The Johnstown Flood, by David McCullough

This was the first book by historian David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Truman" and "John Adams", and it was written in 1968. I downloaded it from NetLibrary.org.

Having known nothing about the Johnstown Flood before listening to this audiobook, I had no disinformation that needed to be swept away like the Victorian Era steel town was in 1889. The newspapers of that time made every kind of reporting error in America's first major natural disaster, and some of those mistakes are now part of the mental DNA in some people from the area surrounding the ill-fated Pennsylvania town.

My wife's family took part in the clean-up after the flood, and she said she knew quite a lot about the flood. In spite of that, she still thought the dam had been built by rich people to create a resort. Actually, the dam had been built as part of a government canal project, just before the railroads made the canal obsolete. After falling into disrepair, the earthen dam was refurbished by developers to create a lake for a hunting and fishing club, but the club's membership has all the liability that the owners of a timeshare would have if a resort burned down: none. And that is pretty much why legal action against the members never got off the ground.

It took almost 80 years for some of the best reporting and fact-finding to get done, as does in this book, and it's fortunate that there were still survivors of the disaster at the time that David McCullough was writing it. There are also the records from the American Red Cross. This was their first natural disaster response, and Clara Barton herself was there to oversee it.

All the class envy, race hatred, yellow journalism, relief money scamming and political finger pointing make a good template for future books about Hurricane Katrina that will be written by the cooler heads of the future. I hope it doesn't take 80 years. I give this one 4 stars for its thoroughness and the excellent narrative skills of the author.

"God Wills It!": Understanding the Crusades, by Prof. Thomas Madden

This is not exactly an audiobook. It's a course taught in 14 lectures by a professor of Medieval History and chair of the History Department at St. Louis University. But it was 8:10:55 long, so it seemed like a book to me.

Professor Madden (pictured left) breaks down the Crusades into external Crusades against the Muslims and internal Crusades against Christian heretics. But the majority of the time is spent on the Crusades to regain the Holy Land from the Muslims over a period of about 500 years. There are 5 major Crusades recognized in this series, and they all get a pretty thorough and interesting treatment.

These lectures don't sound like a manuscript being read for dramatic effect, but they do sound like they were given in a studio as opposed to a lecture hall, with all the ambient noise associated with that venue. However, at the end of some of the lectures a narrator breaks in to announce that a student had posed a question at the end of the lecture, and a recorded answer is presented separately.

As a history nerd, I enjoyed these for the sense of completeness of the overview and depth of detail. There is not a lot of personal anecdote about the players, so it is just the facts. But there are so many facts and the narration is so well organized, that you don't get lost in the droning vastness of it all. I thought this was an excellent presentation and I give it 4 stars.

Everyman, by Philip Roth

I heard a review of this book early in the year, when it first came out. Someone had said it was the story of a man's body, and now I know what was meant by that.

Roth's character is so personal, yet impersonal. You learn all about the struggles of a man from his early youth until the day he dies an uneventful death. You become acquainted with him through his appetites and the indulgences thereof. But you are not disgusted by him so much as you pity his personal emptiness.

The main character's name may have been mentioned in the beginning of the book, but it was so far back and never mentioned again that I believe that it was an essential part of the author's creation: a man with no distinguishing characteristics or identity apart from his own search for meaning through pleasure, whether though his vocation or his diversions.

Everyman has a series of affairs, most of which lead to him divorcing a decent women that are named over and over, and marrying his tryst partner, only to cheat on her. You learn the names of all his friends, relatives, and women, but he is a nameless bundle of well-meaning narcissism. He is faithless, not only to his wives, but in general. He has no god. And he dies that way: an old man who is frustrated that the hottie on the beach that he hit on does not call him; and even starts jogging somewhere else to avoid him.

This is a sad story of a man who executes the sexual fantasies of ordinary men, and bleeds the life out of them. It's a good thing Mr. Roth is a good writer, or this would be all depressing morality tale with no room for pitying our anti-hero. And you do pity him because you see too much of yourself in him to loathe him without feeling the pain of being loathed. Most of his children hate him and avoid him, and he is useless to comfort anyone, while no one is left to comfort him. Take prozac before reading. It's three stars for the introspective mental workout, but one star for entertainment.

Health Care..., by Ceci Connolly

Another Chautauqua lecture on a single CD, available at our local library. Ceci Connolly is a political reporter, and this lecture took place before the 2004 election.

Ms. Connolly reports that although the US probably spends enough on health care to get the job done for all Americans, that it is not allocated very well. We spend the highest percentage of our GDP on health care, yet we have so many inefficiencies and CYA tests and procedures that do no necessarily yield life enhancement. Patients with insurance also abuse the system, and she is surprisingly lenient on the insurance companies, which she finds to be the lesser of evils.

Thought-provoking, if light on data; this was an easy listen and enough to get you digging. I give it 3 stars.

Changing China..., by David M. Lampton

I saw that one new addition to the local library's CD collection is a series of lectures from the Chautauqua Institute. This first one comes on one CD, is about 1:15 long, and is very much like one of those NPR public affairs broadcasts.

In this lecture, Mr. Lampton is optimistic about our relationship with China, so long as we are all optimistic about it. He makes the case that our Western attitude is one of, "If China will cooperate, we can be friends; whereas, the Chinese approach is, "If we are friends, we can cooperate." He was one of the first Americans allowed into China after Mao's death, which had brought on a brief period of seclusion, and he tells us that change in China is much more positive and rapid than we think. Furthermore, he has some positive words on why we could, and should, be positive on the relationship between the People's Republic of China (Mainland) and Taiwan.

This is a 4 star must-listen for anyone who weighs our foreign policy options when going to the polls.

A break for podcasts

Yesterday I took a break from audiobooks to just zone out with podcasts. I usually have a few podcasts as a part of my listening diet, but yesterday I caught up with a lot of shows I had not heard in awhile.

For those of you who are mystified about what a podcast is, it is simply a down loadable audio program that is attached to an rss feed, so you can subscribe to it and be notified of the latest episode. Some will argue that the rss feed is not required, and I can understand that, but I have to admit that I don't listen to such podcasts. Everything I download is part of someone's rss feed, and the podcasting community all seems to agree on this, so I think I will let them define themselves.

