The Prisoner of Azkaban (Audio)

Posted on November 10, 2010 by smellincoffee
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

10 discs, approximately 12 hours.
© 2000 J.K. Rowling, Listening Library
Performed  by Jim Dale

Last week I finished listening to my first audiobook, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I don’t know why I started with book two instead of book one, but I did and that’s that. I enjoyed the experience well enough to try listening to the next book in the series, and I am even more impressed. Prisoner of Azkaban is one of my two favorites from the Potter series (the other being The Half-Bood Prince), and as I listened I enjoyed all the little things that add up to a wholly pleasant experience: the friendship between Harry, Hermione, and Ron; the concern their teachers have for them, the coziness and adventure of another year living and studying at Hogwarts among friends; the abounding humor; and the excitement of a Quidditch match. In Azkaban Harry learns more about his parents’ demise when the man convicted for betraying them, Sirius Black, escapes with the apparent goal of killing Harry to please Voldemort. Professor Snape’s background is also explored in more detail, and we begin to see him as a bitter and abused man who is capable of commanding both sympathy and disgust. Dale’s performance here — and it is a performance, not just a reading — is better than the last, with practically no sentences being read without what I thought was their appropriate emotional context,  and the numerous characters allow Dale to show off his range of voices. Peter Pettigrew is an outright triumph for the narrator, I think.

Last week I mentioned that as much as I enjoyed the performance, I couldn’t see paying so much for audio books. They’re beginning to grow on me, though, and if I saw a good used price on Amazon I think I’d buy a set of CDs for my listening pleasure. The books are so lovely as a reading experience, but the experience only lasts a few hours — and is shorter still with the movies. Listening to the CDs allows for prolonged enjoyment of the story, and when Dale ended the presentation by thanking me for listening, I wanted to immediately start playing another CD. I will be continuing in this audio experience, no doubt!  Very much recommended.

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Teaser Tuesday (9 November)

Posted on November 9, 2010 by smellincoffee

This Tuesday Teaser is brought to you by the Hundred Years’ War (and Should Be Reading).

He shot without thinking. Without aiming. This was his life, his skill, and his pride. Take one bow, taller than a man, made from yew, and use it to send arrows of ash, tipped with goose feathers and armed with a bodkin point. Because the great bow was drawn to the ear it was no use trying to aim with the eye. It was years of practice that let a man know where his arrows would go and Thomas was shooting them at a frantic pace, one arrow every three or four heartbeats, and the white feathers slashed across the marsh and the long steel tips drove through mail and leather into French bellies, chests, and thighs.

p. 16, Heretic. Bernard Cornwell.

“Why would the people need a priest when God is everywhere?”

“To keep us from error,” Thomas said.

“And who defines the error?” Genevieve persisted. “The priests!”

(184, the same.)

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Posted on November 6, 2010 by smellincoffee

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
© 1870 Jules Verne
382 pages

