Murder One (Ben Kincaid #10) by William Bernhardt

Not as good as the others in the series

Published in 2001.

William Bernhardt has a whole collection of books he has written concerning small-time lawyer Ben Kincaid and his (mis)adventures and legal maneuverings. Most of the books feature Ben and his ragtag office staff going against well-funded corporate lawyers or the District Attorney's office and somehow coming up with a win.

Murder One is no different, except that it is not as good a book as the others he has written. In fact, I would not have reviewed this book for this forum at all except for the review quote on the cover that says, "...You never see the end coming." In today's over-hyped marketplace I've seen a lot of quotes like this, but this time it was true. I did not see it coming and that (and the accurate quote) deserves recognition.

This book, however, only rates a "3 stars" from me - it did not stay true to the strong character development that was present in the other books and I thought Ben Kincaid strayed from the character that has been built throughout the rest of the books.

I do, however, recommend any of his very early books - they are fun and well-written.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Murder One (Ben Kincaid series Book 10)

Reviewed in August of 2004.

The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Originally published in 1978.

Winner of the National Book Award

The Book of the Dun Cow is a simple fable of Chauntecleer, a rooster. He is in charge of a small animal kingdom and is confronted by the evil Cockatrice, a half snake/half rooster who is the son of the devil, an evil serpent that is trapped beneath the surface of the earth but is trying to get out to destroy God's creation. The book revolves around the efforts of the animals to come together to confront the evil threat and the costs that such action entails. It also has much deeper themes such as the nature of love and forgiveness.

I really was not looking forward to reading this book - in fact, I only picked it out of my pile of books because I thought that I had remembered a friend had read it while we were in high school. Much to my surprise, however, I loved it. It was well-paced and the main characters had depth. I recommend this book enthusiastically.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Book of the Dun Cow.

Reviewed in August of 2004.

Letters To A Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens

Originally published in 2001

Letters To A Young Contrarian is supposed to be a book for young people - I'm assuming by young they mean late high school or college.

I am a high school teacher and I can tell you that Hitchens' repeated use of foreign phrases without translations (such as "saeva indignatio" - p. 8 and "dei sacrificium intellectus" - p. 23 and "cette 'fugutive du camp des vainqueurs'" - pp. 91-2) and his continual references to the 60s and the Cold War without any background will lose nearly every young person who attempts to read it.

If by young, they meant 36 years old, than this 36 year old found the text to be interesting and challenging. However, I have to give it a poor score because he will fail to hit the stated target audience - and he will miss by a long shot.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Letters to a Young Contrarian.

Reviewed on August 21, 2004.

This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War by James McPherson

A "Must" for All Students of the Civil War

Published in 2009 by Oxford University Press.

This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War is a collection of 16 essays by well-known historian James McPherson on a number of Civil War-related topics. Some of the essays are brand new, but most have been published before but have been re-worked for this book.

The essays fall into five broad categories:

1) Slavery and the Coming of War; 

2) The Lost Cause Revisited; 

3) Architects of Victory; 

4) Home Front and Battle Front; 

5) Lincoln.

McPherson discusses the causes of the war in the first essay - a brilliant essay entitled "And The War Came." McPherson directly confronts those that insist that slavery had no part in causing the war. Please, read this essay if you are one of those people before you make that argument again (if you don't want to buy the book for fear of supporting someone who skewers your particular point of view, get it at your library, read it in the coffee shop at Barnes and Noble - just read it!)

Essay number 4 is called "Was the Best Defense a Good Offense? Jefferson Davis and Confederate Strategies." I liked this one because I spent a lot of time as a young person playing a Civil War board game called Battle Cry and it was always a challenge to figure out how to defend the Mississippi River valley in the Confederacy so I could sympathize with Jefferson Davis's quandary. Turns out that I analyzed things about like Davis did most times.

"The Last Rebel: Jesse James" was an interesting look at what really was a tiny little slice of the Civil War that spawned one of America's most famous criminals. Fascinating stuff.