Relax. I know I just numbed your brain a little bit with a bit of geek-speak, but you don't have to have a clue about rss feeds to enjoy podcasts. It's like your mp3 player: you don't have to understand it to use it. But if you want to subscribe to podcasts, it will be helpful to use a program or application to track the ones to which you want to subscribe. Forunately, some sites like yahoo.com and google.com provide a means of doing that through their "mypage" portals. (Yahoo's is called MyYahoo, and Google's is My Account, but you get the point.)

Here are some of the websites for some of my favorite podcasts that are a good jumping off point. You can find recent episodes, get subscribing information, etc.

Scott Sigler's "The Rookie" This one is a podcast novel. As he says in the intro, "you can't peek at the end!" I am not a science fiction fan, as a rule, but Sigler is a very good writer, and that comes out in any genre. It takes place in a future where an alien race has conquered the known universe, but has the same governinng problems that come with any overextended empire. In order to channel the aggression of all these alien species into a less destructive venue, the victors have encouraged athletic competition, and American Football is the overwhelming fan favorite. So, you have receivers and cornerbakc who can jump 25 feet in the air.

Another thing you have in a huge empire that tries to control everything is organized crime. Some of these criminal elements own football teams, and use the team spaceships to move contraband. And on the teams themselves you have issues of racism. This sounds like a crazy book, but I have to tell you that I am hooked! So, here I am waiting eagerly for episode 13.

The Daily Breakfast Father Roderick in the Netherlands does this English language podcast with upbeat music, humor, and a touch of spiritual inquiry. I am not even Catholic, but this show is a pleasant diversion that anyone could enjoy. Fatehr Roderick is a 38 year old priest who watches over 3 parishes in the Diocese of Utrecht, and he makes the time to produce a half hour program with podsafe music, geek news, movie reviews, and even an ocassional Latin segment that begins with a sound clip of Bart Simpson praying in Latin, followed by Homer yelling, "Bart, what in hell are you saying?"

There are many others, but I have to go to work! Happy listening!

The Souvenir, by Louise Steinman

The rest of the title is: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War, and that discovery begins after Louise's father, Norman Steinman, passes away and leaves behind a treasure of old letters from the Pacific, and a souvenir. Like many WW2 combat veterans, Norman never reminisced about the war. He was quite happy to forget it. So his daughter, like many baby boom sons and daughters, grew up with a view of WW2, and war in general, that did not benefit from the experience of the participants.

Norman was a non-observant Jew who came back from fighting the Japanese in the Philippines, went to pharmacy school on the GI Bill, and raised his family without saying anything about the war or revealing the cache of 474 letters to his wife, along with a Japanese flag with inscriptions from a mysterious dead soldier's family back in Japan.

Only after her mother also died did Louise Steinman discover this archive while cleaning out her parents' condo. She reads the letters, some of which mention the flag and her father's regret at having taken it and mailing it home to her mother, but learns little else about the flag. Her curiosity propels her on a search for someone to translate the inscriptions and, eventually, to return the flag to the dead soldier's family.

This is exactly the kind of thing you would expect a politically liberal performance artist/writer (which is what Ms. Steinman is,) to do. And it might be cathartic to write about it, and profitable to publish as well. At least, that's the cynical view. And although I am a bit cynical, and way to the right of most performance artists, I found this to be a riveting, and touching, memoir by a woman who has given a real gift to historians and the public at-large. She travels to Japan and meets the soldier's family, and also visits Hiroshima, and the place where her father did battle on the ground in the Philippines.

I have read a lot of books on WW2, so I was not surprised by the savagery of the fighting, the hatred between the Japanese soldiers and the US Marines, and the atrocities visited upon soldiers and civilians alike by the Japanese military. But this was all news to the author, and her visit to Japan gave her a new appreciation for The Bomb.

I think that hawks and doves alike will find this book immensely authentic, and that it will challenge you to look at war in a way that gets past slogans and propaganda. It was read by Suzanne Toren, and was 7 hours and 2 minutes long, and included an author interview at the end. And I give it 4 stars.

Dead Watch, by John Sandford

I know this is the second John Sandford novel I have reviewed in 3 postings, but at least it's no part of the "Prey" series, with Lucas Davenport.

Released just this year, Dead Watch appears to be the beginning of a new series that features Jake Winter, a political espionage operative who has a working relationship with the FBI and CIA.

In this story, Jake is called upon to find out where a former US Senator has gone, and who may have kidnapped him...if it's a kidnapping. Lincoln Bowe is a Republican politician who is married to a former TV news reporter. Madison Bowe believes that her husband's former opponent, the Governor of Virginia, is part of a plot to make the outspoken former Senator disappear.

Governor Arlo Goodman, a conservative Democrat, is linked to a citizen volunteer organization called The Watchmen, which was formed to assist law enforcement in such "watchful" activities as locating illegal aliens and looking out for terrorists.

There are enough twists and turns to keep this interesting, although it does not rise to the level of some of Sandford's better Prey novels. But it is interesting, and there is enough linkage to several contemporary issues to make you think. And, of course, the solution to the problem of the former Senator's disappearance is a surprise.

I give it 3 stars for keeping me involved all the way, and not drifting too far out on the romantic tangent, which is inevitable from early on.

The Legacy, by Stephen Frey

Many times you discover an author that you like after he has had several novels published, and you have to go back in time to catch up with him. "The Legacy" was published in 1998, but my first experience with Frey was "The Day Trader", 2002. Frey writes financial thrillers, but this one is much less about the stock market and hedge funds than it is about a government conspiracy to cover up the investigation of the JFK assassination. The main character, Cole Eagan, just happens to work for an investment house.

JFK conspiracies are not my bag. But it is an indelible memory for most people my age, who all remember what they were doing when they heard JFK had been shot. (I was in kindergarten when the room dividers were all pulled apart, the teachers stayed huddled together, and a TV was rolled in for us to watch the news instead of the story lady on our local PBS affiliate.) And although I have shrugged off much of the JFK genre as something that has been overdone, this was a very good spy novel, with enough double crosses to keep you guessing right up to the end.

