DESTINY DISRUPTED: A HISTORY of the WORLD through ISLAMIC EYES (audiobook) by Tamim Ansary

Published in 2009 by Blackstone Audio.
Read by the author, Tamim Ansary
Duration: 17 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

Tamim Ansary has done something that is very hard to do - he has written a long history of a complicated topic without making it boring and after more than 17 hours of discussion, he left me wishing that it was even longer.

Ansary makes the observation that most histories that people in the West (Western Europe and the Americas) read are written from a Western perspective. That makes sense. But, the history of the world is not just the history of Western Civilization. There are multiple civilizations on the planet. Mesoamerica (the Mayas, Aztecs, Toltecs, etc.) is a separate civilization. China is the historic center of another civilization. So is India. And between the West and India and China is another one. Westerners usually refer to it as the Middle East. This book is a history of that civilization from the beginning of recorded history (empires like Bablyon) to 9/11 and the fallout from that terrorist act.

The strength of this book is that it lets the reader see history from another perspective. For example, the Crusades loom large in European history, but they were mostly an irritant to Muslims of the day since Ghenghis Khan was threatening them from Central Asia at the same time. Compared to Ghenghis Khan, the Crusaders were not an existential threat to their civilization. To make an analogy from American history, the Battle of Lexington and Concord looms large in American history textbooks as "The Short Heard 'Round the World", but most English school children have never heard of it.

The audiobook is read by the author and he does a great job. The book is written in approachable, every day language, literally designed to be an introduction to the history of this civilization. He reminds readers of key concepts throughout, showing how older ways of doing things applied to new situations and were adapted. Ansary's reading is excellent.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. I highly recommended this audiobook. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DESTINY DISRUPTED: A HISTORY of the WORLD through ISLAMIC EYES by Tamim Ansary.

LOST HORIZON by James Hilton

Originally published in 1933.

The dust jacket from the original
hardcover printing in 1933.

Lost Horizon was the first novel published under the label Pocket Books (Pocket Book #1) and was one of the best-selling novels of the 20th century. My copy of this book was published in 1966 and it says it is part of the 62nd printing by Pocket Books.

The story starts in Afghanistan where a local rebellion has caused the British government to evacuate all 80 of the white residents via airplane. The last airplane out is a high performance luxury airplane carrying just 4 passengers. Turns out, their pilot is a hijacker armed with a pistol and he takes them far off course into modern-day Tibet. They have a very rough landing on a high mountain glacier and the hijacker dies.

The four survivors start to walk across the glacier but are soon discovered by a party from a nearby monastery called Shangri-La. They are escorted back the monastery and settle in for a long wait for the next supply party to work it's way up to the monastery. But, that's not a problem because this monastery is on the edge of a hidden lush and beautiful valley full of people that seems to have been forgotten by time.

And that's not all this valley is hiding.

I am rating this book 3 stars out of 5. Despite it's tremendous reputation, I found it to be quite slow and more than a little anti-climactic. I found the introduction to the novel in the inside of the front cover to be more interesting than the actual novel. For example, the name Shangri-La was entirely made up for this book and has since entered the English language as another word for a remote, exotic, earthly paradise.

Multiple editions of this novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Lost Horizon by James Hilton.

I did like this quote from the book: "People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little."

SERGEANT STUBBY: HOW a STRAY DOG and HIS BEST FRIEND HELP WIN WORLD WAR I and STOLE the HEART of a NATION (audiobook) by Ann Bausum

Published in 2014 by Blackstone Audio.

Read by Pam Ward.

Duration: 5 hours, 12 minutes.
Unabridged.

Sgt. Stubby wearing his medal vest (left), marching in a parade
(upper right) and wearing his special gas mask (lower right).

During the quick basic training for American forces heading for France in World War I, a stray dog found its way into a Connecticut National Guard training camp at Yale University. The unit was sprawled all over the campus and this Boston Terrier mix wandered around making friends all over. His friendly nature guaranteed a lot of table scraps. He marched with the men, learned the commands and blended in as well as a dog can. Somewhere along the way, someone taught him how to salute and hold the salute until it was returned.

When it came time to board a ship and head to France, the soldier that he spent the most time with, Corporal James Robert Conroy, hid him under his coat as others provided a distraction. Once aboard, Stubby ensured he got to stay with his friends by saluting any superior officer that questioned his presence and all resistance melted away.

Stubby stayed with his friends in France. He served several months in the trenches, participated in 17 battles, was wounded by a German hand grenade, was wounded by German poison gas, helped locate wounded soldiers in the "no man's land" between the trenches, single-handedly captured a German spy (he grabbed his pants with his mouth and made a ruckus until human soldiers came) and won admirers everywhere he went.

