need of a bit of editing, in my opinion. It goes on a little too long, but that is to be expected - Ancient Greece is Hanson's bread and butter.

So, does Hanson prove his point with these three battles? Of course he does. But, he does more than that. He tells three interesting stories of history and demonstrates that no action has occurs in an historical vacuum, especially not battles because so much rides on the outcomes and the sheer chance and chaos of it all. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: RIPPLES of BATTLE: HOW WARS of the PAST STILL DETERMINE HOW WE FIGHT, HOW WE LIVE, and HOW WE THINK by Victor Davis Hanson.

Reviewed on July 4, 2014.

STEELHEART (The Reckoners Book #1) by Brandon Sanderson

Excellent.

Published in September of 2013 by Delacorte Press

Imagine a world in which some people, seemingly random people, were given the powers of a comic book superhero. They are called Epics. Some have extraordinary powers, such as the ability to fly or the ability to control electricity or to heal people. Some have minor powers. But, these powers tend to warp the personalities of the Epics - the more they use them the more the Epics are disconnected from the world of regular people - the more they look at regular people as things to be controlled, used and eventually discarded.

Brandon Sanderson. Photo by Ceridwen.

18 year old David is the lead character in Steelheart. He lives in what used to be Chicago. It is now called Newcago and is ruled by an Epic called Steelheart. He has the power to turn anything into steel and he has turned Chicago into a steel-covered wasteland. Plus, he can fly among other powers. In the DC Comic world he would have powers equal to those of Superman. He has a troika of underlings that rule the city and under them are scores more lower power Epics.

Newcago is better than most places if you are not an Epic in that it has electricity and food. But, it has hardly a high quality of life. People are little more than slaves. Some have gone underground, but that is also very, very difficult. 

David scrapes together a legitimate living at various jobs but he also has a secret plan to kill Steelheart because Steelheart killed David's father 10 years ago. This plan just may work because he knows something:

"My mind holds a clue to how Steelheart might be killed...Many of you probably know about the scar on Steelheart's cheek. Well, as far as I can determine, I'm the only living person who knows how he got it.

I've seen Steelheart bleed.

And I will see him bleed again." (p. 16)

Sanderson joins with a secret group of anti-Epic avengers known as The Reckoners and go along for the ride as this ragtag group devises a scheme to kill a nearly unstoppable super-villain and his Epic consorts. 

This is a great action novel with a hard-driving plot and a lot of tension. Everyone knows how its going to end in this David vs. Goliath story (heck, his name is David - can we be more obvious?) but it's a matter of how it will happen and at what cost. Sanderson does not disappoint.

I rate this novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: STEELHEART (The Reckoners Book #1) by Brandon Sanderson

Reviewed on July 2, 2014

THE PROFESSIONAL FREELANCER (kindle e-book) by Rory Scherer

Published in 2014.

The un-named protagonist of the short (114 pages) e-book The Professional Freelancer has worked in a variety of entry-level jobs (fast-food, telemarketing, door-to-door selling, painting houses, lifeguard and more) and has not had any success at any of them (fires, accidents and government raids have all ended his employment). 

Now, the computer genius friend or the un-named protagonist has used his connections to get the un-named protagonist a job at a software firm. But, three weeks into this job, he loses it thanks to yet another government raid. The government is looking for something and the un-named protagonist has no idea what it is (but...he does have a USB flash drive with some strange code that he has brought home and left in his car - the car that won't start and has been left to sit in the driveway for a while, now).

So, the un-named protagonist goes out, gets dumped by his girlfriend, loses his apartment due to a failure to pay his rent (and two months back rent) because he has no job and moves in with his sister and her bully husband and their child. But, Will comes up with a new career for him - a freelancer, which is a fancy way of saying that he'll do all sorts of odd jobs. He visits someone's grandmother in a nursing home while that person is away on a trip, mows lawns, tutors kids and walks dogs.

Photo by DWD

Eventually, his "cases" lead him to a run-in with a Korean mafia boss. And, eventually, he re-discovers the long-lost USB flash drive and that leads to a run-in with another crime boss, which is where our story starts. The book actually begins with the un-named protagonist being beaten for the information on the USB flash drive and information about his now-defunct employer. The entire story is a flashback interspersed with the action with the mafia boss.

