A VOYAGE LONG and STRANGE: REDISCOVERING the NEW WORLD (audiobook) by Tony Horwitz

 

Published in 2008 by Random House Audio.
Read by John H. Mayer.
Duration: 17 hours, 16 minutes.
Unabridged.

In A Voyage Long and Strange Tony Horwitz set out to fill in a big gap in his understanding of American history. He vaguely knew that the Vikings arrived in the New World and did something or other and he knew about Columbus' voyage in 1492 and he knew about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock and the First Thanksgiving in 1621, but what happened in between? Also, what about the people that were already here?

Horwitz decided to find out what he didn't know and this book is a combined travelogue and history lesson. He starts with the small failed Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada, moves on to the Dominican Republic to learn about Columbus and comes to the United States to look at the first Spanish explorers and settlements in New Mexico and Florida. He also looks at the epic and eventually tragic expeditions of exploration that the Spanish sent out. Finally, he turns toward the early English attempts to explore and build colonies. 

A reconstruction of what a Viking longhouse in
Newfoundland may have looked like.

Typically, Horwitz starts out a section of his book by looking at the geographical area he is visiting as it is nowadays. He finds a variety of different locals to interview and lets them supplement the history he presents. Many times those local experts get very philosophical about how the past has influenced their homes.

Horwitz's roundabout way of discussing the history is almost always interesting - usually extremely interesting. However, the section on the Dominican Republic and a museum he visited there was too long and too repetitive. But, he bounces back from that and does a splendid job from that point forward.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 

A VOYAGE LONG and STRANGE: REDISCOVERING the NEW WORLD by Tony Horwitz.

UNOFFENDABLE: HOW JUST ONE CHANGE CAN MAKE ALL of LIFE BETTER (audiobook) by Brant Hansen

Published in August of 2015 by Tantor Audio.
Read by the author, Brant Hansen.
Duration: 4 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged.

Brant Hansen came to a realization that righteous anger, an emotion that a lot of my fellow Christians seem to adore should not actually be a tool in the Christian toolbox. It's on display all over social media and at public events like the current spate of contentious school board meetings. For example, recently a former member of 2 Contemporary Christian bands was seen at the forefront of a mob that was menacing people in the parking lot after a school board meeting. He yelling, "You can live freely, but we will find you!" at medical personnel who testified in favor of masks. He became the story and all Christians got a black eye as Taliban-type extremists. 

The author, Brant Hansen

Instead, Hansen is trying his best to take the words of God seriously when he says  to avoid anger. Here are 20 verses that give that counsel. He describes the change in mindset that is required - a move away from selfishness towards others. 

He does not claim to have perfected it or even to have come close to perfecting it, but the change in perspective has made a tremendous difference in his faith walk. He gives examples of others being unoffendable, including people reacting to things he did to offend them. The difference is that Christians are not perceived as the world's judges - a big point since God has made it clear that he is the world's judge.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. I liked the points it had to make, but it felt like the book was repetitive in an attempt to make it bigger. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  UNOFFENDABLE:  HOW JUST ONE CHANGE CAN MAKE ALL of LIFE BETTER by Brant Hansen.

10 DAYS (Dee Rommel Mystery #1) by Jule Selbo

 

Published by Pandamoon Publishing in August of 2021.

Waterfront in Portland, Maine

Synopsis:

Dee Rommel is at a crossroads of her life. She is on leave from the police department of Portland, Maine because she lost half of one of her legs on duty. After months of diligent physical therapy (and less then diligent psychiatric therapy) she is being pushed to decide if she is coming back to work or not.

She has been helping her godfather Gordy, her deceased father's best friend. He is a private detective and she feels very comfortable with the paperwork and the billing. When Gordy takes some time off to donate a kidney in Florida, a situation arises. One of Gordy's lifelong friends urgently needs help now and Dee is asked to step in and do some investigating while Gordy is down and out from the surgery.

The friend is a famous billionaire named Claren - Maine's version of Bill Gates. A local boy who made it big in the tech business. Claren's twenty-something daughter is also a tech whiz and a genius who graduated early from college and runs her own independent division of Claren's company.  She has gone missing.

Dee takes the job but there are other things demanding her attention as well. A local bully has been released from prison and is menacing all of the people who testified against him. Also, Dee continues to look into the case that cost her her leg. Plus, the new guy in the town is surprisingly sophisticated and intriguing considering that he cultivates a biker persona...

My thoughts:

The first book of any series is always tough to gauge because so much world-building has to be done. This book builds a pretty credible world with a lot of potential characters to use in future books. For me, that slowed the book down quite a bit - there were so many characters to process. I am assuming that future books won't go out of there way to include everybody like this one did.

The main mystery with the missing heiress was simply okay for me. I was much more intrigued by the secondary mystery with the local bully.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 10 Days (Dee Rommel Mystery #1) by Jule Selbo.

Note: I received an ARC copy of this book in exchange for a unfiltered review. 

