WEST from APPOMATTOX: THE RECONSTRUCTION of AMERICA after the CIVIL WAR (kindle) by Heather Cox Richardson

 

Published in 2007.

Heather Cox Richardson is a historian I have only recently discovered because of her prolific social media presence that she developed while under Covid lockdown. She writes a daily news summary of a few paragraphs with a view towards how these events match up with historical events or trends. Plus, she takes questions from people and develops a one hour daily online lecture. They are interesting, sometimes rambling little presentations and this book shares a lot of the same features. 

In West from Appomattox, Richardson is looking at the time right after the Civil War in American History.  In the history books, Reconstruction, the Old West, the Gilded Age and the Spanish-American War are all treated a separate things. Combining all of these typical divisions of American history into one book makes for a more comprehensive study of the time period. 

Teddy Roosevelt (center with glasses) and
the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War

Traditionally, they are studied separately - in a typical history book they are literally different chapters. Mostly, Richardson does this, too. Mostly - but she is very willing to cross over to the other areas of study. 

For example, it really impossible to understand the Old West without having an understanding of Reconstruction and of the Gilded Age. Reconstruction encouraged a lot of people to move West. The West received attention and governmental support for economic development and the South did not. The economic growth in the Northeast was largely possible because of Federal Government support of resource extraction from the West. Federal support of settlement of the West and Federal support of building a network of privately owned railroads helped spur further economic growth in the Northeast.  

Due to the overlapping nature of the book, there are a lot of overlapping stories and themes. I don't consider it to be a weakness, though. I consider it to be a reminder that the same policies, the same movements and the same rules were affecting the whole country. 

This time period was truly the transition from the old Revolutionary Era politics to our current modern political system because slavery was finally out of the way. Instead of discussing what to do about slavery it became a discussion about when (or even if) government power should be used to intervene in the free market or to help certain people in society. 

In the South, pushing for public schools for poor children was often decried as Socialist because rich people were being taxed to provide a basic education for the children of the poor. It was even more Socialist if it meant funding schools for poor black children. Meanwhile, out in the Western states the government actively intervened in the Free Market by handing out 160 acre parcels of land, providing land grants to fund railroads and breaking treaties with Native Americans and clearing them out of the way to provide access to mineral wealth.

The point about Socialism is interesting. Richardson pointed out something that I have noticed about American political discussions - we throw about the term Socialism and use it with a completely different meaning than the meaning the rest of the world uses. When everyone discusses Socialism, they are talking about the government owning the means of production (factories, farms, mines, etc.). In the United States, it is tossed about when we talk about taxing anyone to pay for community services and we have done that ever since the time period this book covers. I still hear this argument used against the existence of public schools, public libraries and even public roads. In the United States, Socialism is also a term used to describe non-economic things such as Covid mask mandates and gay marriage because the term has consistently been used by the current conservative party (the Dems back in the 1800s and the GOP nowadays) to discredit new concepts. 

I rate this history 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  WEST from APPOMATTOX:  THE RECONSTRUCTION of AMERICA after the CIVIL WAR (kindle) by Heather Cox Richardson.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2016.

This little biography is part of an extensive series of short histories produced by Hourly History. The idea is to be a history or a biography that you can read in an hour. Amazon says that his particular biography is the equivalent to 48 pages long. 

Some historians have asserted that there are more biographies written about Lincoln than anyone else in history, with the exception of Jesus. This is the 73rd book that I've reviewed that with the #tag of "Abraham Lincoln." What does this book have to offer that literally thousands of biographies and histories haven't already covered?

To be honest - nothing.

But, it is exactly the sort of biography that someone who hates history might pick to read because it is not an intimidating length and it is not written in highfalutin language. 

There is nothing in this biography that is inaccurate, just a matter of what the Hourly History people decided to highlight and emphasize.

I rate this kindle book 3 stars out of 5. Not bad, for what it is. Nowhere near a complete biography, but a solid place to start.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (Biographies of U.S. Presidents)(kindle) by Hourly History.

MESSY GRACE: HOW a PASTOR with GAY PARENTS LEARNED to LOVE OTHERS WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVICTION (audiobook) by Caleb Kaltenbach

Be Warned - it changes tone quite abruptly

Published in 2015 by ChristianAudio.com

Read by the author, Caleb Kaltenbach.
Duration: 6 hours, 3 minutes.
Unabridged.

