John Ericsson and the Inventions of the War (The History of the Civil War Series) by Ann Brophy

Published in 1991 by Silver Burdett Press
118 pages of text. 8 pages of timelines, sources and an index at the end.

This book is part of a larger series (The History of the Civil War Series). It is very readable with a good balance of national history versus the biography of Swedish immigrant inventor John Ericsson, with the glaring exception I note below.

John Ericsson (1803-1889) was almost the stereotypical nutty professor type inventor - he never properly patented many of his best inventions. Ericsson built a great number of inventions, but unlike Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, he never really built any industries around them. He seemed to have trouble with personal relationships and was happiest when the was building in his laboratory.

John Ericsson (1803-1889)

Among other things, Ericsson invented a screw propeller, a "caloric" engine and, most importantly, he was the designer of the famed U.S.S. Monitor, the first ironclad in the Union navy, participant in the Merrimack vs. Monitor battle at Hampton Roads, and the model for dozens of other monitor-style ships that patrolled the shores and rivers of the Confederacy for the duration of the war. The Monitor was notable for its ability to go in relatively shallow waters, its rotating turret and its iron body that made it virtually impervious to the cannon fire of enemy ships.

On the deck of the U.S.S. Monitor

For all of its interesting detail about Ericsson's life, it has one gigantic error. On page 108, in a section describing other advances in naval technology during the Civil War, the topic of one of the world's first submarines, H.L. Hunley comes up. This book claims that the Hunley was a Union ship and that it sank a Confederate ship. In fact, it was a Confederate ship (it was not an official Confederate ship, it was still in the experimental stages) that sank a Union ship by attaching a bomb to its hull and then sank on its way back to shore. This is an unforgivable mistake since the Hunley is literally a world-famous ship, since it was the first submarine to successfully sink an enemy warship.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: John Ericsson and the Inventions of War (History of the Civil War Series)

Reviewed on June 14, 2012.

The Gingerbread Girl (audiobook) by Stephen King

A short story: dramatic, gory, creepy and quite satisfying.

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2008
Read by Mare Winningham
Duration: 2 hours, 13 minutes

Unabridged.

"Run, run, as fast as you can
You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!"

Some time back some brilliant someone in the vast Simon and Schuster bureaucracy (I assume it is vast. I guess it could be just some guy named Simon talking to some guy named Schuster all day long but it seems much bigger to me) decided that Stephen King's short stories would make nice little audiobooks. That anonymous, faceless cubicle dweller was absolutely right. Here's the deal with Stephen King and audiobooks - he tends to write long books and that means you are listening to one story for a long time. For example, the audio version of The Stand lasts 47 hours and 52 minutes. Two complete days of a tale of woe, disease, mass death, chaos. I listen in the car so that would mean a solid month, maybe more. Can you imagine what that much Stephen King do to your brain? I shudder at the thought.

Stephen King

But, two hours of Stephen King? Get in, get out and get a little taste of what he has to offer. Yeah, I am in for that. This is my fifth Stephen King audio short story. It is probably the weakest, which means that it is merely good and well worth your time if you like gritty thrillers.

The Gingerbread Girl features Em (Emily), a young wife who has suffered the loss of her daughter to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The death has had a dramatic toll on her marriage and she and her husband have drifted apart. There is no pathetic affair on his part - the marriage just fell apart after their daughter's death. This is King at his best. He creates characters that are believable and situations that command instant sympathy from the reader.

Em deals with her daughter's death by running. She has never been a jogger or a runner but now she runs. She runs with passion, but not out of sport. She runs as if she is punishing herself for the death of her daughter. She runs until she falls down and then she gets up and runs some more. Understandably, her husband is concerned but he deals with her in a way that shows the love is really gone from the marriage so she moves out to her father's vacation home on an island filled with vacation homes off of the coast of Florida. It is an isolated place because it is off season and she runs and runs and runs up and down the beaches until she is finally starting  feel like she has gotten it out of her system.

And, that is when the bad guy steps in. I remember reading an article by Stephen King in which he comments about his short stories. He doesn't plan on them being short, they just turn out that way. The story doesn't expand in his mind like the books do. This story could have expanded quite easily but it would have been fluff that got in the way of the real story.

Em is warned by the friendly drawbridge keeper who operates the only bridge to the island about her neighbor, a wealthy man who has brought a series of  young women to his house over the years but they never are seen again. Supposedly, they all left the island by way of his yacht, but the drawbridge keeper has his doubts.

Within 10 minutes of audio listening, Em encounters her neighbor and anyone can see where it is going to go, which is probably why Stephen King did not even bother to stretch it out into a novel. But, as a short story, it is dramatic, gory, creepy and quite satisfying.

Two time Emmy Award-winning actress Mare Winningham reads the story with a great deal of empathy, which makes the horrific aspects of the second half of the story all the more powerful.