DOOKU: JEDI LOST (audiobook) by Cavan Scott

 

Published in 2019 by Random House Audio.

Performed by multiple readers.
Duration: 6 hours, 21 minutes.
Unabridged.

Part of the new Disney "canon" books, Dooku: Jedi Lost is a look at the origins of one of the characters of the Star Wars prequels - Count Dooku. It is part of a series of "stand alone" books. For me, Dooku just shows up in the movies with a minimum of explanation - not nearly enough.  We learn a lot more about him in the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon show but not enough for me. Dooku is interesting as the original model for Anakin Skywalker - the talented Jedi who often argues with the Jedi Council and eventually falls to the Dark Side.

This book tells little about Dooku's activities during the Clone Wars. Even though it is set in the first half of the Clone Wars cartoon series, that is mostly a frame that is used to lead the reader through a series of flashbacks that tell about Dooku's early life. The use of all of the flashbacks was annoying in my mind, though. I think it would have been better to have just told the story of young Dooku without all of the flashbacks.

The audiobook was performed like an old fashioned radio play with different actors playing each of the characters. That part was well done, but I was irritated that a book called "Jedi Lost" really didn't give much detail about how Dooku became a lost Jedi. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  DOOKU: JEDI LOST by Cavan Scott.

NOTHING to LOSE (Jack Reacher #12) (audiobook) by Lee Child

 

Published by Random House Audio in 2008.

Read by Dick Hill.
Duration: 14 hours, 25 minutes.
Unabridged.

I think that I have worked my way through all of the Jack Reacher novels and short stories over the last 5 years. Nothing to Lose is the last one (I think). I read them all out of order, but fans know that that is okay since they were never written in order in the first place.

Sadly, this was one of the weakest of the entire very large collection. 

Reacher is travelling from Maine to San Diego just to see the country. He notes that Colorado has two towns with interesting names very close to one another: Hope and Despair.

The author, Lee Child.

Hope is a pleasant enough place with a hardware store and a hotel and diner. Reacher decides to hike to nearby despair and is immediately arrested for being a vagrant. Technically, he is a vagrant. He has no job, no fixed address and no plans to acquire either. 

Despair locks him up (after a bit of a fight) and runs him through a kangaroo court, finds him guilty and expels him from the town limits, which is about halfway to the town of Hope. Reacher meets up with the police chief of Hope, discusses the weird behavior of Hope's town government. And...he heads back for more.

He also finds a lot more than ever imagined he would...

This book felt disconnected from reality a lot more than the average Jack Reacher book. I don't mean that as an insult to the series, but let's face it - a giant ex-soldier beating the crap out of groups of big men in the middle of the street in every book is just nor normal behavior. 

Anyway, the whole book seemed sort of half-baked all the way through and Reacher's choice on how to end things seemed completely out of character considering the long-term implications (decades, maybe even centuries) of his choice. 

Dick Hill read the audiobook and he is my all-time favorite audiobook reader. He "gets" Jack Reacher.

Despite Dick Hill's reading, I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: NOTHING to LOSE by Lee Child.

FORGET the ALAMO: THE RISE and FALL of an AMERICAN MYTH (audiobook) by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford

 

Published in June of 2021 by Penguin Audio.

Read by Fred Sanders.
Duration: 12 hours, 15 minutes.
Unabridged.

Forget the Alamo is the second book that I have read because a governor took steps to keep people from hearing about the book. The story of the first is detailed here. 

In the case of this book, the Governor and especially the Lt. Governor of Texas had an event featuring a discussion of this book removed from the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, Texas. They acted in early July of 2021 because they were not happy about how it questioned the way the history of the Alamo (in San Antonio, Texas) is traditionally taught at the Alamo itself and in textbooks, classrooms, movies and books. Here is the text of the Lt. Governor's Tweet from July 2, 2021: "As a member of the Preservation Board, I told staff to cancel this event as soon as I found out about it. Like efforts to move the Cenotaph, which I also stopped, this fact-free rewriting of TX history has no place @BullockMuseum"

The Cenotaph the Lt. Governor refers to is an empty tomb for the defenders of the Alamo since their bodies were never recovered (they were burned by the Mexican Army). There was a plan to move the Cenotaph to be more integrated with the rest of the Alamo site while rehabbing it and updating the list of Alamo defenders. This topic is also discussed in the book.

Speaking of the book, I must thank these two gentlemen because without them I never would have listened to this very entertaining and very informative audiobook. 

Roughly the first half of the book is about the settlement of Texas by Spain, Mexico and American who moved in and agreed to become Mexican citizens. They talk about how slavery became a major point of contention after the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821) because Mexico had every intent to outlaw slavery.

The authors detail how Stephen Austin went to Mexico City for more than a year to lobby for Texas to have special rights. The authors emphasize how he receeived special concessions for Texas and its slaves. This was critical because so many Americans moved into Texas after this point with slaves. The American states neighboring Texas were being filled up with cotton plantations that had to be worked by slaves to be profitable (at least that was the common belief) and Texas showed great promise as a cotton-growing state.

