CHINESE CIVIL WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (Chinese History) (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2022 by Hourly History.

Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour.

The first half of the twentieth century was a time of great turmoil for China. There were multiple wars, political chaos, multiple governments. There was also 15 years of civil war in two distinct phases, interrupted by the Japanese invasion of China during World War II.

From 1927-1937, Chaing Kai-shek's Nationalist government and Mao Zedong's Communist government fought a civil war. When Japan invaded China, the civil war was suspended (sort of) and a united front was formed. Soon after the end of the war, the civil war resumed and the communist faction won, with the exception of the island of Taiwan.

Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) and
Mao Zedong (1893-1976)

This short history suffers from a couple of problems. There is simply too much to cover. The book attempts to describe Mao's politics, but never even tries to explain the Nationalist program, such as it was. 

The book also suffers from an abundance of clunky writing. For example, this is from a paragraph about 2/3 of the way through the book: "...the next stages of the Chinese Civil War would commence. This state of civil war would last for more than three years, sending China into a state of warfare once more."

In two sentences there are three references to the civil war starting up again that state nothing more than the fact that the civil war was starting up again. Space is tight in a book that is only supposed to last an hour and also tell the story of almost 20 years of warfare. Cleaning up this sort of writing would make more room for other important items, like an explanation of Chiang Kai-shek's policies. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found at Amazon.com here: CHINESE CIVIL WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

FRANCIS of ASSISI (The Great Courses)(audiobook) by William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman

 

Published in 2013 by The Great Courses.
Lectures by William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman.

Duration: 6 hours, 10 minutes.
Unabridged.

The idea behind The Great Courses is a simple one - take a college lecture course given by an expert that knows how to give an interesting lecture and package it up as an audiobook that anyone can listen to.

In the case of this audiobook, there are two college professors that have a great chemistry together and really enjoy a discussion of St. Francis.

Before this audiobook, I knew only the barest of details of St. Francis so I found the entire discussion interesting and informative.

I do have a rather big complaint about the way the information was presented, however. They start with a biography of St. Francis up until the moment when he becomes recognized by the Pope and his movement is up and going. From that moment, they move to a thematic presentation and the listener hears about moments in his life that are not tied to any sort of biography. 

For example, they mention more than once that he participated in a crusade as a bystander and as a person that wanted to reach out to the Muslims that were defending, but there is no coherent narrative to that story that makes it more than just a few random snatches of extremely interesting information and teachings. I do not like the fact that I listened to a six hour audiobook about the life of a person and I do not have a grasp of many of the basics about the life of that person. As a fellow teacher of history, I cannot imagine the thought process that went into that decision.

Fortunately, they provided an interesting list of books or presentations written by other, well-known authors such as W.E.B DuBois and G.K. Chesterton.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found here: FRANCIS of ASSISI (The Great Courses)(audiobook) by William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman.

THE FLAG, the CROSS, and the STATION WAGON: A GRAYING AMERICAN LOOKS BACK at HIS SUBURBAN BOYHOOD and WONDERS WHAT the HELL HAPPENED (audiobook) by Bill McKibben

 

Published in 2022 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by Eric Jason Martin.
Duration: 6 hours, 39 minutes.
Unabridged.

McKibben looks back at his life in the suburbs in the 1960s and the 1970s and modern America and compares the two.

In certain circles this is an invitation to complain about the modern world with comments like, "When I was a kid, we didn't have all of this blah, blah, blah foolishness."

This is not that sort of book.

McKibben looks at three general areas:

1) The way that history was taught and the ways that he perceived that his country acted ("The Flag"). He grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts and was a tour guide as a young man for tourists who came to celebrate the bicentennial in 1976. The more he has learned, the more he knows that he was taught a simplistic, feel-good version of American history in school;

2) The things that his church taught him and how churches have fared over the intervening years ("The Cross"). He grew up and was very active in his church. He is really quite complimentary of his church upbringing. But, all denominations of churches have been shedding members. He even describes how one of the churches he attended had to consolidate with another congregation.

His thesis is not that the church in America was doing bad things, necessarily. His thesis is that the church gave up its best role - the role of speaking truth to power (for example, of the Old Testament story of when the prophet Nathan went to King David to tell him that he was wrong for sleeping with Bathsheba, the wife of one his trusted soldiers and then having that soldier killed so he could keep her).

