DAVID and GOLIATH: UNDERDOGS, MISFITS, and the ART of BATTLING GIANTS (audiobook) by Malcolm Gladwell

Published by Hachette Audio in October of 2013.
Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell.
Duration: 7 hours
Unabridged

Malcolm Gladwell has made his reputation by writing insightful articles in which you thoroughly learn about one thing but also how it applies to a larger concept.  Usually, there's a little light science involved and, if nothing else, the reader (or in my case, the listener) feels like he or she learned a little bit and heard an interesting story.

In this case, the premise is that in the David vs. Goliath stories, the underdog is not always as much of an underdog as it seems. He starts with the original David vs. Goliath story - the one in the Old Testament of the Bible and explains that Goliath clearly had size and strength going for him but those weren't all-pervading advantages. Goliath was strong and large but his strength made him reliant on the sword and close-in fighting. If an enemy got close to him and if Goliath got hold of him, Goliath would win. But, David was quick, small and used a sling. One commentator he quotes compares a skilled sling-user to a person using a pistol. David stands back, takes his shot, knocks down Goliath and then Goliath's strengths are all weaknesses. His size and armor makes it hard for him to get up. David rushes in and finishes Goliath.

Malcolm Gladwell in 2014.
Photo by Kris Krug.

In David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, Gladwell takes the lessons of the original story ("There is an important lesson in that for battles with all kinds of giants. The powerful and the strong are not always what they seem.") and applies them to other situations. Some of them are natural fits (the entertaining and inspiring story of the girl's basketball team with not a lot of talent but a whole lot of grit and the willingness to play full court defense), some not so much (education, learning disabilities, family tragedies).

But, even if the theme is imperfect throughout the book, the book itself is interesting throughout. His commentary on education and class size was interesting to this public school teacher. The conventional wisdom is that smaller is better, and it is to the point of diminishing returns. But, there is a competing conventional wisdom that says "class size does not matter." In my school system one of our assistant superintendents was fond of quoting that "fact" as she advocated for ever larger class sizes as a way to save money. It turns out they are both right. Too small (maybe 10 or 12) and the class dynamic gets weird, something I already knew from experience. Too large and the class gets unwieldy and the class dynamic changes from interactivity to college large class lecture format (near 40). I have had classes that large as well. They are tiring and the grading gets overwhelming. Plus, no one gets any sort of attention except for the troublemakers.

There's a lot of ground covered in just 7 hours and I found the whole book very entertaining. He talks about everything from the London Blitz to serial killers to the Civil Rights struggles in Birmingham in the 1960s to Leukemia. It's all interesting and I felt as though I were listening to a knowledgeable friend ramble on about vaguely related but highly interesting topics. Gladwell does a great job at narration.

The commentary about the perceived legitimacy of police forces in comparison with the British in Northern Ireland and the NYPD in a troubled neighborhood makes that section a must-read when thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States right now. 

Highly recommended.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found here on Amazon.com here: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants,

EMBATTLED REBEL: JEFFERSON DAVIS as COMMANDER in CHIEF by James M. McPherson

Published in 2014 by Penguin Press

Famed Civil War historian James M. McPherson aims to fill in an historical gap by providing a biography of Jefferson Davis's Civil War years. He notes in his opening to Embattled Rebel that it is natural to make comparisons between Lincoln and Davis but those comparisons are often lopsided due to a lack of information. There are enough different Lincoln biographies to easily fill a truck. But, Davis is often a caricature - a difficult man who thought he could be general and commander-in-chief due to previous military experience - a man who refused to remove his friends from important military posts and also a man who carried a grudge.

That thumbnail sketch is largely true, but also incomplete. Thanks to the mass of information on Lincoln we are able to detect a sense of nuance.  A lot of source material on Davis never survived the Fall of Richmond. Even worse, many people who worked with him were unwilling to talk about it after the war - they just wanted to get on with their lives and put the war behind them. Even worse, others defended their own reputations by degrading his.

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889)

McPherson's biography of Davis pales in comparison to Doris Kearn Goodwin's work about the Lincoln Administration, Team of Rivals. Even so, this is a solid attempt to fill this glaring hole.