I checked out the audiobook version of Messy Grace from my local library using the Overdrive app. I highly recommend this app, but it does have a small failing - it does not include any sort of reviews of the digital ebooks or audiobooks. It only includes the publisher's description and the publisher's description of this audiobook only tells part of the story. 

As the title says, Kaltenbach did indeed grow up with gay parents. They married young and divorced after a few years. His mother lived life as a married couple with another woman (this was pre-gay marriage) and his father lived as a closeted gay man. His mother hated Christians because of Westboro Baptist Church-type protesters, but to be fair to his mother, there are plenty of people that express in private the same thoughts that the Westboro folks publicly proclaim. Kaltenbach does not deny this - in fact he decries it throughout the book.

Kaltenbach spends the first 60% of the book or so telling the story of his life and about his parents. He is very much against the Pharisee-type behavior you see in plenty of churches - the behavior that automatically rejects anyone that doesn't seem church-y enough. Kaltenbach argues you can't reach the "lost" if you don't actually engage with them - something that Jesus said and did over and over again.

As Kaltenbach discusses this point, he begins to sound less like he is making projects out of people rather than reaching out to people because they are friends and family. I didn't have a way to describe this inkling in the back of my mind until Kaltenbach did - he said churches have to be careful of this very thing and he called it "project vs. people". It ends up sounding like, "We're going to save a gay man" instead of "I think my friend Bob would really like to check out my church and my church would really like my friend Bob." 

The problem with turning people into projects is that once the project is done (the project joins the church) you move onto to a new project and drop the old project. But, people aren't projects so you are just dropping this person that you made big investment in because you weren't friends with them - you were busy fixing them.

The author and narrator,
Caleb Kaltenbach

But, the part that really bothered me above all else was the fact that the book pitches itself as a pro-gay inclusion book right up until the moment that it is not. Once it switches gears it hurts every other argument the book made before. It becomes a turn people into projects book. It becomes a "pray the gay away" book of sorts. The celibacy passage was completely horrible. 

My suggestion: read the first half of the book and then stop.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. I took away 3 stars because of the contradictory message and the deceptive description from the publisher.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: MESSY GRACE: HOW a PASTOR with GAY PARENTS LEARNED to LOVE OTHERS WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONVICTION by Caleb Kaltenbach.

1914 by Jean Echenoz (translated by LInda Coverdale)

 

Published in 2014 by The New Press

Synopsis:

It is 1914 and World War I is starting. This story is about 5 young men who live in a small town in France leave together to join the fight. 

If you have studied this war, you know that this war was a meat grinder from one end of it to the other, but the beginning of any war is especially rough. The technologies have changed but the techniques have not kept up. Men die and get maimed out of ignorance. This war is no different.

My Review:

I have no problem with the depiction of anything in this book. But, I do have a problem with the book's lack of passion. No one is particularly excited about life before the war, during the war and definitely not after the war. Everything is stated matter of factly. I lnow it's a style thing but it served to push me away from the story rather than draw me in. If the characters can't muster enough interest to care, why should I?

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 1914 by Jean Echenoz (translated by LInda Coverdale).

WE ARE WHAT WE PRETEND to BE: THE FIRST and LAST WORKS by Kurt Vonnegut

Published in 2012 by Vanguard Press.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is from Indianapolis, the city I have lived in since 1998. He was always proud to be FROM Indianapolis but never moved back once he and his family moved away right after World War II. His sense of humor and cynical/sarcastic of view has often been compared to Mark Twain, but I am reminded of the humor of another Indianapolis boy a few years later who also went off to the big city and made it big - David Letterman. 

We Are What We Pretend to Be contains the first real story written by Vonnegut and the beginning of the novel he was working on when he passed away. These are the bookends of his literary career. 

The first story is called Basic Training. It was written when he was about age 30 and was never published. His daughter describes stacks of rejection letters and one can assume that this story helped create that stack.  

The giant mural honoring Vonnegut in
downtown Indianapolis. 