Instead, the church became a part of the power structure. It worked with the government with the best of intentions. It seemed like a good idea to put these two institutions to work on social issues, but it neutered the church when it came to calling out the government on areas where it fell/falls short because the church owes certain things to the government or it is just too tied in to see the problems. McKibben uses the example of an attempt to build low income apartments in Lexington that was nixed because "those people" would come out of Boston and live with them in the suburbs. 

Bill McKibben in 2016
(photo by Gage Skidmore)

3) The situation of the American family and how it has changed over the years, including the wealth gap, how it relates generational wealth and policies that have exacerbated the wealth gap, especially among minority groups. He also throws in a healthy serving of environmental concerns - an area that he was worked in for a long time ("The Station Wagon"). This ties in well with the low income apartments in the previous paragraph.

I found this book to be a well-written and surprisingly tight set of arguments, considering that this book could have meandered all over the place with the topics of American history, the church in America and the American family. At the end, McKibben tosses in too much environmental discussion. It is the only part of the story that is not very tight, very focused and very integrated with the rest of the book. I'm not saying he didn't have a point, I am saying that it may not have been the best place to insert that point.

Still, I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE FLAG, the CROSS, and the STATION WAGON: A GRAYING AMERICAN LOOKS BACK at HIS SUBURBAN BOYHOOD and WONDERS WHAT the HELL HAPPENED (audiobook) by Bill McKibben.

PABLO PICASSO: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of Painters #5) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2020 by Hourly History.

Despite me having talked extensively about Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in my recent review of an e-book about Francisco Franco, I am not an expert on Picasso, but I know way more than the average person. He has some paintings that I really like, but I am mostly not a fan. 

This short biography hit the spot in that it covered the details of his life without focusing too much on one particular part. This covered his 70+ year career in an even manner and included his personal life well.

Pablo Picasso in 1962

The real weakness of this e-book was the fact that they couldn't license his paintings and insert them into the book. But, since I read this on my cell phone it was pretty easy to switch to the browser and search the piece of art that was being discussed and take a look at it.

I wasn't much of a fan of Picasso as a person before I read this book and my impression was not changed one bit.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: PABLO PICASSO: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of Painters #5) by Hourly History.

THE PRESIDENTS' WAR: SIX AMERICAN PRESIDENTS and the CIVIL WAR THAT DIVIDED THEM by Chris DeRose

 

Published in 2014 by Lyons Press.

This is my 142nd Civil War-related review. When I heard about this book, I found myself wondering how no one else thought to write this book before.

Former presidents have their own political power and impact current events. Nowadays, you can see this with Jimmy Carter's modeling of volunteerism and his attempts to be a peace mediator in the 1980s and 1990s, Bill Clinton's maneuvering to remain relevant, George W. Bush's refusal to endorse or approve of anything done by Donald Trump, the calls that the Biden Administration is really just the third Obama Administration and, obviously, the 45th President's refusal to admit he lost the 2020 election.

DeRose starts with a rundown of the political careers of each politician involved: John Tyler, Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Abraham Lincoln. 

Then, he discusses how they reacted to Lincoln's candidacy, the break up of the Democrat Party in 1860, Lincoln's election and the Secession Crisis. 

John Tyler, the 10th President (1790-1862)

To a man, they were all critical of Lincoln's handling of the Secession Crisis. John Tyler surprised me, though. Tyler was from Virginia and owned slaves and had a working slave labor plantation so he was never going to be supportive of Lincoln who was philosophically against slavery but only against expanded it into new territories and/or states as a matter of policy. 

Tyler left the presidency politically unpopular and seemed to have relished in the attention he received during the Secession Crisis. Suddenly, people were seeking his opinion on the most important issue of his lifetime. Tyler came to D.C. and led a peace conference hosted by Virginia in the Willard Hotel. 

Nothing came from the conference. Tyler operated as a proxy for the Confederacy, in my opinion, and his proposals were ridiculous. Tyler was elected to the Confederate Conference and served in the Provisional Confederate Congress until his death. He remains the only President that ever served in a government at war with the United States. 

I was amused by the constant thread of James Buchanan's post-presidency - he was going to write a book to explain his actions during the Secession Crisis. He claimed over and over again that he would be vindicated once everyone knew all of the facts and ... he never was. It was almost like a running gag throughout the book. Even today, he is universally acknowledged to be the one of the worst presidents of all of the presidents. 