 Scarcely a year after the end of the American Civil War, Professor Pierre Aronnax of the Museum of Natural History in Paris is  preparing to return to his native France following the conclusion of some research when he learns that the  Abraham Lincoln, a fast frigate, is about to set forth on a mission to track down and destroy a mysterious sea monster that has been plaguing seagoing traffic for several months. Aronnax — author of several books on the life of the oceans — sees the mission as the opportunity to identify and study the fascinating creature, which he believes must be a narwhal of some previous unknown type.  This perception changes when the Abraham Lincoln discovers the beast to be made of iron:  Aronnax’s narwhal is a submarine!  The frigate is swiftly destroyed, but Aronnax, his servant, and a Canadian fisherman find refuge aboard the strange machine. The captain of this vessel, a nationless eccentric billionaire who identifies himself as ‘Nemo’, informs them that although he will extend to them every courtesy of a guest, no one who boards his Nautilus is permitted to leave. Professor Aronnax is thus given the opportunity to study the world’s oceans up close and in an unbelievable vessel.
So begins an adventure at sea and a fascinating bit of science fiction. As Nemo and Aronnax sail through the world’s seas, they explore underwater forests and submerged volcanoes and fight off creatures of the deep — all of which are described in great detail. When I first read a children’s version of this book, the Nautilus seemed to me a version of the Enterprise, underwater. It had a museum, a library, and at least one viewing gallery in which the crew and (accidental) passengers were separated from the ocean depths and all the wonder they contained by a few inches of glass. As an adult, I find the book all the more fascinating given its time. Nemo’s machine needs to surface every five days to replenish its air tanks, but otherwise gains all it needs from the sea itself. It moves at fifty knots, which far surpasses the first US nuclear-powered submarine (the USS Nautilus), and other modern ships, like the USS Abraham Lincoln and even  destroyers like the USS Bainbridge.  Verne’s imagination is astounding: the submarines of his days were primitive things, mostly wooden and useful only for drowning their crews.  What powers this amazing ship is Electricity. I took this for granted, but Aronnax is infatuated by the idea — and well he should be, for the electric dynamos of 1866-1870 were hardly worthy of the name. Not for another decade or two would electricity begin to used in lighting and electric motors. To Verne, electricity is a thing of the future, and its capacity is boundless. It is the source of infinite energy, and he uses it as energetically as Isaac Asimov used ‘atomic energy’ in the Foundation series. 
20,000 Leagues incorporates more science and technical explanation than any other science book I’ve yet read, and I can only imagine how riveted 1870’s audiences were by his explanations of the Nautilius’ electric engine, and his descriptions of what the waters of Earth contain and might contain. I kept wanting to put the book down and watch David Attenborough’s Blue Planet, so catching was Aronnax’s joy at seeing whales, kelp forests, coral reefs,  underwater tunnels through the earth, lost ships and sunken cities.  Leagues isn’t quite as readable as Around the World in 80 Days, and I don’t quite know why. The abundance of scientific and technical descriptions contributes, but the translator approached the book knowing it was known for troublesome translations and so I must assume he would have earnest on making the book readable.  Even so, there are some odd turns of phrase: at one point, Ned Land laughs while moving his jaws up and down ‘very significantly’.  I think this was because he was teasing someone about eating him. (The characters’ conversations about cannibalism were some of the more humorous passages of the book, in part because they read so strangely.)
20,000 Leagues under the Sea deserves to be read again and again, combining natural wonder with the story of a mysterious man who built a superior machine. While story is interesting of itself, considering its optimism and Verne’s imagination in historical context made it most impressive. His Nautilus is a superior construct of the mind, making today’s cramped vessels still seem primitive by comparison. 
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A Singular Destiny

Posted on November 6, 2010 by smellincoffee

Star Trek: A Singular Destiny

© 2009 Keith R.A. Decandido
384 pages
Only days have passed since the culmination of Destiny. The Federation and the Klingon empire, still licking their wounds from the Dominion War, have been ravaged: billions are dead, and large portions of both their fleets are destroyed or remain only as shattered hulks. Although other powers contributed ships to the Battle of the Azure Nebula,  the Borg’s collective wrath (ho, ho) targeted the longtime allies. Now, overwhelmed by refugees and the detritus of war, both the Klingon chancellor and the Federation president are working overtime with too few ships to maintain a semblance of civilization.
Unlike most Star Trek books, A Singular Destiny focuses on civilians — the Federation president, a university professor who moonlights as an diplomat, and the supervisor of a civilian mining operation. (Most civilians seen in the Star Trek and TNG shows wear strange uniforms, run science and mining posts in the middle of nowhere, and show up only when their planet or their sun is about to be destroyed in some way.) Starfleet isn’t absent from the book, as Captain Ezri Dax and the Aventine’s efforts tie the book’s various subplots together to reveal that in the wake of the Federation and Klingon defeats, other minor nations are attempting to take advantage of the power vacuum…and the result will change Alpha-Beta quadrant politics forever.
Singular Destiny ties together the now-laid-to-rest Borg-themed TNG relaunch and the next generation of Relaunch books. In essence, it’s a light political mystery in which professor/diplomat Sonek Pran sees a pattern emerging from various incidents — mine explosions, diplomatic snubs, and trouble for the Klingon Empire after a border polity declares war on them and uses ships sporting Breen disruptor’s and Romulan shields. DeCandido works Destiny into the overall continuity nicely: before sending the Aventine to Romulus,   we get a neat recap of the civil conflict and secession that resulted from the death of Shinzon: there are now two Romulan factions, the old Star Empire under Shinzon’s co-conspirator, and the new Imperial Romulan State under Donatra, the captain who assisted Picard at the end of Nemesis.   DeCandido uses letters, memos, casualty reports, and news service articles to tell the story of the week following Destiny, and works subtle references to other Trek books into them. The casulty lists mention two people who are officially dead but who aren’t really, referencing the events of Kirsten Beyer’s Full Circle and Unworthy. 
A Singular Destiny was…good, though it pales beside Destiny, Full Circle, and Greater than the Sum. I knew the grand revelation beforehand, which may have spoiled my reading. The author is one of the regulars in the Relaunch series, though, so I expect I’ll read more of him sooner or later. I wonder if we’ll be seeing more of Pran, his…fascinating Bajoran/Vulcan/Betazoid/human character who has pointed ears, a Bajoran nose, a Vulcan’s philosophical disposition, and a human kind of folksiness — complete with slang and a banjo. According to DeCandido’s annotations, he’s based on Arlo Guthrie.