Mexico formally abolished slavery in 1831. 

When the Mexican dictator Santa Anna led an army to Texas to stop the Texas Revolution (1835-1836), he announced that he would stop Texas' attempt to secede and he would also free its slaves.  

The authors linger on the slavery point for a while and I think they give solid historical reasons for doing so. They do not make the point that I will make now - Texas seceded from 2 different countries in 26 years in an attempt to protect slavery (1835 and 1861). 

Their description of the battle itself is very good. By the way, the church that makes up most of the focus of the current Alamo site was not a part of the battle. 

The authors switch gears for the rest of the book and focus on the place of the Alamo in national memory and how it has been honored and taught over the years. Their look at how movies and books have told the story of the Alamo was very interesting.

They are particularly critical of the fact that, over time, the contributions of non-white people to the Texas Revolution and the defense of the Alamo have been dropped out of the story and the whole thing has become a story of only white people fighting back against an army of non-whites. There were "Tejanos" or native Mexicans that fought against Santa Anna for a variety of reasons, but it is rarely taught this way. They quote several book and, even more importantly, textbooks and official state curriculum guides. 

The politics of managing the Alamo as a historical site gets a lot of attention in the book as well. There have been a lot of arguments about how to do that and that continues up to this day (see the Tweet quoted above). 

The book ends with a look at the Alamo-related collection of Phil Collins. Yes, Phil Collins the English singer. Collins has an impressive collection of legitimate items from the Alamo and the Texas Revolution. He has an even more impressive collection of items that have been doctored or copies of items that he believes are the real thing. Collins wants to donate all of it to a museum dedicated to his collection - if Texas politicians can get their act together.

Ironically, the controversy caused by the Governor and the Lt. Governor would have fit in perfectly with the theme of this book and I hope that they offer an updated edition in the future with their book included. 

Once again, I seriously want to thank the Governor and the Lt. Governor for leting me know about this book. It was excellent.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  FORGET the ALAMO: THE RISE and FALL of an AMERICAN MYTH by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford.

A LOT of PEOPLE ARE SAYING: THE NEW CONSPIRACISM and the ASSAULT on DEMOCRACY (audiobook) by Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead

 

Published in April of 2019 by Princeton University Press.

Read by Katherine Fenton.

Duration: 6 hours, 49 minutes.

Unabridged

The key to this book is to understand the difference between a conspiracy theory and the new conspiracism. 

Conspiracy theories are the classic hobby of odd people that we all know. They collect reams and reams of information to prove that the lunar landings were faked, that LBJ had JFK killed, or to prove that 9/11 was an inside job. They work very hard to prove their point. They collect video evidence, find paper trails, produce flow charts and maybe have a wall dedicated to showing how all of the data points connect. There is a logic to conspiracy theories, even if most people find them weird.

 The new conspiracism is often incoherent because it demands no logic - it depends on being repeated over and over again and a strong assertion that "people are saying" it is true. There are no documents that back it up. There are no elaborate theories. Just a "harmless" little observation that "people are saying" followed up with more assertions that "people are saying." 

At best, there may be comments along the lines of "Do the research!" When you do you get into an echo chamber of a YouTube video that refers to an article that refers to a podcast that refers back to the original YouTube video - that's the digital version of "People are saying."

The classic example of this is the Pizzagate situation in which people said that the Democratic National Committee was running a child molestation ring out of the basement of a pizza place. A man showed up with a rifle to free the children from the basement - the problem is there is no basement and there were no children.

The authors supply multiple examples, all from President Trump, Trump allies or Trump supporters. Their "People are saying..." accusations can be pointed at anyone or anything.  The purpose of these actions seem to just to conjure up a few very short term political points. That is common enough, but these behaviors do little but sow the seeds of doubt in our political processes. The authors think that this may actually be the point with some groups or politicians.  

While I agree with every example the authors provided, I think the authors have a blind spot towards the Democrats. 

I am what is commonly called a Never-Trump Republican. I concede that a great deal of the Trump-led-what's-left-of-the-GOP is totally into these sorts of conspiracies. But, the Democrats have had their share of that in the past and they should be noted as well. I notice them because I am a metaphorical refugee from my own party.The fringe of both parties is completely willing to wreck the entire system for a temporary bump in the polls and to activate their super-active fringe voters.

The real problem of this book, though, is that it was published in 2019 and it missed all of the craziness of the 2020 election and its aftermath including the multiple failed lawsuits and the January 6th Insurrection and the predictions from the MyPillow guy that Trump will be reinstated at various times in 2021. I have heard that they are going to offer an update. The only problem is can you offer an update in the middle of an ongoing event?

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5, mostly because it identified and gave a name to a disturbing trend in our national politics. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A LOT of PEOPLE ARE SAYING: THE NEW CONSPIRACISM and the ASSAULT on DEMOCRACY by Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead.