Tag Archives: Book Review

BOOK REVIEW: Crooked

Crooked: The Roaring ‘20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal
Nathan Masters
Hachette Books}
Copyright 2023 by the author

When most people think of Warren Harding’s presidency, one of the first things that will come to mind is the “Teapot Dome” scandal, where federal oil reserves were sold off to oil companies to the benefit of people in the Harding administration. Less well-known to us today, but even more outrageous was the contemporary scandal at the Veterans’ Bureau. The Bureau was purchasing goods for far more than market price, surplus goods were sold off for much less than they should have been, and millions of dollars were flat out unaccounted for.

Senate committees were investigating all this. But the biggest scandal was, quite simply, that the US Attorney General and the Justice Department weren’t doing anything at all to help the investigations.

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BOOK REVEIW: Time Trials

Time Trials
M.A. Rothman & D.J. Butler
Baen Books
Copyright 2023 by the authors

I don’t usually care for novel series. More often than not, you have to commit to reading the complete set of novels in order to get the entire story. Or the follow-up novels are just a case of the publisher telling the author “That book did really well. Write another one, with the same characters and same universe.” It gets annoying when you can tell it’s just a cash grab on the order of the Transformers or Fast and Furious movies.

The worst ones are where they can’t be bothered to indicate anywhere on the cover that the book is part of a series. Do I need to read all the ones that came before it to figure out what’s going on? Will I have to read all the following books? Do I have to read them all in a specific order?

Fortunately, there’s a blurb from Kirkus Reviews right on the cover that lets you know what to expect with this one: “An entertaining first entry in what promises to be a fantastic time-travel series.”

 

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Book Review: The Clockwork Dynasty

The Clockwork Dynasty
by Daniel H. Wilson
Doubleday Books
Ccopyright 2017 by the author

June Stefanov is an expert in the repair and restoration of antique “clockwork” devices and automata. She got into the trade thanks to some unintentional inspiration from her Russian grandfather, who survived the Battle of Stalingrad and bequeathed to her both a tale of a mysterious soldier of superhuman ability and an unusual bit of metal he recovered from that hellscape.

Now, she’s been summoned to an old church in Oregon, where they have one of these devices in storage – and is badly in need of repair. Unfortunately for her, there are people who would rather she didn’t fix it – and she finds herself caught up in a centuries-long battle among a hidden cabal of quasi-immortal machines.

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Book Review: Why We Love Baseball

Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments
Joe Posnanski
Dutton Books
Copyright 2023 by the author

The title is something of a misnomer. The book is not a collection of essays on how great baseball is, nor is it a historical chronicle of key events in the history of the game.

Over and over again, with his many books and articles and essays and blog posts, Joe Posnanski has shown himself to be a master at telling stories. Here, he puts that skill to work, with what turns out to be over 100 stories of baseball at every level.

Sure, there are plenty of things from the Major Leagues and World Series. But that’s not all there is to baseball. A Little Leaguer learns the knuckleball from and old star, and uses it to toss a perfect game…. A real potato makes an appearance on the field in a minor league game…. A team pulls of the perfect “hidden ball” trick in the College World Series.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Last Campaign

The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America
H.W. Brands
Doubleday Books
Copyright 2022 by the author

A while back I got involved in a discussion on what movies or TV series could not be made today. The 60s comedy F Troop immediately came to mind. Even in what was clearly a comedy, there’s not a chance in heck that you’d be able to get away with stereotyping the natives in such a manner today.

The contrarian in me started wondering what you’d have to do if you wanted to have your “pitch” for a reboot taken seriously. Obviously, the natives would have to be the only sane, decent, honorable, and intelligent characters. And you’d want them played by Native American actors (assuming you could get enough willing to take the roles).

Then you’d want to get a decent enough grasp on the history of the “Indian Wars”. That’s where H.W. Brands comes in.


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Book Review: The Chanting

The Chanting
Beverly T. Haaf
Jersey Pines Ink
Copyright 2021 by the author

Janet is having a nightmare. She’s hearing the sound of a baby crying, but cannot get to the infant. Everything seems to be in the wrong place….