The book continues on with reactions from each of the surviving presidents to the events of the war such as Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg, the fall of Atlanta, Lee's surrender and, finally, the assassination of Lincoln. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE PRESIDENTS' WAR: SIX AMERICAN PRESIDENTS and the CIVIL WAR THAT DIVIDED THEM by Chris DeRose.

INDIANA from the AIR by Richard Fields and Hank Huffman

 

Published in 1996 by Indiana University Press and Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

From 1993 to 1995 the two authors combined to take pictures of Indiana from an Indiana Department of Natural Resources helicopter - one was the pilot and one was the photographer.

They chose 100 pictures of the state for this coffee table book. There are 92 counties in Indiana, but there is not a picture of each county. However, these pictures are a good representative sample of the state ranging from the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan to the fossil bed at the Falls of the Ohio. The pictures include urban areas, suburbs, small towns, farms and pictures of Indiana's understated beauty. There are no commanding views like the Grand Canyon or the Rockies, but it is beautiful in its own way.

Since the book is more than 25 years old, it was interesting to note some of the changes. The Indianapolis skyline has changed with the addition of at least two very large buildings on either side of downtown. The photograph featuring the campus of IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis) is, I am pleased to say, very out of date. That university has really expanded and come into its own in the last 25 years. The West Baden Springs Hotel is pictured as it used to be - an abandoned but still glorious piece of architecture. Now, it is completely restored and very high class working hotel. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. I liked the book, but I would have made an effort to have a wider variety and included architectural gems like Columbus and Indiana University - Bloomington. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  INDIANA from the AIR by Richard Fields and Hank Huffman.

FRANCISCO FRANCO: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2017 by Hourly History.

I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time in. Francisco Franco was one of those people for me. 

I came into this biography knowing only the barest of facts about the long-time dictator of Spain. Franco ruled from 1939 until his death in 1975. This biography spends little time on his early life and could have expanded on the Spanish Civil War that brought him to power. For example, the most famous image of the war is the painting Guernica. 

Guernica by Pablo Picasso (1937)

Guernica is one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century. It depicts the chaos of an attack by the German air force on the city of Guernica. Guernica was holding out against Franco's forces and Franco enlisted German help to deal with the city. German and Italian bomber planes tried out the relatively new technology in real life. Pablo Picasso painted Guernica to protest the attack and had it displayed at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Because of that, perhaps the most famous artist in the world and perhaps the most famous citizen of Spain was not allowed to return to Spain because of Franco. Most likely, Picasso wouldn't have wanted to return anyway - because of Franco.

This is the problem with the series. Since each book is limited in length, the author has to pick and choose what to include. In this case, they skimped on how he came to power. I enjoyed the discussion of how he sorted out a third way between the Axis and the Allies during World War II (not that I thought he was a good man for having done so, but it was interesting) and continually sought to become an accepted member of the western alliance against the Soviets after the war. I wouldn't have cut a word from the coverage of World War II, but I would have cut some of the talk about how he ran things on a day-to-day basis.  Why? Going back to Picasso, what most of the world outside of Spain knows about Franco comes from that painting of the bombing and it should have been addressed.

Anyway, I confirmed what I had gleaned about Franco. I found it interesting how he picked a member of the royal family, Juan Carlos, to be his successor. Juan Carlos went on to lead his country to a democratic system of government.

This e-book is a good choice to fill in some blanks (what I did) or get an introduction to one of the longest-ruling dictators of the 20th century. But, it is not the complete story. 

I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FRANCISCO FRANCO: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

THE RECOVERY AGENT: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Janet Evanovich

 

Published in 2022 by Simon and Schuster Audio
Read by Lorelei King
Duration: 7 hours, 26 minutes.
Unabridged.

Janet Evanovich's The Recovery Agent features Gabriela Rose. Recovery agents can be another term for bounty hunters who look for fugitives, but Gabriela Rose is not a bounty hunter. She searches for missing property. Sometimes it's insurance fraud, sometimes it's stolen property and sometimes it's just looking for something rare for a wealthy client. She is based in New York City, is quite successful and flies all over the world recovering items. 