On a minor note, I was amused and pleased to see that Doctors without Borders is around in the 24th century. 

Related:
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The Mother Tongue

Posted on November 5, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way
© 1990 Bill Bryson
270 pages

“More than 350 million people around the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seem, try to.”
While I’m reading this as part of a general English-culture theme this week, I would have inevitably picked it up at some point:  language has fascinated me since high school, and I’m forever writing down words and turns of phrase in my journal to look up their derivations at a later point. I know Bill Bryson only through A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I remember favorably even if I don’t recall too much about its contents, having read it perhaps five years ago. 
Although I anticipated The Mother Tongue being a history of the English language, it’s more than that. Bryson begins with the development of speech and evolution of languages before moving swiftly to Europe to describe the various German, French, Viking, and  Celtic histories that coalesced in the British isles to give rise to a genuine world language,  English. After this initial history, he dedicates separate chapters to the development of words, accents, pronunciations, spelling habits, grammar, names, profanity, and wordplay before tracking English’s spread as a world language and contemplating on its future.  
Bryson is an entertaining author, providing humor in bounds. The book only suffers once or twice from long paragraphs of examples, these being exceptions to the general rule of readability. Bryson’s information paints a picture of English changing through the ages detailed enough to provide surprises to even a word-nerd like me. I expected that irregularities in spelling would be ironed out by the introduction of the printing press, but I was not aware that many of English’s  Latin spellings (in debt and doubt, for instance) were imposed long after the language came into its own by those who wished to ennoble English — to root it in the old classical tongues and make it something other than ‘vulgar’.  Various attempts have been made to make English orthodox, but nothing appears to stop it from steadily growing and assimilating other languages. The Mother Tongue reveals English to have a long, storied history, one that has given its current versatility and humorous contradictions. I’ recommend it if you are at all interested in the subject proper, etymology, or Bill Bryon’s work in general. 
Related:

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What Went Wrong?

Posted on November 4, 2010 by smellincoffee

What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle-Eastern Response
© 2003 Bernard Lewis
180 pages (adopted from lectures)

In essence, this collection of modified lectures is a brief history of modernization in the Islamic world and its aftermath. The fist three chapters focus on the Ottoman Empire’s attempts to modernize in the light of its military defeats at the hands of presumed barbarians, but Lewis moves to the Islamic world as a whole in the latter half of the book. Initial attempts to modernize were limited to military arms and techniques, though later the Ottomans and other powers attempted to build western-style economies with little real success; exports remain limited to chiefly oil outside of Turkey, and according to Lewis,  Iranian and Arab businessmen prefer to invest their money in the west or in Asia.

Beyond the historical aspect, Lewis’ work is at its most useful when explaining the disconnects between the ways the western world and Islam have approached ideas of tolerance, freedom, and human rights.  It’s not as if these things don’t exist in Islam,  Lewis explains, but they’re approached from different ways. Freedom means freedom from incompetent or abusive rulers; human rights is what is ‘divinely-sanctioned’.  Lewis also explains that Islam historically has lacked both an organized church and thus a distinction between matters of religion and matters of state.

Despite nearly a century of attempting to catch up, Lewis believes the Islamic world continues to fall behind: now it is no longer following behind the west, but being lapped by it and post-colonial or rebuilding powers in Asia. He describes this as a lack of answering the right questions: for too long,  Muslims concerned about their regress have asked ‘who did this to us’ and not ‘how can we set ourselves right’.  Lewis doesn’t go into any amount of detail explaining what leads to terrorism, only why the Islamic world has so far failed to utilize and benefit from modernity in the same way as Japan and similar cultures. He is not optimistic about the future of Iran and similar nations, believing them to be locked into a negative cycle of self-pity and lashing out at threatening foreigners.

