The 1990s: A Brief History [Kindle Edition] by Vook

Published in July of 2011 by Vook

Vook is a publisher of e-books enhanced with video clips (Video + Book = Vook). This history is short (Amazon estimates it would be about 32 pages on paper) so it is unlikely to satisfy a history purist. However, for a 32 page history of the United States in the 1990s, it is pretty solid (but admittedly lightweight due to its short length) and very readable.

The most famous image from the
1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The topics covered include:

-A New World Order/Fall of the USSR;
-Clinton's Impeachment;
-Creation of the World Wide Web;
-Cloning/Genetic therapies;
-David Koresh/Oklahoma City bombing/First Twin Towers Bombings;
-The 1992 NBA Olympics "Dream Team";
-Grunge Music.

I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5.

This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: The 1990s: A Brief History

Reviewed on November 6, 2012.

Tempting Yerva (kindle) by Chris Turner

Published in 2011 by Innersky Books

Tempting Yerva is a Kindle short story. If it were on paper it would be about 13 pages long, according to Amazon.

An adolescent girl named Dore is a young nun in the Yerva sect. Like monks and nuns across most faiths, her life is a lot of hard work, meditation and discipline and this young girl is miserable. She hates it. She is bored and her raging hormones make her think an awful lot about sex.

The religion seems to have a superficial similarity to Buddhism in that the goal of the aspirant is to achieve "bliss" - a sense of nothingness. Dore has no interest in any of this. One day, alien (literally from another world) voices start to whisper to her and promise her powers, sex and more in exchange letting them use her. She agrees.

Her wildest fantasies come true, she is granted magical powers, no temptation is left unsatisfied and the entire sect is endangered.

My takeaway? Dore has been untempted in her life, but once she is allowed to "sin" she nearly destroys and perverts everything. I don't want to ruin the end of this very short story - you will have to read it to see where her unrestrained activities lead.

I rate this story 2 stars out of 5. Too short. Not explained well enough.


This short story can be found on Amazon.com here: Tempting Yerva by Chris Turner.
Reviewed on November 6, 2012.

Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency by Mark K. Updegrove

Published by Crown Publishers in March of 2012

Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency is a biography composed mostly of snippets of interviews edited together to tell President Lyndon Johnson's story.

The book is designed to give the reader a view of Lyndon Johnson - the man. Johnson was a controversial man  - easily one of the most controversial of the 1960's. He is easily caricatured and mis-characterized. This ambiguity is odd considering that he was one of the most successful presidents of all time when it came to pursuing and passing a legislative agenda. If not for the Vietnam War, his legacy might be much different today.

Lyndon Baines Johnson
(1908-1973)

While I learned a lot more facts about Johnson than I knew before reading this book, I did not get a better read on the man himself. His motivations were so mixed and his outbursts so frequent that I could not (and still cannot) tell if he put himself behind legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to make a name for himself, because it was the right thing to do or if it was done just to confound people. Perhaps it was all three. Was he a bully, a flirt, a schmoozer or just the most versatile politician of his era?

Johnson's stormy relationship with Eastern elites shines through, but this is well-known. Johnson's frequent womanizing is alluded to just once despite numerous pages dedicated to the relationship between LBJ and "Lady Bird" Johnson. This issue is emblematic of a problem with the book in general. The author if the director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library Museum in Austin, Texas. As such, he has access to more of Johnson's papers than just about anyone else. But, I think it is clear that this book was written from the perspective of a fan of LBJ. Fans diminish (or even explain away) the negatives and focus on the positives.

The oral history format of the book was sometimes interesting, but oftentimes it was very repetitive with multiple people expressing the same or very similar thoughts back to back on LBJ and the issues of the day.

Bottom line: the book does little to shed light on the mercurial personality of LBJ. I you know nothing about LBJ, this is a solid place to start. If you know something about him already, you will know more after the reading the book and still not really know the man.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency

Reviewed on November 4, 2012

Fact. Fact. Bullsh*t!: Learn the Truth and Spot the Lie on Everything from Tequila-Made Diamonds to Tetris's Soviet Roots-Plus Tons of Other Totally Random Facts from Science, History, and Beyond! (Kindle edition) by Neil Patrick Stewart

Before You Try to Impress Your Friends with All of Your New-Found Factoids, Verify Them 

Published by Adams Media in 2011

This book was a first for me in a way. Fact. Fact. Bullsh*t! was the first book I ever read on my phone thanks to the Kindle app for my android phone. In a way, this book was made for reading on a little phone screen. It is entirely composed of a topic with three "facts" that follow. After that the reader will find out that at least one of those "facts" will be correct and at least one will be incorrect, or bullsh*t as the title notes. The  facts and the bullsh*t answers are explained.

