The Broker by John Grisham

Fairly boring story, lots of good info on Italian culture, history and cuisine

Published by Random House Audio in 2005.
Read by Michael Beck.
11 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

The last two thrillers that I have read by John Grisham have been anything but. A couple of years ago I listened to The King of Torts and came away with a great education in class action lawsuits but at the cost of a disappointing story. With The Broker, I came away with a great education in Italian culture, cuisine and great insights into the oft-overlooked city of Bologna, Italy - but it was a thriller with precious few thrills.

The Broker is centers around Joe Blackman, a Washington, D.C. lobbyist that plays fast and loose with all of the rules and revels in throwing his weight all over town. Blackman is approached by Pakistani computer hackers who have discovered and hijacked a set of super high tech spy satellites with a special computer program. They want Blackman to sell it to the highest bidder and soon enough the Israelis, the Saudis, the Chinese and the CIA are all interested. One of Blackman's associates winds up murdered and an FBI probe into Blackman's practices place him in prison.

A portico (covered walkway) in Bologna - I felt the need
to include a picture because Grisham
mentioned them so often.

Suddenly, he is part of a surprise last minute pardon deal by an outgoing president and he is whisked into a witness protection program administered by the CIA in Italy. Blackman is forced to learn a new language and a new culture. Most of the book deals with Blackman's lessons and endless trips to drink espresso in one coffee shop after another in Bologna, Italy. Seriously, at least 2/3 of the book is Italian lessons, lunch at one Italian restaurant after another or visits to Italian cultural sites. I am quite sure the inspiration to write this book was the desire to spend a great deal of time in Italy and still be able to write off every bill as a business expense on Grisham's income taxes.

If you are a fan of Italy, this may very well be your book. If you are a hardcore international spy thriller book fan, don't bother.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Broker.

Reviewed on October 17, 2010.

The Law by Frederic Bastiat

I cannot recommend this book enough.

Originally published in 1850.

The Law is a small book on the basics of economic principles written by Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), a French economist and member of their National Assembly. He only published works during the last 5 years of his life, which was cut short by a lingering illness.

The Law struck me as an economics version of Thomas Paine's Common Sense - a short, easy to understand book full of impassioned, clearly laid out arguments and examples that clearly demonstrate the author's arguments.

Bastiat was a man who was not in synch with his times or his country. He grew up in Napoleonic France, a time and place that replaced the idea of individual liberty with government action for the good of the individual. Bastiat argues (and supplies plenty of examples to back his arguments) that this is a perversion of the purpose of government: "The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushed headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above humankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority. They would be shepherds to us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us." (pp. 62-3)

Bastiat begins with a look at the origins of government. He argues, like Locke and Hobbes that governments had to have been organized to protect life and property. That is their purpose and when they stray from it, be it with protectionist schemes like tariffs or with Legal Plunder programs that "take from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong...if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do with committing a crime...then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but it is a fertile source for further evils...it will spread, multiply and develop into a system." (p. 21)

Bastiat would not be happy with amount of influence most modern Western governments have over the economies of their countries and the lives of their people. I can only imagine this Frenchman would be a proud supporter of the Tea Party movement - low taxes, no loopholes or special breaks for favored industries, take a hard look at all government programs and get rid of those that engage in the "Legal Plunder" that I mentioned in the previous program.

So, what is this short book The Law? I found it to be exciting, invigorating, intellectually stimulating, simple in it language and argument and every bit of a match for Thomas Paine's Common Sense. If the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence have meaning for you, if Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations makes sense to you, if you think Hayek's Road to Serfdom and Friedman's Free to Choose are relevant to the modern world make a point of reading this short book - it is powerful in its simplicity and it still has meaning 160 years after its initial publication.

I cannot recommend this book enough. 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The Law by Frederic Bastiat.

Note: Please make sure you get the 1950 translation - by all accounts it is superior.

Reviewed on October 16, 2010.

Jericho's Fall by Stephen L. Carter

It just didn't work for me

Published in 2009 by Knopf.

This wasn't a bad book - I finished it and I wanted to know what was going on, but...

The book successfully creates a mood. It reminds me of one of those novels set in the Highland Moors in which creepy Lord Whatshisname gathers his family, friends and professional acquaintances to his manor as he lies dying. The sparks fly and secrets are revealed as the horrible weather howls outside.

Jericho's Fall is not based on the Highlands, but on a lonely mountaintop mansion compound in Colorado. There is no English Lord, but instead we have a former Secretary of Defense/CIA Director. His daughters, his ex-lover and loads of professional contacts are in and out of the compound. Sparks do fly and secrets are revealed as freezing rain and snow fall.

Well, I hate those kinds of books and this one had a few too many hidden agendas, double secret agents and super spy secret gadgets for my tastes. Too much posturing and too many mind games. It is readable, but not great.

Stephen L. Carter

On the positive side, however, I was intrigued by the author's non-fiction titles inside the front cover and have begun to read them. I have found them to be quite well-written and have added many of them to my wish list.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Jericho's Fall by Stephen L. Carter.

Reviewed on July 23, 2009.

