Cool Reading 2021

In 2021, I read 84 works (23,810 pages).

Favorites of 2021:

The Aye-Aye and I
The Salt Path
The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense
Ring of Bright Water
A Wild Idea
Just Passin' Thru: A Vintage Store, the Appalachian Trail, and a Cast of Unforgettable Characters
A Voyage for Madmen
Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier
The Hobbit or, There and Back Again (Bluefax fan-made audio)
A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe
Peter Moor's Journey to Southwest Africa
Cool Hand Luke
Alone in the Fortress of the Bears: 70 Days Surviving Wilderness Alaska: Foraging, Fishing, Hunting
Captain James Cook

Reading journals from other years:
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This license is for each book review, 1 license per book review. For No Derivative purposes, the license covers only the book review portion of each entry. Fair Use quotes are OK so long as attribution.

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The Aye-Aye and I

Gerald Durrell (1993)
December 2021
Audio P9

Listened to the audiobook primarily because it was read by Rupert Degas who is seriously good stuff it elevates the book. His timing and pitch are perfect. What might have been a bit old-fashioned humor in print was made fresh and live in voice - Degas is Durrell. The book itself is very good, I learned a lot about Madagascar and travel in a third world country, trying to follow along with Google Maps. The barren muddy hills are still there 30 years later, probably even worse now. I'd like to read something more recent and in-depth, but this peaked my interest for more Madagascar.

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The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party

Daniel James Brown (2009)
December 2021
Audio P9

People have been writing books about the Donner Party since the 1870s. For whatever reasons the story has captured imaginations for generations and has become one of the defining events of the settlement of western America and California in particular. Daniel Brown followed their trail, read the books, and wrote this the latest full-length treatment. It's likely the best available for a general audience. There were a lot of people in the party and it's easy to overwhelm with detail, Brown knows when to smooth things over. There are more detailed books if you want. Much of it takes place on the trail, describing places I have been (Ash Hollow) that look about the same today as they did then. Much concerns traveling across country in a wagon. They were actually pretty nice people except for a few. They were also tough as nails and did what it took to survive. Probably the most memorable event was when the two Indian guides refused to participate in the gory feast, turned their back and looked away. Not that we need another reminder that natives were often more civilized then Europeans, it was a poignant moment fortunately not forgotten. It's unclear why this story continued to fascinate - as true-life horror story? There isn't much to learn from it, Brown struggles to make it relevant, the main thing I learned was don't take the shortcut route across the Sierras in winter. Still, a good book and introduction to the Donner Party.

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The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone

Edward Dolnick (2021)
December 2021
Audio Audible

Edward Dolnick's latest concerns the story of how Egyptian hieroglyphs were first decoded in the early 19th century. Everyone has heard of the Rosetta stone that's no mystery. But Dolnick keeps it interesting throughout. The precise way hieroglyphs were decoded is a long story, it was not a eureka moment, or paper, or stone. Turns out they were exceptionally difficult to decipher from a cold start. It goes heavy into linguistics, but is easy to follow. It's also very good with Egyptian culture reinforcing how radically conservative it was, things didn't change much for thousands of years. Well written, livened with humor, interesting and new, educational and relevant, strong characters and narrative - this scores highly.

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Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

Ray Dalio (2021)
December 2021
Audio Audible

There have been numerous theories on historical cycles. One example is the Strauss and Howe generations theory - Boomers, Millennial, etc. Professional histories tend to discount them. Dalio presents his own theory based on history since the 600s AD. What sets Dalio apart he actually invests in the future and has become a billionaire. It's not a precise guide to investing, more of a hybrid cross discipline with heavy emphasis on macro economics as a driving factor that creates waves of prosperity and decline. One such wave was the rise and fall of the British Empire. China has seen many waves. Dalio believes the US is 70% of the way through a wave now entering the final decline period. It's interesting to see how the world's leading hedge fund sees the world, and builds systems to model and predict it. Due to the complexity I don't believe it's practical for an individual to do much with this information, other than maybe spreading investments more globally not all in USD-based assets. Guessing the future is perhaps the greatest game, Dalio has proven to be good at it, a super-predictor, based on data and trends. Even if you disagree with everything he says, you can still learn how to approach the game.

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American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

Alan Taylor (2017)
December 2021
Audio P9

Taylor is a fill-in-the-gaps historian, adding correctives to standard narratives by including African-American and Indians as central players. Geographically he includes areas often overlooked beyond the 13 colonies. And he shows how big picture the motivations of Empires, including the new American, were driving forces. All of this is important and it's hard to disagree. He is playing what we call in Wikipedia "WEIGHT" ie. how much attention to give certain subjects. A re-balancing of the past - less Valley Forge, more Western. Less Bunker Hill, more slavery. etc. The problem is unless you already have a preexisting foundation of the war it feels like what it is, revisionism. Taylor is best approached after you have a good understanding of the period, then you can see it from a new weighted perspective. As a core history of the war I don't think it achieves.

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A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine

Gregory Zuckerman (2021)
November 2021
Audio Audible

A Shot to Save the World is a group biography of the people and companies who developed or helped lay the groundwork for the COVID vaccines, specifically the mRNA type used by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. Most of the work was done by small companies, large pharma did not see the profit potential. or even viability of mRNA vaccines. The audacious and risky goal was a cure for AIDS or the flu. So when COVID hit (two-thirds into the book), they were best positioned to make a vaccine that could be rapidly replicated at high volume - unlike traditional vaccines - and overnight they went from small companies into billion dollar corporations. No one really knew if it would work, but the epidemiological results were stunning. It's a fairy tale, still playing out, how these small companies went from nothing to literally saving the world. This is the second book by Zuckerman I have read, the first about fracking pioneers. That was a better book, I had a hard time following this one, there are a lot of people, the subject matter can be banal - many advancements were simply lab accidents - and the biotech hard to follow. Still it's interesting learn about the people, most of them were motivated to enter into this risky line of research not for supposed riches but to help save lives.

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Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth

Dave Seminara (2021)
November 2021
Audio Audible

Dave Seminara is an inveterate life-long traveler, a nomad, who is always looking for the next horizon. In this short but info packed book he tries to understand why some people seem to be addicted to travel. In fact there are super-travellers, who have online websites where they rack up statistics about countries and places visited. Certain people vie to be the world's most traveled person. Some are incredible spending most of the year on the move ticking off boxes. It's a weird sub-culture. The Mt. Everest of super-travel is an island in the south Atlantic that has no people, no regular ships and is so weather challenged many visitors are never able to get off the boat and step ashore. The story that holds the book together is about a scam artist who stole money from the super-travelers by pretending to be a billionaire. It's a good story and keeps the pages turning although the ending is not satisfying as he never is brought to justice. The real value is Semiara's deep dive into the psychology of travel. Some great stuff here for anyone who has ever thought about why we travel and why some don't stop. The best advice is nothing is really an "addiction" unless it interferes negatively in your life. Of course if you really want to be well traveled nothing beats books for sheer scope and variety as you can move not only through space but time.

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The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

Nathaniel Ian Miller (2021)
November 2021
Audio Audible

Nathaniel Ian Miller is an American MFA who basis his first novel on the true story of "Stockholm Sven", whose memoirs are supposedly known. He was evidently a working-class trapper who lived rough most of his life on Svalbard, an island in the Arctic. He was there during WWI and WWII and also Iceland and Sweden his birthplace. I was expecting adventures and gritty survival. There is some of that but the real emphasis is on a believable historical memoir and character development while employing the power of literature. This really is a work of art, the sentences have poetic quality. Once you finish and know the "plot", on re-reading sentences begin to shine, are quotable good. Sven is a nobody overcoming his poor lot in life. I'm not sure Sven is the most interesting topic Miller could have chosen, but it must have been challenging to realistically create this world at this time.

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The Last Winter: The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World

Porter Fox (2021)
November 2021
Audio Audible

This is the second book by Fox I have read and once again I am impressed more by the idea then the execution. Sure, any book about climate change should get 5 stars but there are so many of them now they are not all equal. Fox's Big Idea is that winter is getting shorter globally. Invariably there will be no winter anymore, one long never ending summer like at the equator. Fox travels to hot spots in Alaska, the Alps, Greenland - mountains all - where the impacts are most stark as snow lines, ski resorts, glaciers rapidly disappear. He talks to experts, locals, describes his admittedly awesome travel itinerary. In the end, I doubt much in this book will stick with me. Except the ending, the last 20 pages or so, he is on the Greenland ice sheet with native hunters when COVID first hits NYC, where his wife and children are. He's got to get out, get on a plane, etc.. it's dramatic. The writing is not bad but often he says something interesting then skips to the next thing, it's broad and shallow. If you don't read much on climate change it might be amazing to learn how many feet the sea will rise when Greenland melts, and the number of people who live close to the coasts world wide, the sort of stuff every climate book reports on. Maybe he is swinging for too much and reaping too little - travel, climate, philosophy, biography, autobiography, explorer history, natural history.