And it goes beyond being a fictional diversion when you consider how much of a story like this could actually be true. It's depressing, but not entirely surprising, which is probably what depresses me to begin with. That, and the idea that with all those people in a large public place, many of whom owned cameras even then, that there is so little incontrovertible proof of anything. You gotta wonder. It's just not very profitable.

Give it 3 stars for good story, characters, and the ability to bother the level-headed.

New link add: an audio player user group

I found this great place to read reviews, shop, and ask questions about digital audio players. It's a little geeky, but that is actually perfect for this kind of subject. Geeks know their audio players!

I've put the link on the left permanently, with other links of interest...

Broken Prey, by John Sandford

This is book number 16 In John Sandford's "Prey" series. I've listened to a lot of them, all narrated by Richard Ferrone, but I didn't know the exact number. I understand that "Invisible Prey" will be released next year, thus extending the franchise.

These novels all feature detective Lucas Davenport, a somewhat rumpled, gritty detective who can take a bullet. He specializes is serial killers, and his stories seldom wade into romance. He is currently married to a woman doctor whose first name is Weather, and Lucas is also fairly wealthy due to his profits from designing first-person-shooter video games. That does not come up in this book, but I do recall that detail from past novels.

In this one, a violent serial rapist, who has been released with one of those tracking leg manacles after doing his time, disappears about the same time that a young woman's body is found, violated and displayed. The missing ex-con is an obvious choice after his ankle bracelet is found in his apartment, sawed through and discarded.

A part of Lucas' investigation takes him to the prison hospital where former patients were acquainted with the missing man, who does not actually fit the profile for the kind of killing that has been done. It seems more like one of the current inmates, except they are all accounted for.

This is a pretty complicated, gory, and sometimes sexually explicit story. Still, Sandford is the master of this genre, and his ability to get himself, and you, inside the heads of his characters is his strength. And the voice of Richard Ferrone was made to read crime drama. It's a well-paced story, told well, but because I am a bit worn out with Lucas, I give it barely 3 stars.

Forever Odd, by Dean Koontz

The follow-up to "Odd Thomas", this is another odd story about a man who is visited by the dead in search of justice.

I have to admit that I am a Dean Koontz junkie who cares less about story than I do about listening to Mr. Koontz's amusing prose and weird juxtapositions. You know there will be good vs evil. You know that good will triumph. And you know there will be a few laughs. The bad guys (and gals: Koontz is an equal opportunity vilifier) will be gruesome and bloodthirsty.

In this story, a man has been murdered and his son, Danny, has disappeared. Danny, a long time friend of Odd's, is suffering from a disease that gives him very brittle bones, so he is quite fragile. Odd starts getting calls from a mysterious female psychopath who threatens to hurt Danny unless she gets what she wants: miracles. It seems that this woman, a bizarre occult practitioner, is using Danny to get to Odd so she can exploit his relationship with the supernatural.

This is not one of his best, but Koontz still gets a solid 3 star grade for this one. It is narrated by David Aaron Baker, who is good, but almost a little too soft-spoken for this one. Almost.

The Quiet Game, by Greg Iles

This 20 hour audiobook was downloaded free from NetLibrary, and it was just too long. And it was very much like a Pat Conroy novel: seedy and southern with a progressive social message and religious hypocrites abounding.

A top flight prosecutor, Penn Cage (I can hear the rimshot), who lost his wife to cancer, returns to his ancestral home with his little girl to get a rest. This does not work out. He ends up getting involved in an old civil right murder that was unsolved, but has plenty of chickens coming home to roost.

Our protagonist is further distracted by a crusading young newspaper publisher who wants to get a Pulitzer out of the turmoil. (Yes, she is hot.) And his old love interest (maybe hotter), who happens to be the daughter of a corrupt local power broker, also comes home after separating from her husband.

Crime novel turns romance turns courtroom drama over a long story with too many players. Yes, some of them are very well written, and probably worthy of their own books, but we are stuck with most of them until the end.

This would have been 3 stars if it had been half as long. It's downgraded to 2.

The Afghan, by Frederick Forsyth

Well-written, but formulaic, this is the story of a British agent of middle eastern extraction who goes undercover to impersonate an al Qaida operative who has been released from Guantanamo Bay.

The good prose of an Englishman is hard for me to resist, even if it's predictable. What is not predictable are the fascinating details of fictional, yet plausible, plots in our age of terrorism.

Forsyth's character takes risks and does not play fair, which is necessary to avert a devastating terrorist attack. If you are a civil libertarian who wants to extend the benefit of the doubt to terrorists, you will find this book insufferable. I give it two and a half stars.

Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich

This is the true story of 6 MIT students who bent the odds of Vegas to their advantage using a system of card-counting and subterfuge. Relayed through the novelist, Ben Mezrich, this account takes on the atmosphere of a thriller, complete with the danger that comes with running afoul of people who are only a degree or two removed from the mob.

Just as exciting as the misadventures with vengeful casinos, the action at the tables is riveting. If you ever read Positively Fifth Street, by James McManus, gambling is quite a rush for both the players and the spectators. And the Vegas lifestyle is a long streak of adrenalin demanding to be indulged with possessions, hookers, and danger. And when the house doesn't want to play anymore, everything hits the wall; everything but the need to play, and play, and play.

This was a fun and exciting story. Unfortunately, it may embolden the reader to engage in similar exploits. It is seductive. But it's important to remember that all those lights and all that glitter is ultimately paid for by losers. And there are an awful lot of them.

As mind candy, 4 stars; as a morality tale, 2.

The Mighty and the Almighty, By Madeleine Albright

I downloaded this from Audible.com as my free selection for buying my Insignia mp3 player. I am not yet a member of Audible, but I am giving it consideration. More about that at the end of this post.

I was no fan of the Clinton administration, nor of Madeleine Albright, so I went into this book expecting a lot of political CYA. The reviews at Amazon were none too positive, either. But, as a person who cares intensely about the relationship between politics and religion in his country, it was a must. I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, there was a great deal of criticism of the Bush Administration, and a good deal of it was justified, but she was quite even-handed in her evaluations, and even defended the President on several occasions. Best of all, she wanted to issue a corrective to future diplomats everywhere; that they be less ignorant of religion when dealing with other nations. This is not the Cold War, when our biggest concern was the Soviet Union, a government that was atheistic on paper, and in practice.