Gabriela Rose is dismayed to hear that her hometown in North Carolina has suffered a direct hit from a hurricane and (somehow) won't get any help from FEMA or any other government recovery program. The town is dying but Gabriela's grandmother knows where a fortune might be found. She was somehow told about the fortune by the ghost of her dead grandmother. In that fortune there is a ring called the Seal of Solomon. This ring is mostly in Arabic language legends about King Solomon of Israel who could use it to talk to animals and to control demons and djinn (genies).

Most of the book is a hunt to find and keep the ring in various settings with an ongoing simmering romance on the side. Readers familiar with the 1980s movie Romancing the Stone or the 2022 movie The Lost City will get the idea - except this book has competent protagonists.

My review:

This book is just all over the place, literally. There are 5 different trips to 4 different countries with jungles to find this ring. It gets old.

*****caution: spoilers*****

The goal of all of this searching is to find a treasure to save the town. Time after time the main characters leave behind literal fortunes of common, run of the mill gold trinkets, jewel-encrusted necklaces, statues, and at least one other famous golden item that would certainly have saved the town. 

There are other issues as well. Evanovich loves to name drop products in her books - pistols, boats, cars and more are named by brand. At one point, there is a planned attack on a compound. Gabriela Rose goes into battle with a fully automatic machine gun wearing a $465 La Perla Balconette bra (the price is mentioned). We know what bra she is wearing because at one point her bra is used as a tourniquet. Who wears a $465 lacy push-up bra into battle and not a sports bra? Sure, it made for a funny scene in the book, but it makes no sense - especially when she goes to a Target later on and buys common everyday underclothing and makes comments about how great they are.

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

What is good in the book is interesting supporting characters throughout the book.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE RECOVERY AGENT: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Janet Evanovich.

LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Sarah Davis-Goff

 

Published in 2019 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by Anne-Marie Gaillard,
Duration: 5 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

Set in a dystopian future in Ireland, Last Ones Left Alive is the story of Orpen, a teenage girl. The world is overrun by "skrakes".

The reader is never exactly told what skrakes are, but it is useful to just think of them as a sort of zombie. Skrakes hunt humans and when a human is bitten by a skrake, the human gets an infection and becomes a skrake. 

Orpen grew up on an island off of the coast of Ireland. There are three of them - Orpen, her mother and another woman named Maeve, The skrakes never come to the island, but from time to time her mother and Maeve must leave the island to scrounge for supplies and hunt.

The story is told in chapters that alternate between the present and flashbacks to Orpen's childhood. There are hints as to what Maeve and her mother did before they came to the island. It is clear is that they have extraordinary hand-to-hand combat skills, both individually and especially as a team. Orpen is trained in those skills as she gets older and has finally reached the point where she can head to the mainland as well....

This is a debut novel for the author and she did an extraordinary job of telling the story from the point of view of just one character. There is no all-knowing narrator that tells us what happened to unleash the skrakes and there is no change of perspective that lets the reader go "Oh! Now I see." Instead, we get the perspective of this one young lady and it's more than enough to build a compelling story.

The audiobook was read by Anne-Marie Gaillard. Her Irish accent was an amazing change of pace for this audiobook reader. Her tone was perfect, no matter the accent.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:

LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Sarah Davis-Goff.

WILLIE NELSON'S LETTERS to AMERICA (audiobook) by Willie Nelson and Turk Pipkin

 

Published in 2021 by Harper Horizon.
Read by co-author Turk Pipkin

Duration: 3 hours, 6 minutes.
Unabridged.

During the Covid-19 lockdowns Willie Nelson decided to write a book. This is not an unusual thing for Willie - he has written a handful of memoirs focusing on various parts of his almost 80 years as a professional musician (he was paid to play in a local band at the age of 10) and this book almost certainly overlaps with other books. 

The format of Willie Nelson's Letters to America is that Willie is writing thank you letters to various people, places and things that influenced his life and his career. He has a letter to his hometown, his grandparents, his sister, various members of his band over the years, his ex-wives, his wife, his kids, the fellow members of the supergroup The Highwaymen, among others.

Nelson's guitar, Trigger

There is also a letter to his guitar, Trigger. Nelson bought Trigger, sight unseen, in 1969 because he needed a new guitar after someone accidentally damaged the guitar he had been playing. Nelson has been playing that guitar ever since. He has literally worn a nasty-looking hole in it. This iconic instrument has its own Wikipedia page and was the subject of a Rolling Stone magazine documentary in 2015.

