A Return to Abundance, Book 1: Money and happiness, abundance and prosperity, money and the unconscious mind: a mythological, psychological, historical, and family of origin look at money & its power

I have a shameful secret. Despite 25 years working in the financial industry, I can’t handle money. I live paycheck to paycheck like many Americans. I have mortgage and credit card debt like many Americans. Unlike many Americans, I know that I shouldn’t be living this way. I know the correct way to spend and save my money yet somehow I am unable to put any of my knowledge into practice.

Paul Gubany offers a way out of this situation. He claims that people like me suffer from an unhealthy relationship with money. He claims that he can help us to “see” this unhealthy relationship and then change it to a healthy relationship.

I think not.

All he is offering is a bunch of psychobabble based on wrong information and twisted interpretations of western philosophy.

For instance, explaining the origins of money he says “around the time prehistoric peoples advanced from hunter-gatherers to farmers living together in villages of approximately one hundred or so, the symbolic faculty of the brain emerged.” It is a well-known fact that Neanderthals had “symbolic faculties” while living in caves, not villages. Ditto our own human ancestors who also lived in caves.

He claims that money “defeated” feudalism. Feudalism was “defeated” by bubonic plague, knowledge brought from the Near East by returning crusaders and the spread of that knowledge thanks to the invention of the printing press.

I could go on and on.

He cites Karl Marx over and over in support of his (Gubany) theories on money and consumption. He seems oblivious to the fact that Marx’s theories were disproven decades ago. Also according to Gubany, those of us who thought Carl Jung wrote about psychology and religion were completely wrong. In Gubany’s world, Jung actually was writing about money.

What Gubany really is writing about are his own issues with money. He also has some serious issues with his mother. He erroneously assumes that the rest of us suffer from identical complexes.

I am just as appalled as anyone else when extremists burn books, but I have finally found an exception. This book is not just an extreme exercise in narcissism but it is also dangerous. People with no knowledge of psychology, philosophy or history who read this book and believe the “facts” as presented in this book will be seriously misled, not helped.

Review copy courtesy of the author

Elder Abuse: A Family Guide

Most of us will eventually be responsible for moving an elderly relative into a nursing home or ourselves become a patient in a nursing home. These are wrenching decisions and enormous lifestyle changes, yet how much do any of us know about nursing homes?

Thankfully there is now a source of information as well as guidance on where to find information about this vital topic. Inspired by her mother’s death which was hastened by a brutal beating in a nursing home, Diane Sandell has compiled a much-needed guide to nursing homes and nursing home care.

This thorough guide offers advice on caring for the elderly in your home, how to make the decision to move to a nursing home, what to look for and what questions to ask when looking for a nursing home and most importantly, how to monitor the care that patients receive, how to advocate for them if their needs are not being met and what to do if you suspect that your elderly loved one is being abused.

Just that information alone is invaluable, but Ms. Sandell doesn’t stop there. She offers guidance on how you can form a task force to work with your legislator(s) to pass laws regulating nursing homes and enforcing existing regulations.

Ms. Sandell writes in an engaging style, rendering complex situations and laws understandable to anyone going through these difficult circumstances. Most importantly, she stresses that you are not alone. Many people are going through the same thing or have gone through it in the past. She points out the importance of caring for the caregivers, of reaching out to others for help or just a shoulder to lean on.

This is an invaluable guide to a stage of life that all us will be facing, either ourselves or our loved ones.

Review copy courtesy of QED Press

Morning Miracle: Inside The Washington Post: A Great Newspaper Fights For Its Life

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book. Although not a reader of The Washington Post, I am well aware of the reputation of this great periodical and the legends who work there, both past and present. How is it faring in an era when newsprint is being steadily replaced by websites and blogs? How is it changing to meet these challenges?

Author Dave Kindred first takes us through the early years of The Post. And that is where he lost me. His sketches of people and events seemed, well, sketchy as if whole chunks of time and information were being left out. Was he assuming a lot of knowledge on the part of his readers, knowledge that I didn’t have, or was he writing for insiders, professional newspapermen and women who don’t need a lot of details or groundwork to understand how The Post became a world-class institution?

Then he switched gears. In an effort to illustrate the changes at The Post, he gives us detailed bios of some of its great reporters and the stories that made them famous, stories that could not be published in today’s environment. At least I think that’s what he was trying to convey. There was so much information about the reporters and so little information about the newspaper that I had to keep checking the bookcover to reassure myself that the title was Morning Miracle: Inside The Washington Post and not Morning Miracle: Reporters Whose Work I Admire.