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Silence

Shusaku Endo (1966)
November 2021
Audio P9

Like a sword of words, viscerally dissects body and soul, blood runs black and belief is crushed. Didn't enjoy. Might watch the movie but even that looks depressing. The story has good bones, not my thing right now.

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American Colonies: The Settling of North America, Vol. 1

Alan Taylor (2001)
October 2021
Audio P9

This is the 20th anniversary of the book, it has held up well. Taylor shows that the 300 years of the 16th to 18th centuries were much more than the 13 colonies. Indians and African slaves were not mere footnotes but central players. Besides the British there are French, Spanish and Russian, not to mention a polyglot of other nations who settled in North America. The geographic range is vast from Alaska to the sugar islands in the Caribbean. When viewed as a whole there is a broad perspective of what happens when an over populated Europe discovers a fertile new continent. The exchange of disease, food and technology were unavoidable outcomes, with disease playing the biggest role killing off 90% of the native population. The narrative is by necessity broad and shallow, but intellectually stimulating. Entire books of material are found in a sentence or two. Those areas I have previously read about I appreciated the reinforcement and context. Those new to me I found the summary at times too brief to leave an impression. Reading history is the work of a lifetime, this is a useful map. I'll probably never think of the word "Colonial" the same, being of such variety and scope. It's the central thesis, and succeeds.

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The Salt Path: A Memoir

Raynor Winn (2018)
October 2021
Audio P9

Such an amazing book. The hiker-girl-in-personal-crisis had its day with Cheryl Strayed, Raynor Winn takes it to a new level. There's a lot going on. A colorful and eventful travel book of South West England (Cornwall, Devon) told through the lens of homeless people, exposing a hypocritical soft underbelly of English culture. The English right to roam laws are revolutionary and one can only marvel at the possibilities if enacted in other countries. It has a Tolkien quality of little people on a great adventure (the only book they bring is Beowulf). There is incredible nature writing and writing in general. At it's core is a grand love story, a lasting memorial to the authors husband. As life is frozen in rock along the Jurassic Coast, so too will their story be set for the ages.

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The Whisper on the Night Wind: The True History of a Wilderness Legend

Adam Shoalts (2021)
October 2021
Audio Audible

The Whisper on the Night Wind concerns the legend of a mysterious creature in Labrador. Many places have mystery creatures such as Sasquatch or Loch Ness and Labrador has its own. Shoalts uses it as a narrative thread to explore Labrador, and does arrive at a plausible explanation. It's also a travelogue and outdoor journey, first it takes 20+ hours to get there along a dirt road from Quebec. The largest settlement is North West River / Goose Bay and just east of there, south of Melville Bay, are the Mealy Mountains. Within the past 5 years they were made into a new National Park. The park has no roads or official trails and is exceptionally hard going with dense black spruce forests and barren rock mountains. It's been called the largest protected area in eastern North America. Labrador was one of the last areas to be settled by humans, being so far away from the Bering Strait, locked up by glaciers, and generally bypassed by Europeans for better climes south. To this day there are very few people. The Mealy Mountains are adjacent to the largest human settlement in the entire territory but hardly anyone goes there. The mystery of the creature keeps the narrative taught and pages turning while you learn about this fascinating place.

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No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead

Peter Richardson (2014)
October 2021
Audio Audible

Richardson is a university professor who spent time in the recently opened Dead archives to write a cultural history of the Dead and their times. Richardson seeks to understand why the Dead remained so popular for 50 years despite numerous predictions of irrelevance. Even the death of Jerry in 1995 resulted in the highest revenues in merchandise in band history, and spin-off and mimic bands are still going strong. The Dead were more than a band but a cultural and artistic movement. They tapped into an American ideal of radical freedom that has been picked up the left and right. Richardson attributes three themes that made them so popular: ecstasy (not the drug) ie. seeking a peak moment be it drugs or just rapture. Nomadism, the open road and freedom to move about. And community. I think he makes a pretty good argument, although these themes could be applied to other fan-centrist things, such as table-top gaming or Star Trek conventions. This is the most recent in a growing library of Dead histories, I think it's pretty good and well worth the time. The remove of years adds perspective and context to understand what the Dead were about and how it has influenced culture for us all.

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The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense

Edward White (2021)
October 2021
Audio Audible

Very well done non-traditional biography told thematically in 12 chapters. I'm leery of biographies that are not chronological but White does a remarkable job in this form. The last chapter for example concerns Religion, Hitchcock was Catholic and how that influenced his films and outlook. White covers all ground including film and social history where relevant. He's a sharp and original observer and one feels smarter having spent time in his company. Hitchcock's career is essentially the history of film starting in the silent era and ending around the time of Star Wars. He influenced everyone. Some things I was surprised to learn is how gregarious he was, joking and making fun; he relied heavily on writers to create scripts built around sporadic visions he concocted such as blood dripping on a white rose, or a gun fight in front of Mt. Rushmore. Then he took all the credit - he was a kindly pig who wanted it all - and a literal foodie and well-dressed dandy. He came from lower middle-class East End London. Now I want to watch every film he made [unlikely]. We studied North by Northwest in a college film class decades ago and I'll never forget how much detail. The great observer also the greatest to observe.

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The Egyptian

Mika Waltari (1945)
September 2021
Audio P9

Unfinished but at over half way and given the novel's length able to review (?). The early parts are the best as he focuses on description of life in ancient Egypt - the plot is slow here, but treat it like a documentary. It's dark, atmospheric, educational, livened by humor. Further along it relaxes and is informed by the film Gunga Din (1939) other similar films of that era and can be visualized that way, it's a mix of low and high brow. Has some legit literary chops, in parts, and other long stretches of puerile crap, why I bailed.

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Ring of Bright Water

Gavin Maxwell (1960)
September 2021
Audio Audible

Gavin Maxwell published this true-story about wild animal friendship with humans in 1960, and it has remained influential ever since. Readers claim it made them environmentalists, not unlike the phenomenon of Born Free published the same year with similar themes. The Dutton Animal Book Award was created because of its success, which inspired other books in the same vein, such as Rascal (1963) about a boy and his racoon. But this is no children's book. The writing is remarkably well done, the choice of vocabulary, descriptions, economy of words. And it would be even better except Maxwell was something of a weak character in real life ("he was, by literally all accounts, an extremely unpleasant man"). And then the fame of the book destroyed him, the contradictions with his true self too much. Afterwards he drank and smoked heavily and was dead at 55, of lung cancer in 1969. Fittingly for a dark nature book that concerns the deaths of beloved animals. But it shouldn't distract from the power of his work, which is as good as any creative non-fiction published today, better in some ways, if you can look past who was responsible for the deaths. A minor classic.

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Conquering the Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery

Andres Resendez (2021)
September 2021
Audio Audible

Reséndez (b. 1970 Mexico) is a professor of history working at a US university. He is drawing attention to the first person to sail across the Pacific and back in the mid-16th century, establishing it could be done and thus the start of a "Columbia exchange" towards Asia, the consequences for the modern world "can not be over-estimated" (cliche that is true). The hero of the story is Lope Martín (mar-teen), a mulatto who had risen through the ranks to become one of the most qualified pilots of the era. Point your bow west from Mexico and sail, but it's not that easy - it requires knowledge of trade winds and currents, but also instinct and bravery. Martín is super important in world history up there with Columbus. He does not have a Wikipedia article as of this writing. The Spanish of the time managed to expunge his accomplishment from history attributing it to a non-mulatto aristocrat.

The book is fairly short with a lot of diagrams. The writing is a bit dense but understandable and dramatic in parts, Reséndez is showing his knowledge and can range widely but it gets more focused towards the end stick with it. It will make you feel smarter for having read it. There is a lot about 16th century navigation techniques, it was something of a black art based on arcane knowledge. The mutinies and violence shipboard foreshadow the golden age of privateering and piracy soon to overtake the Spanish.

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Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love

Rebecca Frankel (2021)
September 2021
Audio Audible

Pretty well done, it is about specific people and events, but their story was shared by many. It helped me better understand not only the awful details of the holocaust which are well known by this point, but the full story from beginning to end when they emigrate to the USA, the relationships among families, it is more humane than a Schindler's List horror-story, thus more relatable. I think the part before the woods is best, the chaos and upheavals, the selections and mass shootings, hiding and escape. Once in the woods, I had a hard time visualizing as time is compressed and there are not the sort of dramatic events as earlier.

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The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future

Geoffrey Cain (2021)
September 2021
Audio Audible

As an introduction to the problem in Xinjiang, China, this is an OK journalistic account based around first-person interviews with Uyghurs who experienced the camps and got out to tell their stories. It's still barely on the radar for most people, so anything to bring attention to the plight of the Uyghurs is good. The twist of technology like AI is fascinating and horrifying. It does read like dystopian sci-fi. As a journalistic account it will quickly age, but if you want to follow events as they are happening. A warning for us all how technology can flatten our emotions, make us less empathetic, scramble rational thinking - and in the hands of devious companies and government, can be done intentionally at scale for relatively little money.