She also gives caution to how we deal with Turkey, a Muslim nation with a secular government, which has the distinction of having positive diplomatic relations with Israel. The Turks are going through the process of becoming a member of the European Union, and is a member of NATO, with the 2nd biggest armed forces in that organization next to ours. I learned a lot about Turkey from this book that I had never heard before.

One of the reviews I read was also critical of her reading voice. This person may have had an ax to grind for the former Secretary of State. I thought she did a fine job.

I give this a book 4 stars for being informative, timely, and thought-provoking. It was well-paced and engaging, and the narration was above average.

As far as Audible is concerned, it would be an incredible break in programming for me to start paying for audiobooks. NetLibrary is free, although limited to a little over 1,400 titles. The brick & mortar library is also free, but the act of ripping the CDs and reloading them is a nuisance, not to mention being limited by their inventory and its availability. I might want to have access to the content of audible once in awhile, but it would not be often enough for me to drop $14.95 per month for the silver plan (1 audiobook per month plus an audio version of either the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times available every weekday) or $22.95 per month for the gold plan (add an audiobook to the silver plan each month). The "Listener" membership is only $9.95 per year and gives you a 30% discount on audiobooks you buy, plus access to some free content that is made available regularly. That last one is a lot easier to swallow, but I already have loads of free content via podcasts. Still, if I end up buying a couple of books during the year, it might be worth it.

Later! I'm embarking on a 20 hour novel, so it will be a few days before I post again!

Life with the Insignia NS-DV2G

OK. I've had more than a week with this little wonder. Now it is time to weigh in on both its usefulness, as well as strategies for its use.

When I had my iRiver IR-899, I had a nifty mp3 player with 1GB of memory, and FM radio, and a voice recorder with a built in condenser mike. I don't listen to music, but as a podcast device, it was awesome, easy to use, and the PC interface software was the greatest.

This device, due to the extra space and the video capabilities, has seduced me into trying to do a lot of new things. This has lead to mistakes being made by the user (me), and a reassessment of what I wanted this thing for.

To begin with, I loaded a lot of songs from my CD collection: about 100. I liked the idea of having Al Green, Marvin Gaye, James Taylor, and even Neil Diamond, at my fingertips when the mood struck me. However, my podcasts were mixed in with them inexplicably, and I had to skip songs manually to get to the next one. This caused me to lose the set-it-and-forget-it convenience of the old method. Now, I just load a few songs that I don't mind interspersing with my podcasts, although they still get loaded on the device in an unpredictable order.

Part of the problem is that the management software, Rhapsody, is more interested in dragging you to their music store to buys stuff than in helping you manage your playlist. In fact, it cares not a lick about your preferences. I'd like to figure out how to get Windows Media Player to manage it, but this "WindowsPlaysForSure" device does not appear to speak to WMP. It wants to be managed by the proprietary music store software, Rhapsody. A pox on them.

Videos need a separate software, ArcSoftMediaConverter2, in order to convert the file and to move it to Insignia. That is not so bad, but it keeps bugging me to register the software, even though I already did, and I can't make it stop. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It's also important to know that although the player will save your place in a long audiobook, if you switch to another book, you have to start the other book all over again. And if you synch the player with your computer, THAT will make you lose your place. So, plan ahead...

I will continue to tell you about this player later. In the meantime, if anyone has found a way to use other management software other than "Crapsody", let me know...

Your Marketing Sucks, by Mark Stevens

This was another free download from NetLibrary.org. I am always interested in business books, with a particular interest in biographies and CEO memoirs, but I am also interested in sales and marketing.

This was a good read, full of horror stories that will either help you avoid marketing mistakes, OR help you position your bloodsucking ad agency under the idiots who make them. It's mostly a good shake-up for your marketing paradigm if you are the kind of person who arrives at a marketing budget figure before you know what to spend it on.

As a lifelong cheapskate, and a hard-boiled skeptic about the value of most advertising, I found this both affirming and instructive: affirming because I am already on board most of this stuff, and instructive because I see how insidious the trap is that draws us into conventional ideas about marketing. I am in the middle of a new project that is pretty innovative; yet I find myself being drawn out of my guerrilla marketing mindset and into the lazy way of simply repeating what has already been done.

Four stars for usefulness and entertainment value.

The Footprints of God, by Greg Iles

This was a new author for me, and frankly I had never heard of him. But the title made me at least look at it, and it seemed to be some sort of thriller. I had a lot of books already, so I didn't feel like I was taking such a risk by getting it, and then being stuck with nothing but it to listen to. Well, I was very pleasantly surprised.

The story begins with the death of a Nobel prize winning physicist being murdered in his office in such a way that his killer knows for sure that it was a murder. Only one person suspects otherwise, and he believes that he is next.

This got off to a slow start, in spite of the murder, and it may be because of the subject matter: the government's goal of creating a supercomputer with human intelligence. Our hero, Dr. David Tennant, is a medical ethicist who has been appointed to Project Trinity to keep an eye on the morals of this operation. He is also one of several scientists who has had his brain scanned with some super MRI machine and had all his brain data stored away for future use. You see, in order for a supercomputer to have real human intelligence, it helps to add a real human.

The scientists who have been scanned have each developed a neurological disorder as a side effect. Dr. Tennant's is narcolepsy, which causes him to fall into deep sleep with little warning. During these sleep episodes, he has dreams that seem to be messages from God, and David Tennant, an atheist, is struggling with this idea as much as he is with the instructions that are in the dream.

When the same people who wanted the first scientist dead come after David Tennant, he runs but he is not alone. His psychiatrist, Dr. Rachel Weiss, believed he was just hallucinating. Now she knows that something is up, and yet harbors doubts about David's sanity as she runs with him. But is she running with him because David's would be killers are using her to track him?

This would be a fairly routine novel of its genre if it weren't that the author spends so much time in David's head, dealing with God, Jesus, and the meaning of life. And this was the most riveting part of the book. I wanted to know more about how he resolved his "memories" than I did about the supercomputer, which does achieve human intelligence, and takes over the world...for a little while.