Thrown into the mix at seemingly random intervals are tidbits about The Post website; how it came to exist, how it has changed, and who has worked on it. While he notes that the revenue stream has grown over the years, he does not go into any detail of how this occurred or future plans to grow this revenue.

Kindred ends his story with the election night coverage in the newsroom of Obama’s historic election. What that has to do with the negative revenues at The Post and the minimum profits of its website, is left up to the reader.

This book is more than a disappointment. The stories between the covers have nothing to do with the title on the front. It can’t even be called a very rough first draft. It doesn’t hold together at all. It appears to be parts of several different books thrown together with the only unifying theme that they are all about The Washington Post.

Somebody call rewrite.

Review copy courtesy of Doubleday Publishing

Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century

One of the reasons a lot of people give for not reading books on history is that they are not relevant to their lives. I have to agree with them that most history books are boring recitations of dates, wars, treaties and the important figures of those eras accompanied by dry analyses. It is difficult to imagine what life would have been like for ordinary people during those times.

John Paul Godges offers a different take on history. He writes about 20th century history from the point of view of his family’s history. Starting with his maternal grandparents’ experience immigrating from Italy through his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party, he illustrates the important events of the previous century.

Suddenly, history becomes relevant. Thanks to the Godges family, readers experience vicariously the major events of the 20th century and how they impacted the lives of ordinary people. Instead of the “immigrants came to America seeking a better life”, we are treated to stories of what life was like in Europe and what “a better life” actually meant once people arrived here. Likewise, the turbulence of the 1960’s had different effects on different people as illustrated by lives of different members of the family.

I learned a lot about the immigrant experience from this book. I hadn’t realized that some immigrants came here only temporarily to make money and then return home or that sometimes they went back and forth a few times before settling down. I was also surprised to learn how readily they helped each other with loans of money.

Ending a story such as that of the Godges family is always difficult. The author chose the celebration of his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary which is a logical endpoint but I felt that he lost focus in this chapter. All the preceding chapters in the book followed the lives of the family members along side the events of the 20th century. In his final chapter, Godges chose to get very personal and talk about the dynamics of his family. It would have been more consistent and more satisfying for the reader if he had used the anniversary party as an opportunity to look ahead to the next generation and talk about the differences and similarities between their lives and the lives of those who had gone before them.

Review copy courtesy of the author

The Dangerous Otto Katz: The Many Lives of a Soviet Spy

Although born a Baby Boomer, I was raised by parents for whom WWII was the defining event in their lives. Every year on December 7, my mother sent me off to school with the admonishment to remember that it was Pearl Harbor Day. My family watched every movie ever made about the war and all of the television series set during the war.

The Cold War with its accompanying Duck and Cover Drills defined my life. Signs in public buildings directing visitors to fallout shelters were ubiquitous. NATO stood guard in Europe. A war was being fought in Viet Nam to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia. I read long and deeply trying to understand the how and why of the Communist threat that hung like a malevolent cloud over my life.

When I picked up this book, my first thought was “Otto who?” I thought that I knew just about everything about the political threats of the first half of the Twentieth Century. The reason I had never heard of Otto Katz is that he was so successful as a spy, few people ever knew his real name. Born in 1895 to a wealthy Czech family, he was a lazy playboy and a “useless” soldier during WWI. After the war, he drifted to Berlin joining the art scene and becoming a true believer in Socialism.

It was his wealthy background and artistic contacts that made him such a successful spy and fundraiser for the Russians. He travelled the world using different names and passports making him difficult to track by Western intelligence agencies. He spent time in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, in Hollywood amongst German expatriates such as Marlene Dietrich and the director Fritz Lang, and in Mexico City where Germans who had fled Hitler’s Germany had settled.

In the end, it was his cosmopolitanism that did him in. In Stalin’s paranoid mind, anyone who had spent significant amounts of time outside of the Eastern Bloc was suspected of having been turned by Western intelligence agencies. The fact that Katz was a Jew sealed his fate. He was tried and executed in 1952.

Author Jonathan Miles does a good job of tracing Katz’s complex life. The book is rich in detail about Katz’s life up to the beginning of WWII. After that point, the narrative becomes less detailed and more hurried as if Miles is impatient to get to the end of his story. Katz’s trial, execution and rehabilitation a decade later are given short shrift. I wish that Miles had taken more time and given more weight to the last decade of Katz’s life. It was an important period not just in his life, but also in world history. WWII shaped the political landscape of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Katz was an important participant and deserves a full treatment of his entire life, not just part of his life.


