Absolutely Fantastic Original Radio Broadcast by NPR Duration: 3 hours Published 2011 by HighBridge Audio
NPR's American Chronicles: World War II is a 3 hour collection of 27 stories broadcast over the radio network from 1982 to 2010 around the topic of World War II.
This collection is not designed to introduce the reader to the war or to its causes - it assumes the listener has a basic grasp of the facts. But, what it does do is delve deeply into certain topics that are associated with the war, such as the life of Londoners during the Blitz, the story of a young Japanese man who was in an internment camp, the Doolittle Raid, Bill Millin - the "Mad Piper" who played the bagpipe for his Scottish regiment as they landed at Normandy (because tradition demanded it), women on the home front, artists who may have used their skills to help the Americans to trick the Germans, and an interview with one of the pilots of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
The atomic mushroom cloud over Nagasaki
This is an exceptionally strong collection - even the worst stories are quite good. My favorite is the story of Tuskegee Airman Alexander Jefferson who tells his story with a lot of zest and hauntingly tells of visiting the death camp at Dachau and noting that the ovens used to cremate the victims were still warm. The reports are well narrated and include lots of music from the era and bits of radio reports to give the listener more of a feel for the time. I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: NPR American Chronicles: World War II. This audiobook was sent to me for free by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Reviewed on November 18, 2011.
Multiple award winner and science fiction legend Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years did something that science fiction all-too-rarely does when it was published in 1989 – it got the attention of the mainstream literature critics. The New York Times named it a “New York Times Notable Book.” Besides mainstream recognition, it was also nominated for multiple science fiction awards as well.
The Boat of Million Years follows a group of immortal people through their lives. These are regular people in every respect except that they never age. They were not all born at the same time – some were born earlier (as early as 5,000 years ago), some later but there seems to be no pattern that explains their immortality. Their ancestors are not necessarily long-lived, their descendents do not inherit their immortality. They recover quickly from injury (their teeth grow back, for example) but they can be killed by accidents, disease and battle.
Poul Anderson (1926-2001)
The book is not a traditional novel. Rather, it is a series of vignettes – snapshots of these characters at some moment in time, usually a time of great change or opportunity. We follow characters as they explore new trade routes with the Ancient Greeks, or narrowly escape being lynched for being a witch or have a meeting with Cardinal Richelieu (a rarity – the book mostly avoids the temptation of having these characters meet celebrities throughout time).
There are themes and patterns that Anderson develops throughout the book. The immortals are lonely. This is understandable since there are not many of them (and they rarely encounter another one – and if they do, how can you be sure? There is inherent danger in revealing oneself) and the people they grow up with and live with all age and die while they look like they are still 25 years old. Their children and their grandchildren grow old while they remain young. Anderson reminds us of this loneliness over and over again with every character. Anderson does not have these characters come up with much in the way of Great Truths. Yes, they have lots of experience, but are not necessarily wise.
While ambitious, nearly every vignette drags. Perhaps it was the audio format that made certain qualities of Anderson’s writing style leap to the forefront but I quickly grew tired of his frequent descriptions of landscapes by way of lists. I kept imagining bullet points on a PowerPoint presentation rather than the landscapes themselves. The writing is often clunky, almost like everyone is participating in a low budget drive in movie gladiator movie from the 1950s. Tom Weiner’s narration is solid – he does a lot with multiple accents, for example - but he can do little to breathe life into this audiobook. I rate this audiobook 1 star out of 5.
This audiobook can be purchased on Amazon.com here: The Boat of a Million Years. Note: I was sent a free copy of this audiobook by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Reviewed on September 18, 2011.