This was really different, and I enjoyed it a great deal. I couldn't get the tapes in and out fast enough. I give it 4 stars.

Patriarch, by Richard Norton Smith

This was my first successful download from NetLibrary, and it was a long book, coming in at almost 19 hours. It was written by Richard Norton Smith in 1993 and was narrated by Nelson Runger, one of the better voices in audiobook publishing.

I have been on a real Founding Fathers bender lately, and I still have a biography of Samuel Adams on my hard drive, waiting for me to cleanse my palette with some light-hearted silliness. Patriarch was a very engrossing story of George Washington and his often overlooked administration. Midway through this book I realized I knew next to nothing about George Washington, the post-war Confederation and his 2 terms as president under our present Constitution. I also learned a great deal about Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and the rest of what you could call the original cast of "West Wing".

There is enough infighting and animosity inside George's administration that I can no longer think of the expression, "the Founders' original intention," without rolling my eyes. They were all over the map on every subject, and many of them couldn't stand each other. There were so many intrigues that the first President did not want to finish his first term, let alone get stuck with another. The pressures of maintaining the peace was just as challenging as winning the war, and it all seems quite familiar with our current controversies.

I would have loved every minute of this book if there had not been so many of them. I started getting lost in the Washington family adventures after awhile, and I think we could have done without the frequent appearances of various nieces and grandsons. George and Martha Washington had no offspring of their own, but they took on the task of helping to raise the children of relatives and those from Martha's first marriage.

The overall effect is a great deal of interesting history worthy of 4 stars, interrupted by bursts of 2 star soap opera. Overall, it's a 3 star effort that every student of American history should read.

DM

Parallel Lies, by Ridley Pearson

A man loses his family to a faulty rail crossing and seeks revenge against the company. A mere settlement was not enough. He wants them to admit they were wrong.

Secondary story: the man who is investigating a series of train derailments got this job after a police homicide department punts him under the shadow of police brutality charge.

The man who is derailing the trains is also being hunted by the railroad's private security force, and they want him dead. The company's CEO fears that his new bullet train will be sabotaged, and he wants to tie up a certain loose end without resurrecting the old rail crossing case and the ensuing cover-up.

I've read better novels by Ridley Pearson. This one gets 2-1/2 stars. The villain is too weak, the characters just short of interesting. There are a couple of well-written, suspenseful scenes, but it doesn't carry the book.

Leonardo Da Vinci, by Sherwin Nuland

I absolutely loved this. It came on 4 audio CDs and it told me things about Leonardo Da Vinci that I never knew.

We all knew he was a great painter and inventor, and we may even be away of his interest in anatomy. But "interest" does not come close to describing his passion for knowing how we are made.
Leonardo was a one-man CSI unit. He dissected cadavers in minute detail, drew thousands of pictures of what he found, and made discoveries hundreds of years before they were officially "discovered" by the scientific community. This colorful workaholic was so obsessed with his inquiries that it kept him from finishing many paintings for which he had been paid. It was rough on his art career.

It would be hard to do justice to the life of Leonardo in just 4 audio CDs, but Sherwin Nuland does it admirably. He both enlightens and delights you, while leaving you wanting more.

Four stars and a comet for this one.

DM

Got a new MP3 player!!!

I finally got my store credit from Best Buy, and I have already spent it. If you recall, I was mourning the loss of my iRiver player last month. After a year of spectacular performance, I broke it by bumping into the sharp corner of a desk. Fortunately, I bought one of those product replacement warranties and after about 4 weeks, I got my replacement.

At first, I was disappointed because Best Buy no longer carries my iRiver player that I was used to. But I was ready to make a change so I could find one that would play the audiobooks from NetLibrary.org. That was my little friend's only downfall, so I was open for a change.

I decided to take a chance. Best Buy has an in-house brand, Insignia, that makes a video iPod knockoff for $119. It also plays the WMA DRM files that come from paid subscription services like Audible.com. I wasn't absolutely sure it would work with NetLibrary. And NetLibrary's list of approved devices is not very up-to-date. It was a gamble.

Even if it didn't work, this is a dandy mp3 and video player with 2GB of memory, an FM radio, and voice recording if I get an external mike. I didn't like that last part, since my iRiver had a built in condenser mike that was awesome. But, I had already decided that working with the audio files I created for my elections website was too much work, so I could live without the condenser mike. I could have gotten a 4GB Insignia for $30 more, but I was trying to stay within the store credit I had, and the tax would have taken me over the $151 and change I had from Best Buy. I got the player and 50 blank CDs and another flash memory stick, since my daughter lost my other one. That got me within 2 bucks of my limit.

The best news is: IT WORKED!!! I downloaded a free audiobook from NetLibrary, opened it with Windows Media Player 10 first, so I would be prompted to get the permissions key (you need to log in with your NetLibrary username and password), and then moved it to my new player. And the book plays! Woo Hoo!!!!!!! This will be GREAT!

And the 2.2 inch screen is clear and bright for video. It came preloaded with some music vids, which I will delete soon, and I moved some of my own over to the device, and it works great. The synching interface is not as intuitive as the iRiver was, but I figured it out after only a minimal amount of snarling and complaining.

I'll keep you up with its performance...

Terrorist, by John Updike

I want to start by saying that I have never really cared for John Updike, and I have avoided him. Maybe it was because I had to read him in high school and that I just didn't get him then. I can't remember. Besides, I thought he had to be dead or too addle-brained to write by now. But when I saw this on the library shelf, with a 2006 publication date, I had to bite.

It's about a boy who grows up with his Irish-American mother, who has been abandoned by her Egyptian immigrant husband. Perhaps it's an attempt to find an identity with his father, but the youngster embraces Islam at 11, and is a devoted student of a local Imam with Jihadist tendencies. By the time he graduates from high school, he is without dreams of his own, and only wants to please Allah. He is disgusted by the corrupt American culture of sexual immorality, exemplified by his own mother's serial dating and his provocatively dressed schoolmate, Joryleen. Joryleen invites the boy, Ahmad, to her church to hear her sing, and he is no less repulsed by the religious fervor of her African-American congregation of Jesus worshipers.