Even though this book mostly reinforces the stereotype view of Davis, it does provide a look into how hard it really was to be the President of the Confederate States of America. He was outgunned from the start and stayed that way throughout the war. It was very rare to have a Confederate force actually larger than the Union force it faced it battle.

But, just as it there was a shortage of men and supplies, there really was a shortage of top level officers. A truism often bandied about by Civil War devotees is that the Union had more soldiers but the Confederacy had better officers. It started out that way but battlefield deaths (Albert Sidney Johnston and "Stonewall" Jackson, to name two of the biggest losses) and difficult personalities combined against the Confederacy to even out things.  Davis is often criticized for holding on to officers like Braxton Bragg for too long but he really didn't have a lot of men with the expertise to manage an entire army. Take a look at the example of John Bell Hood - an aggressive Corps Commander who was promoted and went on to ruin an entire army in just a few months.

There really is not much new here, but it does the reader the service of collecting the information that would be scattered across a larger history of the war and consolidates it into one very readable, if smallish, book.

I rate this history 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Embattled Rebel.

THE TIME of OUR LIVES: A CONVERSATION about AMERICA (audiobook) by Tom Brokaw

Published in 2011 by Random House Audio
Read by the author, Tom Brokaw
Duration: 7 hours, 8 minutes
Unabridged

I picked up the audiobook of The Time of Our Lives in the hopes that former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw would be offering some in-depth analysis on a wide range of issues. After all, the cover promises to look at "Who we are, where we've been and where we need to go now to recapture the American Dream."

Instead, we get a lot of amiable reminiscing about Brokaw's family, his early career, and a bit of of a slanted history lesson with every chapter with some half-hearted advice that is based on discussion with industry leaders.

That is the essence of the problem Brokaw is a top-level journalist. He is a journalist emeritus - respected and admired for what he used to do but he is not doing the gritty stuff any more. He hobnobs and socializes with elites. If he wants to talk about some new trend in computers he can literally call Bill Gates and get his take.

But, here's the problem. Gates is no longer street-level. He's up in the clouds and he doesn't see everything any more. To make a comparison to a war situation, Brokaw is talking to the officers in their cushy offices far from the front and not talking to the people in the trenches. His sources are important people but they no longer know the realities of the daily grind. Brokaw is quoting CEOs about what is going on and not talking to the people doing the actual work.

It was most glaringly obvious in his discussions about education. He comes back to the topic time after time and his all sorts of "insights" that tell me he is talking to school corporation superintendents and not to actual classroom teachers (like me - this is my 27th year in the classroom).

For example, he refers to "charter schools" as a help to public schools. Almost no public school teacher or leader sees them that way. They see schools that are allowed to pick and choose who can attend, avoid rules that hamstring public schools (couldn't we help the public schools by removing those rules for everybody?) and hire unlicensed staff who get to become teachers with just a couple of weeks of training. A head of a school system might say that he welcomes the competition, but that's just a politician talking.

At one point Brokaw muses that maybe public schools would be better if they could use the methods that the Marines use in basic training to teach students. Sure, Tom, that would be great. Only take in the ones that make the cut (there are no physically disabled or mentally disabled Marines) and throw out anyone that won't get with the program. Tom - those are the methods that the most egregious charter schools use.

My least favorite quote from the book - I literally pulled over to write this one down because I was listening while driving: "Business is the consumer of the product that schools produce and academics have lost the sense of that." No, Tom. students are the consumer of the product that schools produce. Students are educated. Schools serve the students. Students are not boxed up and shipped out to corporations like so many gears. Students choose their own lives and a well-rounded education helps that process.

Brokaw's breathless announcement to teachers that students can use their cell phones to cheat on tests was too much for me. He was in the midst of a mini-rant about the uses of technology in the classroom and sounded like he just discovered something that we've all been missing. I laughed out loud and the gall of a man to tell professional educators something that we have been fighting on a daily basis for more than 5 years by the time this book was written. It's like he's the only one that figured this out.

