GOD IS NOT ONE: THE EIGHT RIVAL RELIGIONS THAT RUN the WORLD - and WHY THEIR DIFFERENCES MATTER (audiobook) by Stephen Prothero

Published in 2010 by HarperAudio.
Read by Paul Boehmer.
Duration: 14 hours, 37 minutes.
Unabridged.

Stephen Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University. The purpose of God Is Not One is to inform the reader of the eight greatest world religions, their philosophies and their way of looking at the world.

Prothero is very aware that choosing just eight religions is fraught with problems. How do you choose? Is it based on influence? Number of adherents? Importance of the countries it is in? He went through all of those questions again once again when he chose the order he would present the religions he picked.

The religions he profiled are: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, Yoruba religion, and Daoism. He spends about 90 minutes discussing each religion and includes nearly an hour on Atheism at the end, on the theory that militant Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens) behaves much like a religion, complete with evangelistic movements and a coherent worldview.

Prothero takes great pains to point out that these religions do not approach the world in the same way. He is pretty irritated at the "all religions are basically the same - they answer the same questions in different ways" view of religion. He thinks it is intellectually lazy. For example, Christianity teaches that the main problem with the world is sin. Daoism doesn't even have that concept - they think the main problem is society polluting people and making them unhappy by making them take on roles that go against their nature. Confucianism thinks the biggest problem is people not knowing their place in society - embrace the role given you and you will be happy. Yoruba religion is all about power, including spiritual power and leveraging it to your advantage. Atheism think religion itself is the problem - but they are usually most vocal against the three monotheistic religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity). They might be okay with Daoist and Confucian philosophy and some Buddhist sects. Of course, all of those summaries are super-simplistic.

Prothero is not making this point in order to say that the religions of the world can't get along. Rather, he is making this point in order to say that if we are going to get along, we actually have to know what the other religions are saying and where they are coming from.

Prothero's explanations include Western cultural references to movies and books. If you are a well-read person these can be quite helpful.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GOD IS NOT ONE: THE EIGHT RIVAL RELIGIONS THAT RUN the WORLD - and WHY THEIR DIFFERENCES MATTER by Stephen Prothero.

"I LOVE PAUL REVERE, WHETHER HE RODE or NOT" by Richard Shenkman

Originally published by HarperPerennial in 1991.

Richard Shenkman has written several books that show that many of the commonly-held beliefs about history are not quite true and some are absolutely false. The title comes from a quote from President Warren G. Harding when he was asked about a popular newspaper article that asserted that Paul Revere did not actually make his famous ride. Ironically, Paul Revere only gets two mentions: once on page 10 and the other on page 192. The mention on page 192 is simply the complete quote from Harding that inspired the title of the book. So, if you were thinking this was going to be a book about Paul Revere, you will be disappointed. 

Instead, Shenkman's I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not is a reminder that there are always multiple views on history. Anybody that tells you that a certain group all believed a certain thing or they all did something for one reason is simplifying things and losing some of the nuance of how it really happened. 

The Boston Tea Party

Shenkman explores several different areas in 12 chapters including patriotism, religion, business, alcohol/drugs, and women. Typically, he brings up a "fact" that people commonly believe, such as the Puritans living in a theocracy, and then demonstrates that they the common belief is, at best, an exaggeration (government often told the ministers to mind their own business and ministers told the government to do the same -even early on. He cites an example from 1639 - just 19 years after Plymouth colony was founded).

But, sometimes he takes things too far in order to make a point. For example, on page 66-67 he discusses the common belief that the Civil War laid the foundation for a post-war explosion of growth. He looks at railroad expansion and notes that "Before the war, railroad track increased at a rate of about 200 percent a decade. In the decade afterward, the rate barely reached 75 percent." Comparing rate of growth to actual growth is a game people play with statistics but does not deal in absolute growth.

His discussion of the Boston Tea Party is similar in that it is completely factual, but does not include all of the facts in order to make a point about the men who led it. It's a valid point, but it is certainly not the only point.

This is an extremely readable book that makes the valuable point, as I've already noted, that history is seldom as simple as we tell one another. It's not always as simple as Shenkman makes it out to be, either. I do recommend this book, however. It teaches that the reader needs to do his or her own research and provides plenty of places to get started.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: "I LOVE PAUL REVERE, WHETHER HE RODE or NOT" by Richard Shenkman.