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The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat

Eric Jager (2004)
September 2021
Audio Audible

Fantastic! Transportive to a place and time, gripping story, strong characters and informative. And to be released as a film by Ridley Scott next month (which I didn't know before reading). Continues to be widely read for 15 years and culturally influential, this is one of the great classic stories of the Middle Ages. Some reviewers raised questions how far Jager strayed from the sources, it is a valid concern given how Hollywood this story feels, but, he is a professor, and on topics I know something about didn't see any real problems. Sometimes reality can seem like fiction, we should not downplay dramatic events to make it seem authentic. The Middle Ages could be violent, and this was a violent episode, but it was a single rape and death, compare with our own times (eg. today a man shot and killed 4 people randomly in their home etc), this was no more violent. It concerns justice, and how that was accomplished, in a formal and institutionalized way, different from what are used to but not something to judge negatively ("Dark Ages") anymore then we might judge the Romans and Greeks, and our own times.

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Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years With a Midwife in Mali

Kris Holloway (2006)
September 2021
Audio Audible

Interesting story of an Ohioan just out of college joins the Peace Corp and spends two years stationed in a remote village in Mali. She has a wonderful sincere open personality and you feel as if having spent time in Mali. There is a love interest, marriage, death and a mystery. For better and worse she experienced a traditional rural village before plastic, electricity and "progress" took over. The midwifery is brutal work, Mali has some of the highest death rates from birth (mother and child), and some of the highest birth rates in the world.

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At Night All Blood Is Black

David Diop (2018)
August 2021
Audio Audible

Can't say I really enjoyed this novel, but it does have an interesting sing-song cadence that reminded me of the technique in Batouala by René Maran which won the Goncourt in 1921 and is a landmark of African-authored French literature. David Diop is a literary historian, so he knows Batouala, the echoes must be intentional. Both deal in their own way with colonialism and western perceptions of Africans, and reveal the inner voice and world of a native African from this period (early 20th C). Maran's book is also a short but somewhat difficult read, with a jazz-age rhythm. One reviewer said Diop's book had both "echoes" and "premonitions", but I don't understand premonitions.

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I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir

Jan Grue (2021)
August 2021
Audio Audible

Jan Grue has lived in and out of a wheelchair his whole life. He is an academic and fiercely intellectual, closely examining every aspect of his life through the prism of his condition, often informed by theory but also told with artistic sensibility. The words and ideas are compressed, a world in a sentence, as in poetry. Much hinges on challenges with moving around - schools, other countries, airplanes, buildings. It appears he is self-defined by his disability even though he tries hard to over come it, a contradiction, but an understandable one when this is all you have known. As he seeks to achieve ableness, we seek to understand disability through his story.

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Jacob T. Marley

R. William Bennett (2011)
August 2021
Audio Audible

Do we really need this? The ghost of Marley, according to Dickens, is presumably forever trapped in a bad place for his transgressions, which encourages Scrooge to look into his own life. But Marley here is a guiding angel who is redeemed. Bleh. Disney-fare. Middle-brow. Dickens was a vital author, Christmas Carol a serious work of literature that withstands repeated readings, new gems appear each time. It can be life changing. For me, Marley remains a mystery whose back story does not require explanation. With that said, I gotta give Bennett credit for managing a Dickens knock-off fairly well, at least at the level of theme and sensational plot coincidences.

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Just Passin' Thru: A Vintage Store, the Appalachian Trail, and a Cast of Unforgettable Characters

Winton Porter (2009)
August 2021
Audio Audible

What a great book! Only complaint it wasn't longer, and that Porter has not written more books. He's really good, in a raconteur bar-tender way. The AT is a place of escape. It is also a test of one's endurance, and self-sufficiency - and it's no joke, most hikers fail to reach Maine. Porter is like a sports coach keeping people from "killing themselves" by replacing cotton socks and Walmart sleeping bags with lightweight gear. Now, some hikers have made the AT a lifestyle, who Porter mostly focuses on. They are kindly criminals, mentally unstable, war vets, homeless or just plain strange in an entertaining way. This is classic Gen X literature (Porter 1966). Grungy, cynical, nomadic and free. Loved every bit. The audiobook version read by Jones Allen significantly adds, taking it from 4 to 4.5 stars.

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1941: The Year Germany Lost the War

Andrew Nagorski (2019)
August 2021
Audio P9

1941 was the year that decided WWII. Recall when 1941 started, Germany possessed France and Poland uncontested; the US was not at war with Germany or Japan; Germany had not invaded Russia and Stalin was convinced he and Hitler could conquer the world together. Britain's future as an independent country was actually in doubt, depending on what happened next. By the year's end, it looked like familiar WWII: Germany was stuck in a quagmire of attrition with Russia; the US and Russia were allied with Britain; Japan faced the fury of American industrial might - the straws were drawn, basic economics and demographics now determined who would prevail. What went so wrong for the Axis? Nagorski pieces it together. By and large, it came down to mistakes of judgement by Hitler. There were a couple major things, but simply he gambled everything on a Blitzkrieg victory in Russia (he didn't even bother procuring winter clothing). It was not an unreasonable gamble, even within the top levels of the US government, analysts thought Russia would not last 3 months, given Germany's previous successes in Poland and France. But for many contingent reasons Germany failed to take Moscow, and Hitler piled mistake on mistake by micro-managing his generals, dispersing his forces, and ramping up moral and criminal outrages which turned erstwhile allies into devout opposition. It took another 3.5 years for the Axis to crash, this was the year it went off the rails.

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A Wild Idea

Jonathan Franklin (2021)
August 2021
Audio Audible

Douglas Tompkins founded The North Face in 1960s era San Francisco; then Esprit clothing company in the 80s. He hung out with Grateful Dead, Janice Joplin and other royalty. He has been compared rightly to Steve Jobs for his forward vision and attention to design (really Jobs is comparable to Tompkins). He was also a devout environmentalist and adventurer who spent 3-4 months a year on expeditions in the wild. So in the 1990s after he sold his businesses for 150 million he moved to Patagonia and started buying up land. Lots of it, setting up a decades long fight with timber and ranching interests. He intended to conserve it and donate it back to Chile as a national park. As a person he was said to do more in one week then most people do in a month, a frenetic super-charged dynamo who inspired the entire country of Chile to build huge national parks, becoming a global model of conservation.

Jonathan Franklin is an American journalist based in Chile who writes on South American topics and has followed the career of Tompkins, the book is based on original interviews with dozens of people. It has all the right elements for good non-fiction: strong main character, a good plot (little guy vs. Goliath) , adventure and exotic locales, informative. And a strong though sad ending, bringing events to the present. It leaves you feeling a bit hopeful and positive towards humanity, Tompkins showed we can pay our due the natural world, give something back for what we take.

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The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature

Peter Wohlleben (2021)
August 2021
Audio Audible

Peter Wohlleben is wonderful. This is a Hidden Life of Trees update, with new science about trees, biographical developments and how to forest bathe. Although nonficton, Wohllegen writes in a captivating storytelling voice that vaguely reminds of Tolkien, such as trees that can see, breath and feel pain.

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To the Ice and Beyond: Sailing Solo Across 32 Oceans and Seaways

Graeme Kendall (2017)
August 2021
Audio P9

Short book by a New Zealander who sailed a 41' boat around the world by way of the Northwest Passage ie. from NZ to Africa to Greenland, across the passage and back down the Pacific. It was done in two legs, in 2005 and 2010, with a stop in Greenland because the passage was iced shut in 2005. This is a seriously no-drama account, Kendall was so well prepared there were no real problems. You have to respect him, luck is made by being prepared. He was the first person to sail solo non-stop through the passage, it took 12 days.

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Kokoro

Natsume Soseki (1914)
August 2021
Audio Audible

One the most famous early modernist Japanese novels. Not a big fan of early modernism. Some amazing wisdom bombs: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1977713-kokoro

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Hojoki: A Hermit's Hut as Metaphor

Kamo no Chomei (1212)
July 2021
Audio Audible

Chomei was a 12th century court poet whose artistic sense of life morphed a radical path during old age, retreating from the striving of ego which he experienced and observed in court. He saw impermanence and asked what is a good life. Not money, power or status, rather peace and nature. That's the story. In fact he retreated after he lost political backing, was passed over for promotion within the Shinto shrine. He decided to turn his back on society only after he lost the game. A true recluse might gain worldly desires, then give it all up for free. Nevertheless, the power of his words can not be denied reaching across a chasm of time.