Not as thorough as I would’ve liked, but I was expecting more emphasis on modernization and its influence on terrorism. What Went Wrong is suitable for  brief history of Turkish modernization and an explanation of intercultural tensions between the West and Islam.

Related:

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This Week at the Library (28 October – 3 November)

Posted on November 3, 2010 by smellincoffee

This past week has been quiet, as far as books go. I read an older, but never-finished Deep Space Nine relaunch novel (Warpath, David Mack) which was well done but continues in story arcs I don’t particularly like. I finally got around to reading Greg Iles’ The Devil’s Punchbowl, which is more graphic than Iles’ usual work but as usual, a riveting thriller. I also read a short collection of tales of early American history, which was enjoyable enough. I also made progress in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and am finding it enjoyable for entirely different reasons this time reading as an adult than I did while reading it in childhood.

Potentials for next week:

  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
  • A History of Britain, Simon Schama
  • The Mother Tongue: English & How it Got That Way, Bill Bryson
  • Heretic, Bernard Cornwell. The story of an archer during the Hundred Years’ War with some religious fun thrown in.
  • What Went Wrong? Western Impact and  Middle Eastern Response, Bernard Lewis.  I’m interested in the idea that Islamic fundamentalism is in part stemmed from the same sources that gave birth to populism, labor activism, industrial regulation, and socialism in Europe and the United States. (Regulation and socialism to a much lesser extent in the United States, as voters prefer corporate tyranny to humanistic democracy.)
  • I have a few other books from last week I’ve not finished,  because they haven’t hooked me yet.

Earlier this year I thought it would be interesting to do reading around a specific culture during the week of its national holiday — reading from its history, its literature, and so on. I had three countries in mind for this: France, England, and Germany. So far it hasn’t gone as planned: I couldn’t read a lot of French-related stuff around Bastille day because of the size of Citizens, and I forgot Germany entirely. I thought Reunification Day occurred in mid-October, but it doesn’t. (The actual date is 3 October.) I could read from German history this week, given that 9 November is somewhat important in German history (Revolution of 1848, formation of Weimar Republic in 1918, fall of the wall in 1989), but the date also stinks of Hitler, given that he used it for his first failed attempt to seize power and also set his SA thugs on Jewish synagogues and stores during the ‘Night of Broken Glass’.

Well, to England — I read a layman’s introduction to British history a few years back in which Sean Lang wrote that 5 November is the closest thing England has to a national holiday, it being the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ failed attempt to blow up Parliament and restore the One True Religion. So, this week was to be England’s week. I had planned to read more by Alison Weir, some Dickens, and a guide to the world of Shakespeare, but…well, I’ve got too much to read already!

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Top Ten Books That ‘Got To Me’

Posted on November 2, 2010 by smellincoffee

This week’s top ten topic is “Top Ten Books that Made You Cry“, but in the interests of preserving my dignity I am changing it to “Top Ten Books That Got To You”.

These aren’t the ten most emotion-inducing books I’ve ever read, just the most notable examples that came to mind. I’m sure there are many more which have stirred me. Tears aren’t always borne of sadness, also.

1. The Pigman, Paul Zindel.

Pigman ranks as the first provocative book I ever read. It’s the story of John and Lorraine, two bored teenagers who befriended a lonely old man named Mr. Pignatti.  The teenagers and Mr. Pignatti find new life in pursuing a friendship with one another, and together they visit the zoo, roller-skate around his house,  and eat chocolate-covered ants and are all happy. Then Mr. Pignatti goes to visit his sister, John and Lorraine throw a party for some high school acquaintances, and Mr. Pignatti comes home to find the house — his only connection to his beloved and departed wife — wrecked. He has a heart attack, and..

…well, things don’t end well.

2. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

Charlie Gorden is a mentally impaired man working in a bakery. He’s decent and kind, and attends adult education classes in hopes of bettering himself.  When he’s selected for an experiment to increase his I.Q. level, Charlie learns to read and gains the ability to really think about things; he sees life in a new way, falls in love, and then…

…and then the effect diminishes and reverses itself, and Charlie is left staring at his old journals, not even able to read what he once wrote.

3. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank

I read a play based on this in eighth grade, and the ending — Gestapo soldiers pounding on the door, then dragging poor Anne away as she screams for her mother — terrified me. I bought a copy of the diary later on, and keep it with the rest of my meaningful books. I remember being so sad, and so angry at Anne’s mistreatment that I got made at God for the first time and accused him of all manner of things, from negligence to sadism. I was in eighth grade.

4. Sunny, diary three. 

Some time in seventh grade, I picked up the fictional journal of a guy named Ducky, a 10th grader at Vista High in Palo City, California. (It’s fictional. I bought a map of California and tried to find Palo City on the map, because I wanted to leave Alabama and go there.) Ducky was struggling with problems of growing away from his two best friends, and he was likable. Ducky’s story was part of a series of fictional journals and diaries called California Diaries, though most of the journal-keepers were girls. Ducky was two years older than them, but the five grew to be fast friends. Everyone had their own issues, and Sunny’s….Sunny’s was a mom dying slowly and painfully of cancer. Throughout the series she grew isolated from her friends, trying to escape her mom’s decline by running away or by losing herself by partying with the cool crowd.

Her mom…doesn’t make it. But Sunny does rally, and reunites with her best friend Dawn even though Sunny’s behavior has driven them apart.

5. To the Last Man, Jeff Shaara

One of Shaara’s viewpoint  characters for the Great War is an airman who’s not afraid of being shot, or falling to his death, but dreads the idea of his cockpit catching fire and him with it.

Guess how he dies.

6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire/Half-Blood Prince/Deathly Hallows. 

Dumbledore’s speech to the school following the death of Cedric always makes me teary.  It’s mostly a carry-over from the movie.  The funeral of Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince is just as bad, but that line in the final book — “I’m not worried, Harry. I’m with you.”  — gets me every time.

7. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

I am a big softie when it comes to human redemption.  I love this story of Scrooge being forced to see the consequences of his actions and cold-heartedness, and his desperate hope to be able to change his life.  (“Why show me this, Spirit, if I be past all hope?”)

8.  Destiny: Lost Souls, David Mack

The Destiny trilogy is unlike any other Star Trek series I’ve read, pushing the Federation into an apocalyptic final war with the Borg. Borg fleets literally smashed through thousands of Starfleet, Romulan, and Klingon vessels before beginning to exact genocide — methodically destroying planets one at a time. The third book unfolds over a half-day, and as the Borg slowly make their way to Earth, there’s this feeling that the end is near…and people take it with the quiet dignity befitting human beings. Rather than descend into chaos, the people of Earth gather in public places, enjoying the time they have left together — drinking to life, drinking to joy despite the nearness of death.

That’s tear-invoking enough,  but the end of the book is positively cathartic. I enjoyed it too much to spoil it, even though I doubt most people reading this read Trek literature, but…horror turns to ectasy. And it’s not just, “Oh, yay, the end is averted” ectasy, either. It’s…jubilation. Redemption.

9. Warpath: David Mack

…hm. David Mack is on here again.  Well. The Mission: Gamma four-part series established the estranged father-daughter relationship of Commander Elias Vaughn and Ensign Prynn Tenmei. Tenmei hates her father, for reasons revealed throughout the series, and just as they approach something resembling an understanding,  it falls apart. In Warpath,  they’re still wounded people,  too prideful to communicate…but there’s this glorious, wonderful moment in the book’s endgame where Vaughn realizes while he can’t have his daughter’s forgiveness, he can at least save her life.

And it gets better.

10. Captain Hornblower & Lord Hornblower,  C.S. Forester
Where are you, Mr. Bush?

The first, when Hornblower received a letter from Lady Barbara telling him that his wife and children were dead of smallpox, but that his newborn Richard was alive and she was taking care of him; the second, when Mr. Bush didn’t make it back. I did so like Mr. Bush. Even now, when someone says ‘Bush’, I don’t think of Dubya but poor Mr. Bush.

I don’t think I cried, but I got teary-eyed. In case that’s not enough for you, here’s a bonus.

11. The Call of the Wild, Jack London.

I first read this as the story of a poor dog who was stolen from his master, and who master died before he could return home, so he had to live in the woods. I missed the whole ‘civilization as a thin veneer’ angle, but I was eight.