Review copy courtesy of Bloomsbury USA

Just Enough Jeeves

If you have never read anything by P.G. Wodehouse, this book is an excellent place to start. It contains two novels and a collection of short stories, all featuring Bertie Wooster and his omniscient manservant, Jeeves. The stories collected here span most of Wodehouse’s career, from among the first Jeeves stories to the last.

One drawback to reading an anthology like this is that it is much like watching a House marathon on television. The plotlines are all the same. In House’s case, the first 15 minutes are devoted to the setup, introducing the new patient, his/her misdiagnosis and the friends and family surrounding him/her. The next forty minutes see House and his team pursue various clues while making wildly wrong diagnoses until in the final ten minutes House has an epiphany and comes up with the correct diagnosis. The fun, of course, is in the byplay between the characters and like any good mystery, guessing which are the real clues and which are the red herrings.

Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories are much the same. Each story starts out with Bertie and his friends and relatives faced with a seemingly insurmountable personal situation, which after much drama is neatly solved by Jeeves. The fun in these stories is the dry, English humor and guessing what solution Jeeves will come up with. “Drama” is relative. Like Seinfeld, these stories are about “nothing”. Nothing important (to anyone but the rich, selfish characters) ever happens. No one ever dies or is seriously hurt. Yet to the characters in the stories, the situations in which they find themselves, are of vital importance. Only Jeeves can save them.

All the stories are told from Bertie’s point of view. We are never privileged to enter into Jeeves character or thinking other than to hear his explanations of the solutions he comes up with to solve the dilemmas of the idle rich. His simple but effective answers to their seemingly insurmountable problems, offers him an opportunity to comment on their ignorance without actually calling them morons. Bertie and his friends and family remain blissfully unaware that he is mocking them.

Review copy courtesy of W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.

Cleopatra: A Life

The reviews of this book present an interesting dichotomy. Scholarly reviewers rave about author Stacy Schiff’s ability to flesh out the life and times of a queen about whom very little is known. Other reviewers complain that there is very little about Cleopatra herself in the book. Although not a professional historian, I am firmly in the camp with those who stand in awe of this recreation of an extraordinary woman.

History is written by the victors. As Schiff points out, in Cleopatra’s time they were men, Romans whose culture did not allow for powerful women or female rulers. In their eyes, she was the enemy who had seduced Caesar and Mark Antony, bent them to her will and contributed to their destruction. Subsequent authors through the ages, accepted this interpretation of her and embroidered on it.

In this book, Cleopatra’s life is placed in the context of both the Egyptian culture that she ruled and the Alexandrian culture of the ruling class (her ancestors were Macedonians who had conquered Egypt). Both of these cultures allowed for a woman ruler, unlike many other ancient cultures. To the Egyptians, she was a goddess, the incarnation of Isis.

Both cultures allowed her to rule without a husband unlike many future European queens who were forced to make the difficult choice of remaining single like Elizabeth I of England or choosing a husband who either alienated her subjects like Prince Philip of Spain, the husband of Elizabeth’s half-sister Mary, or cost her her throne like Lord Darnley, the husband of Mary Stewart of Scotland.

Her world is brought to life in this enchanting book. One can almost smell and feel the humid, spice laden air of Alexandria and the chill of the Roman hills. The colors, the pageantry, the rites and the people come alive.

It’s been more than thirty years since I last took an ancient history course but the author provides plenty of background information on each country and personage who was a part of Cleopatra’s life. I was able to follow along with no problem.

Unlike the heavy, ponderous style of male biographers, Schiff’s writing style is peculiarly suited to her subject. Her light feminine style provides the perfect voice for a smart, fearless, feminine queen.

Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans

The title of this book, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans is a bit off-putting. Reading it, I mentally prepared myself for a diatribe written by a disgruntled low-level employee out to get his pound of flesh. We all know that health insurance companies are in the habit of denying coverage and raising premiums, occasionally exorbitantly, but they aren’t all that bad, right? Surely not as bad as the Wall Street firms that first took away our retirement savings and then our jobs.

I worked in the financial industry for 25 years. Nothing I saw there was as heinous as what is revealed in this book. Put simply, Wall Street may take away people’s money, but health insurance companies take away people’s lives.

Author Wendell Potter was an insurance company executive, heading up a PR department. For years, he participated in the shameless pursuit of profits over lives until he finally came face to face with the effects on real people of what he was doing. Visiting a clinic set up on a fair ground offering free health care to those who had no insurance and no means to pay for health care, he saw ordinary hardworking people reduced to being treated in animal stalls.

He has written about his experience in the health insurance industry, as well as his epiphany, in a straightforward manner, making it more powerful than if he had penned an hysterical screed. He takes us, step by step through the changes in the health insurance industry from a privately held companies offering true health insurance to the modern publicly owned companies whose focus is on profits rather than health.