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Beyond the Trees: A Journey Alone Across Canada's Arctic

(2019)
July 2021
Audio Audible

Look at a map and consider the huge expanse of land in northern Canada, dotted with a million lakes and few trees, this book gives some insight. Adam Shoalts solo canoed across in a single season, going from one lake or river to the next following a torturous route from the Alaska border to Hudson Bay. There is no easy path east-west because water flows usually north to south. The landscape is unchanged for millions of years and mostly untouched by humans. He encountered maybe half a dozen other people. Float planes dropped off barrels of supplies, called in with sat phone. He battled rivers upstream that were thought impossible. Pushed through dense weedy portages, and crossed a lake as big as Erie (Great Bear). This is not a particularly deep or stylistic adventure book. It is description of huge lakes and rivers you have never heard of, and can now form a mental picture. He makes it easy to follow along on Google Maps which enhances the arm-chair travel experience. The remoteness, brief warm season, animals and insects, terrain, flight cost, physical demands etc.. all discourage visitors, this is the next best thing.

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The Doomsday Calculation: How an Equation that Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe

William Poundstone (2019)
July 2021
Audio P9

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Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City

Edmund Richardson (2021)
July 2021
Audio P9

This is an outsider story set in 1830s Afghanistan. As a young man, British private Charles Masson went AWOL from a military post in India, a serious offense. Seeking to escape capture, he traveled into the wild west of Pakistan and Afghanistan, taking on disguises and new identities. His adventures there are enough for a book alone, but he developed an interest in Alexander the Great and made a historic discovery of ancient coins and artifacts. They were, he believed, remains from a city founded by Alexander - modern scholars agree. He deciphered an ancient script no one had before, using the coins as a Rosetta with parallel words in Ancient Greek. These are only some highlights, there is much more. Scholars have recently been taking a greater interest in Masson. As a general reader I found at times too much information about Masson's movements and dealings, and I'm still not sure if he was really a spy. But it is well written and has authorial character appropriate for the quirky topic.

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Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

Volker Ullrich (2018)
July 2021
Audio P9

Having finished both books I'm not sure what to make of it. There is no overriding thesis other than incorporating the latest thinking and facts established by other historians (Ullrich is a journalist). It's easy to read and detailed, in a dispassionate tone, a good 'introduction', yet also a massive number of pages. Hitler knew the game was over in the Fall of 1941, when they failed to take Moscow and his armaments minister Fritz Todt told him to sue for peace because Germany had no chance to outproduce Russia in a war of attrition. Hitler responded by immediately killing Todt (probably, in an unsolved plane explosion), and doubling down in the east. The failed assassination in July 44' had a profound impact on Hitler's physical and mental condition, it was not a complete failure. Ullrich says the Holocaust was solely due to Hitler, it would never have happened otherwise.

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The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry Is Dream

Charles Spencer (2021)
June 2021
Audio P9

Narrative history of events of Henry I and his children, with the sinking of the White Ship occurring nearly exactly half-way through. It is the pivot point on which the fortunes of Henry rise and then fall. Spencer makes the case it had repercussions for the rest of the Middle Ages and even to the present. Henry lost his male heir, was unable to create another, allowing the mixing of a new royal house the Plantagenet ie. the houses of Lancaster and York, leading to the Wars of the Roses, Tudors, and so on. It's a reasonable argument, but also counter-factual "what if", which historians sometimes like to emphasize to demonstrate how important an event was. In the same way certain battles are pivotal to broader history. Hard to imagine another ship sinking more influential to English history. And it was so stupid, like tripping and breaking you neck, or getting hit by a bus, we look for meaning but find only banality and lady fortune for consolation. Spencer has managed to make a decent book with it at the core.

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Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

Elizabeth Kolbert (2021)
June 2021
Audio P9

Kolbert says it is much easier to destroy an ecosystem then maintain one. She shows specific attempts to manage nature even for the smallest of things, like keeping a few dozen minnow-size pupfish alive. It is discouraging. Our ability to destroy nature knows no bounds, while the record of management is fishy. Which explains the predicament of a world in decline, at the scale of a pupfish, and global warming.

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Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

Rebecca Wragg Sykes (2020)
June 2021
Audio Audible

Rebecca Wragg Sykes is a paleontologist who has written the best book on Neanderthals I have yet read. It is of course loaded with fascinating information, she also writes with an art that collapses deep time. At some point I was smelling leather and smoke and living in a verdant natural world.

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A Voyage for Madmen

Peter Nichols (2001)
June 2021
Audio Audible

I knew nothing about the (in)famous 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, but wow this book delivers. Not only a great story, with incredible characters, the author is master sailor who puts things in context. For example. he doesn't just say the boat "heaved too", he explains what it is, why it has fallen out of favor, why it was important in this race, etc.. you learn a lot about long-distance small-boat blue-ocean voyaging, technically and psychologically. It reminds me of long-distance lightweight hiking, or climbing rope-free, sports with a natural purity. If I remember anything it will be that every boat is unique, as is every captain, and storm - these complexities make it nearly impossible to prepare for every eventuality. A person can learn to sail their entire lives, yet still come across unexpected and deadly challenges. I suspect the most successful have the ability to be flexible and try new things without resorting to "rules", but also know when to play straight. Good life lessons generally. Anyway, super-impressed and hope to read some of the memoirs this book is based on.

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King Richard: Nixon and Watergate--An American Tragedy

Michael Dobbs (2021)
June 2021
Audio P9

Detailed history of the 100 days leading up the Nixon's resignation. To be honest, I often felt lost in the morass of people and events - this is a complex event, no fault of Dobbs just the nature of it. Would have helped to know the geography beforehand. The audiobook is interlaced with recordings from Nixon's tapes, it is cool to suddenly hear Nixon talking. I was expecting to loath him by the end, but he comes across the tragic figure. Despicable what he did, but also brave: he did not to destroy the tapes when he could have, keeping them for posterity. He fired all his closest aids a great loss to him. He chose to resign when those around him said to stay. I often thought Trump is another Nixon, but that degrades Nixon.

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London in Fragments: A Mudlark's Treasures

Ted Sandling (2018)
June 2021
Audio P9

This book is so well written and produced. The hardcover contains glossy plates, at least a hundred or more. Each has text about the item, the author's experience, and it's history. It had me ready to go mudlarking, for one problem: I live in the US. Ah well, this is second best. It helps to look at pictures of the Thames riverbank to gain a sense of the place, which is easily accessible due to stairways cut into the walls - not for mudlarking, but for river-crossing taxis that once existed before the modern bridges were built. An ancient vestige of the city repurposed. It seems possible to pick the mud clean with enough time and hands, but the author seems unconcerned. I listened to the audiobook which improves the text, very well done. While also paging through a copy of the book, which is kind of required; the author visually describes each piece but they are of such unusual shape and pattern the pictures help.

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Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape

Cal Flyn (2021)
May 2021
Audible P9

This is quite good, and unusual. Cal graduated from Oxford University in experimental psychology, with a focus on the 'psychology of abandoned places'. A fancy way of saying, she has thought deeply about the many dimensions of abandonment. She has literary sensibilities, an eye for the poignant, and is a great writer. Cal visits a dozen places around the world and riffs on different themes. My favorite is about the herd of feral cows on an abandoned Scottish island farm - what does it mean to be feral, when will they revert to a fully wild species, will they ever be rid of vestiges of domestication? How do cows live when divorced from humans - it turns out, they are pretty interesting, unlike domestic cows. Their lives are legendary, with battles between males for dominance, the landscapes scarred by fights, the rise and fall of "kings", hermits, bone graveyard visits. Definitely in need of a Watership Down treatment.

Ultimately you get a sense that the human/nature divide doesn't really exist, humans are a part of the natural processes. This might seem obvious, but for many, humans are a weed, an invasive species. She mentions that invasive often go through a boom and bust cycle, the bigger the boom the harder they fall. Well, much to consider, nothing definitive or preachy, just some thoughts bravely exposed while exploring abandoned places.

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The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 1066

Marc Morris (2021)
May 2021
Audio Audible

Having read Morris' Normal Conquest, probably the best general treatment, I was excited to next take a trip through the Early Middle Ages. It is possible to write a compelling book on ancient people with few available sources. But this is not it. Morris mostly sticks to political events from primary sources and as such it's a lot of names, kings disposed, and haphazard contingent history. There is little cultural history, which is essential to bring a period alive and transport the reader. For an example of this see Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings . Morris says up front his goal is not to provide a coherent narrative of the Anglo-Saxons, rather each chapter focuses on a different individual to provide a taste of what is available.

Nevertheless I gained some new perspectives, on how polity formed starting in the 5th century and became larger in time, centered around the King, starting with a small band of raiders, a small village, who absorb neighbors etc.. a chaotic process that took hundreds of years before a King of England first emerged in the 9th century. The 5th century Roman collapse and the mid-6th century famines caused by climatic events molded a new society centered around kin and King (not just in Britain). The revival of interest in the Rome Empire in the 8th century marks the beginning of the end of the collapse era; problems with kingship begin to emerge that will take centuries to resolve (if ever). Population increase in the 10th century after a prolonged period of peace from Viking raids is key marker for improvements in society.

