MAHDIST WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published by Hourly History in 2020.

One of the nice things about the e-books that Hourly History publishes is that they offer free books every week and they cover a wide range of topics in a manageable size. This book is a great example. There is no way that I would have read a 400 page history of this war simply but I was perfectly willing to read about it for an hour while while waiting for an appointment.

If you have never heard of the Mahdist War, join the club. This is one of the seemingly never-ending series of colonial wars that Britain took up as the European powers divided up Africa in the 1800's. 

The Mahdist flag

In this case, Sudan rose up and threw out their joint Ottoman/Egyptian overlords, which caused a lot uproar in the area. The British thought it would be a danger to their vassal state of Egypt and possibly Ethiopia, Somalia and may even threaten shipping along the Horn of Africa and access to India.

This was probably an overreaction, but the British decided to put the rebellion down. They sent in Egyptian troops, they tried to recruit local troops and, finally, they decided to send in soldiers from other parts of the British Empire. When they failed (due to some seriously bad choices by their officers), they did it again. At various points there were 3 or 4 different armies marching around fighting against each other. Eventually, they subdued Somalia. 

Looking back on this war more than 100 years later, it looks like a big waste of lives and money. The UK is no longer a presence in the area and Sudan continues to be in an uproar. 

I rate this ebook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE MAHDIST WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

UNCIVIL AGREEMENT: HOW POLITICS BECAME OUR IDENTITY (audiobook) by Lilliana Mason

 

Published by Tantor Audio in 2019.
Read by Rebecca Gibel.
Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

Lilliana Mason is an associate research professor at Johns Hopkins University. She collects, analyzes and breaks down the raw data that tells us what we already know about American politics right now - we are polarized.

For me, the most interesting part in when she looks at what that means and who is actually being polarized here. If you are a true political junkie - the type of person that reads a lot of news, watches the Sunday morning talking head shows and the has clearly identifiable ideological positions you can be very partisan, but are unlikely to be truly polarized. 

The true insight in this book came from a deep look at the most polarized people - the people that truly believe that the other party is a clear and present danger to the country and that all Republicans are clearly Nazis or all Democrats are clearly communists. You run across the people in the comment sections on social media all of the time.

It turns out those people don't really have ideological positions. Instead, they simply identify with their "team" and will support it no matter what happens or even if they flip-flop ideologically. They are literally the most ignorant of the ideological positions their party takes, they just support the party - very similarly to sports fans that support their team no matter how badly it is managed or how badly it plays. However, it is not dangerous to the country if a fan continues to support the NFL's Detroit Lions (statistically the 2nd worst team over the last 20 years) despite their obvious incompetence. It can be dangerous to the entire country if "fans" always show up to support their party's nominee for any office if they are clearly incompetent and have no business being in office.

One sees this easily with those "man on the street" interviews at political rallies with people who are remarkably enthusiastic and also remarkably ill-informed (links to people on both sides of this polarized political landscape). The problem with these  types of political partisans is that they literally cannot be talked out of their positions because they have no positions outside of "My side is right and your side is evil and possibly demonic" (thank you Franklin Graham for that one).

Your party can literally flip-flop on major policy issues like international trade and people just roll with it like it's no big deal because they had no idea that their party stood for that policy to begin with. You can't argue them out of a policy position because they don't know any policy positions in the first place. Tell them their party is for a position and they are all in. Tell them that the position changed the next week and they are still all in because it is not about the position because there are no standards and no ideals - just supporting the brand no matter what the brand does.

I recently had an encounter online with an old friend who went to school to be an ordained youth minister and has served as one for a long time (25+ years.) We have lost track with one another and only came back into contact because of an online political discussion over the post of a mutual friend. He was totally for a political stunt that I was against on a religious basis (not abortion - another policy). When I brought up the religious perspective on what had happened, he admitted he hadn't considered that perspective at all (!), conceded that it was problematic on a religious basis and then went right back to defending it. I took a peek at his other posts and, thanks to this book, I knew that there was no point to continuing on with the conversation. He was going to root for his "team" no matter what - even though it went against the religious beliefs he literally taught for years.

The downside to this book is that it was mostly written in a more formal academic style that was just not very listener-friendly. Plus, there were a lot of references to charts that are available as pdf downloads - good luck looking at those charts if you are listening to this audiobook and driving!

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: UNCIVIL AGREEMENT: HOW POLITICS BECAME OUR IDENTITY (audiobook) by Lilliana Mason.

LETTERS to MY WHITE MALE FRIENDS by Dax-Devlon Ross

 

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2021.
Read by the author, Dax-Devlon Ross.
Duration: 5 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

Dax-Devlon Ross makes a simple observation that it is entirely possible to participate in a racist system and not be racist. Not only is it possible, it is quite common. A person can participate in a system that looks fair on the surface, but somehow always results in the same kinds of people and the same kinds of people at the bottom. 

He notes that this is not a particularly popular idea among white Americans, especially white male Americans. But, he also noted that the death of George Floyd caused a lot of white people to reconsider what they thought they knew. 

This book offers an explanation of structural racism and gives concrete examples from the author's life and recent American history and offers some suggestions as to how to identify structural racism and break it up. That is good.

On the other hand, there is some Human Resources jargon that I had to look up and a lot of open-ended suggestions of something along the line of "do better."  Maybe that is a good thing - in the end, the corrections have to come from the people who have been imposing the old racist rules because they have to fix it.  If the rules are imposed on them from the outside and they will just find ways to work around them. If a new understanding of the problems is reached, the solutions just might come right along.