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Teaser Tuesday (2 November)

Posted on November 1, 2010 by smellincoffee

Here for you, a trio of teasers!

“Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for dictatorship as ours! We’re ready to start on a Children’s Crusade — only of adults — right now, and the Right Reverend Abbots Windrip and Prang are all ready to lead it!”

“Well, what if they are?” protested R.C. Crowley. “It might not be so bad.”

p. 29, It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis.

Yet this cemetery breathes an older history. Some people buried here were born in the mid-1700s, and if they were resurrected tomorrow, parts of the town would not look much different to them. Infants who died of yellow fever lie beside Spanish dons and forgotten generals, all moldering beneath crying angels and marble saints, while the gnarled oak branches spread ever wide above them, draped with cinematic beards of Spanish moss. Natchez is the oldest city on the Mississippi River, older even than New Orleans, and when you see the dark, tilted gravestones disappearing into the edges of the forest, you know it.

p. 3, The Devil’s Punchbowl. Greg Iles.

“At last we can see!” cried Ned Land, who stood on the alert, knife in hand.

“Yes,” I replied, venturing a play on worlds, “but the situation is nonetheless obscure.”

(p. 68, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Jules Verne.)

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America’s Hidden History

Posted on October 31, 2010 by smellincoffee

America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation
© 2008 Kenneth C. Davis
272 pages

“The stories that unfold in these six chapters, which span a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, were selected because each plays a central part in shaping the nation’s destiny and character and each, in some way, belies the American myth. For the most part, these are tales that the textbooks left out.”

Kenneth C. Davis is best known for the Don’t Know Much About series, but has recently broken away from that to pursue interests in general American history. This book is one of his first projects in that field, and consists of six sections on early north American history, starting from Spanish colonization efforts and finishing up with the establishment of the Constitution following Shay’s Rebellion. Davis begins with “Isabella’s Pigs”, the story of Spain’s discovery of the Americas, the plague that follows, and the establishment of North America’s first colony (St. Augustine) which predates the English landings by a century and which was founded on the rubble of a French colony which the Spanish conquistadors savagely razed in a fit of Inquisitorial pique.  “Hannah’s Escape” follows, tackling the theocratic Puritans and the first Indian wars in which we’re introduced to lady scalpers. “Washington’s Confession” jumps us into the Seven Years’ War, following young George Washington’s early career (which seemed to consist of bumping into French people wandering around the woods,). “Warren’s Toga” and “Benedict’s Boot” are set in the revolutionary period, one detailing the attempts of the revolutionaries to ground their desire for a Republic in the legacy of Rome, while the other follows the career of Benedict Arnold — the prideful, aggressive, and ambitious man who was hailed as a hero and traitor both to the American cause, who is honored by a statue of a boot. The last section, “Lafayette’s Sword”, covers Shay’s Rebellion and its unintended consequence on the  formation of the American union.

America’s Hidden History is a breezy read: Davis’ publishing history as a writer for lay audiences serves him well here. There’s a great deal of interesting trivia to be picked up here, and the general tone is daring, flirting with iconoclasm. The Puritans and founding fathers are depicted as idealists who generally ignored their ideals: the Puritans, wanting to set a good example as Good Christians (as opposed to those naughty Spanish), establish vaguely theocratic governments which are cruel to their people and wage war  against the surrounding natives, while the founding fathers beat their chests, urge for war,  and channel Cicero in protest against British aristocrats daring to rule them, but put furiously put down rebellions of the disenfranchised (like Shay’s) without missing a beat. Overall the book is good light history, best fit for those with a casual interest in early American history who want something fun and interesting to read. Davis gives ample background for his stories and is generous with first-hand sources, but the book isn’t a sweeping or detailed history. It’s kin to the  Great Tales from English History series.

Related:

  • 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. As soon as I read of Isabella ordering the Spanish to bring pigs with them to the new world, I winced, knowing the devastation they caused from reading Charles C. Mann’s excellent work.
  • People’s History of the American Revolution, Ray Raphael. Davis is far more cautious than Raphael,  but People’s History examines the disconnect between the founding fathers’  motives for independence and the common laborers and artisans’ motives. 
  • Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey
  • Great Tales from English History (Volume II), Robert Lacey
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