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Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World

Vaclav Smil (2021)
May 2021
Audio Audible

70 some chapters on energy, population etc.. Smil distills large complex topics to their mathematical essence and you feel enlightened. The problem is, they are large complex topics for a reason. Throughout I was thinking "yeah but" there is so much missing. With short zingers on big things, it's easy to leave out contradictory information. It's entertaining and interesting, but reality is complex. Smil is at his best in live lectures, from which many of these chapters derive, too bad he couldn't narrate.

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Conquistadors of the Useless

Lionel Terray (1961)
May 2021
Audio Audible

Conquistadors of the Useless is something of a cult classic. First published in French in 1961, it was for a long time unavailable in English, then after translation, it went out of print with copies going for over $1000, helped by its later inclusion in the National Geographic Outdoor list. Not long after publication, Terray died while climbing in France. The book then is a scope into the mind of a soon to be dead man who struggled with why he climbed, saw so many others die, almost died many times. But it is not morbid, Terray is full of life, such are the sharp contrasts of this sport, way of life.

Terray came of age when climbing transitioned from fragile hemp rope and clod-hopper nail boots to modern technology and techniques, as such, he was first ascent to many climbs or nearly so. They were superstars in the days after the war, doing things people thought insane and impossible, the book gives a sense of the fraternity of climbers in the Alps during the 40s and 50s. Remember 'The Eiger Sanction'? Well that sort of time period and place is what this concerns but for real. This is a long book and the early sections are not so great, but once he started on the Big Walls it takes off. The interlude of WWII is interesting as he sneaks up on Germans from mountain tops they didn't think anyone could climb, only to have his gun freeze! So many stories. This is a must read for climbers, NatGeo completionists, or really anyone who likes good stories, Terray is a likeable, down to earth character. He influenced later climbers and outdoors people including Douglas Tompkins, founder of The North Face company - a 2010 film about Tompkins is called 180 Degrees South: Conquerors of the Useless a hommage to Terray's book.

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Valcour: The 1776 Campaign That Saved the Cause of Liberty

Jack Kelly (2021)
May 2021
Audio P9

Kelly is a great writer and provides context, balance, and measured excitement. It was easy to follow on Google Maps and I now have an enduring mental picture of the lake and environs, as told through this interesting story, the first major engagement of the US Navy (weirdly on a lake). Also learned a lot about Benedict Arnold, and the American invasion of Canada brought low by smallpox. As someone who has never read a general history of the war, this is filling in the story like a jigsaw piece, one book, battle and person at a time, each a new discovery.

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Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey Into the Dark Antarctic Night

Julian Sancton (2021)
May 2021
Audio Audible

Badly written. Not comparable to "Alfred Lansings immortal classic Endurance" (Nathaniel Philbrick), in fact among the worst polar exploration books I have read. Et tu, Schiff, Sides and Isaacson? [disappointed]

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Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Patrick Radden Keefe (2021)
May 2021
Audio P9

I came to this with eyes open, willing to give the Sackler's the benefit of the doubt and recognize journalistic techniques that cherry picks the bad and ignores the good for the purpose of story. Indeed, some of that goes on here. Nevertheless, the evidence is damning. The Sacklers knew from the start OxyContin is addictive and destroyed lives, they had a limited amount of time to push opioids before they would be forced to stop. They cynically hauled in as much cash as possible, all the while denying. It is a smaller version of the tobacco and fossil fuel situation, played out over a compressed time frame because the drug is so devastating. The book is unsatisfying in the end because there is no resolution, the Sacklers are still free and have billions hidden away. But the case goes on. The family is currently fleeing to Western Europe (London, Switzerland) to live a discreet life with private banking. Can they be brought to justice? The writing is top notch, expect a Pulitzer contender and/or optioned.

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Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry

Robert Kanigel (2021)
May 2021
Audio Audible

Such a great biography. I've never read Homer before, heard of Milman Parry, nor am I a Classicist, yet this book is wonderful. Learned so much. No fears, this is not a dry book on an academic topic wrapped in the veneer of a "big idea". It's difficult to explain why this book is so good because it started a bit boring/confusing, but the elements begin to pile on and it just works: the biography, adventure travel in 1920s Balkans, mysterious death, a big revolutionary idea that has changed the field of literary studies, a brilliant young man and his untimely death who becomes a sort of heroic figure mirroring his subject. And Kanigel is an excellent writer, he has a knack for picking the precise word, it feels carefully done. Richard Poe is the right narrator, the text compliments him to an extent I had not noticed in earlier readings, there is a synergy here.

Why should you care about this topic? Well,we tend to have a bias towards written cultures and view oral as something less. This is why Bob Dylan was reviled for winning the Nobel (even though it is technically written) he was merely a bard, a song writer, is that really literature? Another reason is that Parry showed how self-learning, conviction and hard work can cause an academic revolution. He did nothing but learn Ancient Greek, read Homer, and write down a thesis - in his early 20s. Now he is immortal, there is BP (Before Parry) and AP (After Parry) - even if you disagree he can not be avoided, like a literary Darwin who discovered the key to understanding ancient epic literature.

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The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe

Barry Cunliffe (2019)
April 2021
Audio Audible

This is a good book but how much dependent on your depth of interest as it can be somewhat academic. Not enough on their origins, even if we don't know precisely there is a lot to be said of the Yamnaya culture from the same region a few thousand years earlier, who surely morphed into the Scythians. It stays pretty well in the first millennia BC. I probably should have read Cunliffe's By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean as that is the broader picture, this is a more precise look at single culture.

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A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe

Johannes Krause (2019)
April 2021
Audio Audible

A Short History of Humanity is by two German archaeogenetics, which is the study ancient DNA of human, bacteria, animals etc.. One of the authors, Krause, made the discovery of a new human type, the Denisovan, he knows his stuff. The book is quite short, but packs a lot of information yet remains readable for the lay person as an introduction to this otherwise difficult topic. It covers the history of Europe from a genetic perspective from about 11,000 BC to present. Spoiler alert - it's actually very simple; most Europeans have three types of genes. 1) the "original" hunter gatherers who presumably arrived during in the stone age and displaced the neanderthals. 2) neolithic farmers who migrated in from modern-day Turkey via the Balkans around 6,000 BC. 3) a steppe people called the Yamnaya culture from the area north of the Black Sea who arrived in force around 3,000 BC. And that's it. After 3,000 BC the European population was established enough that no new invaders were able to genetically supplant these three dominate genetic markers every European still has. In modern Europeans, the hunter-gatherer genes are most prevalent in Northern countries and least in the south, but in all cases is the least prevalent. of the three types.

Some interesting findings: the original hunter-gatherers were dark skinned, they received abundant Vitamin D through a diet of wild game and fish and did not benefit so much from having light skin in northern latitudes. The neolithic farmers from Turkey were lighter skinned because they ate grains and vegetables, mostly, and required more D from sunlight. This need was magnified in the north and the light-skin adaptation increased. It is thought the Black Death or something like it proceeded the invasions of the Yamnaya culture ca. 3,000 BC, similar to what happened to New World natives in the 16th century. Europeans and American Indians carry similar genes, a surprising finding, but explained by the same group from central Siberia who migrated across the Bering Strait, some also migrated westward into Europe. Thus, the Columbian Exchange was a homecoming by very distant relatives.

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Watership Down

Richard Adams (1972)
April 2021
Audio P9

This is my second reading. The first was in 7th grade over 40 years ago when I read the entire book in a single long day. I don't remember any of it so decided to try again a bit slower. Of course it is a classic thus 5 stars. It's heavily influenced by The Hobbit which Adams said it was - the world building, language, history, epic scale, fantasy, quest stories.(It's not nearly as well written as the Hobbit.) Both are the products of wartime experiences. They offer a lesson of learning to work together with other animals/creatures/people outside your home community/country/species for a collective goal of peace and prosperity. It's kind of old-fashioned in a socialist way, no accident the bad guys have fascist overtones. These books can't escape the context of the times or authors. Still, they are powerfully imaginative and influential. Unlike The Hobbit, there is a good chance I'll never read it again, but happy to have had two while young and sort of old.

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The Hobbit or, There and Back Again

J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)
April 2021
Audio Self Published

Like many others I first read The Hobbit years ago as a young person. Now older and wiser, I return to the story of my youth and wonder if Middle Earth still holds the same magic. The myths Tolkien created have so saturated our culture it's difficult to see the forest for the trees, to see The Hobbit as a simply a 1930's children's story, and not one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Still, it's possible to suspend belief and let the story carry along down the road from one little adventure to next, marveling at how innocently Bilbo finds the Ring that would create such consequence, in fantasy and reality.