This makes for fairly interesting short-term reading but it is not built for the long haul. This would be a great book to have for standing in line at the bank or if you have to wait for a bus or a train because you can get in and out of a topic in just a few minutes.

But...some of Stewart's facts are more factual than others. For example, he incorrectly states as a "fact" that Thomas Jefferson was the fourth president and the third vice president. In reality, he was the third president and the second VP.

Janet Guthrie at the 1977 Daytona 500.

When it comes to the NASCAR set of "facts" there are multiple problems. He addresses the widely held belief that Danica Patrick is the first woman to race for NASCAR's Winston Cup, which he notes is incorrect, but on multiple levels that he fails to mention. Danica is not the first woman to race in NASCAR, which he correctly notes. However, he only mentions Janet Guthrie, who first competed in NASCAR in 1976. Other women competed in NASCAR's top level as early as 1949, but they are not mentioned. Also, he fails to note that Danica never competed for the "Winston" Cup since its name was changed in in 2004. Also, he notes in his "fact" section that the largest NASCAR event can hold as many as 170,000 fans. That is incorrect. The Brickyard 400 race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway has 280,000 seats available.

So, in short, this is a fun little book but don't trust everything that you read in it. Before you try to impress your friends and co-workers with your newfound factoids, verify them.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Fact. Fact. Bullsh*t!

Reviewed on November 2, 2012.

War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 (audiobook) by James M. McPherson

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2012.
Read by Joe Barrett
Duration: 8 hours, 55 minutes.

Unabridged

James McPherson is undoubtedly the most popular living Civil War historian. He writes in a common, easy-to-understand style that flows nicely and does not dumb down the facts. His latest book, War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 continues that tradition.

Union Admiral David D. Porter -
Leader of the Naval forces in the
Vicksburg campaign.

If you read a typical Civil War history you get a just a little bit of the information, usually in passing, about the war on the open sea, in the bays, harbors, up and down the rivers and even in the swamps. McPherson reverses that arrangement in this book and focuses on the strategies, personalities and challenges that faced both navies and mentions the land campaigns in passing. If you are a frequent reader of Civil War books, little of this material will be new. But, the special focus does make the story of the naval forces more cohesive than is usually found in histories.

Starting with Fort Sumter and the formation of the Anaconda Plan, McPherson hits all of the typical highlights, including the Mason and Slidell Affair, privateers, the taking of New Orleans, the repeated tries to take Charleston, the Merrimack (Virginia) vs . the Monitor fight, the river campaigns in the West, including the long struggle for Vicksburg, the taking of Mobile ("Damn the Torpedoes! Full speed ahead!") and more. Typical of McPherson, he includes smaller stories that make the war more real and interesting, such as the time a Union gunboat captured a Confederate train and the cattle rustling gunboats.

Joe Barrett narrated the audiobook. He has sort of a "folksy" reading voice which is pleasant enough. His real strength, however, was the way he gave individual voices to direct quotes, including a soft southern accent for Union Admiral Farragut who was born in and lived in the south but went for the Union and a high-pitched accent for Lincoln. Movie directors love to give Lincoln a baritone voice but all accounts talk about his high-pitched Midwestern accent.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. A must-read for all serious students of the Civil War and/or the Navy.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 (The Littlefield History of the Civil War Era) 

 Reviewed on October 25, 2012.

The Time Keeper: A Novel (audiobook) by Mitch Albom

Published in 2012 by Hyperion Audio
Performed by Dan Stevens
Duration: 4 hours, 42 minutes.

Unabridged.

I am torn by this book. I liked the message (just live your life, enjoy the time you have, don't be a clock-watcher) but this short book felt like it was jammed full of padding.

The Time Keeper features a man named Dor who lives at the beginning of civilization. He is happily married to his childhood sweetheart, has kids and is also the first man to measure time. He creates sundials, water clocks, measures the cycles of the moon and notices the days get longer and shorter as the year progresses. His childhood friend is the king and the creator of the Tower of Babel. His friend wants to harness this ability to measure time in some way to build his tower but Dor refuses. They are banished and eventually his wife dies from a disease. Dor returns to the tower and storms up the stairs just as God punishes the builders of the tower (sort of like it is described in Genesis). Dor is not killed. Instead he is placed in a cave and is forced to listen to the prayers and laments of everyone who wants more time, less time, to stop time, to reverse time, or whatever. Dor does not age even though time continues to move forward. He becomes the mythical figure  known as Father Time.

