FORT SUMTER 1861 by Albert Castel

Originally published in 1976.
Reprinted and sold by Eastern Acorn Press through the National Park Service.

Something like 24 years ago I went with to Gettysburg with a wife and a friend for a weekend trip. On that trip I bought this little book. It sat on my shelf unread for more than 2 decades. No reason for that - I am an insatiable student of the war. I have reviewed 91 books on the subject before this one. But, it sat there unread until now.

Fort Sumter 1861 is a readable and quite thorough history of the events leading up the famous Firing upon Fort Sumter. The best feature of the small book (fifty 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages) is that it doesn't just tell about Fort Sumter in South Carolina, but also about Fort Pickens in Florida. The book details how Sumter was part of a larger policy. Most histories separate the two of them and that is a mistake.

The book also describes the duplicitous actions of Secretary of State William Seward throughout the affair. Seward seriously doubted the abilities of President Lincoln and tried to conduct his own private negotiations with South Carolina to end the crisis. On top of that, he countermanded some of Lincoln's own directives when it came to relieving Fort Sumter.   

The expected stuff is included as well - who fired the first shot, when the fort was surrendered and so on. This was a $1.25 well-spent 24 years ago. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

Fort Sumter 1861 can be found on Amazon.com here.

KILL YUAN (audiobook) by Peter Nealen

Published in May of 2017 by Peter Nealen, LLC
Read by Cody Parcell
Duration: 12 hours, 23 minutes
Unabridged

The Yuan in the title Kill Yuan is a Chinese Navy captain who has stolen his frigate and its crew and become a pirate leader in the South China Sea. For some reason, the government of China is not acting against him and the other governments in the area are not strong enough to move against a true military ship the size of a frigate (in the pirate world a frigate is much larger than most of their re-purposed ships). The United States has ignored this new pirate leader because its forces in the area are busy playing cat-and-mouse war games with the Chinese Navy.

Cut to Dan Tackett. He is a former member of the U.S. military who has done some independent work as well. But, he has stopped all of that because his wife has died in a car crash and he has to raise their two children. But, making the money he needs while repairing motorcycles is tough and he has to make it up with lots and lots of overtime, meaning that he is not actually raising his own children - he is leaving that up to the day care providers and he hates it. In the evening he is drowning the pain of the loss of his wife in plenty of alcohol.

Out of desperation Tackett looks online for some independent military contractor work and finds an offer that looks to good to be true: $50,000 per month! He decides to go for it, leaves his children with their grandparents and goes off in search of a fortune that will pay off his house and leave him able to raise his children.

Tackett arrives at the training facility in Florida with a number of recruits and discovers that it's training pace is unbelievably grueling, even though it's purpose is hidden. His true employer is also hidden and this might just be a problem once they are deployed...

I listened to the audiobook version of this book read by Cody Parcell. Parcell did a fine job of reading the book despite his consistent mispronunciation of the word "redoubt." His pacing was good and he did a great job with the Chinese accents.

While I like a good action book, I freely admit I am not really an avid reader of pure military adventures so this one was a little out of my normal reading zone. The section on training was excellent. The middle part of the book (when they are deployed) was also excellent. The last third of the book got a little too full of jargon for my tastes.  When the author started to refer to weapons by the letter number combinations (like M16 and AK47 but different number combinations I had never heard of because I have never served in the military) I just assumed they were rifles of some sort and went on with the experience. On the whole, though, this was an enjoyable listen. I listened to it very quickly, which is a great sign.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Kill Yuan by Peter Nealen.

DIE TRYING (Jack Reacher #2) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Penguin Audio
Originally published in 1998.
Read by Jonathan McClain
Duration: 14 hours, 47 minutes
Unabridged

In Die Trying Jack Reacher helps out a lady in need with her dry cleaning and ends up being kidnapped, thrown in the back of a van with her and driven across the country as part of an over-the-top plan.

Reacher tries to figure out a way to escape while simultaneously trying to figure out why the kidnappers them in the first place. Of course, once he starts to figure out things, he discovers that their near hopeless situation is actually worse than he thought...

This is a great Reacher novel. I am listening to them all out of order, which isn't much of a problem since Lee Child isn't really writing them in any particular order. Lots of action, plenty of plot lines and Reacher himself make this entry worth reading.

This is the first Reacher novel I have listened to that was read by Jonathan McClain. Most of them I have heard were read by Dick Hill. McClain's style grew on me as I listened and I enjoyed it. His voicing of the creepy bad buy was especially good.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. 

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Die Trying by Lee Child.

THE POSTMAN by David Brin

Originally published in 1985.

Winner of the Locus Award in 1986.

The Postman is the book that inspired the Kevin Costner movie of the same name. It has a lot of similar features but the movie changed a great deal.

Gordon Krantz is a survivor of the Doomwar, a nuclear and biological war between all of the world powers. The war was bad enough but survivalist groups called the Holnists made survival even more miserable in what was left behind. The Holnists are united by a common ideology that teaches that some men are naturally superior to others and every man must grab what he can get in this world.