When I first picked up the book Tribe, I assumed that the title referred to the complicated loyalties of local Afghan politics that create the hard-to-decipher undercurrents that permeate Afghan politics. After all, the cover photo features the silhouette of what looks to be a mujaheddin soldier brandishing an assault rifle. My assumption was wrong on multiple levels. If I were more adept with my weapons identification skills, I would have known right away that the soldier was brandishing an American M16, not the omnipresent AK47 favored in Afghanistan - which is a clue to the direction of the book. While wild and hairy adventures in Afghanistan and Yemen exist in the book, this is not really a book about American adventurism in the Muslim world. Instead, the tribe referred to is the brotherhood of intelligence agents - Russian, Afghan, American who do the secret work of their governments but really have more in common with one another than they do with the people who issue their orders. Bruno would know something about this, having served in the diplomatic corps and as a military intelligence officer for many years. In Tribe we see that ground level CIA operatives and their bosses at the top of the political food chain in Washington, D.C. live in two different worlds with different sets of goals and neither may be quite based in reality. CIA officer Harry Brennan has a game-changing operation that is about ready to swing into action in Afghanistan - a plan that might very well destroy the Taliban. Suddenly, his superiors pull the plug on his operation and his decision to go ahead with it on his own has spectacular but mixed results that result in his being called back to D.C. and put on a very short leash. But, political winds shift and Brennan becomes involved with major elite power players - the kind that craft grand policies. Through Brennan we see policy created and implemented from the White House level on down to the dusty mountain roads of Afghanistan - we see operatives that are unaware of larger issues and top level officials that create grand plans for Central Asia that have no basis in ground-level realities. Brennan is a likeable character with an admirable devotion to his daughter, even if he has a wandering eye for the ladies. His network of friends and a (mostly) constant devotion to his own standards of what is right make this an enjoyable trip through the jumbled world that produces American foreign policy. Throw is some behind-the-scenes look at the world of spies and spying and some well-written adventure and you have a solid book. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Tribe by James Bruno. Reviewed on November 5, 2011.
A story of a man and his dog and so much more Read by the author, Tom Ryan Duration: 9 and 1/2 hours. Published: 2011 by Harper Audio Unabridged At first glance, Following Atticus is a simple book: A man gets a dog and the dog changes his life. This is true, but this book is so much more than that. Tom Ryan has written a deep, thoughtful book about a man and his dog, but also about a man and his work, fathers and sons, the relationship between man and nature and men and women. In short, this book about a little dog and a lot of hikes in the woods is also a book about life itself.
Tom Ryan is the editor of the upstart newspaper the Undertoad in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He has a full life with plenty of friends, a fulfilling job and all of the challenges of a small business. An exceptional elderly dog comes into his life and he realizes he has been missing some things, especially companionship and love. When that dog passes away, Ryan quickly buys another and he and his new dog, Atticus M. Finch, quickly bond. They literally go everywhere together - board meetings, restaurants, nature walks, business meetings. Those nature walks grow into full blown hikes up to the peaks of New Hampshire's 48 4,000 foot tall peaks. Tom and Atticus become consumed by the desire to climb all 48 of them and they quickly become the least likely pair to ever accomplish this feat: a middle aged overweight man with no experience and his 20 pound miniature schnauzer. Tom and Atticus roam these mountain peaks seeking the solitude of his thoughts and an escape from the pressures of running his newspaper. Sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes profoundly sad, Tom Ryan's memoir of their adventures is more than just the tale of their adventures - it is also the tale of his difficult relationship with his father, the difficulties of loosing friends to cancer, the joys of nature, and a running commentary on many of New England's most famous authors and their thoughts on the natural world. I literally knew nothing about New Hampshire's 48 peaks (or schnauzers - I am a beagle man myself, although we currently have a Jack Russell terrier/beagle mix) and I really don't have a lot in common with Tom Ryan. But, he took me into a whole new world and made it alive for me as I drove back and forth across my city this week and for that, I have to thank him. It makes for a fascinating book and one that I am pleased to recommend to all readers (or listeners), not just dog lovers. Tom Ryan narrated the book and I am glad that he choose to read it himself rather than hiring a professional reader. Usually, the author-as-narrator is, at best, a mixed bag. In this case, Ryan's New England accent made the story work all the better (I love regional accents!) and he is quite adept at portraying the emotions of the moment in his voice. I cannot imagine how it could have been performed any better by a professional and I recommend the audiobook version over the printed version because of his performance and what it adds. Tom Ryan updates the world on his adventures with Atticus on his blog "The Adventures of Tom and Atticus." I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Following Atticus: Forty-Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship
Multicast Performance with music and sound effects
Duration: 2 hours, 2 minutes.
Published by Galaxy Press
Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format.