But, what is really the most unforgivable thing about this book is that it has no zip. It is the audio version of an oatmeal breakfast with a few interesting stories sprinkled in. Hearing Tom Brokaw talk about bad traffic in Los Angeles and how his old house has been bought and re-modeled is not interesting listening. I was expecting something with some real analysis and some novel suggestions. What we ended up with is sweet family stories, advice to eat at home more instead of at a restaurant so you can save your money for a rainy day and the perspectives of other people who are not longer in the day-to-day grind of trying to "recapture the American Dream."

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. I was so glad to be done with it.

The Time of Our Lives can be found on Amazon.com at this link.

SPECIAL AGENT CHRISTIE LOVELACE: VILLAGE of IDIOTS by Gene Penny

Published by Eugene Penny in May of 2016.
Duration: 5 hours, 58 minutes.
Unabridged.
Read by Rebecca Roberts.

FBI Special Agent Christie Lovelace is a plucky, sarcastic, foul-mouthed agent who investigates offbeat cases. Think X-Files, but with a much more gross, much more weird take.

Lovelace has been sent to Danbury, Texas to investigate a charge of corruption. It seems that the whole town is being controlled by one man and a person may have died.

But, once Lovelace arrives, after a frustrating series of humorous personal disasters, she discovers that the body has disappeared from the morgue. When she goes to the jail to follow a lead the stench of feces is overpowering...

Plus, people keep hinting about the dead coming back to life.

It's going to be a strange Monday.

My thoughts:

For me, this book was a little too gross and a little too interested in being weird for the sake of weirdness for my taste. Too many oddball characters in one place. I like Christie Lovelace and I liked the general concept. But, I felt like the story just got lost in its own shenanigans. 

The story was read by Rebecca Roberts. She did a good job with a wide variety of voices. She made a lot of very different characterizations and showed a lot of range.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Special Agent Christie Lovelace: Village of Idiots.

Note: I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

DROWNED CITY: HURRICANE KATRINA & NEW ORLEANS (graphic novel) by Don Brown

Published in August of 2005 by HMH Books for Young Readers.

Written and illustrated by Don Brown

Sibert Honor Medalist

Kirkus' Best of 2015 list

School Library Journal Best of 2015

Publishers Weekly's Best of 2015 list

Horn Book Fanfare Book 

Booklist Editor's Choice.

The story of Hurricane Katrina has been told many ways in many different formats but this graphic novel by Don Brown is undoubtedly one of the more powerful re-tellings. The powerful combination of the simple text combined with the simple, sad drawings of this tragedy work together to move the reader.

There is no main character to the book, just a simple re-telling of the story, starting with the birth of the storm, continuing on with the multiple mistakes leading up to the flood, the horror that followed and finally following on to the re-building of the city. 

From time-to-time an unknown person will speak directly to the reader, such as when a FEMA employee says, "When I have a nightmare, it's a hurricane in New Orleans." At another point, a train conductor stands on any empty train platform next to his train and says, "We offered...to take evacuees out of harm's way. The city declined." It turns out that all of these quotes are real quotes from real people that are endnoted in the back of this graphic novel.

This is well worth your time and a portion of the proceeds are donated to Habitat for Humanity.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. Excellent.

As of the date of this review, this graphic novel was being sold for $12.58 on Amazon.com. Check here for current pricing: Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans.

THE INNOCENT (Will Robie #1) by David Baldacci

Originally published in 2012.

The Innocent introduces Will Robie, a professional hit man who works for the United States government. His hits are usually drug cartel leaders, leaders of terrorist organizations and the like.

Robie gets an assignment close to home, which is a weird thing in and of itself. The first two hits described in the book are out of country hits. The fact that they are out of country hits gives the U.S. government a bit of plausible deniability. This new assignment is in Washington, D.C. and, as far as Robie can ascertain, the target is a fellow member of the intelligence community - but not an important one.

He's willing to follow through with it until he sees that the target is actually a mom with a young son and a baby. He hesitates, tries to figure out what is going on and that's when everything goes topsy-turvy in Robie's already convoluted world...