SEMICOLON: THE PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE of a MISUNDERSTOOD MARK by Cecilia Watson

Published by HarperAudio in July of 2019.
Read by Pam Ward.
Duration: 3 hours, 47 minutes.
Unabridged.

Cecelia Watson is a historian whose research has made her an expert on the semicolon. Why the semicolon? She describes herself as a reformed member of the grammar police and really enjoys looking at how authors use punctuation in their writing.

I did learn some interesting (albeit trivial) facts about the origins of the semicolon and I as a world language teacher and I did appreciate Watson's de-emphasis of grammar in favor of meaning. But, sometimes this short book sometimes felt like it was slowing to a crawl as the focus went on to how various grammar books explained semicolons (and other points of grammar) over the years.

The author, Cecilia Watson

Personally, I avoid semicolons. My theory is that in most cases it would be better to make two smaller sentences than having one longer unwieldy sentence held together by a semicolon, although Watson does point out a brilliant sentence from Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.

If you are a fan of grammar, this may well be your book. I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark by Cecilia Watson. 

FRONT ROW at the TRUMP SHOW (audiobook) by Jonathan Karl

Published by Penguin Audio on March 31, 2020.
Read by the author, Jonathan Karl.
Duration: 10 hours, 16 minutes.
Unabridged.

Jonathan Karl has had a long relationship with Donald Trump. Karl is a reporter

Jonathan Karl and Donald Trump in 1994 and nowadays.

(The New Republic, The New York Post, CNN and ABC) and he first met Donald Trump in 1994. Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley had just gotten married and were staying in Trump Tower for their honeymoon. Karl convinced Trump to do an interview about why celebrities would want to stay in his building. Trump personally led Karl on a tour of the building.

Over the years, Karl interviewed Trump multiple times for multiple reasons. Because of this relationship, Karl was called on to interview Trump when he toyed with the idea of running for president before 2016 (5 times).

Karl moved on to be the White House correspondent for the Obama administration for ABC and stayed when Donald Trump was elected.

This book will not change a single mind about President Trump, for or against him so I am not going to even delve into his stories. I thought Karl made a series of fair points.  He was also critical of other administrations and their dealings with the press. But, he didn't go into detail on those because it is a book about the "Trump Show".

The book is very listenable. Karl reads his own audiobook and does a great job, which is to be expected considering what he does for a living.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FRONT ROW at the TRUMP SHOW by Jonathan Karl.

THE HESSIAN by Howard Fast

Originally published in 1972.

Howard Fast (1914-2003) was a prolific author with a particular love of historical fiction. He is most famous for the novel Spartacus, the book that the famous movie is based on.

The Hessian is set in rural Connecticut late in the Revolutionary War. The war has moved on south of Connecticut. The main character is Dr. Feversham, a veteran of the Revolutionary War and wars in Europe who is sick to death of war. He is not a particularly pleasant man. He is a lapsed Catholic while most of his neighbors are Protestants. There is also a scattering of Quakers in the area.

A British ship dropped off a squad of 16 Hessians who cause a panic. Hessians are German soldiers hired by the British to help supplement their soldiers during the Revolutionary War. They were particularly hated and feared because they were mercenaries (and they fought very well). The Americans could understand why the British fought, but what was the motivation of soldiers who were rented out by their lord back in The Holy Roman Empire?

The reason for this mission by the Hessians is never discovered, but they do hang a local man during their march. He was a simpleminded fellow who barely knew how to speak. He was following them because they were new and interesting. The Hessians seem to have killed him because he might be a spy, but it was just as likely that they did it because he was annoying and this was a war zone.

The local militia forms up to go after them and, using their superior knowledge of the countryside, they successfully surprised them and wiped out the whole force - except for the teenaged drummer boy who ran away.

The drummer boy shows up at a Quaker home in need of medical care. The Quakers do what all Quakers would do - they assist him and bring in the doctor. Being pacifists, they are not part of the war, but they do help those in need.

And that is the problem - is he a boy or a soldier? Is he lost and in need of help or is he a soldier looking to rejoin the rest of his army? Is he responsible for the murder of the mentally disabled man?

This book has moments of greatness in it. The premise is a powerful one and worthy of a book. But, there is annoying subplot about the doctor's marriage and his attraction to another woman that distract from the issue at hand. 

