The Salvationist (audiobook) by Nancy Cole Silverman

A Clever Twist on the Typical Western.

Published by Mind Wings Audio.
Read by Emily Durante.
Duration: 1 hour, 3 minutes

This short story is a clever twist on the typical western story. Many westerns have the theme of the banker, or other powerful businessman exploiting the townspeople for his own nefarious purposes only to have the local drifter come in and confront him and eventually save the day.

A Salvationist from the 1880s

Nancy Cole Silverman has a similar situation with the most powerful man in Bisbee, Arizona, a mining boom town, exploiting the local miners and young women by gobbling up their claims (in the case of the miners) or coercing them into becoming prostitutes in his brothel (in the case of the young women). The hero is not a cowboy or a gunfighter.  Instead, she is a bumbling, well-intentioned and brave rookie evangelist (Salvationist) named Fannie Johnston who has come to town with the Salvation Army as part of a team sent to evangelize to this rowdy boom town.

Loosely based on events in the life of the author's great-great grandmother, the story is often amusing and, even though it ends abruptly, it is still a solid western story and perhaps a bit more close to the truth than the more popular gunslinger stories.

Emily Durante does a nice job of voicing the great variety of characters (newspapermen, Salvation Army members, miners, young people, the sheriff and several more). Nicely done.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Salvationist by Nancy Cole Silverman.

Reviewed on July 13, 2012.

The Lowdown: A Short History of the Origins of the Vietnam War (audiobook) by Dr. David Anderson

Delivers what it promises

Published by Creative Content Ltd in 2011.
Narrated by Lorelei King
Duration: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Creative Content has a whole series of short audiobooks and kindle books in its "The Lowdown" series. The main feature of the series is that they are short (a little more than an hour or about 35 "pages" on the Kindle) and give the reader a quick look at a topic.

In this case, the topic is the origin of the Vietnam War. Note, this is not a history of the entire war, but if you ever wondered just how the United States got involved in the Vietnam War, this nifty little history will do the job just fine.

President Lyndon Johnson signs the
Tonkin Gulf Resolution in August of 1964

Anderson roots his history in the aftermath of World War II. There are two major factors at play. The first is the desire of the French to re-establish their pre-war colonial empire and re-assert themselves as a major player on the world scene despite their being conquered by the Germans at the beginning of  World War II. The second factor is America's determination to contain Soviet Communism. Anderson traces these two movements and demonstrates that they led to a collision with Ho Chi Minh's anti-colonial communist movement in Vietnam. He follows them through the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He ends with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that was widely interpreted to give Johnson permission to act in Vietnam as he saw fit.

This is an easy to digest history. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know a little more about the Vietnam War or for use in any class that is looking for a relatively short reading (or listen) in a 20th Century American history class. The audiobook version is read by Lorelei King. King's reading is well done. She reads at the perfect pace - not so fast that you cannot absorb the new facts that she is presenting, not so slowly the listener's attention starts to lag. Nothing less than I would expect from a true audiobook pro.

Link to this audiobook at Amazon.com: The Lowdown: A Short History of the Vietnam War.

I rate this history 5 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on July 13, 2012.

Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in America by David K. Shipler

Highly Recommended

Published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2012

Last summer I read David K.Shipler's first book on this topic, The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties (see my review by clicking here) and I found it to be the most profound book I read that summer and maybe all year. I began my review of that book with this thought:

"I always tell people that the traditional left-right continuum used to describe someone's politics is so inaccurate as to be useless. Really, what is the difference between an aging hippie living on a hill somewhere  raising some dope for personal use and telling the government to get out of his business and a Barry Goldwater-type conservative (like me) living by himself on a hill somewhere that tells the government to get its nose out of his business? Some dope. Otherwise, they are both determined advocates of civil liberties - keep out of my business if it is not hurting anyone else."

When I read the first book I was expecting to get a snoot full of political commentary that I disagreed with from a New York Times reporter with a left-wing agenda. To be blunt, I was expecting one of those political attack books that Al Franken, Michael Moore, Ann Coulter and David Limbaugh produce with regularity (Well, Al Franken is busy being a Senator now so I suppose he has stopped). Instead, I found the book to be politically balanced and quite remarkable. This book is just as remarkable, if a little less balanced by the inclusion of a half-dozen snide comments that should have been edited out, in my opinion.