Why is Tolkien so popular? It's easy to find: Bilbo and the hobbits represent the middle-class with all its values and fears and hopes. The middle-class, by definition, face two forces: the proletariat or working class from below as represented by the various dark creatures such as the trolls and goblins; and the ceiling above, the rich elite such as the wood elves (landed gentry) and the dragon who hordes wealth obtained illicitly (robber baron). It is the middle class dream, sandwiched between these opposing forces, to obtain safety and security and comfort (Bilbo so loves his comfort in his hobbit hole) by keeping down the grubbing lower class and taking a share from the immoral upper class. In the end this is exactly what happens when the goblins/dragon are defeated and the treasure is fairly distributed.

That Bilbo is portrayed as a thief is curious, but it fits the model. He didn't steal the ring from Gollum but won it by out smarting him - the bourgeois value of education rewards in the end. Bilbo's thieving is always done in the name of good, like Robin Hood, not out of greed or malice. So The Hobbit is more than a fairy tale for children, it is a bourgeois guidebook. It's the perfect story for facing the fears, uncertainties and joys on the journey of becoming (and remaining) self-sufficient members of a democratic society. In a democracy everyone is ideally seen as equal, at least in opportunity to get ahead, and thus a small inconsequential hobbit Bilbo can obtain great success, which re-enforces the bourgeois notion that with a little pluck and work anything is possible. This lesson seems odd in a world of monarchy, where birth determines status and fortune, but that is part of the fantasy: bumbling kings and heroic nobodies.

Others have tried to copy Tolkien such as Brooks, Jordan and Martin but Tolkien remains the most beloved. I think Tolkien was still close enough to the 19th century that his style of Naturalism and Romanticism were least corrupted by Modernism and post-modernism. This corruption later manifested in darker and more cynical works, which are appealing in their way, but miss something of the magical child-like wonderment and optimism of Tolkien's Hobbit.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2011 cc-by-nd

Re-read in 2021 via the Bluefax fan made audiobook. Highly recommended, even for old timers, gain new perspectives really brings the text alive. Demonstrates what is possible with audio. Better than commercial audiobooks, and better than the movie. Remarkable achievement.

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Just Another Day in Vietnam

Keith Nightingale (2019)
April 2021
Audio Audible

This is innovative fiction. Nightingale was actually there for the battle, doing after-action intelligence gathering. Yet, he chose to write a novel about it instead of a history or memoir. This gives freedom to write descriptively, and oh so good it is. Particularly the natural setting. Lush. Sort of like nature writing + war - a strange yet effective mixture, I've never read anything quite like it. The main character is the jungle. He self-published in 2015 (why?). Then it took off on Amazon, and a commercial publisher released it in 2019. Audiobook followed. The zen-like attention to detail sets it apart, small things writers don't normally focus on. He describes body sweat in so many ways, not in one place it keeps re-appearing in different contexts. Or the shape of the trees, the root system, the character of the mud. It goes on, the details. It grounds you there. Technicolor Vietnam.

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Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom

Louis Hughes (1897)
April 2021
Audio LibriVox

Read via the LibriVox recording by James K. White, one of the best narrators around, free or otherwise. Hughes wrote this memoir in 1897, 32 years after his 30 years of slavery, but it is fresh with many telling details. It has informed scholarly books on slavery, Hughes is often quoted. For a slave POV in the Memphis area, it is one of the best primary sources available. Hughes was enslaved from birth to 1865 - or 33 years. However, the Emancipation Proclamation was in 1862, and therefore Hughes was not technically a slave the last 3 years, rather a worker unpaid as he transitions to full freedom - thus the "Thirty" years. Hughes would not let himself be a slave one year longer than truth would allow. One has a sense Hughes was more intelligent than his so-called masters, whom he takes pity on in the end. This account includes the kind of brutality seen in other memoirs, the whippings in particular are hard to read. But there is also the Madam McGee who is emotionally and physically abusive - boxing ears and face, pinching ears, never praising and always complaining now matter how hard one works, it is Chinese water torture of the soul. I really liked this, on par with Twelve Years a Slave, as noted by another reviewer the only failing being not long enough.

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A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier

Diana Preston (2004)
April 2021
Audio Ebook

A Pirate of Exquisite Mind says it all, Dampier straddled 16th century privateers like Francis Drake, and enlightened explorers of the 18th century like Captain Cook, a bit of both. This book was written by a husband and wife team who travelled the world in his footsteps, it feels like being there in exotic mostly tropical locations with lush descriptions of nature (since hugely degraded). It's hard to recapture the magic of landing on beaches and walking in forests as a European for the first time, the sense of infinite potential opening, but that does come across at times. Dampier live an action-filled life enough for 10 people. Remarkable life, times and book.

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In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire

Laurence Bergreen (2021)
March 2021
Audio Audible

In Search of a Kingdom is a great introduction, and adventure story, of a defining figure of the 16th century. There are so many English explorers and pirates - Thomas Cavendish, Walter Raleigh, William Dampier - it's easy to become confused (for this American), but Drake was the first to become famous, he would inspire and influence all one who came after. He is probably most famous as the first English captain to sail around the world and return alive - Ferdinand Magellan was killed on his journey and his crew returned barely alive, whereas Drake came home with a healthy crew and ship in polished condition. He was also something of a colorful personality and natural leader who even his enemies admired; he sometimes captured a ship and set the captives free with a bit of the loot as a gift; he usually dined on ship with musicians serenading his meal. Still, despite being so privileged to have seen the world, it's geography, native cultures, flora and fauna, he returned home largely unchanged as a person. His influence as such is a secondary consequence of his actions - contrast with William Dampier a century later, whose writings and outlook changed the way the world sees. Bergreen's theme, as the sub-title, is that Drake was the beginning of the British Empire. This idea is not original, nor dwelled upon, but it is valid. England under Elizabeth was an indebted secondary kingdom without much of a navy in a world dominated by wealthy and powerful Spain. But the Spanish Empire had an Achilles heel - it needed to ship treasure, which made it vulnerable to attack. Drake was not the first of Elizabeth's "Sea Dogs" (privateers) but was the most successful, bringing home enough loot to pay off England's debt and more besides. This wild success spawned more piracy, and solidified the idea that England could be a maritime power with colonies of its own. It's an old theme that when glorified as the Victorians did is tone deaf these days, but important to understand the context of how colonialism began - inter-state competition over global resources and culture. Bergreen does not glorify, maybe to a fault one has to bring a sense of awe and wonder, but he is a reliable narrator of events.

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Cupid in Africa: The Baking of Bertram in Love and War

P. C. Wren (1944)
March 2021
Audio LibriVox

I so very much wanted to like this, by the author of Beau Geste. It concerns the East African campaign in WWI, a topic of particular fascination. Yet.. nothing happens. Then nothing more happens. People joke around. There is racist good-old-boyism. Nothing more happens. I was disappointed, learned nothing, didn't have fun, and gained little from the experience. Maybe that is the point? I could find no critical commentary such as reviews, it never got much attention. There are some reviews on LibraryThing and Goodreads, but they are mixed. If you are not liking it early on it probably won't get much better, but some people like it, free anyway.

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Peter Moor's Journey to Southwest Africa

Gustav Frenssen (1906)
March 2021
Ebook

In 1904, in southwest Africa / Namibia, the native Herero people rebelled against German colonists, killing around 200 white farmers. In response the German military invaded and killed 10s of thousands of men, women and children. It was an attempted extermination, now considered an early 20th century genocide, an antecedent to the Holocaust. A few years later, in 1906, German novelist Gustav Frenssen published a fictional memoir by "Peter Moor" who takes part in the campaign. It is well written and not at all like fiction, Frenssen supposedly relied on multiple accounts from veterans to build a composite story that reads like a real memoir - impressive craft. It is not nationalistic glory, rather bloody reality of a young man who only wants to return home and survive. It is IMO anti-war fiction, brutally showing the banality and waste of war, a loss of innocence and no clear right and wrong. But there is the problem: Frenssen does not go far enough in documenting the genocide (a term and concept that did not yet exist). But neither is it apologia, contemporary reviewers in the English world considered this book as evidence of Germany brutality and lack of civility - by no accident did the English translation appear in 1914.

It provides a visceral sense of this campaign. The massive and imposing ox-driven caravans with red-boxed driver seats manned by Boers who made "wagon forts", the constant need for water, dysentery and typhoid rampant, thorn brush injuries, watering holes subsumed by masses of dead cattle, dead cattle everywhere on the roads and trails, isolated outposts of Germans that have gone feral beaming light signals into the night for relief that never comes, horses that continually die and are replaced, locust storms, the scene of two year old abandoned on the roadside gnawing an old bone, etc.. Apocalypse Now. It helps to read more up to date works to properly place this conflict in context.

