Hunting Badger (Jim Leaphorn/Jim Chee #14) (audiobook) by Tony Hillerman

It is better the second time around.

Published by Recorded Books

Read by George Guidall.
Duration: 5 hours, 49 minutes.
Unabridged.

I've read all of the Hillerman books so I'm re-reading them as audiobooks to ease a tedious drive to work and to re-enjoy them.

I had remembered Hunting Badger as a weak link in the series, and I was wrong. The book, as usual for this series, is set on the Navajo reservation. Joe Leaphorn is retired but gets involved anyway. The story involves the is about the armed robbery of a Ute Indian casino that results in the murder of two security guards. Throw in an anti-government militia movement and, as always, plenty of local color and you get the makings of great Leaphorn and Chee mystery.

Watching retired Lt. Joe Leaphorn work the mystery from one end and current Navajo Tribal Police (now called Navajo Nation Police) officer Jim Chee work it from another was interesting and enjoyable. The banter in the early parts of the book between Chee and Cowboy Dashee is very enjoyable. The irony of having a white rancher complain to a Navajo about the federal government taking away the lands that his family had lived on for the last 100 years was too much for me - I had to laugh out loud.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Hunting Badger by Tony Hillerman.

Reviewed on June 1, 2008.

The Killer Angels (abridged audiobook) by Michael Shaara

A Must for any Civil War buff

Published by HighBridge Audio
Read by George Hearn
Lasts about 6 hours
Abridged

This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975.

Way back in 1989 I had to read The Killer Angels as part of a American Military History class while I was attending Indiana University. Since then I've read it 3 or 4 more times and I've recommended it to countless friends and students. Surprisingly, hearing it as an audiobook was an entirely new experience for me - it was much more powerful than I remembered.

The Killer Angels is the story of the Battle of Gettysburg told from a variety of points of view, but mostly from the points of view of Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet on the Confederate side. The Union side is largely represented by John Buford and Colonel

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
(1828-1914)

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of Maine who won the Medal of Honor for his actions on the second day of the battle.

The Killer Angels won the Pulitizer Prize in 1975 and is one of the finest pieces of fiction, let alone historical fiction, that I have ever read.

The audiobook was brilliantly read by George Hearn and uses music from Gettysburg,  the 1993 movie adaptation of the book (it is a faithful adaptation that just does not do justice to the power and tragedy of the book). This really is a beautiful production. More than once I had to stop it for the tears that came to my eyes due to the tragedy and spectacle of the battle (I am a Civil War softy - I tear up every time I watch the movie Glory as well). I do not particularly remember the soundtrack of the movie as being very moving, but it is used to great effect in the audiobook. It lasts about 6 hours and is well worth the purchase.

Highest recommendation.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This abridged audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Killer Angels.

Reviewed on June 1, 2008.

The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari

A nicely done personal history of a large, sad tale

Published in 2008 by Random House

Unfortunately, the only thing that 99.999% of the world associates with the word "Darfur" is death, hate and tragedy. Daoud Hari's small memoir,  The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur, reminds the reader that Darfur was once home to millions - a place of family, friends, play and work.

That is the strongest asset of this short work - it puts a human face on a large tragedy. Written in simple, elegant English and with a wry sense of humor ("Most people like me, are tall - I am six feet - and are also a little thin because of all the walking, the hard work and the dieting that is one of the many advantages of poverty."[p. 108]), this book is an extension of Hari's way of fighting back against the forces that are destroying Darfur. Rather than taking up arms, Hari decided to expose Darfur to the world by escorting journalists from Chad into Darfur in Sudan.

Daoud Hari

This was not a choice for the faint of heart. Journalists and their guides were considered to be spies by the government of Sudan. Hari and his journalists were exposed to gunfire, captured multiple times and eventually one group was captured, tortured and eventually released through the efforts of former presidential candidate and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

Before reading the book, I suggest reading "Appendix 1: A Darfur Primer" at the end of the text. It helps give his story some context.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari.

Reviewed on June 2, 2008.

Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby by James A. Ramage

This must be THE definitive book on John Singleton Mosby

Published in 1999 by University Press of Kentucky

James A. Ramage has written what must be THE definitive book on the life of John Singleton Mosby, Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby. I cannot imagine a more thoroughly written book on the topic. Ramage discusses his family history, his childhood and more.

Of course, the largest amount is written about his service in the Civil War as a partisan ranger that terrorized the Union troops arrayed against Robert E. Lee. Ramage is definitely a fan of Mosby, but he refuses to get involved in the hype that Mosby and his contemporaries sometimes engaged in concerning how effective Mosby's men were. Ramage agrees that Mosby was cost-effective, meaning that his small groups of men - usually around 120 or so - would tie down thousands of Union soldiers, but disagrees with Mosby himself that he tied down tens of thousands.

John Singleton Mosby (1833-1916)

The real strength of this biography is that Ramage covers Mosby's post-Civil War career thoroughly, including his controversial forays into politics and his government posting in Hong Kong. Ramage even includes a chapter on how Mosby has been represented in film and television, including a movie in which Mosby played himself in 1910.

This is not a book for the casual Civil War reader - there is too much specific detail and an assumption that the reader knows and understands the basics of the war. However, this book will continue to serve as the reference for all things Mosby.

I rate this biography 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby by James A. Ramage.

