Underporch

Provides much-needed context

Revisado: 10-01-23

Heather Cox Richardson is a first class historian/communicator. This is the second of her books that I have read and it was well worth the time. Some of it was recent events (though even those details fade fast in our 24/7 news cycle) but the real value is her dives into our history, always providing context. There is much caution, but real hope here. To paraphrase Franklin, we have a republic, if we can keep it. Here we are reminded that the self-interested forces arrayed against it have always been powerful, but not invincible.

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A Blast From the Past

Revisado: 07-10-22

I don't always like full-cast and surround-sound productions but this one really captures the soundscape of the late 60s along with solid vocal impersonations. Space 1969 answers the questions: what if Kennedy had been just a little damaged in Dallas, NIxon had retired from politics, still bitter about Nov. '60 (that's not muttering, it's him "narrating"), and you REALLY could use that Pan-Am spaceflight reservation you made in '68? Oh, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis got back together (albeit briefly), the Beverly Hillbillies filmed A Very Special Episode on the US space station, and the nation committed itself, before the decade was out, to having a Shakey's Pizza franchise on the moon.

The plot is really an after-thought, though it zips along fast enough to conceal its weaknesses. It's the way Oakley recreates a past that never happened that earns the fifth overall star from me

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Filling in a gap in 20th century history

Revisado: 01-13-22

For me there was always a gap between the Germany described by William Shirer, and the modern German democracy I grew up hearing about. Jahner's book picks up the narrative where Cornelius Ryan's "The Last Battle" leaves off. His chapters are essays, each tackling a separate issue, beginning with the question "when does a war end?"--it's a liminal process, not a moment, though the completeness of the final surrender seemed to surprise everyone.

The essay approach gives the reader a wide sampling of events and trends in that transformative decade without an overload of names and dates (it is, as the subtitle indicates, a social history). Jahner addresses everything from removing rubble, to the role of the black market, to the relative roles of women and men after the war, to changes in tastes and attitudes towards art. He also addresses the ways in which denazification did and didn't work, and the utter failure of early attempts (when there were attempts made at all) to acknowledge the Holocaust.

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Lots of quick bites make for a decent plateful

Revisado: 10-24-21

This is a series of good, tight essays on cosmology, with an emphasis on the history and people involved in making the discoveries of the past century or two. The author is a science communicator and it shows. She gets the stories across and maintains the reader's interest. Also she doesn't neglect the women involved (and there were plenty, mostly having to fight for a seat at the telescope, literally). This is the perfect read when you need shorter, self-contained pieces.

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Good book, GREAT narration

Revisado: 10-24-21

I'd give this one a straight five stars except that the ending seemed both a little too deux ex machina and yet unresolved, all at the same time. The set up was really good, though, and narrator Vikas Adam--what can I say? He nailed it, with an exceedingly tough task; the POV character being a plush tiger AI nanny, and the other main character an 8-year-old boy (not to mention a slew of other characters, adults, kids, male, female and AI). In Adam's hands (or voice) the dialogue flows smoothly from character to character. You stop realizing you are being read to by a single individual.
There is plenty to think about in this tale, everything from The Ship of Theseus to free will vs. predestination (all with an AI spin) balanced with a lot of action. I only wish Cargill hadn't brought to to such a hasty conclusion. This one had legs.

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The Titanic in context

Revisado: 05-16-21

The author takes a long running start at the events of April 15, 1912, setting the stage with an abundance of information about (almost entirely) select first class passengers' lives up to that point. Some may find this slow going, but I found it engaging.

If you are not a Titanic obsessive, it may help to take one of the virtual Titanic tours on YouTube before getting to the sailing itself. I found it helpful to visualizing who was where and what happened.

The suggestion that the author would tie the Titanic's sinking to social changes at the close of the Edwardian Era--I found that an oversell. The book worked better as a set of character studies, combined with a really detailed look at some of the common misconceptions: Ismay's perfidity, the relative survival rates of different demographic groups, and even the conspiracy theory that the Titanic had been swapped out for her previously-damaged sister ship.