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All the Brothers Were Valiant

Ben Ames Williams (1919)
March 2021
Audio LibriVox

All the Brothers Were Valiant originally appeared in Everybody's Magazine (April and May 1919) with evocative illustrations by N. C. Wyeth and released as a book the same year. The setting is a whaling ship during the 1850s in the South Pacific, and is a pulpy melodrama concerning a conflict between two brothers over money, a woman and power. One brother is a rouge, the other upstanding. It wraps up neatly and quickly, though not believable, is a soothing balm from reality.

The story was subsequently made into three movies (1923, 1928, 1953). The 1923 silent starred Lon Chaney and is now lost, destroyed in an MGM fire in 1965. It was faithful to the book. It was remade in 1928 as Across to Singapore with changes to the plot but with the same character names and themes, starring Joan Crawford. It was remade again in 1953 in Technicolor starring Elizabeth Taylor's brother Robert (but not Elizabeth who declined a part). It's remarkable this was filmed three times. It's not that strong as a novel, but the 1953 film version is an improvement, smoothing over some rough spots.

A war between brothers is in both title and author. The title is derived from an epitaph to William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle (1593-1676) inscribed at Westminster Abby: "It was a noble family, for all the Brothers were Valiant, and all the Sisters virtuous" - he helped to finance the (English) Civil War. Williams was born in Mississippi a relative of Confederate General Longstreet, though Maine became his adopted home. His most serious work is a two volume multi-generational epic on the (American) Civil War, House Divided which he worked on up to his death. He was most popular during the 1920s with magazine short stories in the Saturday Evening Post, where he pushed boundaries on what was possible with the form.

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Love of Life and Other Stories

Jack London (1907)
March 2021
Audio Audible Prime

These are the first short stories by London I have read, and have to say, better than the novels. They are well structured, rewarding and feel flawless. According to some critics, the short story is London's natural genre.

The title story and one of his best known. It is based on a non-fiction piece by another author. London was accused on plagiarism but he said it was only the inspiration for the story. "A Day's Lodging" uses a trope (TVTropes: Battle Trophy) also found in the 2015 Pulitzer Prize play Between Riverside and Crazy where in both cases the protagonist is wronged, takes money from a couple as a bribe to stay quiet, humiliating the woman, then throws the money away regaining the moral high ground - eerily similar plot device. "Brown Dog" is often considered the other great story from this collection along with the title piece, it's pretty good, but a bit Lassie. The Indian stories are interesting as he attempts to show another POV of the world. My favorite stories are the three mentioned and "The Unexpected" for it's depiction of trauma.

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The Song of Roland

Anonymous (1040)
March 2021
Audio Audible Prime

The Song of Roland is the oldest surviving work of French literature, and the first chanson de geste, a genre of epic poetry that tells of heroic deeds, of which there are over 100 in existence. This was an influential work, not only on French but world literature. One of the more interesting aspects is how it came to be written - by one person, through word of mouth stories from the 8th century, as fanciful myth-making by 11th century bards, etc.. no one is really sure. It was meant to be performed to music in a culture where memorizing and recounting a 3 hour story was not unusual. I listened to a full-cast audiobook with sound effects. As a first experience this is fine and charming giving the spirit of the thing as audio entertainment.

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The Sound of My Own Voice: And Other Noises

Severn Darden (1961)
March 2021
Audio Internet Archive

LP comedy album from 1961 produced with Second City, the troupe that later influenced Saturday Night Live. It consists of 4 skits by Severn Darden (1929-1995) whom was a founding member of Second City. He was also an actor in Planet of the Apes movies [original] and partied with the Merry Pranksters during early acid tests. The skits are intellectual in character with the main skit being a clever faux lecture by a German professor on subject of The Universe because "there isnt anything else!" It's funny in parts with a few memorable lines, and most impressive when he begins to improv on audience call outs - we think of "comedy improv" today as a distinct genre, Darden was inventing its form. His NYT obit says the skit "influenced two generations of comic performers". You get a sense from the audience reactions how novel this was at the time. Freely available to listen at the Internet Archive.

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Otto of the Silver Hand

Howrd Pyle (1888)
March 2021
Audio Audible Prime

Otto of the Silver Hand has been classified as a milestone in children's literature being one of the first historical novels written for children by an American. As such it has been influential. It's also very well done, striking a balance between readability and invoking the period accurately. As an adult with some background in Medieval history, I found it a lot of fun and as a kid probably would have even more so.

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Typhoon

Joseph Conrad (1902)
March 2021
Audio P9

A novella informed by Conrad's own experiences with a real-life Captain McWhir (one "r"). It shows the historical switch to metal steamships, the crew are engineers, not sailors, and portrayed as brutes or soulless. The captain reflects his ship - a steely lack of imagination indifferent to the forces of nature - contrary to the romance of sail. The best part is the ending - there is none! At the climactic moment, time jumps back to port. It is up to you to fill in the blank. Post-modernism, or a failure of imagination? The steam ship has lost something of the heroic.

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Caesar and Cleopatra

George Bernard Shaw (1898)
March 2021
Audio P9

Review of two audio recordings: BBC 1980 and Caedmon 1965. The former is a studio production, and the later a recorded stage performance. The Caedmon performance is better due to a veteran stage production, and Claire Bloom as Cleopatra. This is a grand story that follows well known historical events including the affair between the title couple, the invasion of Alexandria, burning of the library, and some murders. It is Shakespearean. Checking the Wikipedia plot summary (tagged as "too long") one can see how much is in this under two-hour play. The intellectual themes Shaw is aiming for are now mostly dated. Enjoy as an entertaining if not a little dense retelling of historical events, it would have made a magnificent contemporary production with costume and sets.

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Last Man Off: A True Story of Disaster and Survival on the Antarctic Seas

Matt Lewis (2014)
March 2021
Audio P9

The best part of this book are the details about life aboard a tramp fishing boat in the Antarctic ocean ca. late 1990s. Most of the book is a memoir of a young man who shipped aboard to act as an observer of wildlife by-catch, he is outsider on the inside. Since you already know a disaster of some sort is going to happen, everything feels a bit sinister. The ship is poorly maintained, the people responsible behave with no care for anyone but themselves. You can feel it coming. When the disaster happens it reaches a pitch of horror when Lewis feels something biting his toe under the water. This is a first class disaster survival memoir but also fascinating look at the sketchy toothfish industry (never buy Chilean sea-bass) and hard lessons on leadership and empathy.

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The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramirez: The True Adventures of a Spanish American with 17th-Century Pirates

Fabio Lopez Lazaro (1690)
March 2021
Audio P9

This book contains a recent translation of the 1690 text The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez, and a multi-chapter academic discussion about the text. The later makes up the majority of the book's length. Historically, the text has been considered fiction, but the author makes a compelling case for the events being real, albeit with a lot of lying. Whatever the case, I found the story to be entertaining and the academic portion so specialized and detailed you would need preexisting interest - I skipped most of it. The 1690 story is worth it, being about life on a pirate ship. The translation is easy to read and can be read in an hour or two.

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Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX

Eric Berger (2021)
March 2021
Audio Audible

Liftoff is a much needed history of SpaceX that is not centered on Elon Musk. Each chapter highlights a key employee, and a time frame in the companies history. It's well done, reaching a narrative climax in 2008, thus the "Early Days" in the sub-title. It carries it forward to the present, but the core story ends with the first successful launch, by any measure pretty damned exciting for a number of reasons. Berger gives a good sense of working in a small scrappy startup with an uncertain future. It's based on original interviews with many of the people involved.

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Between Riverside and Crazy

Stephen Adly Guirgis (2015)
February 2021
Audio P9

Listened via the LA Theater Works production with John Cothran, Jr. performed for a lively audience.. rehashing the plot won't tell you much. Rather gain a new perspective on how it must be when everyone wants a piece of you and you can't trust anyone. This can happen to famous people, but also regular people unwittingly caught in the spotlight of public attention. It tests one's strength of character. Well done, many faceted and rewarding.

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Alone in the Fortress of the Bears: 70 Days Surviving Wilderness Alaska: Foraging, Fishing, Hunting

Bruce L. Nelson (2015)
February 2021
Audio Audible

Alone in the Fortress of the Bears is a self-published outdoor adventure book. Nelson is a retired smoke jumper who is going on various expeditions in the wilderness, such as boating the length of the Mississippi, walking the Pacific Crest Trail, etc... In this book he spends 70 days alone on the most densely bear-populated island in the USA, Admiralty Island in south-east Alaska. To make it more difficult he brings no food. This is rather risky, but he pulls it off with ease. It helps he brings modern equipment like a canning oven and Ball jars, inflatable boat and rifle. And Alaska is full of natural abundance: seafood of all varieties, deer, and many types of berries and editable vegetables. Still, he works every day to acquire the needed calories and much of the book can be read as a practical adventure guide. Nelson is personable and it feels like you are on a journey with a good friend. What it lacks in the art of literary introspection is made up with a visceral sense of being there, an arm-chair traveler. The descriptions of the natural geography, flora and fauna are very good. Nelson has also made documentaries of his trips, and he even narrated the audiobook versions and does a good job (author-read books can be hit or miss). Talented self-published authors are a treat to discover. Disclaimer: I purchased and read this out of curiosity and was not asked or required to write a review, disclaimer needed due to the many schemes for the promotion of self-published material.

