COST of ARROGANCE (Jake Clearwater #1) by H. Mitchell Caldwell

Published in October of 2021 by Nine Innings Press.

Cost of Arrogance features Jake Clearwater who used to be a prosecutor. However, rough and tumble office politics encouraged him to take a job as a law professor. He is happy with his choice, but he decides to take on long shot death penalty appeal after being asked by an organization called Death Penalty Project.

The argument in the appeal is that the man on death row is there because of an incompetent defense lawyer in the original trial. The trial was for the murder of a married couple.  The client knew that his lawyer was not doing a good job so he made a spectacle of himself - cursing, yelling and more in front of the jury. Considering that he had already served serious prison time in the past, the jury was only too happy to put this angry felon on death row - after all, if he's this crazy during the trail, it's not hard to imagine that he killed two people. 

Clearwater successfully argues that the defense was incompetent and is assigned as the attorney in the re-trial. In the re-trial he will go against the people in the prosecutor's office where he used to work. The prosecutor in the re-trial will be the man who basically drove him out. 

And that's when things start to get really interesting - and not always in a good way...

The first novel in what is intended to be a series of novels can suffer from too much world-building - establishing all of the intended characters and all of the intended locations that the series could possibly include in its run. Happily, Caldwell does not give in to that temptation.

The courtroom scenes are well done - with the exception of just having too many dramatic moments to interrupt the trial. I can't discuss them without revealing the plot, so just let me say that the author went to the same plot device well one too many times.

That being said, I would be more than happy to read another installment of this series.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  COST of ARROGANCE (Jake Clearwater #1) by H. Mitchell Caldwell.

Note: I received a free Advanced Readers Copy of this book from the publisher so that I could make an honest review. 

EMPIRE of BLUE WATER: CAPTAIN MORGAN'S GREAT PIRATE ARMY, the EPIC BATTLE for the AMERICAS, and the CATASTROPHE that ENDED the OUTLAWS' BLOODY REIGN (audiobook) by Stephan Talty

 

Published in 2007 by Random House Audio
Read by John H. Mayer
Duration: 13 hours, 26 minutes.
Unabridged.

Stephan Talty writes a lot about pirates in Empire of Blue Water. Not modern pirates, but the swashbuckling pirates that most Americans imagine when they hear the word "pirate". The modern personification of that word is Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. In the late 1600s, the personification of that word was a Welshman named Henry Morgan.

Morgan was technically not a pirate. He was a privateer. If you were in the Spanish government, there was not much of a difference between a privateer and a pirate, except that privateers came with an extra level of annoyance. 

17th century England did not have the money to expand the Royal Navy enough to confront Spain. Spain was more than 200 years into looting the Americas and had a very, very large navy to protect that loot as it came across the Atlantic to the home country. 

England did have something that Spain did not have - a lot of entrepreneurs that owned their own ships. England decided to license any interested ships to attack Spanish ships for their cargoes. The crown got a cut and basically a navy for hire. 

Privateer ships were staffed by a diverse group of men (women were almost never allowed on one of their ships). They were very democratic - everyone got to vote on targets and everyone got an equal share of the booty afterwards. Bonus shares were given to men who performed bravely or completed certain acts in battle. Once a target was chosen, the officers had command and their orders were to be followed - or else. Officers got bonus shares. If you were injured, you were compensated from the loot. If you died, your heirs were compensated. 

Pirate ships worked a lot like privateer ships, except they did not have to report back to any government and share any of their treasure. But, they had no safe havens to return to. If a Spanish ship chased a privateer, it could, theoretically, flee towards any English port and find safety. 

Jamaica served that purpose in the Caribbean, particularly the city of Port Royal. Port Royal was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1690s. It was never rebuilt, but at one point it was the largest and wildest city in any English colony in the New World. You could easily make an argument that it was the wildest port in the entire English empire.

The danger with privateers, of course, is that once unleashed, they are hard to rein in. The English came to an agreement with the Spanish that was dependent on the privateers stopping and then had a very hard time bringing them under control - until someone had the bright idea (not being sarcastic) of bringing Henry Morgan into the government of Jamaica and letting the ultimate privateer bring the privateers under control.

Talty talks about A LOT of things in this book. It is a thorough examination of the entire privateer phenomenon - from the instability of the Spanish royal family to the ossification of the Spanish bureaucracy to the craziness of Port Royal, Talty tells the story well. 