Also, in this book Howard Fast has a really bad habit of having long threads of dialogue without identifying who is speaking. Multiple times I had to go back and re-read these passages just to figure out who was saying what to whom. Even worse, sometimes he ends such a conversation and with a short sentence goes right into another one. At one point I was wondering why the doctor was having an argument about his love life with the family gardener until I realized that the conversation had changed with very little warning.

So, I am sorry to say that the book does not live up to its potential. I rate it 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE HESSIAN by Howard Fast. 

A SHORT HISTORY of RECONSTRUCTION: 1863-1877 (audiobook) by Eric Foner

Originally published in book form in 1990.
Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio.
Read by Paul Heitsch.
Duration: 12 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged (see below)

Clocking in at 12 and one-half hours, A Short History of Reconstruction: 1863-1877 is an abridgment of a larger work about Reconstruction that Foner published in 1988.  Still, it is plenty long enough to reveal the scope of the tragedy that was the post-Civil War Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln often thought about the conditions necessary to bring the seceded states back into the Union. He called that plan Reconstruction because the separate state governments would be rebuilt and then the Union itself would be reformed.

There were certain ground rules, including not letting power players in the Confederate and seceded state governments return to power. Most importantly, slavery had to be ended in the areas under the authority of the Emancipation Proclamation that was effective on January 1, 1863.

When Lincoln was assassinated, Vice President Andrew Johnson was forced to take the lead in Reconstruction. However, he was not nearly the politician that Abraham Lincoln was and soon enough, the Congress took the lead in Reconstruction. Their disagreements over Reconstruction was one of the reasons Johnson was impeached.

But, there were still promising results. African Americans voted and started schools and their own churches and went to Congress and became sheriffs and city council members and more.

Grant's eight years as President were a mixed bag. The KKK flared up again only to be squashed by outright military intervention. But, the North was tired of dealing with the South and its issues. If you start counting at the start of the Civil War, by the time the election of 1877 came along, they had been dealing with the those issues for 17 straight years. To get a contemporary 21st century analogy - think about how strong the American public feels about the war in Afghanistan in the year 2020. So, when the election of 1876 was too close to call, a deal was made and Reconstruction came to an end under Rutherford B. Hayes.

Foner details how almost everything fell apart and so many fell into the near-serfdom of sharecropping and Jim Crow laws. Interestingly, the GDP of the South was the same in 1900 as it was in 1880 - absolutely no economic growth at all over 20 years.

President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875)

Foner does point out that things weren't a whole lot better for African Americans in the North and that organized labor of any sort in general struggled in the North (and was practically non-existent in the South).

The audiobook was read by Paul Heitsch whose reading style reminded me (too often) of the automated voice you get when you call a bank or an airline. Also, he mispronounced several words. For example, he consistently mispronounced the word "lien" (used throughout the sharecropper section) lee-un.

This was not a pleasant book - no one likes to hear about the almost complete failure of the country to protect the civil rights of its people. But, this is an important piece of our history.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A Short History of Reconstruction: 1863-1877.

THE SCARECROW (Jack McEvoy #2) by Michael Connelly

Published in 2009 by Hachette Audio.
Read by Peter Giles.
Duration: 11 hours, 15 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Scarecrow is a sequel to one of Michael Connelly's earliest books - 1996's The Poet. In The Poet, newspaper reporter and FBI agent Rachel Walling solve a murder mystery and defeat a serial killer.

Since that time, McEvoy wrote a book about his experiences, moved from Colorado and took a job with the LA Times. Now, 12 years later, he is being let go as the Times is going through a round of lay-offs. He has been given two weeks notice and told to train his younger replacement on the crime beat.

Meanwhile, a parent calls to complain to McEvoy about an article he wrote saying that her teenaged child had killed a woman and stuffed her body in the trunk of a car. McEvoy decides to look into the case and he and his reporter-in-training uncover some interesting facts that make it clear that the boy didn't do it. Instead, McEvoy is on the trail of another serial killer...

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of serial killer books or movies, especially if the serial killer is a main character in the book. I don't enjoy exploring the psyche of a serial killer. Connelly does a bit of this, but doesn't revel in it like some authors do.

That being said, I am going to rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It's a good story.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE SCARECROW (Jack McEvoy #2) by Michael Connelly.