Rights at Risk focuses on multiple topics but here are the chapter titles (with descriptions): Torture and Torment (being abused while being investigated), Confessing Falsely (how some people, especially young people and the mentally impaired, are tricked into confessions), The Assistance of Counsel (the defense side of the trial), The Tilted Playing Field (the prosecution side of the trial), Below the Law (the lack of rights of immigrants, legal and illegal), Silence and Its Opposite (freedom of speech in turbulent times), A Redress of Grievances (spying on protesters, "free speech zones") and Inside the Schoolhouse Gate (freedoms of students and teachers).

Torture and Torment includes a discussion of jailhouse torture such as physically abusing suspects and CIA torture. It demonstrates that the famed water-boarding sessions have poisoned several other cases. The good news in the cases of the police abuse is that the system, in the cases Shipler cited, mostly worked to flush out the bad cops. Mostly, but not always. A weaker part of Shipler's argument comes from the discussion of people wanted for trial in America but arrested in foreign countries. He argues, correctly, that many countries do not offer any protection for defendants. But, his arguments are not as tight here and led me to the inevitable conclusion that anyone who confesses to a crime in a foreign country can just claim that they were tortured into confessing and the confession should be dropped. Arrested in Luxembourg? Claim torture and post-traumatic stress disorder. The chapter entitled Confessing Falsely is quite interesting. Shipler discusses the various training methods police learn on how to question suspects and how those very methods can lead to false arrest and false trials and leave the real criminals out on the streets. He also writes about instances in which the rights of the accused were short-circuited in order to facilitate a confession. He includes a recommendations for how to address these problems, including the videotaping of all interrogations and prohibiting the questioning of children without the presence of his or lawyer or a parent.

You know the old adage, "You get what you pay for?" Well, the chapter The Assistance of Counsel was disturbing because it proves it. Public defenders in areas that have professional public defender offices are overwhelmed. In states and locales that have court-appointed public defenders from the general ranks of area defense attorneys there are serious issues of quality. Shipler encountered judges that admit to appointing certain defense attorneys over and over because they don't fuss much in court. Others appoint lots and lots of cases to their political contributors. Those attorneys make a good living on the sheer volume of these cases. But, appointing cases based on these criteria is not a solid foundation for justice. On top of that, court-appointed defenders have almost no budget for experts and in most cases, there are no funds available for appeals. It really is stacked against poor defendants.

The Tilted Playing Field looks at all of the tools the government has to coerce cooperation, including threats of deportation, violation of probation, plea bargaining and asset forfeiture. I was disturbed by the practice of sentencing based on parts of the case that were dismissed. For example, if you have a gun illegally and are brought up on charges of trafficking drugs and are found not guilty of the drug charge, some courts will still sentence you more severely for the gun charge because of the drug charge, that you were acquitted of.

Below the Law discusses the status of legal and illegal immigrants in the justice system. To be blunt, they don't have much status. I was especially disturbed to discover that a great number of immigration judges have no particular experience in immigration law except for a single short class with an online quiz taken the next day (page 144). This makes for poor justice when the judge is not an expert. Would you go to probate court with a judge who know next to nothing about wills? The case of the political refugee who was arrested for not having his papers and was on the deportation list is especially disturbing. Luckily, the refugee learned from other detainees that he did not need papers as a refugee. He told his attorney who educated both the prosecutor and the judge on this legal point. They were directed to a page on their own website that explained the law. (pages 184-5)

The chapter Redress of Grievances demonstrates that we spend an awful lot of time spying on groups that exercise their right to protest. While most of these groups would be silly to spy on, Shipler seems that there would never be a need to look at any of these groups at all. I don't know where the line is, but it is clear that some law enforcement groups are over-zealous and act spitefully towards protesters. For example, the Maryland State Police surveilled an anti-death penalty group and listed some of its members in an anti-terrorism database despite having no evidence of a crime. (page 229) In at least one case, Shipler does hurt his own argument. He notes the famed WTO riots in Seattle in 1999 (nicknamed the "Battle in Seattle" by some) one page and argues that the Washington, D.C, police had no reason to be worried about planned demonstrations against World Bank and the IMF meetings six months later. (pages 234-236) Shipler ends the chapter with a long discussion on flag-burning, which has been ruled legal for a long time and is still news to some and the Westboro Baptist Church protesters.