The Great Progression: How Hispanics Will Lead America to a New Era of Prosperity by Geraldo Rivera

Much like Geraldo himself, this book is a lot of sizzle and not much substance

Published in 2009 by Celebra.

Sadly, I have to do some explaining before we start. I am a history and a Spanish teacher (20th year this year!). I live in an ethnically mixed neighborhood in which my best neighbors are, by far, a Mexican family. I live with illegal immigration every day, in my neighborhood and at my work. I am not a raving nut that says "round 'em up!" Nor am I an open borders guy that wants to take in the whole world. My neighborhood has been materially improved by immigrants who have moved in.

So, now that we've gotten that out of the way, on to Geraldo's book, The Great Progression: How Hispanics Will Lead America to a New Era of Prosperity. It is a lot of sizzle, half-baked commentary and an endless series of attacks on Lou Dobbs (who I must admit that I have not watched for years now since we ditched cable and we don't have satellite - I thought he was the host of a financial show).

Early on Geraldo Rivera attacks Rush Limbaugh for a series of anti-immigrant comments entitled "Limbaugh's Laws." I did an internet search and I found 3 paragraphs of the same title. They are inflammatory. They are awful. But, here's the essential third paragraph of the commentary - the paragraph that Rivera ignores: "I can imagine many of you think that the Limbaugh Laws are pretty harsh. I imagine today some of you probably are going, "Yeah! Yeah!" Well, let me tell you this, folks. Every one of the laws I just mentioned are actual laws of Mexico, today. I just read you Mexican immigration law. That's how the Mexican government handles immigrants to their country."

That's a telling example of the slipshod commentary throughout. Rivera's thesis doesn't even hold up to his own scrutiny. He is critical of those that claim illegal immigration drives down wages and than, a few chapters later, he notes that Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers fame was against illegal immigration for that same reason. He even calls it an economic law.

Rivera asserts that the anti-illegal immigration crowd (he disingenuously calls them anti-immigration, meaning against immigration of all sorts) is racist because it is afraid of the gang violence of such groups as MS-13 and than he has a whole chapter devoted to drug-related gang violence on the border. So, the violence is real, but trying to keep it out or even to talk about it is racist? He does a similar thing with ARM mortgages and immigrant families (they aren't overly-represented, but then, a few chapters later they are because they are victims). He gets upset that Hispanics are hassled for ID to prove they are citizens and then notes that the presence of "obviously foreign" day laborers. Is only Mr. Rivera allowed to make such assumptions?

The book begins with "hard hitting" interviews with such political greats as J-Lo, George Lopez and Rosario Dawson. We get lists of baseball players of Hispanic origin (literally - paragraph after tedious paragraph) is a chapter called "Beisbol." I am still unsure as to the purpose of the chapter.

Geraldo Rivera gives us a look into his jet-setting lifestyle (he notes that he is writing in L.A. for this paragraph, Puerto Rico for another and so on) but shows how truly out of touch he is when he comments that America's lawns wouldn't be mowed, their kids cared for or our toilets cleaned if it weren't for Hispanics. Really? I wish I had that kind of money. The only lawn mowed by Hispanics in my neighborhood belong to houses with Hispanic families living in them.

Geraldo Rivera

Is he all wrong? No. Rivera gives an impassioned argument as to why education must become a priority in the Hispanic community. His chapter on "The Hispanic Consumer" is fascinating and entertaining. He makes valid points when discussing allowing illegal aliens to join the military as a path to citizenship in another chapter.

But, more often he wanders afield in commentary such as his on unions - he wants the so-called "Card Check" legislation to pass but isn't quite clear as to why, especially when businesses can just go to newly arrived workers with fake IDs to replace the strikers.

More irritating is his tendency to name call. For example, he calls "Joe the Plumber" a "douchebag".

If you want a lot of splash, this is your book. If you want well-reasoned commentary - the kind that has been thoroughly researched, discussed and evaluated, well, this is not it. There is no middle ground in this book. Even attempting to have a reasoned conversation about immigration with Rivera would be cause for attack and liberal use of the epithet "anti-immigrant".

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Great Progression: How Hispanics Will Lead America to a New Era of Prosperity.

Reviewed on August 3, 2009.

Note: This review was edited on January 19, 2025. Update: My Mexican neighbors who lived behind me (I referred to them in the first paragraph) have long since moved away. It's a rental property and no one stays more than a couple of years. But, multiple houses further down their street have been purchased and flipped by a Hispanic family that is using their skills to build wealth and turn some of the worst houses in the neighborhood into some of the best. Good for them and good for the neighborhood! I still think Rivera makes a few good points, but weakens the overall argument with weird comments, name-calling, off-topic points, edited quotes intended to be "gotcha" moments, and comments that reinforce stereotypes.

Lee: A Life of Virtue (The Generals series) by John Perry

A solid biography in many aspects, but not without its problems

Published in 2010 by Thomas Nelson Inc.

First, a bit about this reviewer and Civil War books. This is my 80th Civil War book. Robert E. Lee figures prominently in almost every one of them. I consider him to be the the most talented general that served on either side in that war and that is high praise indeed because many generals rose to the top and did distinguished themselves in that war. If Lee is the most talented general in that war, he is the most talented American officer of the 19th century and one can make the argument that he may have been the best ever (assuming one overlooks the massive point that he earned that reputation as a fighter by breaking his oath and taking up arms against the United States government, which I am.)

