Richard

The Lives of the Highly Trained.

Revisado: 10-22-18

SAS are some of the most effective (read you do not want to mess with any of them), military in the world. Other reviewers have mentioned that much of this book is about the people who survived the hard and harsh SAS training and how it informed their lives both in and out of the service. I found all aspects fascinating. The part about these Australian warriors trying to train others to fight and survive is actually funny. I am glad to know that these people are smart as well as hard and make great lives both in and out of a really vital service to their country.

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Why how power is acquired and how it is used

Revisado: 05-11-17

This time Robert Caro does his usual excellent job of writing, but not to explain how other people think and work, but why he has chosen to do the work he has essentially given his life to. No one can summarize his work as well as Caro has. I certainly will not try. But I will say I have read his two books on LBJ and am now anxious to read his book about the power broker Robert Moses, as well his third LBJ book.

His work is better than fiction. To use a familiar phrase, you can't make this stuff up.

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Government by Invitation

Revisado: 12-01-15

This is in fact a well written, well researched book about how a not very large group of people, who influenced each other, including sitting politicians, and the people who read their articles and essays in respected magazines, and newspapers such as the Washington Post and Newsweek. If people were not invited to the select Sunday suppers, large cocktail parties, then then they did not get the big "scoop", or the hint as to what the American voter is thinking.

It is a bit unsettling that some of these people such as Joe Alsop, who is really fascinating, and very articulate, helped to steer United States into some of the policies that we as a country are still dealing with today, such as Vietnam, and the middle east. Or at least he thought he did. He had the ear of both Kennedy and Johnson, so maybe so. His war reporting from Vietnam is almost funny. But at the time it was published, it was taken with great seriousness and influence.

Listening to the book it is difficult to tell at this time who was using whom, politicians or journalist. The Sunday dinners, cocktail parties, etc. where Big Ideas were discussed and to which only the select were invited is fascinating. Oddly enough Ben Bradley who became editor of the Washington Post is not described as having the best invitation of them all, frequent dinners at the Kennedy White House. His book about that is fascinating.

As combative as things are in Washington now, and as dangerous as the world is now, it is just as well these are not the people dealing with it. Except for Mrs. Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post during the Kennedy and Nixon Administrations. The lady may well be a national treasure.

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Lady Bird & btw Lyndon

Revisado: 11-27-15

This is an excellent double biography. It in no way takes the place of Robert Caro's masterpiece, but it does give us LBJ's mother's background and influence as well as his failed politician father's.

But Lady Bird's (aka Claudia) Johnson's childhood and parents are the stuff of novels. Her brothers older than she, were reared for the most part in boarding school, and to a lesser degree so was she. I think the most dramatic example I can give of her parenting as a young child is that after her Mother's death, her Dad put her on a train in Texas to visit her relatives in Alabama, her mother's wealthy ones, and his own less prosperous family. Her only companion on the trip was a sign that said please "Deliver this Child..."

Children with this background often do not do well. But Lady Bird, grew strong, smart, and charming. She dealt with her over powering father and to a degree his series of new wives.
At thirteen when there was no one to take her to school, her Dad bought her a car and she drove herself, she could balance a checking account and read accounting files before she graduated high school. And although her husband looked to be verbally abusive, she always maintained she let it flow around her, and yet she was always totally devoted to him.

This is a truly interesting look at a fascinating woman. There is not much new on LBJ, but it is well worth a look at his life in the light of his wife and daughters.

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The Aeronauts

Revisado: 09-30-15

If this were not such a trusted author, I am not sure I would have continued after the first few chapters. We are begin with a character who is brilliant, but bored and in order to get what she wants, which is to join the Guard, she is willing to blast her way out of her mother's drawing room. Her Mother tells her house guards that her opposition to her daughter's leaving is really manipulative. Because the daughter only does things she thinks other people do not want her to do, the Mother is only pretending to oppose her. HUH? So what military unit would accept a spoiled brat, where is the wind ship Captain?

But this is Jim Butcher and yes, his characters grow and learn. And the reader is delighted to be with them. The characters and their story lines are woven together so skillfully that by the end of the book, which by the way is non stop action, we not only know them well, but are invested in them. When the book ends we miss them. Jim Butcher just gets better.

I am not sure why the narrator read this book as if he were quietly teaching a course in Victorian literature at one of the British Universities. I think the publishers, really should rethink the direction given to this reader. The choice of voice used here would be great for Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, even Bram Stoker. But the people in this book are warriors.

