THE OTHER SIDE of HISTORY: DAILY LIFE in the ANCIENT WORLD (The Great Courses) by Robert Garland

 

Published by The Great Courses in 2013.

Read by the author, Robert Garland.
Duration: 24 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

Robert Garland

Robert Garland gives his listeners a look at the "other side of history" - meaning from the point of view of the lower and middle classes, slaves, regular soldiers, women and children from the Stone Age through Medieval Europe. Occasionally, he looks at the rich, but not quite famous as well. He also explores how religion worked in every day life, family life, marriage ceremonies, how many jobs were performed and funeral rites in Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe, particularly England.

Garland is a lecturer at Colgate University in New York State so he delivers this information through a series of 48 half-hour lectures. Asking for all 48 lectures to be 5 star quality is asking too much, but I found this to be an enjoyable and educational listen.

Highly recommended.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE OTHER SIDE of HISTORY: DAILY LIFE in the ANCIENT WORLD (The Great Courses) by Robert Garland.

DEAR CHURCH: A LOVE LETTER from a BLACK PREACHER to the WHITEST DENOMINATION in the U.S. by Lenny Duncan

Published in 2019 by Fortress Press

Lenny Duncan, as noted in the title, is a black pastor in a very white church body - the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). I belong to a different Lutheran denomination, but I recognize the congregations and the issues he is talking about. I found out about Dear Church from an interview on the morning news on NPR.

Duncan took a unique route to becoming a pastor. He was a homeless teen, he was a prostitute, he served time in jail and he was seeking something spiritual when he attended an ELCA church and heard the Lutheran teachings on God's grace and his life was changed.

Now, he is a pastor telling this church that he loves that it must do better. To be fair to the ELCA, this letter is not just applicable to that denomination, it is applicable to most of the mostly white mainline protestant denominations. But, comments like this one are more than fair for all Lutheran churches: "People are deciding not to come to our churches because we have allowed them to become country clubs where we pantomime discipleship or to be German/Swedish cultural centers, not because we finally got the courage to love God’s own children."

I was struck by several quotes that I will list off:

"Now is the time to rise up with the oppressed. Our churches are emptying because we have become navel-gazing social clubs that are more concerned with the fund to keep the organ alive than funds for refugees."

"Dear Church, it’s time to stop prioritizing tradition and civility over the lives of the marginalized."

"Jesus wants us to love everyone. I’m constantly surprised and disappointed by how radical that statement seems to be."

"Dear Church, we are the ones we have been waiting for. No one else is coming. You are the generation that has been chosen for this time, this place, this moment in human history. Stop waiting for some sort of transformative leader to arise from the body politic or the body of Christ. It is you. You with all your flaws, fears, doubts, brokenness, and downright utter humanness—you are called for more."

Duncan looks at his role as pastor as being the advocate for the marginalized in society because Jesus reached out to people just like them - because Pastor Duncan was one of those marginalized people himself. He wants the church to mobilize to reach out - really reach out. Open up its doors. Feed the poor and more.

I don't agree with every point he makes, but Duncan makes enough good points that I have to give it a strong recommendation. 

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DEAR CHURCH: A LOVE LETTER from a BLACK PREACHER to the WHITEST DENOMINATION in the U.S. by Lenny Duncan.

TREASON by David Nevin

 

Published in 2001 by Forge (Tor).

Treason has been in my to-be-read pile for a long time. I was inspired to finally read it after watching the musical Hamilton on a streaming service. As you may know, the character of Aaron Burr plays a large part and I got to wondering exactly what happened to Burr when he went west after his term as Vice President.

The problem, as the author points out, is that we don't really know exactly what Aaron Burr did. He went on trial for treason, but it was a hurried and botched trial and Burr was found not guilty.

Nevin does a solid job of explaining what Burr might have been doing. Nevin goes along with the popular theory that Burr was working with the commanding general of the U.S. Army, James Wilkinson. In 1854, letters were discovered that showed that Wilkinson was in the pay of the government of Spain and was feeding them all sorts of information.

Aaron Burr, 1756-1836.

Nevin supposes that Wilkinson gave Spain false information designed to make Spain attack the United States while Burr was bringing hundreds of men down the Ohio and Mississippi as part of a private army. Burr and Wilkinson were planning to use the Spanish attack as an excuse to initiate martial law in New Orleans, attack Mexico and combine New Orleans, Texas and Mexico into a new country, led by Burr and Wilkinson. Eventually, the states west of the Appalachians would join the new country and New England and New York would break away from the rest of the coastal states and the United States would simply cease to exist.

All of that was interesting, but David Nevin strung this book out and made all of that as boring as possible. He repeated conversations, rants, mental rants and made the pace crawl. The front cover features the Hamilton-Burr duel, but the book barely mentions it with just 6 pages out of a 545 page novel. Hamilton is basically a non-entity, which is weird because Burr is probably most remembered for the duel.

In short, this book is slow and tedious. It took me more than 6 weeks to read it. In the meantime, I read a completely different book because I thought it was more interesting. And magazines. And just goofed around on Facebook.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TREASON by David Nevin. 2 stars for the coherent theory about Burr's conspiracy.