While the story moves along briskly, I found the main character (the un-named protagonist) to be a difficult character to like and to root for. I found myself agreeing with his bully brother-in-law more and more as the story goes on. His comments about wanting put his nephew on Ritalin and the way he treats him pretty much sealed the deal for me. What is supposed to be a story of a lovable loser making good (which is exactly where the story is when the main character helps with the euchre tournament in the nursing home in the middle of the story) just fell short.

Disclosure: A review copy of this e-book was provided to me by the author in exchange for an honest review.

I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Professional Freelancer by Rory Scherer.

Reviewed on June 29, 2014

THE CAMEL CLUB (Camel Club #1) (audiobook) (abridged) by David Baldacci

Published by Time Warner AudioBooks in 2005.
Read by James Naughton
Duration: 5 hours, 39 minutes

Abridged

Four outcasts form The Camel Club, a team that keeps an eye on the government so that it can discover the "truth". The club is led by Oliver Stone - not the director but a former CIA assassin who has taken the movie director's name. Stone literally stakes out the White House and watches who comes and goes. Reuben Rhodes is a former soldier and DIA member who works in a warehouse. Caleb Shaw works for the Library of Congress and often dresses like he was in the 19th century. The last member is Milton Farb, a computer genius with obsessive compulsive disorder.

These four witness a murder of a government agent on Theodore Roosevelt Island, D.C. area national park. When it looks like the murder is going to be treated as a suicide, the club swings into action with the support of a friendly Secret Service agent and discovers a conspiracy that was even larger than they could have imagined that extends all of the way into the White House itself.

I listened to this book as an abridged audiobook. The unabridged audiobook (read by a different reader) lasted 16 hours and 10 minutes. My abridged version, read by two-time Tony Award-winning actor James Naughton lasted a mere 5 hours and 39 minutes, making it almost exactly one-third the length of the unabridged version. Taking into account that different readers can read at different paces, this abridged version is still missing about two-thirds of the book - and it shows.

The White House

The abridged version introduces characters with little or no explanation (the Reuben Rhodes character gets the short shrift, for sure) and the plot sometimes jumps forward in a herky-jerky fashion. At first, I thought it was because the book was poorly written but then I finally realized that it was abridged after I read the fine print on the back of the box (it is not disclosed anywhere else). Naughton did a solid job as the reader, but I cannot recommend his abridged version. I have not listened to the unabridged version, but it has to be better than the abridged version. 

I rate this abridged audiobook 2 stars out of 5. The unabridged version can be found on Amazon here: The Camel Club. I couldn't find anyone selling the abridged version.

Reviewed on June 27, 2014.

THE BIG TRIP UP YONDER by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Originally published in 1954 by the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction, Kurt Vonnegut's short story The Big Trip Up Yonder is set in the year 2185 in a time in which old age has been defeated. The main character is Gramps Ford, a man that was 70 when anti-gerasone, the cure to aging was created. He has been 70 years old for 102 years. He is grumpy, vindictive and generally unpleasant - much like you would expect for a man that has has been 70 years old for 102 years.

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

Galaxy Science Fiction was designed to be thoughtful science fiction rather than laser guns and explosions driven science fiction and Vonnegut's style fits the bill perfectly. He looks at what would happen in a world with no death. It becomes crowded - so crowded that privacy is a rarity and people are forced to live cheek-by-jowl with their families in hallways, living rooms and the like.

If you have ever seen a movie or a TV show in which greedy family members are waiting around the family manor for the eldest family member (who changes the will frequently) to die you will immediately understand the premise of this short story. But, Gramps can't die because he never ages. Until, that is, when he disappears one day...

This is early Vonnegut but his angry whit and sarcastic view of human nature shine through. While mostly filled with a bitter tone, the last two pages save the story and make it end with a funny, almost upbeat tone. Also, like Vonnegut, I am a native Hoosier and I always note his references to his home state of Indiana. In this case, the Indy 500 is referred to twice, although it has now become the Indy 5,000.

This short story was re-printed as a single short story paperback by Aegypan Press. 

I rate this short story 4 stars out of 5.

This short short can be found on Amazon.com here: The Big Trip Up Yonder.

Reviewed on June 23, 2014.

THE THIRD RULE of TEN (Tenzing Norbu #3) by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay

This series returns to its winning ways.

Published in 2014 by Hay House Visions

Former Buddhist monk and ex-LAPD officer Tenzing "Ten" Norbu returns in The Third Rule of Ten.