The story is about a recently orphaned teenaged boy who goes to live on a relatives farm. He already has a college scholarship to learn music but it all is at risk because he can't seem to get the hang of how to get along with his relative that runs the farm - an old guy nicknamed "The General".

The second story is called If God Were Alive Today.  This story is actually the beginning of an unfinished book about a George Carlin-type stand-up comic. The comic has several mental issues, including drug, alcohol and sexual problems.

Of the two stories, I think Vonnegut's first one is clearly superior. It doesn't sound like a Vonnegut story and feels much more like a John Steinbeck story but it is pretty good. I would rate it 4 out of 5 stars.

The second story suffers from the fact that it is not a complete story - it is simply the opening pages of a larger work that we'll never be able to read. That being said, I found the main character interesting but very unlikable. Even worse, even though he was a stand-up comic the main character was not funny. He said outrageous things, but not funny things. That struck me as odd because Vonnegut was well-known for his very dark but very real sense of humor. I rate it 2 out of 5 stars.

So, a 2 star story and a 4 star story make a 3 star average.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  WE ARE WHAT WE PRETEND to BE: THE FIRST and LAST WORKS by Kurt Vonnegut.

FALLING FREE (Vorkosigan Saga #4) (audiobook) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Audiobook published in 2009 by Blackstone Audio.. 

Originally published in book form in 1988.
Read by Grover Gardner.
Duration: 8 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Falling Free is entry #4 in a long series of published books and short stories.

Leo Graf is an engineer. Actually, he's more than an engineer. He's a space engineer - he builds habitats, space stations, space ships and more. And - he's really good at it.

He has been brought by his company to a space station in orbit around an out of the way space colony to teach outer space welding. But, his students are not what he expects.

He finds the station has nearly 1,000 genetically modified residents that are named quaddies. They are designed to work in no gravity environments - they have no legs. Instead of legs there is a second set of arms. They can grip onto something and still have two or three hands to work with - especially welding together new space stations and expansions to current space stations. 

Graf finds out that the quaddies are not considered to be people. Instead, they are company property. They are an experiment and when experiments run their course, they can be trashed. 

So, when Graf finds out that the quaddie experiment has been made outdated by a new technology he has to decide if he lets the company destroy 1,000 genetically modified people or if he intervenes...

What I thought:

I really appreciated the old school sci-fi feel to the book. It just felt like a book from the 1950s or 1960s. 

The premise of the book was compelling, but as the book went along, more and more obstacles had to be surmounted that seemed to be put in place just to make the book longer rather than spur on character growth. There was a long part of the book that reminded me of the scene in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie The Infinity War where Thor builds his battle axe to fight Thanos. Actually, looking at the publication dates, the scene with Thor is reminiscent of the scene from the book... except that the scene with Thor did not drag on, was not boring (it had very funny parts) and it moved the plot forward with character growth. The scene from the book just drug things out for about an hour. 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. Not a bad book, not a great book. It can be found on Amazon.com here:   FALLING FREE (audiobook) by Lois McMaster Bujold.

ENGLISH in AMERICA: A LINGUISTIC HISTORY (audiobook) by Natalie Schilling

 

Published in 2016 by The Great Courses.

Read by Natalie Schilling.

Duration: 5 hours, 55 minutes.

Unabridged.

If you are not aware of The Great Courses, they are basically college-level lectures (undergrad) on a topic. Most of them clock in at around 20 hours in length, but this one came in at just under 6 hours. 

When I saw that the subtitle of English in America was "A Linguistic History", I thought the audiobook would be a more formal history. Rather than present it in a typical history format, the book was presented in a scattergun type style. Everything she covered was perfectly fine to put in her presentations and sounded perfectly good to me - I've listened to and read a few books on this topic (not enough to make me any sort of an expert).

She discusses such topics as how English may have sounded when the first English colonies were established, how American English developed new words, influences on American English from immigrants groups, African American dialects, regional dialects and more.

But, the scattered presentation style made for repeated presentation of facts and prevented a smooth flow. 

There is nothing wrong with this presentation, but I think it should have gone deeper and been gone from topic to topic in a more cohesive manner.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ENGLISH in AMERICA:  A LINGUISTIC HISTORY (audiobook) by Natalie Schilling.