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Cool Hand Luke: A Novel

Donn Pearce (1965)
February 2021
Audio P9

Surprisingly well written and transportive. Better than the movie as I vaguely recall a sort of psychological battle of wills as in The Sea Wolf. Pearce actually served on a Florida chain gang making it an anthropological study of the mid-century American southern red neck. The mirrored sunglasses worn by the boss (devil) is quite the trick. Pearce deserves more critical attention then he received (he died in 2017), ironically the film buried the book but it continues to be rediscovered. On release it sold 1,100 copies and was never a best seller but has become a slow burning cult-classic, recently adapted to a major West End theater production. Mark Hammer's 1991 audiobook performance is amazing.

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The Word for World is Forest

Ursula K. Le Guin (1972)
February 2021
Audio P9

Written in 1972 within the context of the Vietnam War, the Gung-ho military guys are stereotypical 1960s "baby killers", smoking dope, dropping napalm on forests from helicopters, shooting up villagers. Feels dated. Was curious about it as an ecological parable to see if it had anything original. The world itself is cool and exciting to think there might be places like it in reality, but yeah, I'm sure humans if they ever got there would consume everything, that is our nature. But so is conservation, leaves you wondering which will prevail.

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Henry Knox's Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Bookseller's Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution

William Hazelgrove (2020)
February 2021
Audio P9

Henry Knox's Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Bookseller's Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution

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Simon Girty: Wilderness Warrior

Edward Butts (2011)
February 2021
Audio Audible

A short but action-packed and historically accurate biography of a true Canadian hero and American turncoat. Girty makes an appearance in Allan W. Eckert's The Frontiersman among other works, this gives you his whole story. With the ragged head scar and red bandanna he must have cut a remarkable figure in real life, up there with Boone, Crockett and Simon Kenton. The late 18th century Ohio frontier was one of the more exciting places in history as Indians pushed off their lands further east move into the territory (eg. Delawares) while the French and British fought over it, and later the British and Americans, all forming a mix of alliances broken and remade, characterized by atrocities. It was wild. A few remarkable frontiersman survived long enough to become legends.

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1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated

Eric H. Cline (2021)
February 2021
Audio Audible

Review of 2021 Revised and Expanded Edition which is about 20% longer. Years ago I read Robert Drews book on this topic and he did a good job explaining the many theories and counter-theories (better than Cline on the historiography). Drews concluded it was caused by changes in warfare, chariot fighting came to end due to foot armies armed with iron weapons and armor ie. the transition from bronze to iron. Cline says this theory has critics though it has a logical beauty. Cline rather takes a generalist approach saying it was multi-causal and cites complexity theory and that we don't have enough information to conclude anything for certain or a singular reason. This is likely true. Complex societies fail in complex ways.

I found the book challenging, the first 70% is background as to what was happening for a couple generations proceeding the collapse. It really goes into the weeds of late Bronze Age international relations (Cline's area of specialty). I sort of took it as a oblique lesson. The final bits are pretty good as he starts talking about collapse, but felt the whole thing could have been easily done in a 50-page essay but was padded with extraneous stuff.

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A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South

Ben Montgomery (2021)
February 2021
Audio Audible

This is my third book by Ben Montgomery, he is becoming one of my favorite writers. He profiles ordinary people, a risky gambit, but the quality of his writing and the extraordinary events makes them forever memorable. They are unsung heroes who lived through difficult circumstances and succeeded in the end. Such is the case with George Dinning, a freed slave, who in 1899 had a run in with the "white caps" (Clan). It reads as a taught true crime thriller. It is also a reminder what life was like not long ago for the thousands of blacks shot, hanged and burned in the generations after the Civil War, and many others who got away and in some cases got the better of it. The book is transportative back to a time and place, well worth the visit.

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Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth

Avi Loeb (2021)
February 2021
Audio Audible

For someone who continually brings up the need for humility, Loeb is nothing by brazen in his polemic against the scientific establishment and what he characterizes as a "gamble" that alien technology is whizzing around our solar system. Just as we don't know who exactly built the Sphinx, resorting to aliens is not Occam's Razor. There are logical problems. Still, it's a fun read and he does have a point that if alien space trash is around, it is probably everywhere. A new direction for SETI research.

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The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

Carl Safina (2011)
January 2021
Audio P9

The View from Lazy Point (2011) is different from Safina's other works which have a sharp focus (animal intelligence, turtles, etc). This is a relaxed and open ended deep think in the form of connected essays, à la Michel de Montaigne. There is a broad theme human destruction of the natural world. He uses his personal experiences at his home on Long Island where he grew up fishing in the ocean. If there is a message it is take only enough and leave the rest. There is much wisdom, well told, it would reward multiple re-readings, at a slow pace. Safina (along with Barry Lopez) is among the great American naturalist writers.

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Captain James Cook

Alan Villiers (1967)
January 2021
Audio P9

Captain James Cook was published in 1967 by an author born in 1903. Alan Villiers might be called one of the last great sailing ship seamen. It is hard to separate the book from Villiers because while a biography of James Cook, it is also an in-depth experience of full-rigged sailing ships through the eyes of a great sailor. Villiers crewed on some of the last full-rigged working sailing ships in the 1920s (they lasted that long because they were cheaper than coal ships for some uses). He then bought his own and trained sailors. He went all over the world. He is a poetic writers who wrote for National Geographic among others. He was famous by the 1950s and wrote a couple dozen books. This biography of Cook may be his masterpiece, though I suspect there are some more hidden treasures to be uncovered.

His writing reminds me of Joseph Mitchell ("Up in the Old Hotel"). Energetic vocabulary and description that leaves one bewildered and in awe. The sort of thing you might read for a lifetime with profit, this is a book to learn from. And it transports back to another age. Villiers is from another age, he was in the 20th century but solidly in the stream of 18th century maritime life. Perhaps the perfect person to write about Cook, whom he unabashedly admires, understanding the challenges he faced and overcame. The book is not perfect, the first sections are not so good and it's probably not the best to get all the facts on Cook, though it is essential to experiencing life on the sea. Nevertheless the core of the book, the three journeys, are well worth a rediscovery.

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Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World

Andrea Pitzer (2021)
January 2021
Audio Audible

Before reading Icebound, I was so confused about William Barents I thought he was of Bering Strait. Wrong. This is "Barents" from the Netherlands who explored the Arctic in the 1590s (!) - not far from the Middle Ages. Barents was one of the first to attempt a northeast passage from Europe to China through the Arctic. Of course such a journey with primitive equipment and knowledge was doomed, retold in glorious detail by Pitzer, but Barents and his crew were arguably the first "modern" polar explorers. Before the Arctic was unknown. After, the Arctic was a destination unto itself. Every polar expedition since traces back to Barents. When they returned home and wrote a best selling book, there was popular hunger for more. Centuries further exploration followed culminating in the golden age in the late 19th and early 20th century. Essential reading for polar literature fans, and 16th century European history.

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Betrayal at Little Gibraltar: A German Fortress, a Treacherous American General, and the Battle to End World War I

William Walker (2016)
January 2021
Audio P9

Books about War World I inevitably tends toward lessons about grossly incompetent leadership. This story is set in the last year of the war and involves an American unit that was scapegoated by a few senior commanders in order to advance their careers, at the cost of thousands of lives. It's the fate of the war in miniature. Walker uncovered the scandal in the archives and has brought it to full light for the first time. There are quite a few moving parts, people of various ranks, units of different sizes, various places of battle. This is not a problem if you own the book as there are useful pictures, maps, charts as guides. However for an audiobook it is easy to become lost, despite having on of the best narrators around Robertson Dean, it helps to have a copy of the book on hand.

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Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

Rick Perlstein (2001)
January 2021
Audio P9

Before the Storm describes the beginnings of the modern Republican/Democratic split. For example in 1960, Vermont went Republican which seems laughably impossible these days. In 1964 it went Democrat for the first time and has not looked back since. Other states similarly lined up to how we recognize them today. What happened? Barry Goldwater, an ultra-conservative, re-arranged politics along the southern strategy which was primarily concerned with civil rights and the ideology of communism versus capitalism ("freedom"). At the same time, as blue collar jobs were replaced with white collar and increased prosperity, politics shifted from what can be done to make life better, to fear of things getting worse, keeping what you have. Thus civil rights and communism were the perfect bogymen to strike fear in the hearts of voters to create a new political force to challenge the existing order. It would take 20 years, and four books by Perlstein to describe the ultimate triumph of Regan and the insanity we have lived with since, culminating most recently with the storming of the US Capitol in 2021. So long as people buy into the fantasies of self-sufficiency and fear mongering, there will be a misinformed, paranoid and angry base of Americans to contend with.