The lengths to which health insurers go and the collusions in which they participate are extraordinary. They routinely deny coverage to people who need it and drop coverage of people who become ill. They hire outside PR firms who form bogus grassroots groups who lobby in favor of health insurers. They provide statistics to back up all of their false claims that any kind of healthcare reform is bad.

Potter devotes an entire chapter to revealing how health insurers torpedoed Healthcare Reform using all of the dirty tricks he had discussed in previous chapters. The reason we have no public option is because it would put the health insurance industry out of business prompting them to wage all-out war against it.

It took the death of a child who was denied a liver transplant to convince Potter to leave his job with CIGNA. He devotes his time now to healthcare reform advocacy and as a health insurance critic. He testified during the healthcare reform debates, but obviously not enough people listened to him.

In my opinion, this book should be required reading for every member of Congress. They need to know how they have been bribed and manipulated by the health insurers to do what’s best for the health insurance industry instead of what is best for the people who elected them to office.

Review copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Press

Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen

I was so excited when this book arrived from Amazon.com. I couldn’t wait to dive into it. After all, it promised a brand new view of Elizabeth I, “…portrayed here as the product of women….” The reader is assured that it is “…a thrilling new angle by the brilliant young historian Tracy Borman.” The author herself guarantees that she has “…focused the story upon those women who help to reveal Elizabeth the woman, as well as Elizabeth the Queen.” 418 pages later, I am still waiting for a revelation.


This book is only interesting to readers who know little or nothing about Elizabeth I. For the rest of us, it is just a tiresome rehashing of all the familiar stories. Elizabeth’s relationships with her half-sister, Mary and Mary, Queen of Scots. Her ladies in waiting, both those who served her selflessly and those who “betrayed” her with secret pregnancies and secret marriages, usually in that order.

There are no new insights into any of these women, their lives nor their influence on Elizabeth. The only original thinking in the book is a few brief pages on Elizabeth’s similarity to her mother, Anne Boleyn. Most biographers point out her similarities to her father, Henry VIII. This biographer looks at her resemblance to her mother both in looks and personality and how she used both to manipulate the men around her, again like her mother.

This single original thought could have fit comfortably into an article or academic paper. There was no reason to write a book.

George Eliot in Love

Many years ago when I first became aware of George Eliot as a Victorian woman who openly lived with a man without benefit of marriage, I eagerly sought out her novels thinking they would be as scandalous as her life. Imagine my disappointment upon discovering that the books were conventional Victorian novels, no different from the books of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope or Henry James, all of whom she knew and with whom she socialized.

The mystery of how a woman who flouted Victorian conventions while writing stories observing those conventions has finally been solved for me by Brenda Maddox’s excellent biography, George Eliot in Love. This small volume, which the author calls a "…short life of the great Victorian author…." is a sympathetic treatment of Eliot’s life and career.

It is in some ways, a typical Victorian love story. A woman, Mary Anne Evans, too ugly for marriage has several brief love affairs before finally finding a man, George Henry Lewes, who can ignore her looks and love her for herself. But there the story becomes more modern. They are unable to marry because he is already married and has acknowledged his wife’s children by her lover as his own thereby depriving himself of grounds for divorce. Nevertheless, George and Mary Anne live as man and wife, she taking his name.

She had been a journalist and editor but with his encouragement, turned to writing novels using the pseudonym George Eliot. He nurtured her talent, shielded her from critical reviews and managed all of her business affairs. Her fame grew and people began to "forget" that she was not married to the man she was living with. Their love also grew. This book is as much a love story as a biography.

Unlike most modern biographies, this one does not dwell on its subject’s flaws. The author mentions the possible physical relationships Eliot had before meeting Lewes, but doesn’t speculate. She also mentions but dismisses rumors that Lewes was unfaithful to Eliot. She doesn’t make a big deal of Eliot’s marriage after Lewes' death to a much younger man. There is no titillation here, only the story of two soulmates who defied society to be together.

Having gained a better understanding of George Eliot as a person as well as an author, I am keen to re-read her novels.

Review copy courtesy of Palgrave MacMillan

Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables

I was a little put off when this book landed, unsolicited, in my mailbox. I don’t like being reminded that I am growing older. Reading the blurbs on the back cover, I was intrigued by the fact that the author was a widow who had lost her husband of forty years quite suddenly and didn’t miss him. That alone was enough to encourage me to read the book.

It turns out that after his death, she realized that her marriage hadn’t been as happy and fulfilling as she thought. Now her life was her own, unencumbered by a husband who had been an emotional burden, and she could finally live her life on her own terms.

