What's So Great About America by Dinesh D'Souza

Fantastic!

Originally published in 2002.

D'Souza starts Whats So Great About America with a thorough indictment of America. In a 30 page chapter entitled "Why They Hate Us" he honestly and thoroughly lays out all of the arguments about why America is reviled by so many. By the end of the chapter the reader begins to wonder if there really is anything so great about America.

The balance of the book is spent answering every charge leveled in the first chapter. I have rarely read a book on contemporary politics in which I agree so thoroughly with his analyses. I may be just a high school history teacher but I do a lot of thinking about history and a lot of reading. The big ideas such as those of Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson fascinate me and I like to think about what their philosophies mean for us if implemented in the real world.

D'Souza's comments on the West being an inheritance from both Athens and Jerusalem (pp. 60-61) closely mirror a conclusion I came to myself one day when discussing Ancient Greece with a class. I guess that makes the Book of Acts the actual document that founds the West...hmmm.

Dinesh D'Souza

I loved this quote from a friend of D'Souza that wanted to immigrate to the United States from India very badly: "I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat." (p. 77)

D'Souza's analysis of Lincoln, slavery and the rigmarole that he went through to finally get rid of it is so brilliant that I will refer to it next time I teach it in history class. (pp. 116-8)

At no point does D'Souza deny that America needs improvement. He does not claim it is a finished product. But, he does assert that for all of its warts and imperfections it is, as Lincoln put it, "the last, best hope of Man on Earth."

The book is a bit dated, even though it is only 7 years old. The War in Iraq, the election of Barak Obama and other events came to mind as I read the book. I hope that D'Souza offers a revision with additional commentary. Perhaps discussion pages at the end, too? It comes to mind because my edition is from Penguin Books and they do that with many books.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: What's So Great about America.

Reviewed on May 23, 2009.

Note: I wrote this review nearly 14 years ago. Back then, I respected D'Souza and his opinions. A lot has happened since then. The rise of the Age of Trump has changed things. Maybe the shock of Trump made the scales fall from my eyes. Maybe Trump's success compelled otherwise restrained people to advocate a number of things that I disagree with. Maybe they always were that way and the Age of Trump freed them. Either way, I cannot say that I support this man any longer. I don't know what I would rate the book nowadays, but back then it was a 5 star read for me, so it maintains that rating.

Feathered Serpent: A Novel of the Mexican Conquest by Colin Falconer

Wonderful historical detail, too much sexual detail.

Published in 2002 by Crown.

In my mind, the Aztecs have been short-changed by modern authors. There has not been enough attention to them and their interesting story. And Cortes! If ever anyone should get high marks for having ambition and bravery in spades, it's him.

Anyway, the historical details are well done in Feathered Serpent. Falconer almost makes you feel like you are there with the Spanish as the arrive at the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. He has created a multi-dimensional Cortes, rather than the stereotypical 'evil conqueror' Cortes (although, at the end I lost the feel for Cortes - I don't know if Falconer lost interest or he also lost his feel for the man). In most books and texts Cortes is portrayed as a gold-crazed, land-crazed conqueror - but his motivations are far more complex - including a complete disgust with the Mesoamerica's fascination with human sacrifice and the cannibalistic consumption of those sacrifices.

Hernan Cortes (1485-1547)

Unfortunately, Falconer's obsession with adding graphic, detailed sex scenes to his book just gets in the way. Another reviewer commented that there's one about every twenty pages - and I'd agree. We get all of the detail that adds nothing to the plot. I'm not trying to be a prude here - after all the main characters were considered to be the first to have a mestizo (mixed European and Native American) child so there's got to be some sex - but it was given such a prominent place in the book that I feel that it detracts from the work as a whole.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Feathered Serpent: A Novel of the Mexican Conquest by Colin Falconer.

Reviewed June 18, 2005.

Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead

The best description that I have for this book is that it is like a roller coaster

Originally published in 1996.

Why is it like a roller coaster?

A roller coaster is slow when it starts out and climbs that first big hill. Byzantium is also slow while Lawhead lays the groundwork and has the reader join with an enterprising group of 13 monks from Ireland and Britain that head off for a pilgrimage to Constantinople.

Like a roller coaster, once this book finally gets moving (around page 90 or so) the pace never stops and the reader is drawn into a wonderful world and is exposed to four cultures (Irish, Viking, Byzantine, Arab), as the main character is taken into slavery, lives the life of luxury, suffers from religious doubt, climbs to the heights of faith, fights corruption, is betrayed, and also travels the world in a whirlwind fashion.

This wonderful story, based on a composite of Irish monks from the 9th and 10th centuries, is a joy to read.

Bravo!

This is my first Lawhead book but it won't be my last.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead.

Black Cadillac (DVD)

Pretty good small budget movie

Released in 2003.

While not the best movie I've ever seen, this movie does what it sets out to do - draw the viewer in for some thriller action.