The White House. Photo by Zach Rudisin

This book was not a particularly great book for a couple of reasons. But, I will start with the good parts. The characters are great. Robie is likable character (for a stone-cold assassin) and his character does grow throughout the book. Also, the two supporting characters are interesting and the interaction between all three of them is well done.

But, the plot holes are not just large, they are magnificent. Robie stumbles into a plot, but you find out that he didn't really stumble into it - it was enlarged to include him as well in a giant cat-and-mouse game that makes no sense when you consider how it puts the original conspiracy at so much risk. Also, I knew who it was from the beginning because of a clue that was dropped that I cannot believe Robie did not pick up on and include in a mission debriefing. If he had, the entire plot of the book could have been avoided.

Also, on a pet peeve note there is this:

I am a Spanish teacher. I notice the Spanish in books and Baldacci includes a mis-translated gem on page 182 that tells me that he can't bother to actually check his dictionary translation with any of the millions upon millions of native speakers of Spanish that live in the United States. It's not that hard. It is a symptom of the lack of follow-through that pervades the book and makes for an iffy plot.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Innocent by David Baldacci.

THE FLASH: STOP MOTION (Justice League of America) by Mark Schulz

Published November 1, 2008 by GraphicAudio.
From an original novel first published in 2004.

Graphic Audio has a long tradition of creating excellent audiobooks by going back and telling stories the way that they used to tell them in the old days on the radio - with actors and sound effects. Rather than reading the story to the listener as the author wrote it, they act it out like an old-fashioned radio play.

In The Flash: Stop Motion the story focuses on Wally West, the young protege of the previous Flash, Barry Allen. Barry Allen is gone now and Wally is taking the responsibilities associated with wearing the red tights seriously. But, he is so much younger than most of the rest of the Justice League and he feels a little outclassed by the others. How can he hope to contribute as much as Superman who can practically do anything? Or the Martian Manhunter who can almost keep up with Superman and has telepathic powers? The Green Lantern is young but everyone knows that his ring gives him almost unlimited power. And Wonder Woman? She is grace, power and wisdom personified. Compared to her, The Flash is just a goofy kid. And who can hope to compare himself to the likes of Batman, even if Batman isn't a "super" like the others?

In the midst of this self-doubt, the Earth comes under attack in a series of asteroids. But, these asteroids are odd in that no one can scan them properly and what readings they can make don't make sense - they seem to be from another universe. The Flash can get some sense from them due to his ability to vibrate at different oscillations, but he keeps getting pulled away to deal with a series of bizarre murders in Keystone City in which the victims heads are literally blown up while they are sitting peacefully. And, once Wally West starts to realize what is really going on he knows that this is not something that the other members of the Justice League can deal with - it is up to The Flash to step up and save everyone and everything he has ever loved...

Normally, I am a big fan of Graphic Audio's productions, as I mentioned in the first paragraph. In this case, however, there were times when the music and action was so loud that I could not hear the voices of the characters or the narrator. This was not the case consistently, but there were times when the audio mix was just a mess. Even worse, I found it extremely hard to understand the voice of Flash's opponent. Most of the time I just guessed what he said based on the reactions of the other characters or further elaboration by the narrator.

But, if those were the only problems in this story I would have been pleased. This audiobook suffers from a near fatal case of TOO MUCH TALKING. Like in a bad play, most of the characters get their chance to step up and deliver a soliloquy. Superman gives a small one, Wally West gives a few, the Martian Manhunter gives several small ones but the worst is an incredibly long speech by a pivotal character towards the end of the book. I am not going to create spoilers but the long build up to the meeting of this character was tedious to listen to and this character's droning speech and contrary logic (that leaves a massive plot hole) just goes on and on and on. Ironically, the character just impressed on The Flash that time was of the essence because his opponent was destroying entire universes every second (or worlds, the character uses both terms interchangeably) and billions of lives were being lost every second and then the character just stands there and talks and talks and talks and tells Wally its entire history. Why? Because you should tell stories why people are annihilated, I guess.

So, way too much backstory told in long speeches, bad work on the mixing board from time to time and not enough action compared to the talking.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Flash: Stop Motion.