Joan Gussow is a nutrition educator, activist and passionate organic gardener. Her garden feeds her body and her spirit. She uses it in this book as a springboard to discuss nutrition, the environment, life in general and her life in particular. She is a talented writer who can start off writing about potatoes, veer off on a discussion of travel leading to the plight of Magellanic Penguins and end up back in her potato patch without losing the reader’s interest or attention.

She had written a previous book about her garden, This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader, which I have never read because I don’t grow food, only flowers, and didn’t think that it would interest me. I know better now and will pick a copy knowing that it will be a wonderful read and not just about veggies.

Review copy courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing

The Dark Game: True Spy Stories

I haven’t read a Young Adult book since, well, since I was a young adult. After a lifetime of reading “adult” books, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book, meant for a young audience, readily held my attention.

What was particularly satisfying was the amount of historical background provided for each spy. Their life and times are described in enough detail to give a well-rounded view without overdoing it and perhaps losing the interest of someone who is not familiar with the historical eras described.

The author covers the whole of American history, from the Revolutionary War to the end of the twentieth century. I was also pleased to note that both men and women, good guys and bad guys are the subjects of the book.

This is a great book to introduce young people to the history of espionage in the United States. It is also a quick and fascinating read for adults who can use it as a jumping off point for more in depth research into this intriguing subject.

Review copy courtesy of Candlewick Press

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future

Many years ago when I was in college (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), there were no required courses other than the ones for your major. You better believe I didn’t crack a math or science text for four years. But, once I graduated and entered the real world, I discovered that there is a reason why those courses are taught. Contrary to what many disgruntled students will tell you, that knowledge is relevant to everyday life.

Take economics, for instance. I didn’t take it in school, but I started reading up on it afterwards. It was the era of WIN (Whip Inflation Now) and the Laffer Curve and waiting breathlessly for the money supply number. What did all of this mean? I slogged through economics tomes written for a popular audience, reading and re-reading the dense prose only to come away with a vague notion of the concepts that the authors were trying to convey.

I don’t know if some of that knowledge finally began to sink in or if economists are dumbing down their books but lately I seem to be able to finally grasp economic theories. And they are all theories. Back in the Reagan years, Keynesian economics was declared dead. In the aftermath of The Great Recession, Keynes is looking pretty prescient.

In his book, Aftershock, Robert B. Reich offers his own theory as to the cause of the Great Recession. He lays out the evidence that the concentration of wealth in the hands of the top one percent of the population, leaving the middle class with stagnant or falling incomes forcing Americans to pile on debt just to stay even, was the root cause of the debacle that is still affecting our economy today. He points out that the same conditions existed prior to the Great Depression.

Everyone seems to be able to agree that the only way to get the economy moving again is if the middle class starts borrowing and spending again. The only way that that is going to happen is if we can put everyone back to work. Reich disagrees, pointing out that full employment didn’t help the middle class before the Great Recession because the jobs that were available didn’t pay as much as the jobs that had been outsourced. The same is true today. Many people who have found work, are working part-time or working at jobs that pay significantly less than the jobs they lost. He devotes his last chapter of Aftershock to his suggestions for fixing the structural problems of our economy.

Like the old Chinese curse, we live in interesting times. As we struggle to find a way to kick-start our economy, we would do well to remember that the Great Depression dragged on for years until the government was willing to go deeply into debt to fund the wartime economy which offered many good paying middle class jobs and launched decades of prosperity.

Killer Colt: Murder, Disgrace, and the Making of an American Legend

I really have to start reading the book blurbs more carefully when I enter the Book Giveaways on GoodReads. This is the second book I have received that is not what I thought it was when I signed up. I thought this book was about Samuel Colt and the invention of the Colt Revolver, a nice segue from the previous Giveaway, They Rode for the Lonestar; the Texas Rangers having made the Colt Revolver famous.

Instead, this book is about John Colt, Samuel’s brother, and the murder he committed for which he was tried and condemned. To make things more confusing, throughout the book both brother’s lives are described in tandem, switching back and forth between them, leaving the reader to wonder just exactly who the book is about. Or is it both of them? A nice little twist at the end, which I won’t reveal, explains how and why the brothers’ lives were so entwined despite their very different temperaments, professions and places of residence.

