ESPERANZA RISING (audiobook) by Pam Muñoz Ryan

 

Originally published in book format in 2000.

Published by Listening Library in 2003.
Read by Trini Alvarado

Duration: 4 hours, 42 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Esperanza is the main character in a fictionalized version of the author's grandmother's adolescence. 

In Mexico, Esperanza is the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Aguascalientes. On this ranch, life is wonderful. She has servants and attends a private school. But, life in Mexico in 1930 is fraught with danger. It is only 10 years after the 10 year long Mexican Revolution and armed bands still roam the countryside. One of these groups kills Esperanza's father and her conniving uncles take the ranch and burn the house down to make sure they keep the land. 

The author, Pam Muñoz Ryan

Esperanza and her mother join a family of their servants (the ranch manager, the household manager, and their son) and flee to America (California) with false paperwork. They hope to work on American farms and re-establish themselves.
However, America is in the beginnings of the Great Depression...

My Review:

The book has a slow start (probably the first 1/3), but once the family makes it to the American border the book truly gets steadily better as it goes along. The migrant labor camps in this book tie in very well with a much older book that is set a little later in the Great Depression in California, The Grapes of Wrath. By the end of the book, I was pretty invested in seeing how it turned out.

For all of the people that act as though the immigration crisis at the border is a new thing that one political candidate discovered just a few years ago, this book feels like it could be easily updated to 2023 with a few technological changes. It is set 93 years in the past, but it involves criminal violence forcing people north to America, migrant camps, illegal border crossings, forged paperwork, low wages, border patrol agents, homelessness, families separated by the border, racial prejudice, and more.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ESPERANZA RISING by Pam Muñoz Ryan.

YOU SHOULD SEE ME in a CROWN (audiobook) by Leah Johnson

Published in 2020 by Scholastic Audio.

Read by Alaska Jackson.
Duration: 7 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

High School senior Liz Lighty is depending on a $10,000 music scholarship to be able to afford to attend the college she has always wanted to go to.  When she discovers that she doesn't get the scholarship, she's afraid her grandparents will sell their house to pay for her college.

Her high school offers a $10,000 scholarship for the winner of the Prom Queen competition. Enthusiastic band member Liz, supported by her outsider group of friends, joins the competition against all cheerleaders, legacies, and the beautiful people...

My Review:

In a lot of ways, You Should See Me In a Crown is a typical high school ugly duckling story - the underdog great kid goes up against the popular clique.

But, there are some additional nuances that make this more interesting. 

The book is set in the Indianapolis area (Indianapolis is my adopted hometown) and the high school in the book (Campbell) is a play on the real Indianapolis suburb named Carmel. Carmel and its neighbors have had multiple incidents with race, inclusion, book bans, and the like. Remember the Moms for Liberty parent group that published a newsletter with the Adolph Hitler quote? This is that place.

This matters in this book because Liz Lighty is African American and lesbian, like the author. Those two facts, especially the second one, are a big deal.

The Indianapolis Arts Garden, the site of 
the prom in this book.

Readers from the Indianapolis area will appreciate the mentions of local landmarks like Mass Ave, Rick's Café and Boatyard, and the Arts Garden.

The book is interesting because of the issues of race and sexuality, but it is a very good book because Leah Johnson is a very good author. Her characters look like they are the standard high school kids from a teen movie or TV show, but she breathes life in them and makes them stand out. Her descriptions of those first few exciting, confusing and embarrassing days of falling in love ring true and were fun to listen to in this audiobook.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: YOU SHOULD SEE ME in a CROWN (audiobook) by Leah Johnson.

Note: In 2022, the Oklahoma Attorney General announced he was going to review a list of more than 50 books that "several concerned individuals" had submitted top his office rather than going through their local school boards. His office decided to determine if the books were "obscene." Later, he dropped his investigation, but not the recommendation that local school boards take these complaints seriously. Although most of the books on this list have an LGBTQ+ theme, it is a wide-ranging list, including classics like Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, and Lord of the Flies. There is nothing "obscene" in this book. There are no sexual acts beyond a few kisses.