Inside the Schoolhouse Gate was the most interesting chapter for me because I am a teacher. It is a maxim that students have the right to express political opinions. But, since attendance at school is compulsory, it is also a maxim that you have the right to attend school and not be harassed. For example, is a Malcolm X t-shirt a threat to white students? Is a Hank Williams, Jr. t-shirt with a Confederate flag on it a threat to black students? Are both, or neither, disruptive to school so that teaching becomes difficult? Can high school newspapers be censored by their schools? (page 274, 278-9) Even worse, in my mind are the speech codes  at universities and designated "free speech zones," especially on public university campuses. Silly me, I thought the entire country was a free speech zone. I suppose we don't want students to discover new and different thoughts while being educated...

Shipler concludes with this thought: "If every American school taught the Bill of Rights in a clear and compelling way, if every child knew the fundamental rules that guide the relationships between the individual and the state, then every citizen would eventually feel the reflexive need to resist every violation. We had better begin now, for rights that are not invoked are eventually abandoned."

As a social studies teacher, I wholeheartedly agree and I worry because we are cutting those very classes across the country in order to make sure we pass the math and English standardized tests. The school I taught in last year cut 20% of the social studies classes in the third 9 weeks in order to provide more time for  English practice (language arts stuff, not English for non-English speakers) with a prescribed, decidedly non-social studies curriculum. I wonder what was cut?

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Rights at Risk.

Reviewed on July 13, 2012.

Grant: Savior of the Union ("The Generals" series) by Mitchell Yockelson

Published in 2012 by Thomas Nelson

Grant: Savior of the Union is an enjoyable, easy-to-read biography of Ulysses S. Grant, the Union General that seemingly came from nowhere to become the man that engineered the conquest of  the Confederacy.

Yockelson covers Grant's entire life and also a bit of his father's life, with an appropriate emphasis on Grant's military service in the Mexican War, his resignation from the army between the wars, his difficulties as a civilian and his return to the service once war broke out between the Union and the Confederacy. Two-thirds of the book covers the four years of service in the Civil War. His Presidency and retirement years are quickly brushed over.

Grant's career is dealt with fairly throughout the book. His great decisions are applauded, his mistakes are pointed out (Cold Harbor, in particular) and the reader gets strong feel for his calm, determined leadership style and his emphasis on substance over style. This is a much more balanced biography than the Sherman biography in this series (click here for my review of

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

Sherman: The Ruthless Victor).

That being said, the book is in serious need of maps and lots of them. There are a few pictures scattered throughout, but no maps. Also, there are times when the book tends to repeat itself, such as in the chapter on his Presidency.

Still, this is a solid biography recommended for the beginner or the serious student of the Civil War who just has to read everything that he or she finds (like me).

 I received this book from Thomas Nelson Publishers for free in exchange for an honest review.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Grant: Savior of the Union.

I rate this biography 4 stars out of 5.

Reviewed on July 9, 2012.

All Good Things... (Star Trek: The Next Generation) (audiobook) by Micheal Jan Friedman

Published by Simon & Schuster Audio in 1994
Read by Jonathan Frakes
Duration: 2 hours, 55 minutes.
Abridged
Based on a script by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga

All Good Things... is an abridged audiobook presentation of the novelization of the two hour series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There is a lot of room there for errors to be made. Will the reader interpret the material well? Is the abridgment done well? Is the novelization of the script done well? That's a lot of steps between the original authors and the audiobook listener and any of them done poorly could result in a poor audiobook presentation.

Jonathan Frakes as
Commander Will Riker

This audiobook was done quite well. The novelist is a prolific author of Star Trek books so he knows his material. The abridgment was done well. The reader was Jonathan Frakes. Frakes played Commander Will Riker throughout the show's run (and directed several of them) so he knows how everyone is supposed to sound, how the show is paced, etc.  Frakes does an amazing impersonation of Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, captures the voice of Q and Data very well. His Lt. Worf voice is laughable, however. Happily, Worf's lines are few and far between while Picard speaks throughout.

In All Good Things... Picard is plagued by time travel. He is slipping backwards and forwards to three different moments in time. The earliest time is the time period covered by the first episode of the series. The second point is seven years later, the time period covered by the last episode of the series. The third point in time is in the far future when Picard is elderly and possibly suffering from a incurable dementia. The audiobook ties together the entire series (in a way) and let's the listener get a taste of the future lives of Worf, Crusher, Picard, LaForge, Riker and Data.