Both brothers are interesting, but I was particularly fascinated by John. Growing up, he was a cut-up and ne’er-do-well who as an adult finally found his calling as an accountant. None of the accountants that I know could be even remotely described as rabble-rousers. They are all terribly straitlaced and conventional. John Colt, despite his troubled past, was not only a good accountant, but he also wrote a book on accounting that was so popular it went through nine editions. It was the final edition of the book, The Science of Double Entry Book-Keeping, that was the cause of the quarrel between him and Samuel Adams, his printer, that resulted in the murder of Mr. Adams. Fully half of the Killer Colt is devoted to the trial of John Colt.

I was also unaware that the author, Harold Schechter, is a noted writer of true crime books. Not normally a fan of true crime books, I was pleasantly surprised that Mr. Schechter writes from a historical point of view rather than the usual lurid and titillating approach typical of that genre. He quotes extensively from the contemporary press to provide the emotional color of the trial. He provides enough background on the City (Manhattan), the press and the various figures involved to allow the reader to fully appreciate the crime, the trial and the emotions swirling around them.

I am a huge fan of history so I loved this book. Through it, I gained a snapshot view of a particular time and place and really felt like I was able to enter into the lives and feelings of the people populating the narrative.

Review copy courtesy of Ballantine Books

The Great Silence: Britain From the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age

The Great Silence, a history of the aftermath of WWI as experienced by the people of Great Britain is curiously relevant as we wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The issues facing returning soldiers then are the same as the issues facing returning soldiers now: disfiguring injuries, PTSD (called “shellshock” during and after WWI) and a lack of jobs. A significant difference for families is that we are much better at retrieving and returning bodies of our dead soldiers to their families for burial. During WWI, many men were blown to bits or their bodies were lost in the mud of the trenches. Others were buried far from home in cemeteries in France.

"The Great Silence" referred to in the title is the two minutes of silence that was observed nationwide on the first and second anniversaries of WWI. This was in stark contrast to the celebrations marking the Armistice in 1918 and the Peace Parade that was held in July of 1919. Playing an important role in the Peace Parade and the anniversary observance in 1920 was the Cenotaph, a war memorial designed by eminent architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens. The book ends with the funeral and interment of the Unknown Soldier at Westminster Abbey, an event that was to stand in for all the funerals of all the dead whose families had no bodies to bury.

I was a little confused by the review of this book by Miranda Seymour in The New York Times Book Review. In her review, Ms. Seymour criticizes the author for emphasizing the experiences of the upper class while scarcely mentioning the middle and lower classes. I did not find this to be true at all. English society underwent profound changes in the aftermath of the war. Workers held frequent strikes for better wages and working conditions. The servant class shrank significantly as former chauffeurs, cooks and maids sought better opportunities in hotels and offices. The Sex Disqualification Act enacted in 1919 opened up new career opportunities for single women, many of whom were widows. A popular book, Married Love, advocated birth control and healthy sexual relationships within marriage thereby making marriage more of a partnership of equals rather than the traditional man as supreme head of the household. All of these changes which affected the middle and lower classes are given extensive coverage in the book.

The Great Silence which covers a longer time period and more wide ranging topics is organized similarly to the author’s first book, The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm. This allows the books to be read separately or together. Both offer insight into these important historical eras, the events of which helped define the modern world.

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society

Whenever I read a book that I really like, I always check out the bibliography to see if there are other books on the subject that I might like to read. I pay special attention to books that are specifically mentioned in the text of whatever book I am reading. Lately, one title has come up over and over, Guns, Germs, and Steel. I read it when it was published in 1997. Because so many authors are using it in their research, I decided that it was time to read it again.

Rereading this book was a pleasure. Enough time has passed since my first reading, that I experienced those “aha” moments again. Moments when what the author is saying is so clear and makes so much sense that I find myself wondering why I have never looked at the subject in that light before. His thesis is very simple. The reason that Eurasian peoples conquered and colonized the world was not because they were smarter than the so-called primitive societies that they encountered. Instead, the reason was simply that they had more plants and animals in their environment that were suitable for domestication which led to population increases which led to more people to come up with technological inventions such as the writing and sophisticated weapons.

Peoples lacking enough plants and animals in their environment that were suitable for domestication either got a later start at food production and technology or never moved beyond the hunter-gatherer stage. Which is not to say that they were any less intelligent. My favorite anecdote is about two English explorers who perished while attempting to traverse the outback of Australia, an area where the aboriginal tribes had been able to find enough food and water to survive with no problem for thousands of years.

And while it is true that many conquered peoples died from the diseases that were introduced by Europeans, those same Europeans died of tropical diseases at the same rates until 20th century medicine was able to overcome them.

It’s no surprise that this book has become a classic. Nor should it surprise anyone that it is the Ur text for anyone writing on climate, food and human civilization.