Mitch Albom (photo by Vincent Wagner)

Meanwhile, in the modern world, two people have their own issues with time. An elderly businessman who is dying from cancer wants more time. A high school girl is dealing with issues of bullying and divorced parents needs to slow things down so she can process them.

Dor is finally released from his prison and told that he can finally die if he can help these two people from a future world that he can barely comprehend. He gets to use the tools of Father Time (controlling the speed of time) to help him accomplish this goal. Will he do it? Albom telegraphs that early on - of course. How will he do it? That's the question.

Dan Stevens reads this book with a great deal of skill. His multiple female characters are well done. I teach high school and he catches the cadence and rhythm of high school-speak very well. Even better, he catches the pain and frustration of the elderly businessman's voice wonderfully. As he dies from kidney failure his voice gets weaker and more slurred in scene after scene.

I give this book 3 stars. It is very slowly paced and is only saved by the tear-jerker moments at the end that felt intentionally manipulative.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Time Keeper.

Reviewed on October 25, 2012.

Chimera (The Subterrene War, Book 3) (audiobook) by T.C. McCarthy

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2012.
Duration: 10 hours, 57 minutes
Read by John Pruden.

Unabridged.

Chimera is the third installment of new author T.C. McCarthy's remarkable Subterrene War trilogy. This is not an easy trilogy. It has brutal battle scenes, shows the reader an uncomfortable vision of technology pushed too far and asks important questions about what it is to be human. And, on top of that these three books are well-told, hair-raising trips through three different war zones in a truly dysfunctional world.

In Chimera McCarthy introduces a new set of characters, as he does in every book in the series. Stan Resnick is an assassin. He seeks out and executes germline clones created by the American military to be frontline shock troops in Kazakhstan. They are all female (the males cannot be controlled), start fighting at age 16 and are pre-programmed to die at age 18. But, some have fled the war zone and have escaped to countries all over the world, surviving in a pathetic half-rotted state but still astonishingly dangerous. Resnick's job is to find them and execute them discreetly, if possible.

T.C. McCarthy

After a tough mission in which his long-time partner is killed, Resnick is sent home to decompress. Suddenly, he is called back to duty and is offered a mission that is in all probability a suicide mission. He is teamed with a fully human rookie soldier with a genius level knowledge of tactics and strategy because has been trained with new artificial techniques gleaned from the methods used to train the clone soldiers.

Part of the book deals with Resnick's inner demons. He is unhappy with the state of the world, the state of his personal life, the type of man he has become and his new mission. He is prone to drinking binges because he thinks too much and that is the only way he can stop thinking. The tension between the grizzled veteran and the talented rookie is a common theme in books and movies, but McCarthy manages to put his own twist on it and make it work to the story's advantage.

Resnick and his partner are sent to Thailand to find the leader of a colony of clone soldiers that have turned off the genetic programming that makes them die. Their mission is to recruit her to fight against a Chinese army that is invading Southeast Asia. Or, maybe it is to kill her.

Their mission brought to mind Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness as Resnick is escorted along a difficult trail deep into the jungle to complete his mission. The rules change in the jungle and everything boils down to a struggle to survive as they discover the awful new genetic manipulations that pilot new war machines that have been developed by the Chinese military and plans for even worse. At this point the reader realizes that there are two meanings for the title, Chimera. From mythology, you know that a chimera is a mythical animal made of parts of several different animals, a reference to all of these genetic permutations. But, is also a reference to the saying, "Chasing a chimera," or going on a fool's errand because Resnick's mission is unclear and unlikely to succeed.

In the jungle the story becomes a high tech war story with some very powerful questions about what it  means to be human. Is Resnick still human, even though his heart is so hardened that he is really not very different than the clones he hunts? Is his partner human, even though his brain has been tampered with? Are the germline clones human? How about the new genetically modified creatures from China? How about Resnick's "semi-aware" computer that he carries on his back and is his only real friend for most of the book?

And what is McCarthy's answer to this question? It is certainly worth the ride through all three books to find out. This is an amazing first series of books and well worth a read (or a listen).

Interestingly, McCarthy's each book of the Subterrene War trilogy has a different reader, reflecting the three different characters telling their stories. John Pruden read this book and captured the world-weary and grizzled voice of Resnick perfectly. Even better, he has a talent for accents and female characters, helping to make this trilogy an exceptional experience.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Chimera (The Subterrene War)

Reviewed on October 24, 2012