This book was also put on a book ban list in Tennessee. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles.
 

DEADLANDS: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Victoria Miluch

 

Published in October of 2023 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by Laura Jennings.
Duration: 9 hours, 24 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Set in a future dystopian Arizona in a United States that is collapsing due to pollution and climate change.

19 year old Georgia lives with her father and her 16 year old brother in an outpost in the Arizona desert north of Phoenix. They are hiding away from the polluted city of Phoenix and the few people that bother to venture out into the wilderness. 

When Georgia and her brother encounter two "hikers" and their car near their outpost, everything changes...

My review:

This book starts out very interesting and then settles into a moody story about relationships, betrayals, and discovery - but I made it sound way more interesting than it actually was. In reality, it was an interesting 45 minute set-up at the beginning and multiple hints that something really dramatic could happen and then nothing happened - again and again and again.

****Spoiler Alert:**** 

Warning: there is a first sexual experience scene that, to me, seemed more like a first sexual assault scene. Some people, like me, really are repulsed by sexual assault scenes. Once again, this followed the pattern of the rest of the book - a very dramatic thing occurs and not much happens as a consequence. 

****End Spoiler****

We never really find out what's going on with America's environment, or why Georgia's father is implementing secret plans, or why Georgia knows all about swimming in oceans when she has lived her entire life in a desert and has never seen a body of water. And, so it goes on and on and on. 

I rate this audiobook 1 star out of 5. If you want to give it a go, it's on Amazon.com here: DEADLANDS: A NOVEL by Victoria Miluch.

SLAVERY, RESISTANCE, FREEDOM (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Books collection) edited by Gabor Boritt and Scott Hancock.

 

Published in 2007 by Oxford University Press.

The book consists of six essays about the experience of African Americans from the early American period through Reconstruction. 

They are arranged in chronological order and, as is the way with all collections, of varying quality. I did not enjoy either of the two essays by one of the editors, Scott Hancock. I did enjoy reading two of them quite a bit.

There are two strong essays that read more like small chapters from a Civil War history  about the United States Colored Troops (USCT) - the segregated units of black soldiers led by white officers. 

The last essay was by Reconstruction expert Eric Foner. It was a bit tedious to read, but it ruthlessly lays to rest that old Confederate and neo-Confederate lie that Black Reconstruction (when Blacks could actually vote and the old leaders of the Confederacy were not allowed to run for office) just elected illiterate field hands to the highest offices. The men Foner describes were mostly (80% plus) educated to at least the level of the average state legislators in the North and some were highly educated and exceptional men.

I rate this collection 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SLAVERY, RESISTANCE, FREEDOM (Gettysburg Civil War Institute Books collection) edited by Gabor Boritt and Scott Hancock.

THANK YOU for VOTING: THE MADDENING, ENLIGHTENING, INSPIRING TRUTH ABOUT VOTING in AMERICA (audiobook) by Erin Geiger Smith

 

Published in 2020 bt Harper Audio.

Read by Lisa Cordileone.
Duration: 6 hours, 3 minutes.
Unabridged.

As the title says, his book is intended to be a primer on the history of elections in America and how elections work now in different states. It was thorough enough without drowning the listener in details.

The book does a solid job with both of those major topics without feeling partisan. Those topics comprise the first and last two hours of this audiobook. The middle two hours just felt like padding. There was an extended discussion of how to raise the voter participation rate that just dragged with discussions of how businesses can encourage employees to vote, ad campaigns from local government, and so on. 

I would rate the first two sections 4 stars out of 5, but the middle section is a 2 out of 5 at best. That makes a final score of 3 out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THANK YOU for VOTING: THE MADDENING, ENLIGHTENING, INSPIRING TRUTH ABOUT VOTING in AMERICA (audiobook) by Erin Geiger Smith.

FIGHTER PILOT: THE WORLD WAR II CAREER of ALEX VRACIU by Roy E. Boomhower

 

Published in 2010 by Indiana Historical Society Press.