Ten continues his search for the perfect girl but his professional life has taken off in a big way thanks to the celebrity connections he made in The Second Rule of Ten. Mac Gannon, an aging action hero star who is an ultra-Catholic with a propensity to cheat on his wife and drink too much and the spout racist venom (clearly inspired by Mel Gibson) hires Ten to find a missing illegal alien housekeeper. That's tricky enough with the hazy documentation comes with being an illegal alien, but Ten has to keep it as quiet as possible since Mac is really hiring Ten so that Bets McMurtry, California's answer to Sarah Palin, does not get tied to her (even though she desperately wants her friend found, she is always aware of the political implications).

Photo by Niels Noordhoek

As Ten starts to search he comes across other seemingly unrelated cases as he digs and discovers it's not just people that are coming across the border and discovers that plenty of people are willing to kill to keep that a secret. 

Despite the overt attacks on anyone on the political right throughout the book (and some might say the Catholic faith as well), I find myself reading the book because I just like the character Ten.  The mystery was good, there is plenty of action and humor as well.  I have read 3 of the 4 books in the series and I am pleased to say that this series is back on its winning ways with The Third Rule of Ten.

Note: I was given a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

See all of my reviews of book in this series by clicking here.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Third Rule of Ten.

Reviewed on June 9, 2014.

STONEWALL JACKSON (Landmark Books #86) by Jonathan Daniels

Published in 1959 by Random House
Illustrated by William Moyers

In the 1950's and 1960's Random House created an extraordinary history series for children called Landmark Books. There were 122 books in the American history series and 63 in the World Landmark series. A very solid description of the series can be found here: link. When I was a kid my little hometown library had what seemed like an endless shelf of these books (I even remember where it was in the library nearly 40 years later). Undoubtedly, these books are part of the reason I am a history teacher.

Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson 
(1824-1863)

So, when I found one of these volumes, Stonewall Jackson, sitting all by itself at a book sale my heart leapt like I was seeing an old friend that I have not spoken to for years. It had been purged from a school library, which is very sad in my mind because this entire series is excellent.

This short history (184 pages of text and illustrations, including a six page index) is short on Jackson's youth and long on his experiences in the Civil War. It also includes his service in the Mexican War and his famed appointed to the Virginia Military Institute as an instructor. To put it mildly, he was as poor a teacher as he was an excellent officer during the Civil War.

The description of Jackson's famed Valley Campaign is explained in this book as well as I have ever read and better than in most  books. I found the illustrations to be solid and nothing more, but I remember staring at similar illustrations when I was a kid, coming back to them again and again, trying to absorb what people wore and carried back in those days.

This book is short on causes of the war. Slavery is barely mentioned. States' Rights gets one mention (p. 44) and Virginia seceding because of Lincoln's intent to use the military to keep the Union intact is given a brief mention (p.45). This oversight points to the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the series. It is long on action and short on analysis. If you are looking for an well-rounded biography of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, this book will disappoint (thus, the reason for the 4 star rating). However, if you are looking for a solid introduction that kids will want to read and will give a solid foundation for future learning, this book and this series fits the bill, for kids and adults.

Bottom line: I will keep this book in my personal collection and if one of my kids wanted to learn about the war or about Jackson in particular, I would gladly put this book in their little hands as a place to start.

The Landmark series is being re-printed. I do not know if this book is among those that are being re-printed.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: STONEWALL JACKSON (Landmark Books #86). 

Reviewed on June 3, 2014.

THE HISTORY of the ANCIENT WORLD: FROM the EARLIEST ACCOUNTS to the FALL of ROME by Susan Wise Bauer

Published by W. W. Norton in 2007

Susan Wise Bauer is well-known in the home school community for her well-written histories. I am not a home school parent but I do recommend her History of the Ancient Word for history buffs who would like a long-term general overview of history.

Bauer mines lots of types of sources to build a view of the earliest cities and their beliefs. Bauer's history focuses on political leaders and religious/philosophical beliefs of different civilizations. One thing that I really like was her ability to take myths and legends (like Gilgamesh) and tie them into actual history and demonstrate why those myths and legends mattered to those ancient peoples and give the modern reader a way to have a better understanding of these ancient peoples. 

The book starts with a focus on four major civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus River Valley (India) and the Yellow River Valley (China). As these groups grow, other areas are added (such as Ancient Greece and Rome).  

The text of this book is 777 pages long and it has almost 90 pages of works cited, notes and an index. One of the real strengths of this book is the inclusion of nearly 100 relevant maps. I was also pleased with the timeline included at the end of every chapter was helpful as well. Each timeline included the civilization just discussed and another of the groups as well so they can be compared.