Well, she has been under a lot of stress lately. She’s staying with her sister in a rather well-to-do neighborhood near Princeton NJ as she waits for her divorce to be finalized. And she still hasn’t quite gotten over the death of her infant daughter. So yes, she’s probably imagining things.

But why does she keep “sensing” (for lack of a better term) suffering children? What’s the deal with that mute little girl who keeps showing up in the neighborhood? And that senile old woman who’s always dressed in black? And that cat that seems to have the run of the neighborhood? Is she going nuts, or is there really something to worry about with that big old yellow house?

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Book Review: The Vortex

The Vortex: A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation
Scott Carney and Jason Miklian
HarperCollins
Copyright 2022 by the authors

In November, 1970, a cyclone slammed into East Pakistan. It was the deadliest storm in history, leaving some half a million dead in its wake. Fifteen months later, after a brutal and genocidal war, the nation of Bangladesh was born. As Carney and Miklian show, the events were not unconnected.

Through a mass of documentation and interviews with people who were there, Carney and Miklian have recreated the setting and placed you right in the action.

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BOOK REVIEW: Drunk

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization
Edward Slingerland
Little, Brown Spark
Copyright 2021 by the author

We’re so confused when it comes to alcohol. It’s the cause of, and solution to, all of Life’s problems, according to a noted contemporary philosopher. We can’t seem to decide if its good or bad for you. “Red wine has antioxidants, which are good for you!” “Alcohol damages your liver! All of it is bad!” Some alcohol in moderation is fine!” It’s enough to drive one to drink!

You can find someone to support whatever viewpoint you want. But Slingerland steps back from all of that, and asks another, probably more important question:

Why do we like getting drunk in the first place?

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BOOK REVIEW: The Bald Eagle

The Bald Eagle: The Improbable History of America’s Bird
Jack E. Davis
Liveright Publishing Company
Copyright 2022 by the author

I’ve seen three so far. The first while on a bridge across the Hudson River at Albany, during a road trip with a friend. I was surprised to see one, in part because it was an urban environment. Didn’t think they’d like cities. The second was in southern Westchester County NY, on my way to work one morning. It was perched atop a pine tree at the side of the road, minding its own business. Again, it was a surprise, since it was another “semi-urban” environment. I suppose the golf course in the neighborhood made for prime squirrel and rabbit hunting grounds. The most recent was at a nature preserve on Long Island Sound. I spotted it flying off into the distance. This was a more natural environment for it; plenty of fish in the waters – and ospreys to steal from. I suppose I’ll be seeing more in the future.

In the meantime, Davis has penned a wonderful history of the bald eagle, based on its relationship with America and Americans. Both a “natural history” of Haliaeetus leucocephalus, and the actual history of how it became our national symbol.

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BOOK REVIEW: Otherlands

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds
Thomas Halliday
Random House
Copyright 2022 by the author

One of the most underrated works of art is not found in any small gallery or private collection. It is readily available for the public to view, prominently displayed in a well-known museum. It is the “Age of Reptiles” mural by Rudolph Zellinger, in the Peabody Museum at Yale University in New Haven, CT.

An “illustrated timeline” of some 300 million years of Earth’s history, Zallinger depicted not only dinosaurs and reptiles, but plants as well, using the best scientific information that could be had in the early 1940s. It’s one of the first attempts (and undoubtedly one of the most successful) at depicting the creatures of the distant past in as accurate and complete an environment as possible.

Needless to say, since then we’ve learned a lot about the dinosaurs and other living things of the deep past. Halliday, a paleontologist working out of the Natural History Museum in London, has taken all the new findings and has painted not a continuous mural, but rather a set of “dioramas” depicting each of the major geologic eras in Earth’s history. They aren’t collections of “things you might have seen at that time”; rather they are based on fossil evidence at specific locations – locations where, by pure luck, enough was preserved to give a good picture of all the life that inhabited the area.

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