Click here for the link to The Gingerbread Girl at Amazon.com.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on June 13, 2012.

City of Darkness (audiobook) by Ben Bova

Originally published in 1976.

Published by Audio Literature in 2002
Duration: 3 hours, 24 minutes
Performed by Harlan Ellison.

Unabridged

City of Darkness is my first foray into Ben Bova's work. I've seen his stuff around but never quite picked any of his books up. If this is typical of the quality of his work, I will be back for more.

The story is set in a future United States in which the cities have been closed. New York City is cut off from the rest of the country except for the summer months - where it becomes a tourist destination away from the unrelenting tedium of suburbia (called "the tracts"). Our protagonist runs away to the city and gets locked in after it is closed at the end of the summer - and he finds out that the city is not empty after all...

Harlan Ellison makes this audiobook seem like a one man radio play. He does a first-rate job at making the story sing and zing. Take the word of a listener who has heard more than his share of mediocre readers - Ellison deserves an award.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found here on Amazon.com: City of Darkness.

Reviewed on November 13, 2006.

Marked for Death: Islam's War Against the West and Me by Geert Wilders

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Published in May of 2012 by Regnery Publishing

Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament and the the leader of the third largest political party in the Netherlands, but he is forced to live his life under protection. Since 2004 he has to have armed protection every day, everywhere he goes because of multiple death threats from extremist Muslims. His crime? He dared to take the threats to Western freedom seriously when, in 2004, Muslims killed Theo Van Gogh (a filmmaker whose film Submission criticized the treatment of Muslim women. Van Gogh was stabbed multiple times and a note was stuck to his body with a knife explaining why Van Gogh was murdered) Muslims rioted over the famed Muhammad cartoons in 2005, when they threatened to kill politicians who question why there are "no-go" zones that have basically been ceded to Muslims.

Wilders believes that Islam is more than a religion, it is a totalitarian political ideology that has no tolerance of dissent and is more than willing to use the West's multicultural/pluralistic ways to infiltrate European countries, gain control of the instruments of government and then use those tools to silence critics of Islam.

Wilders tells his personal story and how he arrived at his conclusions. He is especially afraid of a "Trojan Horse" plan to spread Islam - the very plan that Muhammad used in the city of Medina. Move in as friendly immigrants and then, over time, take control of the government and enforce your vision on everyone else.

Geert Wilders

Marked for Death is an extremely well-written book - as a foreign language teacher I was impressed by Wilders' knowledge of English and his repertoire of quotes from English language speakers to make his arguments. Quotes abound from Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan - all making the point that a struggle with Islam has not been a recent thing and, more importantly, free speech is not something you give up because someone might be offended.

In the end, that is Wilders' most important point - free speech is the basis of all of our other rights and it cannot be limited by political correctness or by genuine outrage. Marked for Death was written to be a poke in the eye to those who have forced him to live under constant protection and as a warning. As he writes on page 3:

"For asserting our rights to say what we really think...we have been hounded by Muslims seeking to make an example of us. Offend us, they are saying to the world, and you will end up in hiding like Wilders, attacked like Westergaard, or dead like Van Gogh."

No matter whether you agree with Wilders or not (and I do not on some things), the man should certainly be free to speak his mind without fear - otherwise what's the point, really?

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Marked for Death: Islam's War Against the West and Me by Geert Wilders.

Reviewed on June 8, 2012.

Leviathans of Jupiter (Grand Tour series) (audiobook) by Ben Bova

Read by Cassandra Campbell, Gabrielle de Cuir, Samantha Eggar, Rosalyn Landor, Stefan Rudnicki and Judy Young

Published by Blackstone Audio - 2011.

15 hours, 30 minutes.

Unabridged.

Long-time author Ben Bova adds to his Grand Tour series as he continues his tales of the colonization of our solar system with Leviathans of Jupiter, the sequel to his 2001 novel Jupiter. Some characters are brought forward from his other novels but, in reality, Leviathans of Jupiter also works well as a stand-alone work.

In Jupiter Bova introduced Grant Archer, a researcher that made fleeting contact with gigantic creatures (some are several kilometers wide) that live extremely deep in the oceans of Jupiter. Now, 20 years later, Archer is in charge of Jupiter’s research station and he is determined to prove that those Leviathans are intelligent. He assembles a team of experts and the book follows those experts as they get to know one another and as they determine how they can best meet and interact with an utterly alien life form that may or may not be intelligent.

Jupiter and one of its many moons

In many ways, Bova’s book is a throwback style book, which is appropriate since Bova is among the oldest living science fiction authors (born in 1932). Its style reminded me of the classic science fiction books from the Golden Age – the point of the book is nothing more than to create an old-fashioned adventure in the stars – in this case it is the wonder of meeting an alien intelligence. The technology is not the star, no long moral pontifications, no hidden meanings - just the adventure of exploration and discovery. But, it is a fun adventure and this is a fun book.