Two friends and a little brother have travelled to Wisconsin for an evening of booze and girls at a backwoods bar in the winter. After a barroom brawl a 1950s Cadillac menaces them and eventually pursues them - but our 3 protagonists have no idea why.

Randy Quaid as the local yokel good ol' boy sheriff is the only actor you're likely to recognize but, in my mind, young, pez-consuming Josh Hammond steals the show

I am unwilling to be a spoilsport, so I won't go into great details, but you can imagine the tension that develops with car chases in the winter on twisty country roads, a hitchhiking sheriff in the backseat spouting off platitudes and asking pointed questions and a general feeling that things are spinning out of control make the movie work.

The DVD commentary is interesting, especially discussions of the inspiration of the story and making a movie with budget constraints.

I rate this DVD 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on June 8, 2005.

Witch Hunt: A History of Persecution by Nigel Cawthorne

Good information but told in a repetitious manner that wore this reader down

A witch burning

Cawthorne's Witch Hunt: A History of Persecution is a recounting of the witch hunt craze that infected not only Salem, Massachussets, a topic with which most Americans have a least a passing familiarity, but throughout Europe to a much, much larger degree. The back of the back says that this book "...examines this persecution and the religious hysteria which inspired it." To me the use of the word examination implies that the author will interpret this hysteria and make observations and insights throughout the reading. Cawthorne does not do anything close to this, with the exception of a brief, four page introduction. Rather, he recounts witch trial after witch trial, often going into great detail about the tortures used and the indictments brought against the accused witches.

While this is an impressive bit of research, the book felt half-done. It was as if Cawthorne had written up his research notes and then had to hurry off to write something else before he added his own touches. What he leaves us with is more than 200 pages of torture, false accusations and descriptions of supposed orgies between witches and Satan. The first dozen times I read about them, I was interested. By the 50th time, they become most wearisome. Not that they were not horrific stories, but there was just no analysis, no synthesis. This is not so much the work of a historian than a gathering of research.

So, what does this book do well? It is a wonderful resource for someone wanting to know basic facts about the ways that the Spanish Inquisition and the Witch Hunts physically tortured and financially abused their victims. I'll keep it as a resource for my world history classes just for those topics.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

Reviewed May 22, 2005.

This book can be found here on Amazon: Witch Hunt: History of a Persecution

An Open Letter on Translating (Kindle) by Martin Luther

A piece of history, yet still accessible

Originally published in 1530.

I should note that I am a lifelong Lutheran and Martin Luther is one of my personal heroes, despite his numerous flaws.

An Open Letter on Translating is a September, 1530 letter to Luther's critics concerning his translation of the Bible from Latin into German. This was very controversial at the time and it led to a lot of disagreement (even wars) over who should be allowed to read the Bible and who should interpret its meaning.

Luther defends his translation in his very best combative style. He correctly notes that not all turns of phrases translate literally from one language to another. He notes, along with a liberal dose of insulting names for his opponents, that he and his team of translators did a lot of research and took great care to make his translation accessible and accurate.

Martin Luther
(1483-1546)

What is perhaps most amazing is that this document is immensely readable for anyone conversant with the issues of the Reformation, even though it is nearly 500 years old. His irreverent style won over many of the common folks of his day and made him the Western world's first international bestselling authors.

The letter veers off topic towards the end and meanders into a general criticism of indulgences and entreaties to saints which is why I only give it 4 stars.

It can be found on Amazon.com here: An Open Letter on Translating by Martin Luther.

Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead

"It is a tale ... full of sound and fury; signifying nothing." -Shakespeare

Published in 2007 by Algonquin Books

The above quote tells quite a bit about Olmstead's Coal Black Horse. It is garnish and flair, it is pretty words and gruesome descriptions of the horrors of war, but it is a story without a point, except to say that life is without value and, eventually, someone will end yours and it will all be over.

Olmstead borrows heavily from the styles of Howard Bahr and Stephen Crane to create this book. From The Red Badge of Courage he borrows the stylistic device of never quite letting the reader what battlefields or locations the book is set in - that is until he suddenly tells you that it's in Gettysburg. How Robey avoids tens of thousands Confederate soldiers stacked up along the Potomac River (they massed there for days waiting for flood waters to go down) is a mystery to me. Why Olmstead decides to tell the reader the battlefield at that moment is a mystery as well.

Civil War dead scattered on a battlefield

From Bahr he borrows many of the same style of battlefield descriptions - the chaotic glimpses of a battle that remind me of quick movie cuts. The poetic descriptions of awful destruction, brutality and inhumanity are powerful, and reminiscent of Bahr. But, Olmstead lacks Bahr's ability to tell a story. Coal Black Horse plods along and eventually becomes a dark, depressing novel. It starts with death and ends with 2 murders and two attempted murders and no one seems to care about any of it. No love. No joy. Just dreary existence.

I note in the back cover that Olmstead received an NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) grant to write this book. If this is what we are paying for with government-provided grants, than I suggest we stop. Certainly he can write this stuff on his own. Others write much better works and without government assistance.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on May 26, 2009.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Coal Black Horse.