Reviewed on June 2, 2008.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Caleb Carr's plodding plot mars mystery

Published in 1994.

Winner of the 1995 Anthony Award.

This is the second Caleb Carr book I've read and it will be the last. Carr follows Charles Dickens in the time period of the book and in the tradition of using 100 words to say what 15 could have said.

The plot of The Alienist is painfully slow to develop. Carr sacrifices reader interest for the sake of creating mood. He succeeds in doing both - mood is created and I nearly lost interest. I forced my self to move on, suck it up and finish and I was rewarded with a decent last 100 pages or so. But, the payoff was not early enough for all the build-up.

I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this book to anyone except for the most hardcore fans of mystery, New York City, and/or Teddy Roosevelt who puts in an appearance as the Superintendent of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City. That job title was soon after changed to Chief of Police. He held that position from 1895-1897.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
as an NYC Police Commissioner

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Alienist by Caleb Carr.

Reviewed on June 8, 2008.

Alpha Girls: Understanding the New American Girl and How She Is Changing the World by Daniel J. Kindlon, PhD

Rings true to this classroom teacher

Published in 2006 by Rodale Books.

As a classroom teacher that first came into the profession at the height of the Reviving Ophelia type of research done by Mary Pipher. I have participated in classes, seminars and training sessions about how girls are being short-changed in the classroom and in our culture. It was not until I ran across some research I was doing in my Master's Degree program some 15 years later that my eyes were opened to a new possibility: the girls are, on the whole, doing just fine. The boys, on the other hand, are falling by the wayside in heart-cringing numbers. Go to any public school and you can just about guarantee that 7 or more of the top ten will be girls. Look at the special education numbers and 7 out of 10 will be boys.

Dan Kindlon's Alpha Girls: Understanding the New American Girl and How She Is Changing the World does not address what is going on with boys, but it does look at a relatively new phenomenon - the hyper-achieving academically gifted, socially skilled, generally athletic, well-connected Alpha Girls.

What makes an Alpha Girl?

-GPA of 3.8 or higher
-Leadership role in an extracurricular activity
-Participation in that activity at least 10 or more hours per week.
-High motivation to go to college, own a home, make a lot of money, have a good reputation, study and save money for the future.
-High self-esteem based on personal dependability.

While clearly not trying to be openly critical of feminist researchers Carol Gilligan and Mary Pipher, Kindlon's findings blow giant holes in the universal applicability of their theories, although he does admit that changes in American culture may well be what accounts for the differences. He also notes that the differences between previous research and his research may well be due to the fact that men and women talk about themselves differently - men often do not recognize to their own shortcomings as well as do women, especially young men. So a perceived drop of self-esteem on the part of women could very well be an unrealistic level of self-esteem among their male counterparts (pp. 96-7).

So, what is an Alpha Girl like? Well, I had a surplus of them in my classes this last year (I was teaching a lot of college track classes) and I can tell you that Kindlon hits them right on the head when he describes them as "hybrids" and girls that speak the language of boys. They understand boys well and boys understand them. They are stll, however, all girl. They compete, they prepare, they write poetry and they are generally the highest achievers in any classroom. Generally, Alpha Girls have had an involved father (but not always). Kindlon notes that, on average, fathers spend a lot more time with their kids than in decades past, and he theorizes that this interaction has helped socialize their girls a little differently.

Kindlon's book occasionally wanders of-course, with a foray into suppositions about chemical imbalances in the environment creating more macho girls and less macho boys being responsible for some of our cultural changes (he mentions the "metrosexuals" [p. 175] as a new phenomenon. This history teacher will tell you that we've had "metrosexuals" many times in history - I suggest that they are more a product of leisure and disposable income than chemicals. Think of Ancient Rome and the court of Louis XVI as prime examples of metrosexuality in the past). The discussions of lesbian experimentation (pp. 228-32) doesn't really keep with the main theme of the book since it is not limited to the Alpha Girl phenomenon.

On the whole, the book is interesting, seems well-researched and fits with my own classroom experiences.

Other books I recommend on boys and girls in school are:

-Boys and Girls Learn Differently!: A Guide for Teachers and Parents and The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life by Michael Gurian.

-The WAR AGAINST BOYS: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Sommers

-Keeping Black Boys Out of Special Education by Jawanza Kunjufu

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on June 9, 2008.

Vexille (anime) DVD

Pretty good sci-fi movie

Released in 2007.

I am not much of an anime fan, but I do like a good sci-fi show and Vexille was pretty good.

The animation of everything that was non-human was fantastic (in my newbie-to-anime eyes). The metallic structures were perfect. The sunsets, explosions, splatters, etc. were wonderfully done. The human faces (and to some extent, the body movements) were not as good - but that is understandable. We humans spend so much time actively looking at faces and body language as compared to cars, sunsets and explosions, that the art cannot stand up to that type of detail.

The story is pretty strong, although you need to pay attention. Japan has sealed itself off from the world because the rest of the world has decided that cyborg technology is a danger to the human race. Japan has embraced this technology, however. The story is interesting, but sometimes they over-narrate and sometimes there's not enough narration. I got a bit confused when due to the two main female characters' (Vexille and Maria) similarity to one another.

Nonetheless, I liked it. Recommended for sci-fi fans.

I rate this DVD 4 stars out of 5.

This movie can be found on Amazon.com here: Vexille.

Reviewed on June 10, 2008.