Where he falls short is the description on just about any military campaign. It becomes an unending list of what happened in the order they happened - like a series of bullet points on a boring history professor's PowerPoint. As an audiobook listener, I frequently found my attention wandering at the points that should have been the most interesting parts of the book simply because of the way it was presented. 

Because of that, I am going to give this audiobook a score of 3 stars out of 5. I was irritated at the number of times I had to go over parts of the audiobook because of the way it was told.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: EMPIRE of BLUE WATER: CAPTAIN MORGAN'S GREAT PIRATE ARMY, the EPIC BATTLE for the AMERICAS, and the CATASTROPHE that ENDED the OUTLAWS' BLOODY REIGN by Stephan Talty.

WILDLAND: THE MAKING of AMERICA'S FURY (audiobook) by Evan Osnos

Published in September of 2021 by Macmillan Audio.

Read by the author, Evan Osnos.

Duration: 17 hours, 7 minutes.

Unabridged.

Evan Osnos is a reporter for The New Yorker. He was inspired to write about the phenomenon of Donald Trump and the 2016 and 2020 elections when he returned from an multi-year assignment in China and noted that politics, journalism and even economics in the United States had changed. He didn't use this analogy, but I will: Parents don't notice their kids changing and growing because they see them every day. But, the aunts and uncles who only see them at the holidays can easily detect the changes.

For Wildland Osnos went to three places that he used to live to investigate: Greenwich, Connecticut; Chicago, Illinois; and Clarksburg, West Virginia. 

In West Virginia, he primarily looks at the changes in journalism such as the loss of local news and small town newspapers. He also looks at government pulling back environmental regulations and business avoiding responsibilities such as living up to pension obligations and cleaning up their messes. The shenanigans from Peabody Energy to avoid pension obligations were especially egregious.

In Connecticut he follows up on the business theme by looking at Greenwich - a town seemingly full of hedge fund managers. Really, it's not, but their wealth and their change of mindset is changing the town. The mindset embraces famed economist Milton Friedman's maxim that the purpose of a corporation is to maximize returns for its shareholders. I grew up in a town with one very large corporation with multiple factories. It provided scholarships, paid for public art and architecture and provided benevolent leadership through boards, committees and generally being engaged with the community that its leadership lived in and provided its labor force. 

In Chicago, he looks at the near-collapse of some communities - the ones that make the news all of the time for the murders. He discusses how the manufacturing base of Chicago left and how that helped lead to the decline of some neighborhoods. which ties into the Greenwich part of the book.

On top of all of this, throw in the Supreme Court case generally known Citizens United. It opened up the flood gates for money in politics. Now millions of dollars could be spent on primary campaigns. In 2020, my state was not really a player in Presidential politics, but we saw almost non-stop ads over 1 race for the House of Representatives. One ad after another from both sides. Those kinds of ad campaigns are the result of the Citizens United decision in 2010.  The Supreme Court held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including non-profit corporations, labor unions, and other associations. With that decision, politics changed.     

Outsiders with a lot of money now had a chance to come in and be effective without having the strong organization and the political contacts of a political party.    

The book takes a long time to develop and I nearly quit several times in the first couple of hours. There was so much talk of hedge fund managers and the new prevailing mercenary quality in big business. Notice that I said "prevailing" - the mercenary quality has always been there but it was restrained by other cultural norms. But, once it moves on to West Virginia and Chicago the book got more interesting to me. I guess it's simply because I don't know ultra-rich hedge fund managers and I don't identify with that lifestyle, but I do know poor black people in a big city and I grew up in a rural area. 

At the halfway point, he starts to tie all of this stuff together and then the book gets good. About 3/4 of the way through the book he starts to tie in the rise of Trumpism. To be honest, I had forgotten that this was the point of the book in the frist place. Osnos ties it together. It's not some big nefarious plot, but rather the result of a lot of forces converging - the Citizens United decision, the change in the philosophy of big business, the loss of local news reporting, the loss of good jobs in rural areas and the big cities all come together.

Toss in a great deal of frustration, Osnos makes it seem that the arrival of a person like Donald Trump was inevitable. I contend that it also explains Bernie Sanders. Like Trump, Sanders is truly a political outsider. Sanders isn't even a member of the Democrat party and has not put in a lot of work building the party organization. Still, he almost won their nomination in 2016 and ran very strong in 2020 because this decision lets money make up for not being part of a party and having access to all of the connections and organization that political parties can provide. 

This book doesn't have a lot of answers, but it points out a lot of problems and you have to know what the problems are before solutions can be found.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WILDLAND: THE MAKING of AMERICA'S FURY by Evan Osnos.