Hopefully.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LETTERS to MY WHITE MALE FRIENDS by Dax-Devlon Ross.

SO COLD the RIVER (audiobook) by Michael Koryta

 

Published in 2010 by Hachette Audio.
Read by Robert Petkoff.
Duration: 13 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Eric Shaw is a down on his luck film maker who has moved back to Chicago from Hollywood. His marriage is on the rocks, he feels sorry for himself and he is making ends meet by making little movies out of family photos for funerals. He is good at his job - so good at it that he is offered a special job.

A woman asks him to travel to French Lick, Indiana and research the early years of her father-in-law, an eccentric billionaire. The only clue he has is a strange bottle of Pluto brand mineral water, bottled in French decades earlier. The bottle seems to be forever cold and the water inside looks strange.

Once Shaw arrives in French Lick the water is not the only strange thing he encounters...

*******

My Review:

This is good supernatural thriller. I did not realize this when I started listening because I had picked out this book because it was set in the French Lick area. I have vacationed in the area a few times over the years and wanted to read what this author had to say about the area. This author is from nearby Bloomington, Indiana and he absolutely captures the over-the-top beauty and splendor of the West Baden Springs Hotel (see picture.) 

All of his Indiana references are spot-on perfect, which made the book all the more enjoyable for this lifelong Hoosier.

The audiobook is enhanced with a violin music and other occasional sound effects. 

This book was adapted into a movie on 2022.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: So Cold the River by Michael Koryta.

MYTHS, LIES, and HALF-TRUTHS of LANGUAGE USAGE (audiobook) by John McWhorter

Originally Published by
The Great Courses in 2012.
This version published by
The Great Courses in 2013.
Read by the author, John McWhorter.
Unabridged.

Linguist John McWhorter takes a look at the history of the English language in this 24 lecture presentation. He includes the origins of some of our more unique features and also the origins of some of our "rules" that aren't really rules at all.

The author,
John McWhorter

McWhorter takes a long view, going all of the way back to English's roots in proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European language from the Caucus mountains region that spread all over the place and eventually became lots and lots of modern languages, including English.

For me, the most interesting theory was based on English's relative lack of verb endings. If you have ever studied Spanish, like me, than you remember the endless verb charts and verb endings. The same goes with French and German. Why doesn't English have all of those endings? We used to, but they disappeared - perhaps thanks to the Vikings!

The first half of this audiobook was an absolute joy to listen to. It was interesting and presented well - 5 stars. However, somewhere in the middle, the lectures became less interesting and somewhat repetitive - sometimes it became . It would have been better to have tightened up a few of the presentations and cut down the 24 lectures to 18 or 20 very lean and effective lectures.

So, the final result is 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  MYTHS, LIES, and HALF-TRUTHS of LANGUAGE USAGE (audiobook) by John McWhorter.

LONG RANGE (Joe Pickett #20) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

 

Published in 2020 by Recorded Books.
Read by David Chandler.
Duration: 10 hours, 35 minutes.
Unabridged

This book is the 20th in the Joe Pickett series, but in a lot of ways it is the sequel to the 19th book in the series: Wolf Pack. More about that below.

The book starts out with Joe in the deep woods on an investigation of a bear attack. But, he is called back to Saddlestring, Wyoming on an emergency run. The wife of a legendary local judge was shot during a presumed attempted very long range sniper attack on the judge. The judge has demanded that every law enforcement officer in the area investigate immediately, including Game Warden Joe Pickett.

Of course, things are more complicated than that...

************Spoilers*************

In Wolf Pack a Mexican drug cartel assassination team shot up Saddlestring, killing the sheriff, the prosecutor, critically injuring an FBI agent and more. Nate Romanowski killed the leader of the hit squad and in this book their best assassin comes after Nate to exact his revenge. 

Personally, I am getting tired of the plots that take Joe Pickett away from being a game warden. Joe and Nate have disrupted international terrorists and taken on Mexican drug cartels in the last few books. They are good adventure stories, but they get away from the types of stories that made me like this series and they start to get more and more improbable. 

I was more interested in the bear attack part of the book than the attempted assassination of the judge and WAY more interested in the bear attack part of the book than the return of the drug cartel. The drug cartel angle seemed to be a clunky, heavy handed way of redirecting the arc of the Nate Romanowski story line.

**********END SPOILERS***********

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5 mostly based on the fact that I like the main characters and it is always good to spend time with them, even in a frustrating book.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: LONG RANGE (Joe Pickett #20) by C.J. Box.

JOHNNY CASH: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published by Hourly History
in 2022

The Hourly History series features e-book histories and biographies that can be read in about an hour. They are great if you want to know a little more about a topic, but you don't want to read a regular-sized book or biography. Plus, they offer a set of free books every weekend so you can explore without spending a dime.

I already knew the bare outlines of Johnny Cash's life, but this small biography filled it out a little more. It would have been great if there had been embedded links to the songs that are discussed throughout, but since this is an e-book it's not particularly hard to minimized the Kindle app and open up YouTube and find the song. I did this exact thing with the original version of Cash's classic hit Ring of Fire. Here is the original version, performed by one of June Carter's relatives. I had no idea that Cash didn't write this song himself.

Johnny Cash (1932-2003)

I was struck by the fact that Cash continued to struggle with drugs throughout his life. He was in and out of drug rehab centers from the 1960's into the 1980's. For me, this makes his take on the Nine Inch Nails song Hurt all the more poignant.

I enjoyed this e-book. I rate it 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: JOHNNY CASH: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.