The author really takes us inside this kid's head, and inside his neighborhood, with believable dialog and characters. I had to wonder to what lengths Mr. Updike had gone for the "flava" in this novel. Maybe he watched BET for a month, but it is a very realistic page-turner, which I didn't expect from this navel-gazing old New Yorker.

It was read by Christopher Lane, and his narration was a first for me. He did a great job. I give this one 4 stars.

DM

American Theocracy, by Kevin Phillips

I was so happy when I found out that this had been released as an audiobook. I have heard much about it, and I knew it would not be like a Bush-hating screed by Al Franken. Kevin Phillips is a very respected Conservative writer who has real problems with the Bush Administration, and I looked forward to this.

I am writing this just a couple of days after the Democrats took over Congress, so apparently rule of the Religious Right is over and the Rapture can begin. Just kidding. But I do mean to say that some things are going an as they usually do: the ebb and flow of ideological tides, washing out the side that has risen to its level of incompetence.

When I first heard a review of this book, my knee-jerk response was, "Great. Here we fundamentalist Christians are a minority of a minority, and we are the scapegoat for all the evils in the world. We are the new Jews. The cattle cars are in the distance and closing in."

Although I am still a bit stung by the way that bigotry against Christians is part of the current political zeitgeist, I do believe that some of your best critics are your enemies. They pull no punches, and sometimes they are right. For that reason, I think that this is an important book for Conservative Christian activists to read. For one, it might help us understand that if we want to advance the Gospel, that sometimes you would rather be wronged. Victory never converts, and it can be a stumbling block to those who might eventually believe, except that you are blinded by your desire for a tax cut.

In spite of the title, and some of the persisting disagreements I have with the author about religious issues, most of the book is about oil dependency and world financial markets. It's very educational, and worth wearing out a couple of high-lighters if you get the paper version of this book. It's rich in history, reaching back from the 1500s to the present for examples of where other maturing nations have failed. It's hard to argue with the patterns as you watch them emerge in your own lifetime.

I hope this will make Christians wiser as they continue to use their rights like every other constituency group. Simply bailing out is not the answer. And becoming more ruthless and demanding is counter-productive in the long run.

There is also an interesting feud taking place between Kevin Phillips and the New York Times Collumnist, David Brooks. It's worth reading about.

DM

Other Terrific Audio Content

I got an expansion card for my Palm T/X, and now I can download and listen to podcasts, which I do as filler between books. A recent one was a Cato Institute Book Forum on Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality (Yale University Press, 2006), by Elizabeth Price Foley. It includes dissenting comments by William Galston, a former adviser to President Clinton and an expert on family policy. This is very thought provoking, informative material on the nature of personal sovreignty and public morality.

I also like to listen to Scott Sigler's podcast novels. He releases them as weekly episodes, and they often include listener comments and good natured ragging on his audience. And, as Scott says, his books include, "adult language, adult situations, and lots, and LOTS of violence!" He has released these free audiobooks into the wild and include the titles: Earthcore, Ancestor, Infection, and The Rookie is now in progress. They are sci-fi thrillers and I have enjoyed them a great deal. So far, Ancestor was the best one, but The Rookie is about as good.

I gotta go.

DM

Killer Instinct, by Joseph Finder

This was a good one. It came out just this year, and the library had it on CD. It's another great narration by Scott Brick.

Jason Steadman is a successful salesman at a company that makes big, hi-def screens. He's losing his passion to succeed just as his young wife is yearning to start a family. She comes from a well-to-do family, and is dissatisfied with Jason's lack of fire.

All this seems to change after Jason has an accident where he meets an ex-special forces guy named Kurt who drives the tow truck. Jason helps the guy out and gets him a job in security with his corporation, in spite of the dishonorable discharge he got from the military. Not long after Kurt is hired, things start breaking Jason's way. His enemies at the company have misfortune befall them and competitors have a rash of bad luck that brings customers back into the fold. It seems that Kurt is grateful and is doing a little espionage to repay Jason's kindness.

Both Jason and his enemies start getting suspicious, and Kurt has to start covering his tracks. Kurt's offhand remark about what the Marines say, "No better friend; No worse enemy," starts to come true. Jason is now in danger because he has turned on his friend.

There is lots of eerie high tech crime here to go with the brutality. It gives one pause to see how corporate security can be used to control and manipulate people, for both good and evil. It made me wonder what other things could have been going on at Hewlet-Packard this year when they got in trouble for monitoring email. Perhaps the employees had read this book and freaked.

A 4-Star effort for Joe Finder (pronounced with the short i sound, as in "window") with no graphic sex, but some graphic language.

DM

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

This book by Jon Meacham covered a subject that is very near and dear to my heart: the role of religion in politics. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and came away feeling a little bit vindicated, a little bit chastened, and a lot enlightened. That is to say that there is something here to offend everyone who is hardened in his or her position on the separation of church and state.

This book goes a long way toward defining, in the words of our founders and everyone who built thereupon, what is meant by "the public religion". The public record is replete with discourses on the place of religion in the making of public policy, but it is seldom brought to light. Jon Meacham unearths these treasures with all their contexts and the personalities of the people involved. It is broadly philosophical that way. It reveals how extremes on both ends of the church-state-separation spectrum have proof-texted their ways to their different conclusions. In the larger view of the Founders' thoughts is the historically accepted middle way.

I got this as an audiobook, but I encourage everyone to get this book in print, and buy a hi-lighter with it. You should also take notes. The audio was narrated by Nelson Runger. He did a great job, and this book gets 4 stars.

DM

Whiteout, by Ken Follet

I will have to make this quick because I don't know how long I will have internet today. I am in the midst of firing Cox high-speed internet and getting the dreaded Bellsouth DSL back. At least with Bellsouth I had service all day instead of my current half-the-time experience.

Ken Follett is one of the best of the old spy novel genre. His first, The Eye of the Needle, published back in the late 70s, was the beginning of a long list of espionage/romance thrillers that had you glued to the story from beginning to end.

After the cold war ended, Follett groped for the right villains, but it just wasn't the same. He went after eco-terrorists in The Hammer of Eden, but it was a sub-par effort. He also tried reclaiming the past with Code to Red and The Hornet's Nest, but the old magic seemed to be missing. Then we suddenly had terrorist organizations after weapons of mass destruction, and Mr. Follett found his footing again.