They Rode for the Lone Star: The Saga of the Texas Rangers, Vol. 1: The Birth of Texas--The Civil War

The usual criteria on most sites that sponsor book giveaways, is that you have posted reviews of similar books in the past. This is good for the giveaway sponsors. They are assured that you have actually read the books and that you post reviews. But it’s frustrating for reviewers who wish to widen the type of book that they read and review. I find myself reading and writing reviews for the same type of book, over and over again.

Not so with the giveaways on GoodReads. They continually surprise me with their choices for me, starting with the very first book, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I had no science fiction works in my "library". They Rode for the Lone Star is another surprise. I have no "westerns" in my library.

I signed up for this book on a whim. I know very little about Texas and thought that the whole Texas Ranger "mystique" was one of those "everything is bigger and better in Texas". I am happy to report that I was wrong. The Texas Rangers are, and were, much more than a state police force.

They have a long, proud history that dates back to the first settlement of Texas by colonists from the fledgling United States. Texas Rangers were initially a militia force, defending "Texians" from hostile Native Americans and Mexicans who also claimed Texas. Rangers fought in the battles for independence from Mexico, in the Mexican War after Texas achieved statehood and then in the Civil War, on both sides of the conflict. The author ends this, the first volume of his history, at the end of the Civil War.

The history of Texas and the Rangers is covered in detail, sometimes too much detail, and includes discussions of uniforms, weapons, tactics and seemingly every move in every battle fought by every ranger. And yet, despite all of that detail, a lot of knowledge is assumed on the part of the reader. I found myself wanting more information on important events like the fall of the Alamo, which admittedly fall outside of the scope of this book.

I was a little confused by the use of numerous watercolors by the artist Bruce Marshall. Since he is a contemporary artist and not someone living during the time period covered in this book, I was unsure why his imagined scenes of battles and equally imaginative depictions of Texas Rangers, their dress, weapons and horses were used in a serious historical work. Much better are the paintings, photos, daguerreotypes and woodcuts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries portraying the actual persons and scenes as they appeared at the time.

This is an excellent book for any student of Texas and Texas Ranger history. The narrative, which can be daunting, is broken up by sidebars with details on people, places, battles and weapons, mentioned in the text and by illustrations of same.

Happily for me, the book I was sent was autographed by the author. I collect books signed by their authors and am pleased to add this one to my collection.

Review copy courtesy of Lone Star Publishing

Ruminations From the Garden

This book was not at all what I expected. Somehow, when I read the blurb about it on the Early Reviwers’ page on LibraryThing, all I took away from it was that the author had planted a garden and tended it by hand while ruminating on our dependence on oil. Even the book jacket quoted the author "What will happen if the oil runs out or becomes so expensive we can’t afford to buy it?" I was looking forward to some homespun wisdom and suggestions for energy independence.

What I got was a blog in book form. A blog like the hundreds, maybe thousands, of blogs that I stopped reading long ago because all they offer is the regurgitated arguments and solutions of pundits and talking heads. There are no new or original ideas here.

When the author does offer a few original, non-energy related ideas, they are breathtakingly ignorant: homosexuality is caused by over-population, mentally ill people are not sick – they are in touch with the spirit world, the death penalty frees evil spirits to infect other people.

Mr. Ford should stick to writing about what he knows best: ranching, animal husbandry, cowboys, and immigrants, both legal and illegal. I found those parts of the book fascinating. If you excised all of the faux philosophy, this would be a wonderful book on life in south Texas.

Review copy courtesy of Speir Publishing

Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam

Back in the early 1980’s while the Cold War was still raging, I used to joke that I must be on some FBI and/or CIA watchlist because of my growing collection of books on the Soviet Union, including books (in translation) authored by Soviet writers who were not dissidents. My curiosity about all things Russian stemmed from my idea that you can’t "hate" an enemy that you know nothing about.

Fast forward to 9/11 when we realized that we were facing a new enemy, radical Islam. Again, my curiosity was sparked, but finding books about Islam that didn’t demonize it have been difficult to come by. Author Fred M. Donner, a professor of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago, presents us with an objective look at the beginnings of Islam in his book Muhammad and The Believers, which he has been working on since 2000. It is a badly needed perspective on the hotly debated subject of the origins of some of the more radical beliefs espoused by today’s terrorists.

Most books and opinion pieces today take one of two positions. Either Islam is a religion of peace or it is a religion of jihad. Professor Donner shows us that it is both. Islam started out as a radical movement of monotheists in an area of the world dominated by polytheists. Members of the movement, who called themselves The Believers, stood out from other cults and religions because of their piety and righteous behavior. Initially, they embraced Christians and Jews who were also pious. It was only after the death of Muhammad and the question of succession had been settled after two civil wars that Islam was rigidly defined and codified, restricted to only those who followed the teachings of the Koran who were now called Moslems.