Nelson's last big theme is a series of politically-inspired letters. He writes to the Founding Fathers and he notes that although he is politically active, he refuses to talk politics on stage because that's not why people buy tickets and it ruins the fun.

I listened to this as an audiobook, but I liked these quotes well enough to get out a piece of paper and write them down:

"Rather than hiding our flaws, it's best to use our right of free speech and discuss them in the open."

"I've been asked if I believe people should be allowed to kneel during the national anthem. Regarding peaceful protests, and just about everything else, I believe everyone should do whatever the f*** they want to."

The biggest disappointment if this audiobook is that Willie Nelson chose not to read it. Instead, he asked his co-author Turk Pipkin to read it. Pipkin seems like a great guy and he does a good job with the reading, but he does not have that iconic Willie Nelson voice. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WILLIE NELSON'S LETTERS to AMERICA (audiobook) by Willie Nelson and Turk Pipkin.

HOW CIVIL WARS START: AND HOW TO STOP THEM (audiobook) by Barbara F. Walter

 

Published in January of 2022 by Random House Audio.
Read by Beth Hicks.
Duration: 7 hours, 17 minutes.
Unabridged.

The author of How Civil Wars Start has an extensive background in studying exactly why some countries collapse into Civil War and other countries don't, even when everyone thinks they will, like South Africa after Apartheid.

The first half of the book is a look at countries that slid into Civil War and specific characteristics that tend to make Civil War more likely. Her team has come up with a scale and they get concerned when societies move quickly on that scale. It doesn't matter if they move quickly away from democracy or towards it - generally speaking moving quickly means that groups in power lose power and they don't like it and they lash out. A classic example of this is Iraq. The Sunni had almost all of the power under the dictatorship Sadam Hussein, but once he was overthrown the Shia majority took power and decided that it was time to get even - democratization brought on a civil war because one group feared losing power and another group couldn't wait to abuse their newfound power.

The author explains how her team studies modern examples of civil wars and starts listing out the warning signs. A careful reader will start to compare those clues to the current political climate in The United States

and start to notice uncomfortable similarities. 

This is intentional.

This book is meant as a warning. The author lays out a scenario in which militias start a terror campaign against state governments across the country. By the way, the very existence of group-based militias is a sign of major trouble. The Proud Boys were clearly heavily involved in the January 6 riot (as I am writing this, several are on trial and at least one has made a plea deal) and a group called Patriot Front had 31 members arrested for planning attack on a LGBTQ event in a city park in Idaho.

We are standing on a precipice. Do we fall in, like the former Yugoslavia and Iraq did, or do we somehow decide to go back to working together like South Africa did?

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW CIVIL WARS START: AND HOW TO STOP THEM by Barbar F. Walter.

SEA HORSE: THE SHYEST FISH in the SEA by Chris Butterworth

 

Published in 2009 by Candlewick.
Illustrated by John Lawrence

Sea Horse: The Shyest Fish in the Sea is an early reader picture book aimed at children aged 4-8. It tells the story of a male sea horse named Sea Horse. It describes his daily routine and introduces his mate. Along the way, they have babies. The entire book is read on this 8 minute long YouTube video.

Link to this Tweet on Twitter
Yes, they misspelled Santa Claus.
Perhaps they should read more...😉

I normally don't review books aimed at small children but this summer I have been reading a lot of books that have been included on various book ban lists. This one was on a list in Tennessee because of a group called Moms for Liberty. They thought that the sea horses in the book were too sexy. Also, they argued that this book was a sneaky argument in favor of transgenderism (see attached picture - yes, it's a real Tweet - see the link underneath it to go to the actual Tweet). 

Here are more links to stories about the books they wanted to ban: Link here and here.

How does the subject of transgenderism come into a story about sea horses? Turns out that sea horses have a fairly unique way of breeding. They female deposits her eggs into the male to be fertilized and the male carries them until they hatch and then they leave his body. So, it looks like the male is giving birth. 

As a teacher (30+ years of grades 6-12) and as a dad, I didn't see any problem with this book. My experience tell me that kids love 5 kinds of "fishes" at aquariums, in no particular order:

1) Sharks;
2) Clown Fish (because of Finding Nemo);
3) Tang Fish (because of Finding Nemo);
4) Sea horses;

5) Electric eels.

