KING RICHARD III: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (BIOGRAPHIES of BRITISH ROYALTY) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2019 by Hourly History.

Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour.

I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The British Royal Family is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of my own ignorance.

I recently read Hourly History's biography of Henry VII (the king that defeated Richard III in battle and took his throne). Usually, I find the British Royal family to be a tedious topic, but I found the Henry VII biography to be quite interesting. I was hoping to have a similar experience with the biography of Richard III.

King Richard III (1452-1485)

Richard III took the throne towards the end of the slow motion civil war known as The War of the Roses. Richard started out as a loyal and devoted follower of his brother (Edward IV) who pretty much let him rule Northern England as a sort of mini-kingdom. Richard dealt with Scotland and border incursions and consolidated English royal control over some of the major noble families of the region.

When Edward IV died, Richard was supposed to step in and serve as Lord Protector for Edward V. Edward V was only twelve years old and Richard was to rule in his stead until Edward V came of age. 

This is where Richard III's story becomes complicated and very much like an episode of Game of Thrones...

This is an exciting story (Shakespeare wrote a play about it because it was so rich in drama) but this short biography just fails to convey that drama. 

I rate this biography 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: KING RICHARD III: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (BIOGRAPHIES of BRITISH ROYALTY) by Hourly History.

GANGSTERS vs. NAZIS: HOW JEWISH MOBSTERS BATTLED NAZIS in WARTIME AMERICA (audiobook) by Michael Benson

 

Highly Recommended

Published in 2022 by Tantor Audio.
Read by Gabriel Vaughan.
Duration: 8 hours, 53 minutes.
Unabridged.

Flag of the German American Bund

In the United States in the 1930's there was a small, loud, enthusiastic, and growing group of Americans that were great fans of Hitler and the Nazi party. They were largely ethnic Germans and formed organizations that sported Nazi symbols and mimicked the big rallies that Hitler had in Germany. They also mimicked the overt antisemitic speech exhibited by the Nazis. The most successful of these was the German American Bund (German American Federation).

There were a lot of small groups but there were two larger organizations with a different take than the Bund. The Silver Legion of America (Silver Shirts) had a spiritualist take on hate. Father Coughlin was a literal Catholic priest who brought a "Catholic" view on antisemitic hate and anti-interventionism from Detroit. He had a massive radio audience that was so enthusiastic that his church superiors were afraid to muzzle him.

Officially, Nazi Germany did not support these groups, but there were plenty of unofficial connections.

The national government could officially do nothing to stop them quickly (although the age-old tactic of looking for things like tax violations did work to slow some of them down over time.)

There was also very little that local governments could do to stop these meetings. Some localities, like New York City, outlawed wearing some of their Nazi-style outfits (dubious legality). Others just buckled down and over-scrutinized all of their rental applications for meeting halls, applications for parades, and so on. If there was a misspelling, or any similar type of mistake it was denied. 

But, that kind of thing only lasts so long. Eventually these American Nazis learned to double check their paperwork and take advantage of America's wide open freedom of speech rules to advocate for actions that would kill those very same freedoms.

A judge from New York City named Nathan Perlman decided that if the American antisemites were going to have paramilitary organizations, American Jews needed one to literally punch back. Turns out he knew a whole bunch of tough Jewish guys that paraded through his court room on a regular basis - Jewish mafia gangsters. People like Mickey Cohen, Meyer Lansky, Davie "the Jew" Berman*, and Bugsy Siegel were talked to in an unofficial way. 

The deal was simple - no killing, lots of roughing up (but not too rough), try to disappear afterwards, no overt help from the judge, avoid the press. In return, there would be lots of backroom maneuvers to get them out of jail if needed. The judge appealed to their sense of ethnic loyalty and it worked. These men were not good Jews in any kind of moral way. Most had long since stopped going to temple. However, most had had enough of a connection to the larger Jewish community to have had a Bar Mitzvah and they all understood that if people were going after harmless rabbis and little old ladies that go to temple, they would certainly go after Jewish mobsters.

Mugshots of Meyer Lansky (1902-1983)

Meyer Lansky said this about their involvement: "The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Adolf Hitler. The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we went into action. We threw some of them out the windows. Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up. We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults"

This Nazi-Gangster fight did not go on for too long - a couple of years at longest. The German American Bund began to fizzle out during 1939 when everyone was starting to get a real sense of what Nazi Germany was all about. Pearl Harbor pretty much brought an end to the pro-fascist meetings thanks to Italy and Germany declaring war on the United States to express their solidarity with Imperial Japan. 

Are there thorny free speech issues in this scenario? Well, it looks bad when a judge is recruiting a crew of guys to beat people up for expressing their political thoughts. But, when you consider the record of Nazis before and during the war it's pretty hard not to enjoy hearing about the mobsters beating the crap out of a bunch of loud-mouthed racist bullies.

