46 Pages by Scott Liell

An important piece of the story of the American Revolution

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Published in 2003 by Running Press

Sad to say, this history teacher had never read Thomas Paine's famed pamphlet Common Sense until three days ago. I came across a stand-alone printing of the book and was prepared to buy it when I found 46 Pages.

The entire text of Common Sense (originally just 46 pages long, thus the title) is added as an appendix at the end of the book. I read the original text first and then proceeded to the first part of the book which consists of a short and pleasant combination of a biography of Paine, a history of Common Sense and little snippets of what several founders thought of the pamphlet at its author.

This is a solid addition to any American history buff's collection.

 I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: 46 Pages.

Reviewed on August 5, 2008.

Indiana: A Tribute The Hoosier State

A decent little documentary about Indiana, its history and its people

Filmed in 1991, this 63 minute production is the first work of two brothers, Jim and John Hilgendorf who were inspired after visiting relatives in Indiana. They learned how to make movies while filming this one and logged more than 10,000 miles covering the state. They have since gone on to make more than a dozen documentaries about such places as Mexico, France, Oregon and St. Petersburg, Russia.

While the production values on Indiana: A Tribute The Hoosier State  are fairly low, the movie more than makes up for that with its thoroughness and its obvious affection for the Hoosier State. This native-born Hoosier cannot think of a thing that was left out, from James Dean to the Covered Bridge Festival to the Indy 500 to Tecumseh to Notre Dame to young Abe Lincoln to the architecture of Columbus to basketball to John Mellencamp...it's all here.

Beautiful shots of the Indiana countryside abound and there's a solid bit of history thrown in as well.

I rate this documentary 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on August 10, 2008

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

Very rarely does a book live up to the hype...

Published in 2008.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY:

The New York Times Book Review

The Washington Post

San Francisco Chronicle

Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award

You know how it is. You get a book because the blurbs on the cover tell you it is the most wonderful book since Stephen King was in diapers. This one has the audacity to have comparisons to Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn and Robert Louis Stevenson.

To be honest, I picked up The Good Thief figuring it would be wrong and I would skewer it in this review.

Well, I am pleased to say that I was wrong. This book DOES live up to that hype. It does belong in that august and lofty crowd. Somehow it pulls off being filled with literary allusions and homages to other works and being a unique work of its own.

There are multiple literary allusions that I noted, including Treasure Island, Sleepy Hollow, Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist, A Clockwork Orange, Faust, Milton and Terminator 2.

So, in short, pick it up. This one is a unique winner.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti.

Reviewed on August 18, 2008.

My Glorious Brothers by Howard Fast

A great piece of historical fiction - strongly recommended

Originally published in 1948.

When I teach world history I always give my students a project in which they are to read a piece of historical fiction and do a bit of research. This book is exactly the type of book I recommend for them to read and why I created the project in the first place. My Glorious Brothers is well-written and re-creates a little bit of the historical world for the reader.

Set in 2nd Century B.C. Israel, this is a story of national liberation and freedom of religious expression. Many Protestants will be unfamiliar with the Maccabees since Maccabees 1-4 is not included in the Protestant Bible. This book is an ideal place to start to explore that time between the exile in Babylon and the Roman occupation that is featured in the New Testament.

The main characters are 5 brothers and their father, descendants of the Tribe of Levi. They refuse to be "civilized" by Hellenized (Greek-influenced) Syrians - they want to keep their old traditions and religion. They revolt against too many taxes, too many injustices and being forced to worship Greek gods. ("Thus they 'Hellenized' us, not with beauty and wisdom, but with fear and terror and hate." - p. 33)

Howard Fast (1914-2003)

I strongly recommend this one. Despite being more than 60 years old, this book can stand on its own among newer and more popular works about the ancient world such as Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae in both its battlefield descriptions and its cultural explorations.

Quote from the book I particularly liked this line based on a Bible verse from the Old Testament book of Micah: "What does the Lord require from a man, but that he should walk humbly and love righteousness?" (p. 142)

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: My Glorious Brothers. 

Reviewed on August 19, 2008.