Krantz is slowly working his way across the country. He started out in Minnesota and 15 years later he has made it to Oregon. He has to walk because the nuclear pulse wiped out the electronics. Life is tough everywhere, but in most places it resembles the Mad Max movies more than anything else so it is slow going.

Krantz loses everything to a group of thieves and luckily stumbles upon a mummified letter carrier in a postal jeep - a man who drove off of the road and died during the later stages of the war and no one found him. Out of desperation, Krantz takes the clothes off of his mummified body and takes the letters he was carrying as well.

Krantz bluffs his way into a fortified town by insisting that he is a letter carrier for the Restored United States and he's delivering old mail and will start carrying new mail.

Turns out that people were craving news from towns just a few miles away because and were excited by the prospect of any sort of return to the old days, even if it was just a pile of old letters. 

So, Krantz promises to deliver letters as he moves along, figuring that he's got a new con he can pull on each new town so that he can finagle a few hot meals and a decent bed to sleep in as he moves through Oregon. But, as people start to believe in him, he starts to think that maybe there's something to this postman gig after all. Things start to look better until you toss in a super-computer, a dystopian Amazon princess of sorts and the largest Holnist invasion force that anyone has seen in years - maybe the largest ever.

This book differs from the movie in a lot of key ways, as I have mentioned. There is enough of a difference that you will not feel like you have already been though this story before.

That being said, this is not a particularly great sci-fi story. I love the "big idea" part of the book (the postman inspires a renewed interest in civilization) but the book just has too many moving parts (the 3-hour long movie attempts to address this by simplifying things, believe it or not).

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Postman by David Brin.

BEHIND REBEL LINES: THE INCREDIBLE STORY of EMMA REDMONDS, CIVIL WAR SPY by Seymour Reit

Published in 2014 by Clarion Books.

Behind Rebel Lines is the story of a real-life Civil War hero. Despite technically not being able to join the army at all because she was a woman, Emma Edmonds crossed the American-Canadian border in order to join the Union army for all of the action and adventure. She knew full well that she could keep up with the men because she grew up helping on her family farm. But, she never expected the adventures she experienced during the war.

Emma Edmonds
(1841-1898)

Seymour Reit tells a fictionalized version of this true story (the events are real, the details, like conversations, are made into a story) that starts out working in an army hospital but soon ends up dressing up in different outfits and crossing the enemy lines to act as a spy and had all sorts of close calls while generating plenty of usable information.

This is an immensely readable book. My fifth grader chose it to read for a school project and her enthusiasm for the book inspired my wife and I to read it as well. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Behind Rebel Lines: The Incredible Story of Emma Redmonds, Civil War Spy.

STANDARD HERO BEHAVIOR by John David Anderson

Published in 2007 by Clarion Books

Indianapolis native John David Anderson's Standard Hero Behavior is a tongue-in-cheek look at the Lord of the Rings type fantasy world, sort of like The Princess Bride. 

Mason Quayle is a young, under-employed bard (he write epic songs about heroes and the like) and his best friend Cowel sells epic plumes for the hats of heroes (think Three Musketeer hats). The problem is that they live in a town that used to be full of heroes but the new duke of their city has the monsters under control. It used to take dozens of heroes, now it is handled by one man. Mason can't figure out how he does it all by himself because his father used to be the most-requested bard for all of those heroes and he's very familiar with the old songs and stories.

But, that was a long time ago. His father is gone, disappeared along with several of the most powerful heroes while off on an epic quest. 

One day Mason is summoned to the Duke's home and he finds out that everything is not as it seemed and he and his friend have to go out and find the old heroes before it is too late...

I really liked the premise of this book but as the book went along I felt like it just didn't live up to its potential. It wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't as good as I felt that it could have been.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Standard Hero Behavior by John David Anderson.

THE HARD WAY (Jack Reacher #10) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2008.
Read by Dick Hill
Duration: 12 hours, 2 minutes
Unabridged

Jack Reacher is just hanging out in a New York City coffee shop, drinking coffee and staring out the window when he gets caught up in a kidnapping case in The Hard Way. Turns out he witnessed the money hand off without even realizing what he was seeing. The ransom payer tracked Reacher down, picked him up and brought him to his exclusive penthouse apartment/office. Turns out his wife and stepdaughter have been kidnapped and he has decided to leave the police out of it and just pay the ransom.

The millionaire runs a quasi-legal mercenary operation and has decided to use his best men to search out the kidnappers and eliminate them...and he wants Reacher to help due to his previous police experience and offers him a hefty cash bounty if he produces. But, as Reacher starts to dig into why someone would want to kidnap his new employer's wife and stepdaughter he starts to find a lot more nagging questions than answers...

This was an especially interesting Reacher book for me. Lots of action, about 3 surprise twists and a number of interesting locales. Dick Hill's narration is just about perfect. He totally captures Reacher's attitudes. 

I rate this audibook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Hard Way by Lee Child.