I recommend the audiobook version because of the reading of Gabriel Vaughan. The book is written is written in a lively and engaging manner and uses words or phrases from movies or newsreels from the time period, using slang like "heaters" (guns) and "whacked" (mafia ordered murder). Vaughan doubles down on this theme by reading with a mild accent reminiscent of newsreel narrators of the time.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: GANGSTERS vs. NAZIS: HOW JEWISH MOBSTERS BATTLED NAZIS in WARTIME AMERICA (audiobook) by Michael Benson

*Note on Davie "the Jew" Berman. Mobster nicknames are almost always colorful. Berman has to have the least imaginative nickname of all the mobsters of this era. That's most likely due to the fact that he was operating out of Minneapolis and Iowa City - places not known for large Jewish populations.

KING HENRY VII: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (BIOGRAPHIES of BRITISH ROYALTY) by Hourly History

Published by Hourly History in 2019.

Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour.

I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The British Royal Family is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of my own ignorance.

King Henry VII of England (1457-1509)

Henry VII was the king that ended the a civil war between competing royal families - The War of the Roses. It was not a sure thing, though. It was a long shot for him to even survive, let alone make it to the throne. Normally, these complicated royal stories bore me, but this one had a lot of dramatic elements - murder of children, escapes, battles, betrayal, the death of a king on the battlefield, and more.

The length of this e-book was perfect. I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: KING HENRY VII: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (BIOGRAPHIES of BRITISH ROYALTY) by Hourly History.

REBEL with a CLAUSE: TALES and TIPS from a ROVING GRAMMARIAN (audiobook) by Ellen Jovin

Published by HarperAudio in 2022.
Read by the author, Ellen Jovin.
Duration: 7 hours, 38 minutes.
Unabridged.

Ellen Jovin had a fun idea. She sat up a table near a New York City subway entrance with a sign that said "Grammar Table" and within 30 seconds someone came to ask a question. She doesn't just take questions, though. She also takes complaints, comments, and observations as well. 

This worked out so well that she and her husband decided to take it on the road and visit all 50 states and make a documentary (he is the cameraman, she is the talent.) However, they only made it to 47 states due to the intervention of Covid-19.

Jovin has a great way of speaking with people about grammar and she has the training to back it up. Most people are defensive and/or nervous about their grammar skills. Jovin sets them at ease and gives them explanations that are easy to understand. I literally have no problem with that aspect. 

That being said, this audiobook was kind of a chore to finish. Jovin's reads her own book and does a good job, but the text was grammatically correct but not necessarily inviting for long-term listening. 

Each of these chapters would be a great weekly 3-5 minute segment on an NPR radio show but were not necessarily fun to listen to back to back to back they got to be be quite repetitive.  

The author at her table

A typical chapter would include the description of the people asking, the location of the table for this question (South Bend, Indiana or wherever) and a literal transcript of their conversation. This could take a while and rarely revealed anything particularly interesting and if properly edited could have knocked at least an hour off of the book. At first, this aspect to the book was charming - it felt sort of welcoming and homey. But, by the time we had worked our way up to the twentieth question, it was getting a bit old. If this were broken up into weekly segments on NPR I am sure I would have loved it.

A reader may be wondering at this point why I didn't do just that very thing and listen to this book in bits of pieces over a long period of time. The answer is simple: I checked this book out of the library as a digital download and only had it for a limited amount of time to listen to it before it went back to the library and on to the next person on the waiting list. So, I listened to it over the course of 10 days or so and it was a bit too...a bit too much.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: REBEL with a CLAUSE: TALES and TIPS from a ROVING GRAMMARIAN (audiobook) by Ellen Jovin.

ALL the WAY to the TIGERS: A MEMOIR by Mary Morris

 

Published by Recorded Books in 2020.
Read by Susan Bennett.
Duration: 6 hours, 32 minutes.
Unabridged.

Sometimes I fall asleep listening to the news on my local NPR station. One morning I woke up to PBS's Rick Steves (the guy who does all of the European travel shows) interviewing Mary Morris about this book. Turns out he has a travel-themed NPR radio show and they discussed her travels around the world. They discussed where she went in India and why she went (to see a tiger in the wild) and I immediately looked it up on my audiobook up and requested it.

But, I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that this book was not the book I heard described in the interview. I heard a great discussion about a travelogue book to India. I am always interested in hearing about India because it is an ancient society, it is a democracy and it is an up-and-coming economic power.

Also, I am a sucker for travelogue books.

I have read a book by a man who hiked across America following an oil pipeline, a man who hiked the Appalachian Trail with his semi-drunk friend, two guys who hiked from Mexico to Colombia, a guy who biked from the UK to India, a guy who rode a motorcycle around Afghanistan, a guy who hiked across Afghanistan when the Taliban collapsed in the early 2000's, and two ladies that rode bikes from Turkey all the way to India and China. I am sure there are more.