Prey by Michael Crichton

A bit of smartly done, high-tech adventure

Published in 2002.

Michael Crichton is re-visiting some old stomping grounds in Prey. The 1970s sci-fi movie classic Westworld was written and directed by Crichton and it features technology run amok and set loose on a killing spree. Jurassic Park features the dangers of tampering with the gene pool with an ensuing killing spree.

Prey, in many ways, is a combination of the two - the dangers of nanotechnology, specifically the dangers of using bacteria in combination with tiny, tiny bits of technology to create something new. The problem is, of course, the same problem that he pointed out in Westworld and Jurassic Park: Things never turn out the way you think they will.

Michael Crichton
(1942-2008)

Is this a Pulitzer Prize winner? Hardly. But, it is a creepy thriller with some good points about science, the dangers of unintended consequences and some good thrills and chills. I enjoyed this one thoroughly.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Prey

Reviewed on August 20, 2008.

Note: This book turned up on a "banned book" list in Texas. Ugh.

Liberty's Children: Stories of Eleven Revolutionary War Children by Scotti Cohn

It just didn't work for me

Published in 2004 by Globe Pequot

Liberty's Children is a collection of stories about the experiences of eleven children during the Revolutionary War (although one is 20 years old, which was definitely not a child in a time when many were married with children at age 16).

The book is well-researched and accurate. I have no complaints with that or the ample bibliography that is sorted by the individual children. But, I just felt like I had to slog through parts of it and I love to read history.

I questioned some of the choices as well. Five of the eleven went off to sea, one of them was 20 years old and one was just a baby. I found myself wondering about the decision not to include the most famous child that served in the Revolutionary War, Andrew Jackson. He served as a courier and had his face slashed by a British soldier for refusing to clean his boots. Or, how about John Quincy Adams, who accompanied his father to Europe during the war to secure supplies and allies and eventually travelled all of the way to Russia. At least Sybil Luddington, the 16 year-old female "Paul Revere" for Connecticut who is featured on Connecticut's quarter coin could have been included rather than another story about a boy gone off to sea.

Not that all of the stories were a chore to read, mind you. I enjoyed the stories of Frances Slocum, James Forten and Sally Wister in particular. If you have read this book and want to know more about Frances Slocum I enthusiastically recommend the novel The Red Heart by James Alexander Thom.

I rate this collection 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Liberty's Children.

Reviewed on August 23, 2008.

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman

Where were you when you discovered the world was flat?

Originally published in 2005. 
Revised and updated versions released in 2006 and 2007.

I've taken a number of economics classes and I've tried to tell people about what I have learned about globalization as a reality. Friedman likes to ask people when they learned that the "world was flat", meaning when they learned that the advent of cheap instantaneous technology coupled with lowering trade barriers, and the fall of many political barriers (like the Berlin Wall) has made the world a very small, very competitive place, indeed. 

Well, I learned the world was flat last summer when one of my econ classes visited a Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana. When I tried to tell people who have not taken economics lately about global supply chains and comparative advantage they looked at me like I was a babbling fool. Now, my mom has read this book and now she suddenly understands my economic babblings and we speak the same language.

Thomas Friedman

What kind of book is The World Is Flat? Well-written, often funny, well-researched, full of interesting facts and, perhaps, a glimpse at the future. I followed my wife around the house reading passages to her - and she didn't tell me to get lost! I must have told 15 people to get this book and read it.

Do I agree with everything in it? No. I think he fundamentally misunderstands George W. Bush (it's just two pages so don't let that offend you or thrill you - it really is not a big part of the book), which is surprising because he really, really understands the threat of Al-Qaeda and bin Laden and explains the rise of the Islamo-Leninists (a.k.a. Islamo-fascists in other circles).

This book is a chunk (469 pages of text) but it is very readable. Friedman makes the complex really quite simple (although this "world is flat" stuff isn't that hard once you get it) and usually doesn't over explain things. Once or twice I found myself skimming passages, but this is no dry textbook.

Couple this book with Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and you have a lot of food for thought to mull over the rest of the summer.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The World is Flat.

Reviewed on July 5, 2006.

Review updated on December 28, 2025.