The title of this book exaggerates the importance of Sgt. Stubby to the war effort. He was immensely important to Conroy and their circle of friends, but the title makes it sound like Sgt. Stubby turned the tide of the war or something.

The book is equal parts a biography of Sgt. Stubby and a history of the era in which he lived. It's also a pretty serviceable history of World War I and includes discussions of movements in American history like the suffragette movement, the anti-alcohol campaigns that resulted in Prohibition and the rise of the FBI.

The audiobook was extremely well read by Pam Ward. I hope to come across other audiobooks read by her.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SERGEANT STUBBY: HOW a STRAY DOG and HIS BEST FRIEND HELP WIN WORLD WAR I and STOLE the HEART of a NATION.

THE OPTIMIST (audiobook) by Roy Schreiber

Published by Author's Republic in 2019.
Multicast performance.
Duration: 1 hour, 11 minutes.
Unabridged

This audiobook is a mixed bag. I will start with the positive side.

The multicast performance in this audiobook is really, really good. The voice actors perform it like an old-fashioned radio play and they are excellent. It even has sound effects that are timed right, set to the right sound level and are not obnoxious.

The story is another matter. It starts out with one plot (two university professors trying to grow the size of the practically nonexistent faculty labor union at a small private university in Indiana), drifts into a second story line and finally moves into a third, rather bizarre story thread that doesn't even come close to addressing the original conflict in this 71 minute story. This audiobook just slides around like a nervous six year old tells a story to a bunch of adults at a family get-together.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It gets 2 stars because I really liked the work of the team that put together the audiobook.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Optimist by Roy Schreiber.

JUST MERCY: A STORY of JUSTICE and REDEMPTION (audiobook) by Bryan Stevenson

Published in 2014 by Random House Audio
Read by the author, Bryan Stevenson.
Duration: 11 hours, 11 minutes
Unabridged.

"...if he just had the money for a decent lawyer."

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who has spent his entire career working with people who have been wrongfully convicted and unfairly sentenced. He works through the Equal Justice Initiative with a lot of death row inmates in Alabama. He has succeeded in getting over 100 re-trials and/or re-sentencing hearings for people on death row. He has had multiple convictions completely overturned.

Stevenson does a lot of work in Alabama because Alabama doesn't do much to subsidize the defense in death row cases. How much does the state spend for the entire case, including appeals?

Just $1,000.

Some counties help with that amount, but more than 70% of Alabama's death row inmates were represented by $1,000 lawyers. Considering that the average cost of a simple will is $375, you can see that a $1,000 worth of death row defense won't get much. The author says it won't even pay for the photocopying costs associated with a death row defense, let alone DNA tests, expert testimony, hiring investigators and other costs. In one of his cases, he freed a man because he was able to demonstrate that the bullet that killed the victim could not have been fired from the supposed "murder weapon" owned by the defendant - it wouldn't have fit in the gun. That is super-basic expert testimony that should have been presented at the original trial.

Stevenson tells the stories of many of his clients as Just Mercy moves along, but the thread that ties it together is the story of Walter McMillian. McMillian was convicted of murdering a teenage girl based on flimsy testimony and even flimsier circumstantial evidence. It is the attorney's most famous case and it does give the reader a good idea about the length of time it takes to straighten out one of these incorrect verdicts.

Stevenson also makes a compelling argument that there is a great deal of racial bias in these cases. The sentences for black defendants are often longer, more likely to go to Death Row and are less likely to have an adequate defense. Younger black defendants are much more likely to get moved to adult court than white ones.

My advice if you are poor and/or black is to never get arrested for anything in Alabama.

This book is an important read. Stevenson's writing style is very to the fact - very much in line with someone that writes a lot of legalese all day. He avoids technical terms in this book, but it is often a "just the facts" style of writing. 

That said, this book can be inspiring and Stevenson paints a compelling picture. There was one point in the story that I was so frustrated with what was going on that I was physically angry. At another point just a few minutes later, the situation resolved itself in such a profoundly moving way that it brought tears to my eyes. The topic is so engrossing that artistic flourishes are not required.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: JUST MERCY: A STORY of JUSTICE and REDEMPTION by Bryan Stevenson.

STAR SPANGLED SCANDAL: SEX, MURDER, and the TRIAL THAT CHANGED AMERICA (audiobook) by Chris DeRose

Published by Blackstone Audio in June of 2019.
Read by Traber Burns.
Duration: 8 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

In February of 1859, Daniel Sickles, a sitting U.S. Congressman, shot and killed a man in Washington, D.C. across the street from the White House.