No one did so much with so little against an opponent that was better fed, had better and more numerous weapons, and outnumbered him in literally every battle. He fought with principle and with respect for his enemies (who he refused to call his enemies - he called the Union forces "those people.")

All of that being said, even I cannot approach the standard of hero worship that John Perry creates in the introduction of this book. Perry cites as one of his primary sources the Douglas Southall Freeman biography R. E. Lee.  Freeman was the primary advocate of a revisionist movement of historians popularly called the Lost Cause movement. It emphasizes the noble character of the southern generals, de-emphasizes the importance of slavery as a cause of the Civil War and justifies secession as a legitimate response to aggressive Northern attacks on the Southern way of life and economy. I would consider Lee: A Life of Virtue to be Lost Cause "lite".

For example, Perry makes a big deal of the fact that Lee never personally owned a slave. He also notes that Lee condemned slavery. That is true, but he did not need to personally own a slave - his wife and her family owned more than one hundred slaves and at least one travelled with the family whenever they followed him in his army postings. Condemning slavery while benefitting from it is a difficult position to defend (ask any devotee of Jefferson.)

Clearly, the war was about more than just slavery, but as noted Civil War historian James McPherson notes in his book of essays about the Civil War entitled This Mighty Scourge, modern historians are re-discovering the primacy of slavery in the debates concerning secession. Charles B. Dew notes in Apostles of Disunion, "Defenders of the Lost Cause need only read the speeches and letters of the secession commissioners to learn what was really driving the Deep South to the brink of war in 1860-61."

Perry's biography of Lee, however, is quite good on the whole. He makes the details of Lee's early life interesting, including all of his postings around the country as an engineer in places such as St. Louis and New York City.

More than half of the book concerns his time in the service of the state of Virginia and the Confederate States of America in the Civil War. Perry's description of the battles and the politics of the war is solid, despite glaring glitches such as the time when he refers to the Battle Sharpsburg (Antietam) as "Strategically...relatively unimportant." (p. 167)

Antietam was a massive strategic loss for the Confederacy. This loss caused Lee to stop his strategy of bringing the war to the North for nearly a year and, even more importantly, provided Lincoln with the victory he needed (vague as this victory was) to issue the preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation. This document brought in African American soldiers, stopped Britain's attempts to interfere in the war, and laid the groundwork for the laws and Constitutional Amendments that ended slavery forever. Some have argued that Antietam (Sharpsburg) was the most important battle of the war because of all of those strategic losses.

So, to sum up, this is a solid biography, but not perfect. Too much hero worship and a basic misunderstanding of the Union war strategy as typified by the fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of the Battle of Antietam.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Lee: A Life of Virtue (The Generals series).

Reviewed September 25, 2010.

I reviewed this book in conjunction with Thomas Nelson's BookSneeze program. I was not compensated for this review. The opinions expressed are mine.

Review updated on July 27, 2024.

The Jinglebob Man by Robert Kammen

So, your first question has to be "What is a jinglebob?"

Published in 1995 by Kensington Pub Corp

A jinglebob is part of the little spinny thing on the back of a set of spurs - the sharp part. It makes the "ting, ting, ting" sound you always hear in westerns as the cowboys are walking along and setting up for a big shoot-out.

The main character is The Jinglebob Man because he is imprisoned tortured by a sadistic superior officer with a set of sharpened spurs during the Civil War because he is accused of treason.

Our protagonist, Tyler Carradine, escapes from his prison and is now forever on the run, afraid of meeting someone from his past and in pain due to a lost love that he feels will not accept him due to his physical deformities and the accusations against him.

Carradine stumbles into a corrupt mining town years after the war and is finally forced to turn and fight rather than continue to run. Oh, and he finally has a chance to find love again (but not with his long-lost love).

The plot of the book is pretty basic western fare. Kammen's writing style is uneven. At times, the story flows effortlessly and at other times it seems as though he is trying too hard to sound authentically western and the narration breaks down and trips all over itself.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The Jinglebob Man.

Reviewed January 28, 2005.

Riding for the Brand (audiobook) by Louis L'Amour

Good, but predictable

Audio version originally published in 1986 by Random House Audio
Multicast performance with sound effects
Duration: 55 minutes.

I like Louis L'Amour. His descriptions and conversations are top notch. However, his plots are predictable so I really am grading this on a curve.

Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson,
Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings

I am also rating the audio version of Riding for the Brand which is interesting because it is told by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash. It was quite enjoyable to hear the four of these men work together - they were all quite good, especially Kristofferson and Nelson.

This audio edition has features that most don't, including special effects and a music soundtrack that was sometimes reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Westerns and sometimes reminiscent of Silverado. The inclusion of the special effects did speed the plot along (you don't have to describe that people are knocking on the door or riding horses, etc.) but sometimes they are distracting (one scene in particular had an overly loud clock ticking over the top of everyone's voices).

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Riding for the Brand.

Reviewed on January 26, 2005.