Liberty! The American Revolution DVD

A history teacher's review

When this first came out on PBS I started watching it and never got into the flow of it. I hated the fact that they used actors to play real people rather than using the tried and true (and fantastic) Ken Burns style. Ironically, I absolutely loved the book Liberty ! : The American Revolution by Thomas Fleming by - it is, hands down, the best single-volume comprehensive history of the American Revolution that I have found.
So, I was pretty much bashing the series because it was not something else. So, here I am years later and I decided to give it a second try. I am glad that I did.

Liberty! is much better than I remembered. It is not as good as the book but it the best documentary on the American Revolution I have seen. It is as thorough as one can be in the limited time that this format will allow.

"The Boston Massacre" by Paul Revere

As for the actor thing - this time around I really liked it. The actors are really good and the story is paced very well. The build up to the revolution is logical and shows how the logic of both the British and the American positions and how those positions led to the Revolution.

Liberty! does a good job of going back and forth from the political to the military action in the actual war. The last episode in the series covers the Articles of Confederation and the writing of the Constitution a little too quickly but it makes a good point about how the original argument about the Constitution are still the same argument we are having today - how much power should our national government have?
 
I rate this DVD set 5 stars out of 5.

This DVD set can be found on Amazon.com here: Liberty!

Reviewed on July 18, 2009.

Too Close to Home by Linwood Barclay

Not as good as other Linwood Barclay books

Published in 2009 by Bantam.

I am an enthusiastic fan of Never Look Away and Fear the Worst my first two Linwood Barclay books. This book continues in the tradition of many film noir thrillers - the regular guy who gets his whole life overturned by some sort of crime and how he reacts to it. Unfortunately, Too Close to Home was not the equal of those two books.

In Too Close to Home we meet the Cutter family, a mom, dad and a teenage son. The neighbors are brutally murdered one night and the family skeletons start to come out of the closet in a big, big way as the police begin to investigate everyone who even might be connected to the victims.

Linwood Barclay

This was precisely the problem with the book, in my opinion. This family has too many skeletons. Every few pages there is a major plot twist with a "sit down, I've got to tell you something" moment.

I am still giving the book 3 stars out of 5 because Barclay makes you want to keep pushing on - even though you know it is just going to get more complicated to the point of being silly.

This book can  be found on Amazon.com here: Too Close to Home.

Reviewed on November 26, 2010.

God Came Near (Deluxe Edition) by Max Lucado

An enjoyable, short read

Published by Thomas Nelson in 2010.

I had just ended a book and was casting about for something to read in my big pile of books in the closet. I came up with God Came Near more as a "Why not?" choice than anything else. I've seen different versions of this book around for years, but I'd never picked it up.

I soon found myself drawn in. Lucado revels in the "God in the small things moments." He also focuses his readers on Jesus the man - not the movie version of Jesus, the untouchable, above it all Holy Man. Instead, as the title of this book reminds the readers, "God Came Near" - Jesus was God becoming one of us - a walking, talking human being with sore feet, who got thirsty, who took naps and who was known almost exclusively by his first name by everyone, and a fairly common first name, at that. He came as nobody special and became the most written about and talked about figure in history.

I was especially struck by a passage in Chapter 9 that noted that everyone, those for him, those against, the curious, they all felt they could approach him : "There was not one person who was reluctant to approach him for fear of being rejected."

Max Lucado

Lucado wanders around in his discussions. He has a cute and thought-provoking story based on the children's song "This Little Gospel Light of Mine", thoughts about what can weaken faith and the warning signs we should pay attention to, the end of life, the Christian as God's ambassador, and he encourages us to get up from our own failures in our walk of faith by looking at all of the big names in the Bible that failed but got back up and continued their own faith walks.

Mostly, the book works because it comes across as a book written for real people - it approaches the reader in the real world, reminds him or her of the amazing story of the God who came to his people who refused to come to him and, in my case, reminded me of how truly remarkable that is.
 
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: God Came Near Deluxe Edition
 
Reviewed on November 24, 2010.

Ancient Enemy (Howard Moon Deer) by Robert Westbrook

Full of gimmicks, but it still works!

Originally published in 2001.

Synopsis:

Ancient Enemy is part of a series of novels about Howard Moon Deer, a highly-educated Sioux Indian who is living in Northern Arizona and helping Jack Wilbur, a blind ex-police chief from San Francisco run a detective agency near the Pueblo Indians. By the way, Howard Moon Deer knows absolutely nothing about being a detective. They run across a couple of murders involving the Pueblos and an ancient Anasazi town and human remains that may have the key to their disappearance centuries ago. The title refers to the Navajo name for the Anasazi.


My review:

Robert Westbrook

Sound gimmicky? Sound like a bad detective show like Jake and the Fat Man or Remington Steele? Sure it does, but it still works. Mostly it works because Howard Moon Deer is as much of a fish out of water as the reader is. Although he is a Native American, the Sioux are not like the Arizona Indians at all. Plus, he has pretty much abandoned his Indian ancestry in search of a doctorate in literature. So, the characters are interesting, the books stand alone very well since this is my first one but it is the third in the series. The anthropology of the Anasazi and the Pueblos made the book very interesting for me

 
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Ancient Enemy.
 
Reviewed in  February of 2005.

A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy by Robert Moore

Fascinating and depressing look into the "new" Russia

Published in 2003.

Synopsis:

The Kursk was the largest, most-powerful nuclear submarine in the Russian fleet. It was one of only a very few of their premier ships - designed before the Soviet collapse and completed by the Russian government. It was larger than anything in the American fleet.