Why is this not just a weird moment in American history?

Five reasons.

#1) Daniel Sickles went on to become the highest-ranking Union officer in the Civil War that did not graduate from West Point. He performed very well at the disastrous Battle of Chancellorsville and performed bravely, but with great controversy at Gettysburg, where he lost a leg.

#2) The victim was Phillip Barton Key, the son of Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner. Phillip Barton Key was also the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.

#3) Key and Sickles' wife had been carrying on a long-term adulterous affair and Sickles had just discovered this fact.

#4) The new technology of the telegraph spread this story to newspapers across the country and it became THE scandal story of its era. Some newspapers sold literally tens of thousands of copies when this story was on the front page. Record numbers of telegraph messages were sent out across the country - totals only eclipsed by the Civil War just a few months later.

#5) It was the first time the temporary insanity defense was used successfully in the United States and kicked off a wave of similar defenses in adultery cases for most of the next century.

For me, an enthusiastic student of the Civil War, Star Spangled Scandal should have been an amazing book. A future Civil War general is defended in a murder trial by the future Secretary of War during the Civil War (Edwin Stanton). A few days before the murder Sickles, his wife and her lover had all been at a party hosted by Rose O'Neal Greenhow - the future famed Confederate spy who used her parties during the war to gather information. Abraham Lincoln was fascinated by the case and discussed it back home in Springfield, Illinois. Later, he and his wife became friends with Mr. and Mrs. Sickles.

But, this book gets bogged down with long passages from the trial. He literally quotes the opening and closing statements from the trial at great length with no analysis - just copies and pastes it into the book. That might have been all right, unless you have read anything from the 1850's. Verbose and flowery speech abounds. Everyone comes off as a self-important, pompous windbag. It is tedious to listen to. If it could be said in 10 words, they were sure to use 50 or 60.

Here is a great example. This single sentence with more than 90 words was written to the New York Herald by Daniel Sickles to complain that they were writing about his personal life, but they didn't know any of the details and they should just butt out:

"The editorial comments of the Herald of yesterday, although censorious, (of which I do not complain whilst I read them with regret) differ so widely in tone and temper from the mass of nonsense and calumny which has lately been written concerning a recent event in my domestic relations, that I cannot allow a mistake, into which you have been held by inaccurate information, to pass without such a correction as will relieve others from any share of the reproaches which is the pleasure of the multitude at this moment to heap upon me and mine."

An artist's rendering of the murder from Harper's Weekly
 in March of 1859.

If you enjoyed that sentence, you would love the extended quotes from the trial transcript threaded together with an occasional comment for page after page.

I did not enjoy the narration in this book. I only have a couple of readers I will not listen to. Before this book, I only had one reader. Traber Burns has made it two. The reader has the perfect voice for pompous, self-important commentary. He is perfectly suited for this style of writing.

So, I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. Just too many quotes. I get the value of letting the people actually speak for themselves, but this was too much.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: STAR SPANGLED SCANDAL: SEX, MURDER, and the TRIAL THAT CHANGED AMERICA by Chris DeRose.

NOT A DRILL (Jack Reacher #18.5) (audiobook) by Lee Child

Published in 2014 by Random House Audio.

Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 1 hour, 27 minutes.
Unabridged

Lee Child was a prolific writer of Jack Reacher stories. I say was because he recently announced his intention to stop writing those stories. His brother will start writing them instead.

Child wrote numerous books and short stories in no particular order, bouncing around the timeline of Jack Reacher's life. Not a Drill is set in Maine. I presume it fits in on the timeline with the other Reacher stories that take place in Maine and New England.

Jack Reacher is hitchhiking to the end of I-95 at the U.S.-Canada border. Another of his books starts at the other end of I-95 down by Miami, Florida and Reacher makes a point that he wants to have traveled from one end of the road to the other.

Once he gets there, he gets out and is soon picked up by three younger Canadians who are headed to a four day long hiking trip. Their trail starts at one town and ends up at another. Reacher decides to go with them to the trail head because he has nothing else to do. But, when the military shows up, things start to get weird...

Not a Drill is a short story or perhaps a novella (depending on how you want to interpret those terms). To me, it felt like this story was the beginning of a novel that never really blossomed into a book-length story. But, this story is just too short to be much of anything at all. Very forgettable.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found as part of a larger collection on Amazon.com here: NOT A DRILL (Jack Reacher #18.5) (audiobook) by Lee Child.