Euan Morton is a skilled narrator. I listened to his early work, in which he did a credible American soldier's accent, and seamlessly went into an SAS operative, along with family members of these two men. So in spite of the skills he brought to this book, the Publishers chose the most low key academic voice, even during a deadly battle of wind ships, hand to hand combat, and Pub brawls.

And still this is a great book. It is well worth the time spent listening to it.

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Perfect story arc for the whole series

Revisado: 08-04-15

I can think of only one other series which develops the overall story without once tripping over earlier plot lines, and this series is flawless. While waiting for this book I listened to all seven of the early ones from the beginning. And wow, do these authors nail it.

Not only does the story arc keep climbing over all eight books without a stutter, the characters grow and change from book one to book eight, and still remain remain consistent. Goodness, many authors can't keep their characters within their original personalities within one book, much less eight.

In the early books we learn that Curan formed the Atlanta pack of different shape shifters because as a youngster his family was torn apart by a band of loupes, shape shifters who have gone crazy. He wanted his future family protected. The Pack repaid his work by not fully accepting his human wife, (well they kept challenging her to duels to the death for leadership of the Pack while he was in a coma, so that's less than accepting). So leaving the Pack that he spent years forming and supporting was not a deal breaker to keep both it and Kate safe from a great Evil. Doesn't mean it wasn't hard. Curan may not have the title of Beast Lord, but it is more than a title it is what he is, and leaving left a hole. The man is Bored.

Thank goodness his wife's problems are quite interesting. Being a mercenary and skilled swords woman, she has mad job skills. Her former employers the Mercenary Guild are willing, if not happy, to hire them both. Even the Lion of Atlanta, and the daughter of Evil (she does not take after her father) have bills to pay. And moving to suburbia has pitfalls of its own.

As usual Renee Raudman goes from an intelligent strong female character, to a growly male Curan, to an even more growly Jim, so smoothly that the listener is not jarred once.

Needless to say I love this series and these characters who are strong enough to have equally strong friends.

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Not exactly new

Revisado: 07-26-15

I suppose the American voter has to be reminded that nothing has changed. The author/narrator seems shocked and saddened that the politicians are not to be trusted. Except of course we get it. Perhaps a bit of history included in his remarkable education would be helpful. Nixon is still within living memory. The people who followed him are just as interesting. Except maybe Carter, and although he is acknowledged as a good person he is not remembered as a strong President. Perhaps its not them, its us.

As smart as this author is perhaps he could suggest some remedies. We get that the people running for office are defining issues in their favor. We get that today's party politics are a better machine than anytime in history. So don't whine, without at least offering a fix.

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Criticize published tweets...repeat

Revisado: 06-27-15

I have to agree with the last reviewer. For someone who has such contempt for the tweets of others, he certainly spent hours and hours reading them. He even put them into groups but even these were distinctions without differences. I think I was expecting some insight resulting from the amount of time spent reading and copying these things. But all this book does is copy the tweet, point to the obvious, copy the next tweet point to the obvious for page after page.

I understand that this is a matter of not managing my own expectations. I was hoping for insight. As polished as the author/narrator is, I think even he was becoming bored by the end.

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Do not expect the Iron Druid or Harry Dresden...

Revisado: 03-29-15

I bought this because one reviewer stated that if a listener likes this list of (novels I love) from Mercy Thompson to the Iron Druid to the great Harry Dresden, that this book is like those books. Hmmm, not really. It is good. Some of the plot points here parallel some of the plot points in those books. But there is a cheerful acknowledgment of the bad guys, and a sense of "bring it" I can handle you in this group of books, that is not in Fated. Fated has a sort of world weary acknowledgment that the bad guys, dark mages, etc. are out there, and ok, I have to clean up this mess one more time, that creates a different atmosphere here, less energetic than the books above, but still good. This just does not have the same atmosphere as the books to which it has been compared. The humor is there, just much lower key, and a bit gray.

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History on a Very Personal Level

Revisado: 10-14-14

This book is not only a very good review of some of the most turbulent eras in United States history, it is told from the view of someone both intelligent and honorable. This is not just the personal view of his biographer, but a view found in the written words of those he worked for and with. From the Civil War to the Spanish American War and beyond this man worked for the best interest of the United States as he saw it. He was not perfect, he held the views of his education and his friends including Henry Adams, (yes he of the acerbic Adams clan). This man lost a personal friend at the Battle of Gettysburg, and still was horrified decades later at the thousands dead in a battle which occurred outside of the borders of the United States. Following Hays life gives a personal view of some of the most formative times in American history.

This book actually gave me an understanding of some actions the American government took in the early nineteen hundreds that are still have reverberations all these decades later. It begins slowly like most biographies, but give it time, it is well worth it.

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