SANITY: IN a TIME of CONSPIRACY, UPHEAVAL, and PANDEMIC by Gary John Bishop

Published in July of 2021 by HarperAudio.

Read by the author, Gary John Bishop.
Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Unabridged.

Gary John Bishop is a life coach/motivational speaker from Scotland. He calls himself a Personal Development expert. 

His topics in Sanity: In a Time of Conspiracy, Upheaval, and Pandemic include how to deal with the pandemic, conspiracy theories that we may believe in and how to deal with conspiracy theories that loved ones may hold dear. He talks about mask mandates and the wildly varied response to them, especially in the United States. He also talks about how we hate the changes to our lives that were brought on by the pandemic, even if we weren't happy with our pre-pandemic lives because the human mind both craves change and loves stability and those are not compatible goals. 

The author, Gary John Bishop

He gives practical advice. For example, don't argue with advocates of conspiracy theories and welcome them back if they come back to reality because you've had your crazy moments yourself. He also advises people to keep up with the news but to be consumed by it and use it as an entertainment source (translation: don't watch Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow - they get paid to make you indignant and they're good at it)

There is nothing new about what Bishop talks about in his talk, but his presentation makes it really effective. It's direct, peppered with curse words and comes off just like you are sitting in a bar listening to your Scottish uncle give you some solid advice.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SANITY: IN a TIME of CONSPIRACY, UPHEAVAL, and PANDEMIC by Gary John Bishop.

BLUEBEARD by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in October of 1987.

The premise of Bluebeard is that it is the autobiography of a has been artist named Rabo Karabekian. Karabekian also appears in an earlier Vonnegut book (Breakfast of Champions).

Karabekian is an abstract expressionist, like the real-life famed artist Jackson Pollock, who is in this novel as a friend of Karabekian. Karabekian's paintings are basically canvases covered with a coat of house paint and then some strips of tape. They were popular for a while.

Karabekian's paintings are really a way for him to deal with his PTSD from World War II. He doesn't want to deal with the details so he basically paints pictures of nothing.

A self portrait of Kurt Vonnegut.

Karabkeian tells about how he got started in the art business, kind of hints around at his World War II experience and intersperses the whole thing with talk about what is going on in his life as he is writing. 

I read the book with Karabekian and his author friend Paul Slazinger as sort of a stand-ins for Vonnegut himself. Both have loads of sarcastic comments and a lot of dark humor. 

This is a bit different for a Vonnegut book. There are a lot of absurd scenes and situations and there are references to the Battle of the Bulge. But, unlike most of his books, there is a relatively happy ending.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut. 

OUT of SEASON (Posadas County Mysteries #7) (audiobook) by Steven F. Havill

 

Published in 2008 by Books In Motion.

Originally published in 1999.
Read by Rusty Nelson.
Duration: 8 hours, 56 minutes.
Unabridged.

In Out of Season things are not going well for Undersheriff Bill Gastner, the second in command of the Posadas County Sheriff Department in southern New Mexico. He is planning to retire in a few months and the person he had hoped he would take over for him is moving out of state. He found out another officer has applied to a much larger department where there are more opportunities. 

Things get even worse, though. A woman that most would consider more than a little mentally off balance calls the department and says that she has seen a struggling small plane disappear behind a mesa near her home. She says that it must have crashed. When a deputy checks it out, he spots wreckage. When they finally get close they find two bodies - and one of them is the Sheriff, a man who notoriously hates to ride in planes.

When Gastner and the department start to dig into what happened, they find more than they ever bargained for...

Rusty Nelson has read most if not all of the audiobooks in this series. I have read or listened to most of them. His folksy tone of voice goes well with Bill Gastner. Since the book is told from Gastner's point of view, that works out well.

Gastner continues to be a lovable grump. His age-related physical limitations encourage him use his head rather than charge blindly into a situation. He continues his insomniac ways while he guzzles coffee and takes any chance to sit down at the Don Juan Restaurant and eat a plateful of spicy burritos.

My only problem with the book is the character of Estelle Reyes-Guzman. She is always perfect. She is pretty, married to a fantastic guy, has a great family, figures out the case before anyone else, drives better than anyone else and is unfailingly polite. Don't get me wrong - I'd love it if she were a cop in my town, but she is a boring character.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OUT of SEASON (Posadas County Mysteries #7) (audiobook) by Steven F. Havill.

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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.