"Brahmans At War" was an essay I was prepared to blow off - who really cares about the Boston elite, Harvard grads, and their experience in the war? Wow, was I wrong. A great essay about fantastic men who led from the front and gave more than their share. I was awestruck by the tale of Captain John Kelliher who lost his arm, lower jaw, a shoulder blade, two ribs and a clavicle at Spotsylvania. He not only survived - he returned to the front to assume command of the regiment!

Great set of essays. Well-written, a master historian at the top of his game.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War by James McPherson.

Reviewed on August 4, 2010.

Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life In Congress by Joseph Wheelan

I have found a new hero from history

Published in 2008.

I've known about John Quincy Adams's post-Presidential career ever since I read Profiles In Courage by JFK many, many years ago. However, what I most remember about that description of him was that that he argued against slavery in the Congress when he could have just coasted along in a comfortable political semi-retirement.

In the well-written Mr. Adams's Last Crusade, Joseph Wheelan does us all a favor by elaborating on John Quincy Adams's amazing career. Wheelan briefly covers John Quincy Adams's early career in the first 65 pages. As a teenager, John Quincy Adams was an assistant to his father while he was an ambassador to Europe during the Revolutionary War. He served as ambassador to several European countries after the War and also as Secretary of State (the Monroe Doctrine is as much his as Monroe's) and finally President.

Oddly enough, that amazing career was only a prelude to his post-Presidential career as a Representative from Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress. He reports to Congress at age 64. Adams was vaguely opposed to slavery but was very much in favor of the rights to free speech and petition. The Congress was avoiding any discussion of the topic of slavery, including ignoring all petitions to end slavery in Washington, D.C. (Congress administers the District of Columbia so it could have outlawed slavery within it by simple passage of a law).

Adams was indignant that a basic part of the Bill of Rights was being ignored so he began to read the petitions on the floor. He was told to stand down but he kept on reading. He was shouted it, threatened and shunned but he kept on reading. He began to investigate slavery, discovered he loathed it and was motivated to read even more petitions. In fact, the conservative "Adams had become the de facto chief spokesman for many of those denied a voice in government - abolitionists silenced by the Gag Rule, slaves, Indians and finally, women." (p. 150)

Finally, after years of these struggles, Adams was censured by Congress for treason for presenting "a petition espousing the dissolution of the United States because of the 'peculiar institution' that the South so desperately wished not to discuss." (p. 196) Adams was previously known to be a poor public speaker but in this cause he found his voice. He was put on trial in the Congress and he defended himself for nine days. He spoke with soaring words, withering sarcasm, humor and anger. Ralph Waldo Emerson described him as a "bruiser" (p. 197) when discussing his political speech-making skills and he was not wrong. The charges were dropped but Adams's speeches destroyed the political careers of some of those who brought the charges of treason against him. He found his voice and he used it to full effect everywhere he went.

A daguerreotype of Adams (1767-1848) taken  in 1843

The unpopular president who could not seem to connect with the common man on any level became a sort of folk hero - the man who stands against the crowd and fights the fight that he knows is right despite the odds - and wins!

Adams's role in the establishment of the Smithsonian is also well-covered in the text as well as plenty of details about his personal life.

Adams was sitting at his seat in the House when he suddenly collapsed. Two days later he died in the Capitol building. His funeral procession was the most elaborate until Lincoln's 17 years later. with his death, most felt that their last living connection with the Revolutionary War era had ended - the youngest of that generation had passed.

Well-written, informative, and inspiring - this book is highly recommended.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Mr. Adams's Last Crusade.

Reviewed on January 16, 2010.

Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet

Interesting perspective, merely an okay read

Published in 2007

I've been teaching for 20 years so I've ran into a few students with Asperger's Syndrome over the years. I am familiar with the condition and studied it in some depth in a class in my master's program. I was hoping Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant would offer a little more insight and be as interesting as the video documentaries and news programs that have covered Mr. Tammet over the years.

Alas, this read is not nearly as interesting as those presentations. I found myself skimming sections such as the three pages about his self-made game of solitaire and his detailed descriptions about number puzzles. What's left is okay, but in reality, how much can a twenty-something really say about himself that is that interesting? He's just started his life so there's not much to include in a memoir.

Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind is his current book and it sounds like it was more like I was hoping this book would be. I'll be looking into it.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Born on a Blue Day.

Reviewed on January 25, 2010.

METAtropolis: The Dawn of Uncivilization (audiobook) collection edited by John Scalzi

Up and down - the ups are solid, the downs are low, so low I nearly quit listening

Published in 2008 by Audible Studios.
Performed by Michael Hogan, Scott Brick, Kandyse McClure, Alessandro Juliani, Stefan Rudnicki, John Scalzi

Duration: 9 hours, 7 minutes.
Unabridged

METAtropolis: The Dawn of Uncivilization is a collection of short stories about a fictional future world in which the United States government is much weaker and local governments have had to shoulder most of the responsibility for governing. We get to see 4 future settings in this anthology - Cascadia in the American Northwest, Detroit, New St. Louis and Scandinavia. While the U.S. government is much weaker, the role of technology has grown much stronger. There are virtual on-line worlds and cellphones are everywhere and even more plugged in than they are now. The five authors sat down and mapped out the ground rules of this future world and than separated to write their stories. John Scalzi edited the collection and was the last one to write a story. He specifically tailored his story to fill in the blanks left by the other four.

So far, so good but what about the individual stories?

What's good is pretty good, what's bad is real, real bad.

The first story is "In the Forests of the Night," by Jay Lake. It is bad. The worst of the bunch. The story concerns a messiah-like figure called Tyger Tyger who arrives at Cascadia, a city of anti-technology greens in the Cascades in the Washington/Oregon area. The messiah-figure concept was done poorly. The anti-capitalist, anti-technology, anti-religion angle was silly (for example, in one scene creationists storm the geology department of a university and kill all of the geologists).

I doubt that Lake actually understands the meaning of the political term "Libertarian" and he certainly overuses the phrase "reputation economics" - in fact the concept is bantered around in the book so often that you'd think this was a new idea. Nah - just overuse of a cool-sounding phrase. The government of Cascadia is so loose and yet so complicated that it reminded me of the peasant collective government in Monty Python and the Holy Grail described by Dennis the Peasant ("Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!").

Lake's premise that you can hide an entire city under the basalt and loam (two more overused words in this story - buy a thesaurus, man!) and keep all of the heat created by people just living hidden from heat-detecting satellites is so silly that I have to wonder why this wasn't sent back for a re-write. 1 star for this story.

The second story is set in Detroit. It is "Stochasti-City," by Tobias Bickell. I enjoyed this one. It explored the conditions of America in this world the authors created and the story was in and of itself interesting as well. 4 stars

"The Red in the Sky is Our Blood" by Elizabeth Bear is the third story. It is forgettable except that I noted that it was the victim of long soliloquies about the evils of globalization. 1 star.

"Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis" by John Scalzi is the fourth story, and in my opinion, the best of the bunch by far. It had the most important thing that any story has to have - good characters. As a bonus, the slacker is kinda likable and we do get to learn even more about the world these authors created because, as I already noted, he specifically tailored his story to fill in the blanks left by the other four. 5 stars.

"To Hide from Far Celenia" is the last story. Written by Karl Schroeder, it builds on the notion that people can and will retreat into a video game world. This is not news - people do that now with online games. There are already online economies. They'll do it even more with the addition of 3D video glasses that overlay the online world over the real one. The story just didn't really go anywhere and the author's comments on economics are a joke. Too many long monologues - at points it was like listening to a half-baked graduate dissertation on economics and computer technology. I only finished it because I had already invested so much time listening to the other stories. I have to give it 1 star.

So - 5 stories with scores of 1 + 4 + 1 + 5 + 1. That equals 12. 12/5 = 2.4

Total score: 2 out of 5 stars.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: METAtropolis.

Reviewed on January 27, 2010.