Sea Horses have a cool factor all their own and kids love to learn things like the fact that they mate for life and the male "gives birth". This is exactly the kind of things that kindergartners learn and tell everyone they meet for the next 3 days.

I encourage you to watch the video I linked above and see if you think that this book is too sexy and encourages children to change genders. I don't think so. Moms for Liberty does. It's not the first time that I disagree with Moms for Liberty. I am certain it won't be the last time, either. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SEA HORSE: THE SHYEST FISH in the SEA by Chris Butterworth.

PRONTO (Raylan Givens #1)(audiobook) by Elmore Leonard

 

Originally published in 1993.
Published by HarperAudio in 2010.
Read by Alexander Adams.
Duration: 5 hours, 54 minutes.
Unabridged.

I am a big fan of the TV series Justified which features a character named Raylan Givens. I stumbled across this audiobook and was pleased to see that Elmore Leonard had done more than create a character for a TV show - he had written a whole series of books about that character.

Synopsis:

Pronto starts out in Miami and is mostly about Harry Arno, a man who runs an illegal bookkeeping operation (just to be clear, he takes illegal bets, he does do illegal accounting). Harry is ready to retire but is unclear how he will extract himself from the organized crime syndicate that "protects" his operation and likes their 50% take. Or...maybe it's less than that. Turns out Harry has been cooking the books for years and has been taking a cut out of the mob boss's cut for years, maybe even decades.

A U.S. Attorney has decided to take down the organized crime boss that Harry reports to. The U.S. Attorney assumes that Harry is basically honest with his organized crime boss and decides to pressure Harry by setting him up to look like he's skimming money from the organized crime boss's cut. The idea is to make the crime boss mad and Harry will run to the U.S. Attorney's office for protection in exchange for testifying in court.

U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens thinks that this is a raw deal so he gives Harry a warning. Harry pretends to go along and agrees to go into hiding if Raylan Givens is the one that takes him in. Raylan agrees and Harry ditches him in an airport and flies away to Italy. The U.S. Attorney decides it wasn't much of a loss, but Raylan can't stand the injury to his pride of having someone in his custody escape so he takes time off of work and goes to Italy to find Harry...

My review:

I was hoping for better. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5, so it's not horrible - but I was hoping for better. 

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Most of the book is about Harry Arno. The second theme of the book is the American expatriate poet Ezra Pound. Pound had lived in the town that Harry Arno fled to and there are plenty of quotes from his poems and discussions about him throughout the last third of the book. Pound was anti-Semitic and openly supported the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists during World War II. Clearly, Elmore Leonard was interested in Pound and decided to work him into the book.

Unfortunately, this felt more like filler rather than anything that added to the story in any sort of meaningful way and I think it hurt the book quite a bit. I doubt I will be moving on to the second book in the series.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Pronto (Raylan Givens #1) by Elmore Leonard.

THE LAST DAYS of the DINOSAURS: AN ASTEROID, EXTINCTION, and the BEGINNING of OUR WORLD (audiobook) by Riley Black

 

Published in April of 2022 by Macmillan Audio.

Read by Christina Delaine.
Duration: 7 hours, 1 minute.
Unabridged.

As the title says, THE LAST DAYS of the DINOSAURS: AN ASTEROID, EXTINCTION, and the BEGINNING of OUR WORLD is about the asteroid that all but wiped out the dinosaurs and the world they lived in.

Technically, very little of the book is about the asteroid itself but hopefully you get the idea.

Riley Black does an excellent job of describing the presumed daily lives of the creatures that we know about before and after the fateful asteroid impact. The author starts out with the most famous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops, but also includes less famous dinosaurs, insects, plants and mammals. The primary focus is the American West (Wyoming, Utah, the Dakotas, etc.)  one the most fossil-rich area in the world. But, other areas of the world are looked at as well.

The step-by-step description of what scientists think happened in the seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks after the asteroid's impact is compelling listening. The ways that some small dinosaurs and other creatures and plants survived in the long term is a testament to Jeff Goldblum's line from Jurassic Park: "Life finds a way." The author does a great job of demonstrating that this does not mean that really clever animals figure it out so much as it means that some animals and plants were simply built to survive the extreme heat and extreme cold that followed the impact. Life found a way because life was so diverse that a part of it lucked into survival.