In August of 2000 there was an accident caused by a malfunction in a poorly maintained dummy torpedo during a war games exercise near the Arctic circle. The explosion of the dummy caused the explosion of every non-nuclear piece of ordinance on the sub and it immediately sink to the floor of the ocean 370 feet down. Most of the sailors died right away but about 20 survived in the aft compartments for several days.

The book details the poor quality of Russia's underwater rescue teams (their annual budget for 1999 was $14,000 - their leaders joked about using it to buy a car so they could drive to an underwater rescue site) and their unwillingness to accept Western offers to help until it was too late for their sailors. It also details the trevails of some of the victims' families and the Russian government's clumsy responses to the crisis and their own newly-freed press.

The Kursk

A Time to Die's title comes from a poem written by one of the men from the aft compartment. He gave it to his wife just before he left to participate in the war games.

When there is A Time to Die
Although I try not to think about this,
I would like time to say:
My darling I Love You.

My review:

A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy is a fascinating, yet depressing book. I learned a lot about submarines and underwater rescue but it involved the loss of over 120 men. The look into the new Russia and Vladimir Putin's first crisis as President is worth reading the book in and of itself.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: A Time to Die.

Reviewed in February of 2005.

Green Lantern: Hero's Quest (Justice League of America) (audiobook) by Dennis O'Neil

I have not cared much for Green Lantern,  but I picked this one up on impulse...

Published in 2009 by GraphicAudio
6 CDs
7 hours
Voiced by 20 actors

Unabridged.

When I was a kid I never cared much for Green Lantern. In the D.C. Comics universe I liked Superman and Batman and in Marvel I liked Spider-Man and the Hulk but the Green Lantern never did it for me. Maybe it was the giant green baseball mitts, pincers and boxing gloves coming out of the ring. Just seemed hoaky, I guess.

Which is all the stranger that I liked the audiobook for Green Lantern Hero's Quest: Justice League of America as much as I did. The book features Kyle Rayner, a new Green Lantern whose real life job is that of an artist and his specialty as a Green Lantern seems to be creating artistic even cutesy things with his ring, such as baseball mitts and giant boxing gloves.

GraphicAudio creates yet another adaptation that delivers "A Movie In Your Mind" as their slogan promises. I readily admit that I pick these up as less of a comics fan and more of an entertainment fan and I do find this series to be quite entertaining. Voiced by 20 actors, this audiobook reminds me of those old-fashioned radio shows that, if you're lucky, you can hear from time to time even nowadays.

Kyle Rayner is a struggling graphic artist who lives in a junky basement apartment and lives a life that really isn't going anywhere. A slacker might be the best term for him.

In the end, I was reminded of other stories from other sci-fi series more than I was reminded of the Green Lantern I remember (and disliked) from my childhood. Kyle is handed a Green Lantern ring by an alien and given precious little instruction, which reminded me of the TV show The Greatest American Hero as Kyle Rayner bumbles around and tries to figure out his powers.

As the story progresses we see a lot of themes discussed in the Star Trek shows and movies, including aliens interfering in other cultures (the Prime Directive) and the theme of being forced to live in a lavish prison - no matter how nice it is, it is still a prison ("The Menagerie" in the original series).  There is also the idea explored with Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations - the hero retiring to a perfect paradise and then being called back to fight once again.

This is not a perfect book. It gets fairly bogged down a little past the halfway point with large sections of the book describing space travel and seemingly endless discussion of physics and philosophy. A philosophical point raised by the Oans is never resolved satisfactorily - if life is evolved randomly, does it actually have value? The book seems to say that it does have value because the Green Lantern values it - but since he is evolved too, does his opinion count for anything?

Green Lantern purists seem to hate the book, but I enjoyed it.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Green Lantern: Hero's Quest (Justice League of America)

Reviewed on November 20, 2010.

Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness by Daniel J. Flynn

A quick and thought-provoking read

Originally published in 2002 by Prima Lifestyles.

The thesis of Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness, an exceedingly-well footnoted book, is that some on the ultra-left of the American political scene have pet theories that they espouse and that they hate it when facts do not bear out their theories. Among these are what Flynn calls "The Five Big Lies".

The Five Big Lies are:

1. American women live under a patriarchy.

2. America is the World's leading threat to the environment.

3. America is a racist nation.

4. The US is an imperial power.

5. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

Daniel J. Flynn

Flynn quotes his opponents extensively and then rebuts their arguments with his own extensive research from a wide variety of sources (he has over 500 end-notes, often with commentary - not a small task).

Flynn does not claim that the US is perfect in any of the above 5 areas. Far from it. He just submits that some on the left have given themselves over to hyperbole and unfairly characterized America and Americans.

Who is the Left that he is disputing? Not any of the normal run-of-the-mill politicians in the Democratic Party (the one that is the "left" in normal political terms for those political novices out there), but rather the ultra-left, such as Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Ted Turner, Stokely Carmichael, Cornel West, Patricia Ireland to name a few. I was put in mind of an ultra-feminist  that taught my English 101 class at Indiana University. The poetry and essays and short story assignments were all about sexism and racism. I was told to write what I thought, but the only time I got above a "C" was when I wrote what she thought.

Anyway, this is a quick and thought-provoking read that has the added bonus of being very enjoyable to read.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed in February of 2005.

5-28-2025: UPDATE. I removed Flynn's now defunct website from the review. I looked for a new site and I could not find one. He is a regular contributor to standard conservative publications like National Review and The American Spectator - his works are easy to find there.

It's been 20 years since this review was written. Donald J. Trump arrived on the political scene 10 years ago and changed the Conservative Movement. Those changes were too much for me. I doubt I would care much for this book now, but I am not going to take down my review. Flynn seems to be strident, but not nuts.