This edition features 3 short stories. The first is Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead, the story of a team of freelance archaeologists that are searching for a lost treasure of Alexander the Great in what is now southern Pakistan. When a down on his luck pilot and a local guide find the map, well, who knows what they will find? The second story, Price of a Hat, is the weakest. It is set in Siberia at the end of World War I when the major powers invaded in an attempt to weaken the new Communist government. The story features a distinctive Russian hat that everyone is searching for. The third story was my favorite. Starch and Stripes is set in the heyday of America's Gunboat Diplomacy period. The U.S. Marines are involved in a pacification campaign against a local warlord. Just when they think they have the perfect trap for him, several Senators and a general are on their way for an inspection tour that threatens the entire operation. The multicast aspect makes these stories very entertaining - very much like the old-time radio shows that were popular when these stories were written. Makes for very compelling listening. I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.
A glimpse behind the veil in Taliban-held Afghanistan
Read by Sarah Zimmerman Duration: 6 hours, 16 minutes Publisher: Harper Audio, 2011
Unabridged.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon had an interest in how women survive in male-dominated war zones. In the modern world, the war zone is, all too often, not a distant battlefield, but instead includes cities, small towns and plenty of women and children. She was interested in the types of businesses women might open in order to feed their families and she was given the name of Kamila Sidiqi, a college-educated woman who lived through the Taliban invasion of Kabul.
Kamila Sidiqi (right)
Kamila Sidiqi considered fleeing to Pakistan or Iran but decided that she would stay in Kabul with most of her family. Women were mostly confined to their homes, unless accompanied by a male "minder" to do the shopping. They were certainly not supposed to attend school, have a job or own a business. Kamila Sidiqi does all of these things during the Taliban occupation, and of course her dressmaking business is the true topic of the book. Through a combination of prudence, grit and diplomacy she is able to open a dressmaking business and add employee after employee in her home-based factory. She is the CEO, the head salesman and a quiet spokesperson for women's rights in an environment that treats women more like cattle than equals. Kamila Sidiqi's story is inspiring, even if Lemmon's telling of it is understated. Sarah Zimmerman's narration adds a surprising depth to the story, invoking a sense of warmth as she reads. I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.
An Eye-Opening Book - A Must for Parents and Teachers
Published in 2011 by Mariner Books. This is revised and updated from the 2002 edition. Rachel Simmons' Odd Girl Outhelped open up a mostly hidden world for me, a dad and 22 year teacher. Sure, I have lots of experience dealing with kids, but I was missing some of this subtle meanness because I am a guy and the minds of most guys just don't work this way. Since Simmons completed her original work she has become a teacher and she can now add the perspective of an outsider to the tone of her original book which was based on a series of interviews with girls from around the country in a variety of schools. The basic concept of the book is that girls bully one another in a way that goes under the radar in schools and at home. Unlike the overt taunting and physical violence that often happens in male bullying, girl bullying is more sly and includes such actions as shunning, sharing secrets, building alliances of friends against other girls and more. Simmons provides personal stories that illustrate her points - these are the product of hours and hours of interviews with groups of girls and individuals and even her own experiences (she was bullied - an experience she vividly remembered and she also participated in a bullying, an experience she had forgotten, but was vividly remembered by her victim). The book is immensely readable and tragically depressing - it is the most profound and the saddest book I have read this year. It has given me more clarity on the experiences of my daughter and of the girls in my classroom. While these actions are not nearly as visible as overt classical male-type bullying, they can be just as devastating because the very people that these girls trust the most end up betraying them. Simmons includes a helpful "What to do if..." type guide for parents and for teachers that is organized by topic.
Rachel Simmons
Simmons and I disagree as to the root causes for this style of bullying. She consistently blames American culture's expectations for how "good girls" behave which means that aggression and disagreement are shunted into less overt channels because good girls do not argue, do not fight and do not bring up unpleasant topics of conversation. That may well be true, but the only way to determine it would be to undertake research like she has done here in other cultures. She thinks she has done this by looking at Hispanic and African American girls in a couple of schools, but as a teacher who has spent half of my career in urban school districts, I think she has missed the mark on that one. I think that it may be more of an innate thing in girls. In some girls, the need to keep a relationship, even a hurtful one, may be more important than the need to live without fear. Of course, my thoughts also would need to be proven in cross-cultural studies. Regardless, this book is a must-read for parents, teachers and administrators. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Odd Girl Out. Reviewed on October 22, 2011.