Towards the end of Muhammad’s life, The Believers embarked on what we today call jihad, battling the adjacent Persian and Byzantine Empires that they considered ungodly. Within just a few generations, Islam had spread across North Africa and into Spain. Admittedly, the initial impetus to the expansion was the overthrow of neighboring infidel empires, but after some time, the Islamic leadership began to depend on the revenue generated by taxes imposed on subject states.

I think that this is what should concern us in the 21st century. Those who claim that modern day jihadists are twisting Muhammad’s teachings or that jihad is a modern concept are wrong. Jihad and the forced conversion or overthrow of non-Islamic states is nothing new. It has been going on since the founding of Islam. But, just as Christianity was able to evolve from the militancy of the Crusades and the Inquisition, to more peaceful means of recruiting new members, so should Moslem leaders begin to turn their followers from the concept of violent jihad to non-violent jihad, converting new members with missionaries rather than soldiers.

Although written for a popular audience, Professor Donner is unable to break out of his scholarly writing mode. He has taken a subject that is incredibly fascinating and made it dry, dry, dry. Dull, dull, dull. I literally fell asleep several times while reading it. In the future, I would suggest that he employ a ghost writer geared toward popular readership. The topic that he writes about is much too important not to be accessible to as many people as possible.

Betsy Ross and the Making of America

Normally when I review a book, I first read the book and write my review, then I read reviews written by other people. In the case of Betsy Ross and the Making of America, my introduction to the book was via a review in the New York Times Book Review dated May 9, 2010. It was not a flattering review. The reviewer, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a professor at Harvard, accuses the author, Marla R. Miller, a professor of American History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, of "sentimental fiction" which "weakens her own historical prose, which is strong enough to stand on its own" and "defeats the ultimate purpose of her book, which is to rediscover the woman behind the legend." Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the fact that, other than books for children, this is the first biography of Betsy Ross ever written. Intrigued enough to buy and read the book despite the poor review.

By the end of the first chapter, I had forgotten about the scathing review and was completely hooked. I literally couldn't put the book down. This was American history as I had never read it before. These were real people and real experiences, not the usual dry recitations of politics and battles and tactics. I never liked American history. I felt it was boring compared to the thousands of years of history of Europe and the Mediterranean. Having been forced in high school to memorize every battle and every general of the Revolutionary War, I subsequently tuned out the following 200 years, learning just enough to pass exams while devoting my spare time to Egyptian pharaohs, Roman emperors and English kings who chopped their wives' heads off. Now that’s history.

It is precisely the "sentimental fiction" that makes this book interesting to the general reader. Rather than a dry overview of the development of the city of Philadelphia, we see it from the point of view of Betsy's great-grandfather, a master carpenter. It's one thing to read about the tactics, such as boycotts, the colonists used to protest what they perceived to be unfair taxation. It's quite another to read about the effects those boycotts had on the local artisans and merchants. The yellow fever epidemics that killed so many residents of Philadelphia are more meaningful when we learn of the various family members lost. Rather than just numbers, they are people that we have come to know. Small details like the families who were split between loyalty to the king and loyalty to the rebellion, illustrates the upheaval caused by this colonial rebellion much better than the usual political analysis commonly found in books on the American Revolution.

The final criticism in the review with which I disagreed was that the author devoted "only" 50 pages out of a total of 362 pages to the last 40 years of Betsy's life, despite the fact that these are the best documented years of her life. I have to admit that after 300 pages, I was pretty much Betsy Ross'ed out. Not only was her life prior to and during the Revolution tumultuous (three husbands and seven daughters), but just trying to keep all the people, many of whom had the same names, straight made my head spin. The author's decision to gloss over the details of the latter part of Betsy Ross' life was a sound one. And, in the best Hollywood tradition, leaves room for a "sequel", a more in depth analysis of her life after the Revolution, to be written by the author or another historian.

After I finished the book, I went back and read the review again. My second reading of the review led me to the conclusion that the problem lay in the intention of the author. The reviewer was critiquing the book from a scholarly point of view whereas it seemed to me that the author intended her book to be read by both scholars and general readers. Scholars are more interested in facts and conclusions supported by facts. Hence the harsh review. General readers like myself do tend to speculate as we read. What was she thinking? How would I have reacted in this situation? We enjoy seeing events through the eyes and emotions of ordinary people like ourselves rather than from the lofty perspective of presidents, kings and generals.