Guilty, by Ann Coulter

This audiobook was obtained from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Public Library and was 10 hours and 27 minutes long. It was narrated by Barbra Streisand...JUST KIDDING!!! It was narrated by Margy Moore, an actress who obviously doesn't mind being blacklisted by Hollywood forever.

There isn't much middle ground where Ann Coulter is concerned. You either think she is an evil harpy who is a continual fountain of hate speech, or you see her a warrior princess on a mission to execute judgment upon egomaniacs in the media and the Democratic Party.

This book is about the victimology of political liberals and their willing accomplices in the press and popular culture. She builds a pretty solid case that there is a liberal media hegemony that has controlled most of the information we get about political and social issues. And now they are outraged as the Internet and cable TV and talk radio have created outlets for those voices who dare to disagree with them. Using many examples and quotes from those she mercilessly excoriates, Coulter examines the hypocrisy of a political establishment that attacks conservatives relentlessly for doing the very same things they themselves have perfected.

In my case, she is preaching to the choir, which is why I gave it 4 stars.

The Hunted, by Brian Haig

This audiobook was 18 hours and 13 minutes long, and was obtained from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Public Library. It was narrated by Scott Brick.

A better than average story with below average heroes and above average villains, this novel about a young Russian billionaire has enough bright spots to keep you engaged, but could have been a lot shorter.

Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, capitalism is beginning to get a foothold, and young Alex Konevitch has made a fortune in arbitrage and banking. He has used his substantial fortune to back Boris Yeltsin, thus helping the fall of communism in a big way. Angry, vindictive KGB officers want to know who has been helping Yeltsin, and when they discover what Alex has done, they begin to use their connections and ruthlessness to ruin him.

After being kidnapped, tortured, and forced to sign over his holdings to a former KGB general, Alex and his wife, Elena, escape and spend months being hunted from Europe to the US, and then persecuted by the FBI, whose politically opportunistic director wants to trade them to Russia for a favorable working relationship.

There is a line between the plausible and the laughable, and this story crossed it just enough times to make it a disappointment. Still, some of it is really good, so that salvages 2 and 1/2 stars for it.

The Anglo Files, by Sarah Lyall

This audio book was obtained from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Public Library. It was 9 hours and 53 minutes long, and was narrated by Cassandra Campbell.

Subtitled "A Field Guide to the British", this could have been a lot funnier, but it is instead a very thoughtful, revealing, and even alarming look at Her Majesty's subjects. Ms. Lyall is American-born, but married to one of the natives. She uses her inside knowledge and an overview of recent British history to explain the self-deprecating humor and low expectations of those who are descendants of a world empire. For instance, the devastating effects of WW2 left a lot of wartime rationing in effect for a decade after peace finally came. There was no "Peace Dividend" for the British, who did not really join post-war prosperity until late in the Thatcher government.

She manages to shed some light on the inscrutability of cricket without helping us to understand it, and reveals a nation's rampant alcoholism that is famous all over Europe as Brits go on drinking tours of Eastern Europe. This book has many light moments, but I found it mostly sad. I didn't want to live there, and was less inclined to visit it, although I may watch BBC programming in a new light. I give it 2 and 1/2 stars.

America Alone, by Mark Steyn

This audiobook was a free download from Overdrive Audio, made available through the Alachua County Public Library web site. It is in MP3 format, is 6 hours and 15 minutes long, and was read by Brian Emerson.

In Mark Steyn's opinion, radical Islam is taking over western nations that are too timid to stop them. He also has some numbers that are difficult to deal with, as that timidity manifests itself in the form of birth rates that are too low to replace these western nations. Meanwhile, the Islamic immigrants to Europe are having babies at double the rate of the native populations, and that is not an opinion.

Meanwhile, America has a birth rate that is barely at the replacement rate, which leaves it as the world's last best hope to keep Islam from overrunning what has been a progressive, liberating, democratic civilization.

If you are a non-Muslim, and you are the least bit concerned about your children and your children's children living under Sharia Law, This is definitely worth the read. It is a subject that our politicians are not willing to campaign on or to which they might apply their leadership. It's a demographic challenge to Europe that may very well leave America alone as the sole free society in the 21st century.

This is very provocative, and difficult to talk to your friends about. But you might want to buy them this book. It's a four star page turner.

Speech-Less, by Matthew Latimer

This audiobook was 7 hours and 20 minutes long and was read by Lincoln Hoppe. It was obtained from Overdrive Audio for free through the Alachua County Library.

A young speech writer in the Bush White House details his early years as a Reagan Republican, through his work life as a staffer for congressmen and for Donald Rumsfeld, until his ultimate goal of writing speeches for the President. This book is a kind of tell-all by a disillusioned young man, yet it is not the kind of exposé that a closet liberal would have written.

Matthew Latimer is a young conservative who saw the disaffection of conservatism from the inside. He and the other speech writers were sometimes ordered to write things they thought were ridiculous. They were often the last check before mistakes were made. It was disheartening to read, yet it was good to know that the failures of the last administration were not the failures of conservatism, but of the people who merely used conservatives.

This one gets 4 stars.

High Crimes, by Michael Kodas

This audiobook was 11 hours and 23 minutes long, and was downloaded from Overdrive Audio through the Alachua County Library. It was narrated by Mark Deakins.

This book is part True Adventure and part Investigative Reporting. Like other books about recent climbs on Mt. Everest, it is a harrowing tale of well-off adventurers meeting the ultimate equalizer. These people pay up to $60,000 each to be taken on an attempt to summit Mt. Everest, and some never come back. Some return to have severely frostbitten fingers and toes amputated. It is a sobering look at what a dangerous proposition this trip can be.

If the mountain and the awful climate are not bad enough, Michael Kodas uncovers a dirty secret: the other people on the mountain can be just as dangerous. And they can also be a bunch of crooks.

In the past couple of decades, climbing Mount Everest and other 20K peaks has become a thriving business for some, and the rich climbers are the unwitting prey of others. Unscrupulous guides can abandon their meal ticket on the mountain after they have already been paid. Poor Sherpas may steal the supplementary oxygen canisters from rich climbers and resell them to other rich climbers, leaving the first climbers in peril. And angry guides, who don't like what you have siad about them on your blog, may want you to die. It's all enough to make you take up something safer, like lion-taming.

This was a thoroughly engrossing story about specific miscreants on the big mountain, and it was never boring. I give it 4 stars.