I only take issue with one of the author's conclusions: that more lifeboats would not have saved more lives. No, it wasn't possible to launch all the existing lifeboats in the time between the iceberg's impact and the sinking, but part of what made the loading and launching of the boats take so long was the anxiety of the captain and officers not to cause panic, which in turn made the passengers initially so unconcerned that they were reluctant to proceed to the boats. Surely the awareness on the part of the Titanic's crew that the lifeboats were inadequate contributed to their actions and indirectly to the passenger's laggardness.

Russell's character studies are revealing. It might be partly authorial choice, but there is the repeated impression that people face crisis much as they deal with everyday events. Selfishness and self-sacrifice are both honed over a lifetime of decisions and actions.

This is a book that stayed with me after I read it. It is a compelling subject and treated here with meticulous attention to primary sources.

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Math free and utterly charming

Revisado: 05-16-21

If you find math to be the stumbling block that prevents your full appreciation of cutting edge cosmology, look no further. Enter Galfard's universe (or multiverse) and be charmed. In a series of dream-like sequences you find yourself transported, shrunk, and given a ringside seat to everything from gravity fields, to quantum phenomena to, yup--those hard-to-imagine strings from string theory. Some of it is still inconceivable (and utterly counterintuitive) but you won't find another book about modern physics that accomplishes so much, with so little math--and ALL in the second person.

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Scalzi + Wheaton = fun

Revisado: 05-16-21

Really, I don't even have to read the book summary anymore to know that anything written by Scalzi and read by Wheaton will be a rollicking good time with improbable twists and a satisfying outcome. If you are annoyed by Scalzi's perpetual use of "he said (she said)" dialogue tags--it's a stylistic thing. Indeed, the opposite tendency (where authors go to absurd lengths to avoid "said" in their tags) bothers me much more. Really, it's only noticeable because he tends toward fast and snappy patter. What's more of an annoyance to me is that his main characters happen to have just the right skill sets to deal with whatever near-impossible task confronts them, but I forgive them because it's just so satisfying when the underdogs pull it all off. So, five stars to this bit of technofluff, with its nods to Philip Dick, Matt Ruff and, heaven help us, Ron Hubbard.

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Good intro to a series

Revisado: 05-14-21

I am always looking for a new historical mystery series. This one piqued my interest and I am glad I gave it a listen. The author starts things off with a bang--a action sequence that reminded me of William Leonard Marshall (of "Yellowthread Street" and "The New York Detective"). But Faye balances forward momentum with backstory and character development, so this feels like a solid foundation for a series. There's just enough Flash slang to set the mood. The period quotes at the start of each chapter are appropriately jarring. This was the era of the Know Nothings, and we forget that even before that was a long dark history of Guy Fawks parades in colonial NY, so absolutely nothing should come as a surprise (no, not even the behavior of one of the female characters--read "City of Eros"). I liked the nod to realism in there being no black and white ending--with both plenty of guilt to go around (and an uneven distribution of punishment).

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an interesting look at where a writer comes from

Revisado: 05-14-21

Okay, I partly liked this because Swanson delves deep into where his love for his subject (Lincoln, and particularly Lincoln's assassination) originated. I grew up near Chicago, and settled on the northwest side. Just finding out how Lincoln's death bed ended up at the Chicago Historical Society's museum made this worth the listen. One take-away from this book for me was realizing how important it is to treat a kid's interests with respect and how valuable it can be for adults to encourage those interests.

Lincoln's death was a critical turning point for our country, not only as the first presidential assassination, but (as an event fraught with Good Friday symbolism) possibly the blood sacrifice that delivered the ratification of the 13th amendment, and the passage of the 14th). As such a pivotal event it is worthy of an obsessive level of attention from a historian, and it's a bonus when that historian is also a compelling writer.

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