One could think of of the asteroid strike as a nuclear war without the radiation. Nuclear weapons generate an immense amount of heat, but the aftermath would bring a nuclear winter caused by all of the debris that would be tossed into the atmosphere. The same happened here, but on a larger scale than if all of the nuclear weapons that humans have ever built were fired off at the same time. The impact was so large that there is literally an easily identifiable dark-colored line that shows where all of the debris settled afterwards. You can stand a football field away and see it running along exposed cliff faces in those fossil-rich zones I previously mentioned.

The author goes on to describe how those few survivors of the animal and plant world went on to diversify as the climate settled down.

I rate this audibook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE LAST DAYS of the DINOSAURS: AN ASTEROID, EXTINCTION, and the BEGINNING of OUR WORLD by Riley Black.

THE BLUEST EYE (audiobook) by Toni Morrison

The author won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Originally published in 1970.
This audiobook version was published in 2011 by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group.
Read by the author, Toni Morrison.
Duration: 7 hours, 6 minutes
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

This is a story of a girl named Pecola who lives in Ohio in the 1940's. She is sexually abused by her father and only knows her mother by the name Mrs. Breedlove. Sometimes she lives with other families as her family struggles.

Pecola is universally considered an ugly child. Pecola wants nothing more than to have blue eyes like Shirley Temple because she is convinced that blue eyes would make her pretty.

The narrative goes round and round and moves back and forth in time, often re-telling certain aspects of the story from different perspectives that fill in the gaps as the reader proceeds. 

In the end, it is not a complicated story, but it is told in a complicated manner.

My review:

Undoubtedly, my take on this book is overshadowed by the audiobook that I listened to immediately before this one: The Handmaid's Tale (click to see that review). On the surface, they have nothing in common - one is dystopian sci-fi, one is set in 1940's Ohio. But, they both share a common theme - the overwhelming sense of despair of people living in a society that is misshapen by a set of rules. Jim Crow era life for African-Americans was its own dystopia.

In The Handmaid's Tale, the rules are enforced by religious elite (or, elite that twist religion to serve themselves). In The Bluest Eye, the rules are enforced by a mostly unseen white society (white characters, even the mention of white characters take up only a few minutes of this 7 hour audiobook). 

White culture sets the standard of beauty for black culture (as demonstrated by Shirley Temple and Pecola's envy), it sets the rules about where black people can live, where they go to school, how long they can go to school before they have to leave to work, what types of jobs they can have and more. It determines almost everything.

Morrison shows a variety of families in the novel. Pecola's family is barely a family at all. She has a sexually abusive father named Cholley. Cholley's first sexual intimate moment was interrupted by white hunters who stumble upon Cholley and a girl and humiliate them by making them continue the act under the threat of their guns while they taunt and critique them. Her mother shows more care for the white family that she works for and shows more care for their daughter than her own. 

Claudia and Freida's family struggles, but they are making it - barely. Geraldine and Junior are rich by African American standards, but Junior has to attend a certain school and has to be friends with certain people and Junior takes it out on other African-American kids. Even the rich are limited in this system.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

The Bluest Eye was the first novel by the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni Morrison (1931-2019). I was spurred to read it because of a news story out of Idaho about 22 books being banned "forever" and this book was included.

Turns out that The Bluest Eye is one of the most banned books in the country. Here is a story out of Missouri and here is a link specifically for The Bluest Eye from a university that tracks banned books. It also made a list banned in the 2023-2024 school in Florida. Here is a link to that ridiculously long list.

This book is specifically complained about for sexual content. Ironically enough, the people who complain about the sexual content are usually the same folks that complain about Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT teaches that everything is tinged with race in America and this book embraces that theme wholeheartedly, and I have to say that CRT is more right than it is wrong.

I am a 30+ year high school teacher so I thought I'd read this book and give my opinion on whether or not it belongs in school. I have been teaching grades 7-12 in some form or another for 32 years. I have a 16 year old daughter and a 22 year old daughter. I also have a very high threshold for outright banning a book. There are books I wouldn't want to personally teach in class, but that doesn't mean they don't belong in a school or a classroom library.

I am convinced that a talented high school teacher could teach this book (see this article). This book has some powerful themes.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

THE HANDMAID'S TALE (audiobook) by Margaret Atwood

 

Published in 1988 by Recorded Books.
Paper book originally published in 1985.
Read by Betty Harris.
Duration: 11 hours, 20 minutes.
Unabridged.
Note: A newer audiobook version read by Clair Danes was published in 2012.