Picard keeps sliding between these times and as he goes along he is confronted by Q who lets him know that if he does not figure out what to do he will be responsible for the disappearance of all of humanity from the galaxy. Picard works to solve the problem from all three times, each with its own set of challenges.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook is available through Amazon.com here: All Good Things...

Reviewed on July 8, 2012.

Resonance (audiobook) by AJ Scudiere

Audio version published by Skyboat Road Company in 2008.

Multicast Performance
Duration: 16 hours, 25 minutes

Unabridged.

The premise behind Resonance is simple - the magnetic poles are starting to switch and it is starting to cause frogs to be born deformed, messing up migration patterns and kill people who are in "hotspots" (areas where the reversal has already started).

Scudiere does a great job of creating believable characters and her five main characters are quite strong. We have two young doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and their boss (played by Arte Johnson of Laugh-In fame), a young narcissistic geologist and a young biologist who specializes in frogs.

These five race around the country documenting "hotspots" and trying to figure out why people exposed to them die. As they travel, we learn a lot more about the characters and a romance starts to bloom.

Well, it would start to bloom except for two things: 1) the entire world suddenly shifts causing half of the world's population to die and 2) the guy just somehow can't muster up the guts to tell her how he feels even though everyone knows it except for her for about 6 hours of the audiobook.

In fact, the book just goes into some sort of holding pattern about two-thirds of the way through. The explanation behind the mass deaths is discovered (because why would magnetic reversals kill people? If it so bad than an MRI would be fatality-inducing) and there is a Twilight Zone-esque ending that is fairly clever but takes too long to resolve.

What is not discussed is the concept of the world still running along like normal even though half of the population has died. No mass chaos. No nuclear power plants overloading. No rogue nations deciding "Hey! It's the end of the world so let's go ahead and nuke such-and-such country!" Deliveries are still made, the phones still work, bureaucrats are still filing forms and accountants are still watching the bottom line. Having never seen the end of the world, I can only assume that it would be less like a Midwestern blizzard and more like Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans and the social fabric was torn to pieces.

This audiobook is billed as an "AudioMovie" because it has special effects and multiple actors reading the different parts, much like an old-fashioned radio show. Several audiobook producers are using this format and it can be a superior way to tell a story. The actors did a great job, especially Arte Johnson who stole every scene he was in with his role as the elderly brilliant but cranky CDC administrator.The special effects were relatively rare and did not intrude as can happen with some companies that have used this format.

This was a book in serious need of a thorough editing. Three or four hours could have been removed from this book without hurting it. Repeated conversations abound and the ending with a twist just lingered until it  eventually lost its punch.

I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Resonance by AJ Scudiere. 

Reviewed on July 6, 2012.

Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV by Warren Littlefield with T. R. Pearson

Published by Doubleday in 2012

If you remember the giant television shows of NBC's heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, Top of the Rock will be fascinating. Shows like Cheers, Cosby, Law & Order, ER, Will &  Grace, Friends, Frazier, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Mad About You and Seinfeld ruled the airwaves. Thursday nights were dominated by NBC and NBC usually made more money on that night than the other six nights combined - literally billions of dollars.

Warren Littlefield was directly involved in the creation of these shows or the in the decision to put them on the air. Littlefield tells the story of "Must See TV" through the voices of the participants themselves. The book is literally a series of quotes with very little in the way of narration from Littlefield himself. Littlefield calls it "oral history" format. If this book were a movie, it would be one of those "talking head" documentaries full of people talking.

But, what a documentary it would be!

I had my reservations about this book, especially when I saw its format. But, once I started it I blazed right through it. The stories behind the creation of these beloved television shows are interesting and told very well. Some stories are more interesting than others, of course, but the book zips along and is full of interesting tidbits like this one - Fred Dryer was the frontrunner for the part of Sam Malone of Cheers, instead of Ted Danson.

The inside story of what was going on in corporate NBC is interesting and, I suspect, a little self-serving on Littlefield's part. He is especially tough on Don Ohlmeyer (who does sound like a difficult person to work with) and makes it sound like NBC has not broadcast much in the way of quality programming since he left.

Nonetheless, this is an interesting book and I rate it 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV.

Reviewed on July 6, 2012.