HARRY POTTER and the GOBLET of FIRE (Harry Potter #4) (audiobook) by J.K. Rowling

 

Originally published in 2000.

Read by Jim Dale.
Duration: 20 hours, 37 minutes.
Unabridged.


I am continuing my first time read (technically a listen) of the Harry Potter series 20 years after the fact. Rather than go through the plot of the book, I am going to skip to my review.

The fourth installment of this book is best so far. A slow start builds up to a tremendous ending. I have been pretty critical of Jim Dale's performance in this series up until now. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Jim Dale nails it. As it goes along he gets better and better. His reading of the scene where Harry looks into Dumbledore's pensieve is absolutely riveting. This is the book where the Harry Potter series makes a turn from being a bunch of cute kid's books. For example, grown-up topics like racism are dealt with. Racism is actually dealt with in 3 different ways - with the House Elves, Giants and the topic of pure blood wizards.

Jim Dale

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be be found on Amazon.com here: HARRY POTTER and the GOBLET of FIRE by J.K. Rowling.

Note: this entire book series has been on banned book lists multiple times since it was originally published due to complaints from religious conservatives. Check out this website for more info.

TIN BADGES (Tank Rizzo #1) (audiobook) by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Published in 2019 by Random House Audio.

Read by Pete Simonelli

Duration: 7 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

Tank Rizzo is a retired police officer. He retired early because his partner suffered a career-ending injury in a botched raid on a drug dealer's apartment. 

Tank's retirement consists of hanging out at the neighborhood restaurant, dating the owner of the restaurant, helping his partner with his rehab and catching a few hockey games with the father of his girlfriend (a retired mob boss).

The author, Lorenzo Carcaterra

But, Tank has a hobby that is sort of an open secret. He has built his own team of crime solvers and he solves cold cases for his old boss. His former partner helps by working remotely. They are paid from sort of slush fund or a secret budget line. It's not really clear, but money is not an issue.

Tank's estranged brother and wife die in a car crash in a snowstorm and Tank's mystery-loving nephew moves in and joins the team and they have just caught a hot new case...

This book was full of so many cliches that it was amusing just to watch them build up:

*Rogue superstar cops? Check.

*Restaurant owned by a mobster? Check.

*The mobster is actually a decent guy? Check.

*Black cop/white cop partners who are so close that they are like brothers? Check.

*Brilliant teenager with amazing skills? Check.

*Amazing team that works together perfectly even though they have no reason to even know each other let alone work together? Check.
*Off the books special deal with the police? Check.

The best thing about this book was the audiobook reader, Pete Simonelli. He has a fantastic voice. The story was not very good. The reading was great.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon here: TIN BADGES (Tank Rizzo #1) by Lorenzo Carcaterra.

WHEN to ROB a BANK...and 131 MORE WARPED SUGGESTIONS and WELL-INTENDED RANTS (audiobook) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

 

Published in 2015 by HarperAudio.
Duration: 8 hours, 13 minutes.
Read by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner and Erik Bergmann.
Unabridged.

Levitt and Dubner are the authors the co-creators of the Freakonomics franchise. They have published several books, have a radio show, have a website and have had a long-running column in the New York Times. All of them have featured odd takes on economic theories (as the title of this book suggests). They also have a blog that they used as a place to put their odd thoughts - not complete articles or chapters.

This book consists of 132 entries from their blog. And, that, in short, is the weakness of this audiobook. Their other works are much more thought out and this one just feels like the results of a preliminary brainstorming session. There were some interesting entries and there were some real clunkers. Also, there were way too many entries about gambling. I have absolutely no interest in gambling but the authors are really into it. 

Bottom line: the quality of this book does not live up to the quality of their other books.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WHEN to ROB a BANK...and 131 MORE WARPED SUGGESTIONS and WELL-INTENDED RANTS by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

MY VANISHING COUNTRY: A MEMOIR (audiobook) by Bakari Sellers

Published in 2020 by HarperAudio.
Read by the author, Bakari Sellers
Duration: 5 hours, 9 minutes.
Unabridged

I came to My Vanishing Country not knowing a thing about Bakari Sellers. I don't know where I heard about his book, but I had placed a hold on the audiobook at my library. I assume I heard him in an interview on NPR or found his name on a list of prominent books to be released in 2020.

Bakari Sellers in 2018. Photo by Luke Harold.

Sellers has the distinction of being one of the youngest state legislators ever and the youngest African American ever elected to a post in American history. He is from South Carolina, was a member of its legislature for 8 years, is an attorney and is now a commentator for CNN. I am not from South Carolina and I don't have cable or satellite so I had never seen his work on CNN, either. 

My complete unfamiliarity with Sellers made the book a little tedious at times. But, the last quarter of the book is very strong. It was so strong, due to more generalized commentary, that it pulled my score for this book up to 4 stars. 

Sellers read the audiobook himself. I understand the temptation for him to read his own audiobook. After all, his entire career on CNN is based on his ability to speak. He was okay as a reader - neither good nor bad. 

This audiobook can be found on Amazon here: MY VANISHING COUNTRY: A MEMOIR by Bakari Sellers.