Alex Vraciu (1918-2015) was a World War II flying ace, ranking fourth in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He destroyed 19 Japanese planes in the air and 21 on the ground. 

This short book is very approachable and tells the story of Vraciu's childhood during the Great Depression in Northwest Indiana (now commonly known as "The Region") and his college years at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. 

Vraciu took advantage of a U.S. government program that trained civilians to be pilots with the understanding that if the U.S. went to war those pilots would become military pilots. He trained in Muncie, Indiana and immediately joined the U.S. Navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Vraciu had a remarkable military career over the next 23 years. Besides destroying 40 Japanese planes, he lost multiple planes, including being shot down over the Philippines and leading a group of guerrilla fighters against the Japanese, he became a test pilot, he led squadrons after they navy transitioned to jets and scored the highest in the predecessor to the Navy's "Top Gun" training program in a jet 12 years after the end of World War II. 

The book is very readable and full of interesting photographs. It would be good for a well-read student of World War II or an interested newbie. I rate it 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FIGHTER PILOT: THE WORLD WAR II CAREER of ALEX VRACIU by Roy E. Boomhower.

POVERTY, BY AMERICA (audiobook) by Matthew Desmond

Published in 2023 by Random House Audio.
Read by Dion Graham.
Duration: 5 hours, 40 minutes.
Unabridged.

As of the day I am writing this review, 7 of the top 10 richest people in the world live in the United States (the least wealthy has $80 billion.) The rate continues on when you go down the list - 14 of the top 20 live in the United States. 

The United States has 650 billionaires.

But, the official poverty rate in the United States at this moment is 11.5% - the highest rate in the in the leading industrialized economies of the world. This chart shows that it has bounced around between 10.5% and 15%, depending on the economic recessions and the like for the last 30 years. During this entire time, the United States has been the leader in wealth creation for the entire planet.

The author, Matthew Desmond

Sociology professor Matthew Desmond set out to find out why.

It's easy to look at those billionaires and note that they don't pay their fair share. The tax code is tailor made to keep them rich. There are deductions and accounting tricks that people who make less than a million dollars a year cannot imagine. 

But, Desmond notes that people who make less than a million dollars a year take advantage of deductions and accounting tricks that people living in poverty can ever imagine taking.

For example, in my state (Indiana) there is a 20% state income credit for every dollar placed in a 529 college savings account. The growth in value is not taxed and for every dollar you put in up to $7,500 you get 20 cents back. Put in the full amount, the taxpayers of Indiana give you $1,500. Show me a family of four living at the poverty line ($30,000 in 2023 according to this chart) that has an extra $7,500 - or even $500 - sitting around to invest in a college savings account. 

Poor people can receive rent subsidies - if there are enough funds and enough spots available. But everyone with a mortgage receives a mortgage subsidy by being able to write off the mortgage interest. That subsidy has no practical limit. You can get it for financing a tiny home in rural Arkansas or a penthouse condo that looks over Central Park in NYC. That adds up to billions upon billions of dollars every year.

Desmond goes on like this to demonstrate that the system is almost like an inverse pyramid - the higher up you go the more perks and discounts and breaks you get. And, at the bottom, there's some perks - but nothing like you get at the top where some people (like our 45th President) don't even pay federal income taxes some years. Former President Trump paid no taxes in 2020 and only $750 in 2017 and 2018. From 2015-2020 he paid $1.8 million in taxes, which is a lot, but he claims to be a billionaire. A billion is 1,000 million dollars, so he paid about 2/1,000 of his total wealth. I know I paid more than 2/1,000 of my total wealth in my combined federal income taxes for those six years.

Desmond goes on with other things. For example, you can get approved to pay a $1,700/month rent so much easier than to pay a $1,200/month mortgage on the same property. Profit margins on rentals are the highest in poor neighborhoods - even after factoring in things like more maintenance on the (typically) older homes in poorer neighborhoods.

The audiobook was read by Dion Graham who is simply one of the best audiobook readers on the scene right now. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It will certainly give you plenty to think about. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond. 

This article from NPR does a very good job of reviewing this book as well.