Bravo! This has the right mix of dangerous, psychopathic killers and family intrigues to have you on the edge of your seat.

An upper class English family has everything we need: a widower scientist who owns a virus research firm, his proper daughter who has married a milquetoast professor, a bossy daughter who has married a lothario, a son who has gambled his way into debt to an organized crime boss, and a couple of randy teenaged cousins and other assorted small ones, all trapped in a house during a blizzard over the Christmas holiday. And this holiday is the perfect time for the black-sheep son to pay off his debt by helping the crime boss burgle the research firm.

The son used to do the computer work for his dad's firm, until he got busted by the company's security chief, a former cop named Toni who has the hots for the widower. It's the umpteenth time the thirty-something failure has let down his dad, and he is sinking deeper and deeper into debt when an opportunity to pay off the debt comes in the form of a heist. As an inside man, he can get them past security to get something for a third party with deep pockets. The son thinks it's just simple greed that drives this enterprise, until the night of the theft, when the people he gets into the lab start taking all the samples of a rare, incurable virus that could wipe out whole populations.

This book is rated R for sexual content, and gets 5 stars for being a terrific story that leaves you wanting another. Welcome back, Mr. Follett!

Velocity, by Dean Koontz

Deann Koontz is one of my favorite writers, so I don't know how I missed this 2005 release while reading "Life Expectancy", "Odd Thomas", "The Face", "The Husband", and the first 2 installments of his "Frankenstein" saga.

As in most Koontz novels, he straddles the line between horror and crime thriller. The difference is that he relies entirely on man's capacity for evil as opposed to outsourcing it to the spirit world.

In this tale, Billy Wiles is a local bartender who inexplicably receives a note telling him that his response will determine whether a young mother of two or a single man who will not be missed will die. It is his choice. He makes the choice by going to the police or not. To the cops, and one gets it; to the police, and the other dies. The letters get creepier and the deaths grislier as Billy tries to figure out who is doing this, and why he has been chosen to participate.

Koontz's gothic mindscapes and quirky characters make for an engrossing read. Some of his books are a bit repetitive, and this is a bit like "The Husband". This was a 3 star effort, which will tide me over until the 3rd "Frankenstein" book comes out.

I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe

I was a bit put off by the title, but it was written by Tom Wolfe, so I bit.

The forward tells about a research project in which cats are a part of some neurological experiment that turns them into sex crazed beasts that will copulate with anything in sight. There is a control group of cats that has not been altered, and it is discovered that they behave the same way after merely sharing the same laboritory where they could watch the others in action. I thought this was an ominous way to begin a novel about a studious girl from a small mountain community going to a top flight University on full academic scholarship.

Charlotte Simmons is not just smart. She is square, old-fashioned, and economically challenged in a sea of affluent, spoiled party animals. She is endlessly disappointed in the revelation that people who needed a 1400 SAT to get in cast off all semblance of intelligence after coming to college. And the college lets her down by failing to tag her French Lit class as one for athletes only. The players on the Dupont University NCAA Championship basketball team meet their language requirement by taking a class in which no French is actually spoken. Before she drops the class she meets one of the players, JoJo Johanson, who really wants to be an actual student instead of a "student athlete". Her offhand assessment of the players goads him into taking a harder class, which puts him at odds with his coach.

Other sub-plots include a Frat-boy with no real future, living entierely for his college years, trying to parlay his knowledge of a politician's on-campus indiscretion into a meal ticket; and a senior nerd-journalist who has written a paper for an athlete, and is not trying to save his academic future after its discovery. These are all related, and even resolved by the end, although not to everyone's satisfaction.

The language is raw and real. The sex is rather pedestrian except for the seduction scene of a virgin that is downright instructive. If you already have an intact, mature worldview, you will find this a disgusting expose of campus life. There wasn't near as much sex on campus when I was in school, and girls almost never used the F-word. But I know they do now, so the sex is probably just as ramped up.

Tom Wolfe is interviewed on the 25th disc of this set, and he went to many campuses around the country, including our own dear UF. Ours is the only town he mentions by name in the interview.

This story was entertaining, alarming, funny, erotic, but ultimately deflating. Charlotte ends up finding her significance in rather shallow satisfactions. I think JoJo was the most elevated character in the book, and I found myself pulling for him early. Maybe it's because I still pine away for the way I wasted my own short time in college on trivial things.

Parents who read this may think twice about sending their kids away to college.

Darker Than Night, by John Lutz

What a dud. I have listened to a lot of John Lutz, and I know he hits a klunker once in awhile, so I know he was due. This was one to miss.

The bright spot is that it was read by Scott Brick, who is second only to Frank Muller as a voice talent. But as good as Brick is, he cannot make up for a forced plot and weak characters. Then there is the lurid attention to body eviceration that is gross enough to be a distraction. It's enough to take you right out of the story and wonder if anyone is keeping an eye on Mr. Lutz.

The ending is absolutely farcical, and I was relieved that it was finally over. I'm glad I only had to listen to this one, as opposed to actually having to waste my aging eyeballs reading it. If it comes out in film, forget about it.

I am still pining away for my mp3 player. I am on an audiobook bender right now because I cannot feed my podcast addiction. Sure, I listen to a few on my computer, but it's not the same as listening while cleaning windows. Window cleaning does not interfere with concentration very much.

Right now I am listening to a very long Tom Wolf novel on CD. It's on 25 discs. I will get that review out to you next week.

You're Wearing That? by Deborah Tannen

I actually heard an interview with the author on an NPR podcast, so I did a double take when I saw this in the library. I got it on cassette tape, and it was read by Cassandra Campbell. Ms. Campbell does a good job with the reading, and does not have a distracting accent or odd inflection like other book readers: Davina Porter and Jonathan Marosz respectively.

I have a wife and a daughter and my mother at home, so I thought this would help me to be a better referee. What I learned was that it will be difficult for me to be a referee, since the other players on the field each try to recruit me for one of the sides. And referees are not supposed to block for one of the players. We are just supposed to keep the game civil.