For all of the strengths, the book does have weaknesses. It rarely discusses technological changes or different agricultural techniques. The book focuses on leaders, wars and battles, the common man of the past is rarely spoken of. To be fair, this book is a chunk as it is - if more detail were included it would be an unwieldy tome. 

Constantine the Great (272-337).
Photo by Jean-Christophe BENOIST

Bauer does delve into philosophical movements, as I mentioned earlier, but, surprisingly, leaves out the entirety of the philosophical movement of Ancient Greece except to quote them when talking about other cultures. Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, the Stoics - their ideas are not discussed at all. I found that to be so odd that I literally searched the book's index to see if I had just skipped the chapter they are in. Along with Judeo-Christian beliefs, Greek thought was (and is) one of the pillars of Western thought. 

The book does not actually go to the Fall of Rome, which has been traditionally dated at 476 AD. Instead, it ends at 312 AD when Constantine the Great became the sole Roman Emperor (prior to that he was a co-ruler). That is an interesting date to choose because that is the moment when Christianity stopped being a persecuted religion in the Roman Empire. 

NOTE: This book is the first in a multi-part series that is still being published. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome.

A CALL to ACTION: WOMEN, RELIGION, VIOLENCE, and POWER (audiobook) by Jimmy Carter

Published in 2014 by Simon and Schuster (AUDIOWORKS)
Read by the author, Jimmy Carter
Duration: 6 hours, 33 minutes

Jimmy Carter and I have a strange relationship. Don't get me wrong, the 39th President and I have never met and are not likely to. I think that his presidency was, on balance, a well-intentioned mess and his post-Presidential career has been a mix of amazing achievements (Habitat for Humanity, for example) combined with annoying commentary and self-intervention into areas where he was not invited (ask Bill Clinton what he thinks of Carter's self-appointed mission to North Korea during the Clinton Administration).

This book only re-affirms my impressions of Jimmy Carter. I admire his religious faith and his intimate knowledge of the scriptures. I also admire his willingness to learn about other faiths and the fact that he teaches in his church's Sunday school. His work through the Carter Center has also been a mixed bag of amazing work against poverty and disease and less-than-helpful self-insertion into international politics. 

As Carter describes it early in his book, A Call to Action was written because so many people asked him to use his position to call attention to the how religion was being used against women around the world. 

The book also looks at the economic and political status of women and often ties religious views into how women and doing economically and politically. This is mostly a look at Christianity and Islam with some commentary on Judaism but almost none on Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism or any of the other faiths of the world.

Carter is especially critical of Christian denominations that do not allow women to be pastors or priests. He lays down his arguments here quite well, which is appropriate since he publicly broke with the Southern Baptists over this topic in 2000 and has laid out his reasoning for doing so many times. 

Former President Jimmy Carter signing
 A CALL TO ACTION in April of 2014. 
Photo by Mark Turner

He is less critical of the Islamic world. Don't get me wrong, he is critical, but spends much less time on the topic than he does in criticizing Christianity. He dismisses a lot of the more obvious things like burkas, not letting women go to school and not letting women receive medical treatment as local tradition. This is true, but it is tradition bolstered by certain verses in the Koran or by attitudes that draw on those verses for strength. 

This leads to the heart of my strange relationship with Jimmy Carter. It is not that he did not have a point about any of this stuff, it is that he points his finger at America and the West for so long in comparison to the other religions and countries.  He gushes over the improvement of the conditions for women in China in a section that focuses on China and brushes over the one child policy, forced abortions (he addresses the forced abortions at the end of the book but only as part of a larger movement) and the number of girls in orphanages. He focuses on the positives and brushes over the negative. When discussing America, he brushes over our positives and focuses on the negatives. Note, I am not saying we are perfect, I am saying his focus is often out of balance. 

The book was read by Jimmy Carter. At first, I thought that this was an odd choice considering his age (he was 89 when this book was released). His weaker voice has only deepened his accent and it does take a few minutes to get used to it. But, in the end, Carter's unique voice, especially if you remember his presidency, was the only one that could read this audiobook - his style is all over the text and you would have been imagining it being read in his voice anyway. At times, his emphasis on certain words while reading express his feelings more than the words themselves would have. Every time he says the phrase "female genital cutting" he practically spits out the word "cutting" - his distaste is obvious.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A CALL to ACTION: WOMEN, RELIGION, VIOLENCE, and POWER (audiobook) by Jimmy Carter.

Reviewed on May 31, 2014.