This book has some travelogue features to it, but about 1/3 of the book is flashbacks to her childhood and her parents. They are both weird. One could easily argue that they were abusive.  About 1/3 is flashbacks to the time she broke her ankle while ice skating and all of the reconstructive surgery she had to endure. The remaining 1/3 (maybe less) talks about her trip to India to look for tigers in the wild.

The travelogue portion was the best part. The flashbacks parts, at their best, were tolerable. I almost quit listening at multiple points. But, in the end, I just had to know if she saw a tiger or not (they are elusive, solitary creatures).

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: All the Way to the Tigers: A Memoir by Mary Morris.

CULPER SPY RING: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END 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 learn 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.

The Culper Spy Ring has become a trendy topic in Revolutionary War history (if you can have such a thing). The spy ring grew out of the need of Continental Army to keep tabs of the British forces based in New York City. The spies were untrained but clever amateurs who, over time developed fairly sophisticated techniques to deliver information, including newspaper ads, letters with invisible ink and secret codes. They used the fact that they were private citizens to their advantage by taking advantage of their normal business routes and family visits to pass along knowledge.

I was intrigued by the fact that after the war the spy ring kept their secret spy ring a secret until they died. Their roles were pieced together by historians in the 20th century. 

Hercules Mulligan, 1740-1825

I was surprised find Hercules Mulligan in the book. I was only aware of him because of my daughter's love for the Broadway musical Hamilton. Mulligan is on the edges of the action in the production (he has less than a minute of solo singing parts - here is a link to all of them put together. Be aware that Mulligan uses foul language in the musical.)

It turns out that Hercules Mulligan may be worthy of his own musical. He was a member of the Sons of Liberty and he ran a high end tailor shop that was so good that the British officers used despite his political leanings. He must have been a great conversationalist because he pumped those officers for information even after Benedict Arnold had him briefly imprisoned for being a suspected spy. He started the war as a slave owner but freed his slave Cato in 1778. He also co-founded the New York Manumission Society, a group dedicated to gradually abolishing slavery and protecting free African Americans who were wrongfully accused of being runaway slaves. 

I enjoyed this e-book quite a bit. I rate it 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CULPER SPY RING: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

CORYDON: THE FORGOTTEN BATTLE of the CIVIL WAR by W. Fred Conway

 

Published in 1991 by FBH Publishers.

If you have ever traveled across Southern Indiana visiting historical sites like the Falls of the Ohio (a great fossil bed and a Lewis and Clark site), the Lincoln boyhood site and New Harmony then you have certainly seen a history written by W. Fred Conway.

I know that the top-rated, best-selling history authors depend a lot on writers like W. Fred Conway in order to get the more popular, wider-audience histories written. Why? Because Conway is a fan of Indiana history and he has done a lot of research that big name historians would never have time to do simply out of a love for his local area. This is one of the many books he has written about Indiana, Kentucky and/or Ohio and life along the Ohio River. Conway knows his stuff.

Unfortunately, there's not much of a story in the story of the Battle of Corydon. It was part of John Hunt Morgan's July 1863 into Union territory. The raid started June 11 in Tennessee and after more than 1,000 miles ended July 26 in Ohio along the Ohio River near West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Along the way, Morgan fought one real battle, although he had lots of little skirmishes. On July 9 a little less than 400 members local home guard militia set up a battle line and fought more than 2,000 Confederate cavalry in the Battle of Corydon. They were quickly outflanked on both sides and captured. This was one of two Civil War battles fought on Union soil - the other one was Gettysburg a week earlier. 

To their credit, the militia gave better than they got. The militia killed 11 Confederate soldiers and wounded 40 and suffered 4 dead and 10-12 wounded. The captured militia was paroled (released on the promise that they would no longer fight in the war in any way) and Morgan's men moved on after some looting and taking more than $25,000 in Union money from local businessmen in exchange for not burning down their businesses. 

That's the basics of the battle. It didn't take very long and was tiny in comparison to the two massive battles that took place in July of 1863: Vicksburg, Mississippi and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was interesting to note that Morgan learned about the results of those other two battles while he was in Corydon.

The book goes on to tell a "lite" version of the rest of the raid, including Morgan's capture and subsequent escape. However, there's still not a lot to this book. There are dozens of photos and drawings (always appreciated - but there were so many that it felt like filler). There is also an appendix about "Corydon Today" - a historical document in it's own right, considering it was printed 31 years ago. All of the pictures and the appendices made me wonder of the publisher had a minimum page requirement. 

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: CORYDON: THE FORGOTTEN BATTLE of the CIVIL WAR by W. Fred Conway.