I am very late to The Handmaid's Tale - more than 35 years after the original publication date. 

The plot is fairly well known so I am not going to go into extreme details. The story is set in a dystopian future America after a violent coup took out the Congress and the Executive Branch. Pollution and constant warfare have lowered the birth rate to an alarmingly low rate and the upper classes have instituted a religion-based system of surrogate motherhood. The upper classes were inspired by the Biblical story of Jacob and Rachel from the book of Genesis and how Rachel resolved the fact that she was unable to have children by having her handmaid sleep with Jacob and Rachel would keep any children as her own. The red robes and the white headpiece are the outfit that the handmaids wear and this book is a sort of diary of one of these handmaids as she tells of her desire to break out of this system.

What finally motivated me to read the book was the fact that it kept on coming up on school censorship lists that MAGA groups like Moms for Liberty keep putting out (here is a link, including a Google doc with detailed reasons why). The graphic novel version shows up on the 850 books that a GOP Texas legislator wants to ban from schools. This notice from Idaho that finally prompted me to stop reading about this book and actually download this audiobook.

Before I give you my take on all of the book banning, let me give you a little bit of information about me. I have been teaching grades 7-12 in some form or another for 32 years. I have a 16 year old daughter and a 22 year old daughter. I also have a very high threshold for outright banning a book. There are books I wouldn't want to teach in class, but that doesn't mean they don't belong in a school or a classroom library.

Here is my take on this book and all of the banning. Generally, it is because of the sex in the book, but also a perceived insult to Christianity. I don't worry about perceived insults to any religion. Not because I am an atheist - I am far from it. I attend church every week and have volunteered regularly with a number of programs. I know that God is above anyone's ability to hurt or insult. Besides, the religion they are criticizing isn't any sort of Christianity that I recognize.

While there is sex in this book, it is never "sexy" and I think that this book would have no intrinsic interest to most high school students except that everyone wants to ban it. Why not? Take the Mad Max movies which are also set in a dystopian future ruined by war and pollution - they are almost all over the top action, almost no discussion. Kids like those movies because there are explosions and yelling and car crashes. The Handmaid's Tale simply has no action. 

That is not to say that it is a bad book. To the contrary, it is a 5 star book in my mind. But, there is no action that would appeal to young readers. It is the description on one woman's situation in this dystopian world. It is all about setting an oppressive, depressing, hopeless mood and it succeeds on all levels. But, it has none of the action or friendships that teen-friendly series like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson have.

The tone of the book reminded me of how I imagined the Soviet Union must have felt during the Cold War - an all-consuming gray oppressiveness consuming everything. It is brilliant and depressing.

For me, the brilliance of the book comes from me seeing that literally everyone in this system is a victim. The handmaids are forced to breed with upper class men. The upper class wives are forced to go along with it and be personally involved at every step. It sounds like the upper class men get nothing but positives out of this deal - after all, they get to sleep with two women, right? This arrangement all but destroys their marriages and sexual relations with the handmaids is...uncomfortable, to say the least. There are no normal relationships exist anywhere. If you can't procreate, the system sends you off to clear toxic waste or makes you a virtual slave. So many children are born deformed to the pollution...

No one is a winner, it's just that some are bigger losers than others.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Note: As I was finishing this review, I came upon a new story about this book on NPR. It was about how this book is almost always on the banned books list and the author was offering a literally fireproof copy of the book in an auction to raise funds to fight book banning. This is a book that will never be burned.

GRIGORI RASPUTIN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2017 by Hourly History.

I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The Russian Revolution one of those areas for me. I know a lot more than most people, but I can clearly see the that there is a lot that I don't know.

Rasputin is, of course, an iconic, almost mythical personality of the Russian Revolution. This series specializes in short biographies and histories that will take the average reader about an hour to read. There are plenty of people and historic events that I would like to know a little more about, but not necessarily commit to reading a 500 page biography or history. 

Rasputin is one of those people for me - interesting but not really worth that much of an investment of my time.

I've read a few biographies from Hourly History and, without a doubt, this was the best of the lot so far. Rasputin was an immensely interesting personality and this short biography did a very solid job of balancing the early part of his life with his more famous later years. 

I rate this short e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GRIGORI RASPUTIN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.