Bova also lets your brain work on a few problems as he tells the story. For example, how would you decipher an entirely new language with no shared experiences to at least start with? These aliens look nothing like us and we look nothing like them. Our lives are utterly different. How can you make any sort of meaningful communication? Luckily, for Archer and his explorers, there is a Leviathan out of the Kin (their word for a group of Leviathans) that is just as curious about the probes that Archer has been sending into Jupiter’s oceans as Archer has been about the Leviathans. The reader is treated to an inside view of Bova’s Leviathan culture and how most of the Kin is unwilling to accept anything new that upsets its idea of how all of life is balanced.

Bova tells the book from several points of view besides that of Archer and the Leviathan. There is a bit of innocent romance and several stock characters that could have been taken from any of a dozen other science fiction books. He even tries to throw in a human villain, Katherine Westfall, a member of the governing body that is supposed to oversee Archer’s research. She is determined to sabotage this research for reasons that do not quite gel. Rather than being a real threat, she becomes more of a sideshow to the real action, which is the difficulty of reaching the Leviathans and then communicating with them.

The audiobook notes on the cover that it is “read by a full cast” – and it is. There are six different readers, which thrilled me when I prepared to listen. I sincerely love the books that are read like the old-fashioned radio plays, with a different actor reading different character’s parts. However, this book has six different readers who simply take turns reading – each getting a section or a chapter and then handing it off to the next reader.

Bova delivers a fun bit of classic science fiction adventure. The possibility of more to come is hinted at as well with several bits of unresolved business left at the end of this book.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Leviathans of Jupiter by Ben Bova.

Reviewed June on 5, 2011.

The World Is Not Enough (audiobook) by Raymond Benson

Published by Brilliance Audio in 1999.
Read by John Kenneth
Unabridged

I never quite got around to seeing this Bond flick. I am a casual fan, meaning that I eventually get around to seeing them, but not usually in the theater. I ran across this audiobook version and figured I'd kill two birds with one stone - liven up my long commute with some entertainment and cross this Bond story off of my list.

The World Is Not Enough is read by John Kenneth. Kenneth was confronted with a tough choice - how does he read Bond? Does his version of Bond sound like Connery? Dalton? Moore? Who? Kenneth's voice for Bond is unique and unforced, which cannot be said of some of the other voices he uses. At times, Kenneth presents the listener with a variety of increasingly-shrill British voices that sound more like the soundtrack of a Monty Python skit rather than a more serious presentation.

Update on 6/28/25: The good news is that this audiobook was re-recorded and re-released in 2015. It is read by Simon Vance who is a top-notch audiobook reader. Click here to check that version out.

Being free of the movie format does offer the author, Raymond Benson, a bit of freedom and he uses it in two interesting ways:

#1 - the amount of sexual detail. Benson goes into graphic detail with Bond's sexual adventures. This is not in keeping with the movies which generally feature a wink and a nod and a female voice purring, "Oh, James!" as the camera fades to black. This is a trademark of the series, just as much as "Bond. James Bond" and "Shaken - not stirred" are and I think it should have been given more respect.

#2 - Benson explores the twisted background of a Bond arch-enemy rather than limiting his background to the bare oral briefing that Bond receives when he is assigned his mission. We learn all about the childhood of Renard, a terrorist bent on anarchistic chaos. I found that to be an interesting and welcome addition to the book.

Interestingly, this James Bond audiobook was directed by a man named Jim Bond!

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The World Is not Enough by Raymond Benson.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on November 11, 2006. Updated on June 28, 2025.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle

WOW! An anti-Communist Manifesto

Published by Drawn and Quarterly in 2005

Right off the bat, Delisle shows where he is heading in this anti-communist manifesto when he tells how he snuck a copy of George Orwell's "1984" into North Korea (a banned book) - any moderately well-read person can identify the constant presence of the photos of "The Great Leader" and "The Dear Leader" with Orwell's omnipresent "Big Brother". It is intended to be a bit of foreshadowing to tell the reader where he is going with the book - and he hits a home run with it!

This is an anti-communist triumph from beginning to end - not with the soaring rhetoric of a Kennedy or a Reagan, but rather with its gentle story-telling style and its simple emphasis on communism's absurdities - from the lack of information, to the lack of food, electricity and choices of what to watch on TV and listen to on the radio. The constant barrage of revolutionary songs and the presence of "volunteers" who sweep an empty 4 lane highway to nowhere with straw brooms are perfect illustrations of the bizarre nature of both communism and North Korea.

I first heard about this book from an interview on NPR. Unfortunately, the NPR reviewer hadn't done much reading of the graphic novel and hadn't really figured out what the book was all about. So, I was not expecting much more than a lightweight travelogue in graphic novel form about a controversial country. Instead, I was pleased to see that it was that and so much more. This is one not to miss.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5.

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle.

Reviewed on October 29, 2006.