This book is the result of a great deal of research by Deborah Tannen, a professor at Georgetown University. She interviewed a lot of mothers and daughters, studied a lot of recorded conversations, and now presents a pretty thorough treatment on how mothers and daughters interact verbally and why that so often goes wrong. She also takes pains to present solutions to these problems.

Dr. Tannen has a Ph.D. in linguistics, which makes this a fairly authoritative work for the layperson. And she also draws on her own experiences as a daughter who has lost her mother not long ago. Her thoughtfulness keeps this from being neither an endless river of data nor an epidose of Jerry Springer. I had mostly feared the latter.

I have to admit, there are parts of this that had me thinking, "I would never give this to my wife or daughter," on the grounds that it could be inflamatory. But as I got toward the end, I was relieved that there were solutions presented. It was more than just, "Try to understand how the other person is feeling."

Tannen begins by helping us to understand that there are messages and meta-messages (the context and baggage that come with the words), and that it is the meta-messages that are the loudest. That is why you can say something as innocent sounding as, "What time are you going to be here?" and it can start a conflict. If the mother has a long history of criticizing her daughter for being late, and the daughter has a history of over-promising in when she can get there, things can spiral down quickly.

Dr. Tannen has found that email and text messaging have been helpful in some mother-daughter relationships. They provide some breathing room and give each party a chance to be more thoughtful, at least in the case of email. In my own experience, my daughter may not want to answer her cell phone sometimes, but a text message will be burning a hole in her pocket until she can steal a glance at it. And if you do it right, it can make her call home.

I gave this 4 stars.

Don

Fear the Night, by John Lutz

If you follow my reading list, you will discover that I have a weakness for crime fiction. Perhaps it is because I am a member of that over-stimulated generation that was the first to grow up with the television as an older sibling that I believe that, if you don't have conflict, you don't have a story. But perhaps it's because characters are best revealed in crisis, and I just love good characters.

John Lutz isn't my favorite writer, but he's pretty dependable. This is a pretty standard police drama in which a man is terrorizing New York City with his seemingly random sniper attacks. He's someone the police have dealt with before, and he misses his nemesis, retired detective Vincent Repetto, and he wants to draw him into the investigation. Repetto doesn't want to respond to the call. He's ready to take his life back and give more time to his family, but the Night Sniper draws him out by making it personal.

John Lutz is a good writer, but he's no John Sanford, who has actually succeeded in bringing tears to my eyes with a shocking ending. But I don't remember the title. Sorry...

Don

My MP3 player is broken...

Fortunately, I bought a replacement warrantee from Best Buy last year, when I got the iRiver Player. I just love my little toy. It has a Gigabyte of memory, plays mp3 and wma files, and FM tuner, and a surprisingly good voice recorder. Well, the tuner stopped working a few months ago, but that wasn't enough to make me replace it.

The only thing I regretted was that it would not play the wma files that had DRM: Digital Rights Management. This is the encryption software that keeps you from moving copyrighted material from your computer to another device or burning it onto a CD. I sort of understand this, but the stuff I was wanting to move to my MP3 player is stuff you can get for free at netlibrary.org. You use your library card number to register for an account with them, download audio books for free, and they expire in about 3 weeks. And the downloads are very fast.

Well, there are some mp3 players that will play DRM protected files. Net library has a list of those "approved" players. And since Best Buy will be sending me a gift card in exchange for the player, I can go buy one of the other ones. So, this is a good thing! I think...

The only bad part is that I have to mail the player off. I've had to jump through a few hoops, and I may be without an mp3 player for 4 weeks. Aaaaaargh! So, I will be using those antiquated tape players and CD players for awhile. Dangit.

Don

Company Man, by Joseph Finder

Last year I listened to Finder's last book, Paranoia, and it was such a good time that I have been dogging the library waiting for another.

This was another corporate suspense novel, which I rather enjoy, but this one had a lot more going on than did Paranoia. Nick Conover is the CEO of a major manufacturer of office furniture, and he is a single parent to a surly teenage son and a pre-teen daughter. His wife died in a car accident the previous year, and now Nick is the town pariah after a layoff of 5,000 employees. So it's no wonder that the small town police are half-hearted in their attempt to find out who has been breaking into Nick's house and leaving ominous messages scrawled on the wall, even after the perpetrator kills the family dog and leaves it floating in the pool.

Looming just as large is the sneaky way that some of the people in his own company are trying to undermine his authority and sell his company to a Pacific Rim investment company. But the real dilemma begins when Nick kills and intruder on his property, and spends the rest of the book avoiding the law.

A complex story, with many well-written characters made this a real "tape turner". Yes, I got this one on tape instead of CD, so I had to use an actual tape player. This is not the most "family friendly" book, with F-bombs falling like rain, as they do in most detective fiction. Yes, there is a detective, an African-American woman named Audrey Rhymes. Her husband is one of the layoffs from Nick's factory, and their marriage is a difficult one. He is sitting at hime, watching TV and getting fat. She is losing patience with him while trying to be understanding. She is a devout Christian, and there are many Bible references and a refreshing amount of spiritual content that is not designed to make her look bad, as so many books do. And this juxtaposition of this good woman with a rather profane line of work was done, seemingly, with no agenda. I have no idea what Joseph Finder's take on Christianity is, but this depiction worked very well as part of the story.

I haven't used a "star system" for rating these books, but I guess if I were giving them out on a one through four scale, this would be a 3 star book.

Don Marsh

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

I got this from my library on 6 audio CDs. Since I don't like to listen to a CD player while I am working, (too much skipping, and a drain on batteries), I copied the discs to my hard drive and then I sent them to my iRiver mp3 player.

This was Ben's life from where his ancesters came from to beyond his death. This book takes in Franklin as a whole person: the precocious teenager who loved to write and crack jokes with grown-ups. In fact, he said that humor was the quickest way for a boy to insert himself into adult gatherings. Everyone likes a wit.

As he grew up, he became the consummate networker and image forger. He loved to engage in commerce as much as conversation. He formed a philosophical society in his early 20s that helped him expand his influence in his home town and across the country, abroad, and throughout history.

He was so successful as a printer that he retired from business at 42 and started to fid new ways to improve the world around him through the formation of libraries, fire departments, and as an inventor. He never stopped trying to improve himself and the world around him.

This book was wonderfully written and performed.

DonTWC