Category Archives: Book review

Book Review – Unbroken

Every once in a while, I’m reminded how little I have to complain about.  Go ahead, do as I did and read Unbroken, a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand and see if you can whine about something going wrong in your life.

I listened to the Random House Audio version © 2010, read by Edward Herrmann.

This book is a biography focusing on the life of Louis Zamperini.  The man is so fascinating that his life would not require a skilled biographer to result in a great book. But Hillenbrand is a skilled biographer.  Zamperini was quite a scamp in his youth, then channeled his energy into running.  He ran well enough to compete in the 1936 Olympics.  When World War II broke out, he joined the Army Air Corps and became a bombardier in a B-24 Liberator aircraft.  When the plane got shot down, Zamperini and two others endured weeks in a tiny, leaking raft with insufficient supplies.  Though one man died, Zamperini and the other aviator survived 47 days until they were finally picked up…by the Japanese.  Sent to various prisoner of war camps, Zamperini barely survived the torture and degradation until the end of the war.  Following his release, he experienced a slow collapse of his life until becoming a born-again Christian.  Hillenbrand’s choice of the word ‘unbroken’ for her title refers not only to Zamperini’s indomitable will to survive, but also to some of his high school and college track records which remained unbroken for years.

Hillenbrand must have done considerable research for this book.  I liked how she would occasionally deviate from a strict chronological treatment to explain some point that made Zamperini’s life easier to understand.  She sidetracked in this way to explain B-24 bombers, American life rafts from that period, the experiences of other WW II POWs, and several other things.  Even with these asides, she never strayed too long from her main focus.  She didn’t shy away from some of the rougher language the men used or some of the hideous tortures the prisoners endured.  This book is not for the faint of heart.  Although it must have been tempting, while writing such a book, to try to psychologically analyze the subject, Hillenbrand resisted that for the most part, only lightly touching on some of his more obvious personality traits to explain behavior.  Edward Herrmann did a fine job with the narration of the book.

I have few negative comments, since the book really blew me away.  I think, at times, Hillenbrand “fell in love” with her subject too much.  It seems to me she strayed from a more objective approach.  Since she most likely interviewed Zamperini himself while researching, it’s hard to know who is responsible for exaggerating one of the more unbelievable scenes.  Did an exhausted and malnourished man really wrestle and kill sharks leaping into the raft?  I have not read Zamperini’s own memoir, Devil at My Heels, and it would be interesting to compare the two accounts.

I’m giving Unbroken a rating of 4 seahorses using my trademarked book review grading system.  It is an outstanding biography and I strongly recommend you read it.  I understand someone’s making a movie from the book and that could be well worth watching.  Compared to Louis Zamperini’s life experiences, my own life has been a breeze, for which I’m grateful.  Sitting here in a very uncomplaining and non-whiny mood, I’m–

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

May 10, 2012Permalink

Book Review – Counting Heads

As both of my many readers know by now, I listen to books on tape more often than I read them these days.  The latest was Counting Heads by David Marusek.  I listened to the Recorded Books version narrated by Kevin R. Free.  I enjoy good science fiction, and the blurb about the book sounded impressive.  Mr. Marusek has apparently written short stories and I believe this is his first novel, but I have not read anything else by this author.

In a future North America where people can live hundreds of years, and nanotechnology and artificial intelligence have made life (mostly) more enjoyable, artist Sam Harger marries billionaire and soon-to-be-politician Eleanor Starke.  Things go awry when Sam is falsely pegged as a terrorist and the Department of Homeland Security (a future and scarier version of it) alters his body so he can no longer be rejuvenated and he now emits a powerful stench beyond cleansing.  Then there’s a plane crash in which the aircraft seat mechanisms protect his daughter Ellen by severing her head from her body.  Medical science has advanced enough to allow re-growing a body from just the head.  But others are after Ellen’s head, perhaps the same evil folks who caused the plane crash and the mistaken terrorist accusation.

I like the world Marusek has created for this novel.  Most people have robotic “mentars” to aid them in drudgery tasks.  Many people are, in fact, clones, and Marusek goes into some detail describing the various types.  Nuclear families have given way to “charter families” functioning by contract and subject to change.  However, terrorists have created nanotechnology viruses, from which cities protect themselves with shield domes.  Mechanical “slugs” crawl about testing people’s identities, and mechanical bees and wasps swarm around observing things for government or media purposes.  I thought Kevin Free did a fine job in reading the novel.

However, for me, that sums up the book’s positive aspects.  Perhaps as a listener rather than a reader I may have missed something, but it wasn’t clear to me what the central conflict of the novel was.  If Sam Harger was supposed to be the protagonist, then the novel spends too little time following the events of his life, and strays into following other characters.  Sam did not seem to me to be actively involved in resolving the central mystery of the book.  As a result, I found it hard to care about him.  The other point-of-view characters are all more focused on their own lives and I found it hard to care about them or even connect them to the plot at all.  The whole book therefore seems a confusing muddle to me.  Is there really a central conflict in this novel?  If so, what is it, and why do the characters not pursue its resolution with any apparent dedication?

After thinking about this for a time, and after reviewing my definitions for my five seahorse rating system, I have to give this book my lowest rating of one seahorse.  If you’re intrigued by science fiction and want to experience one writer’s thoughts on clones, nanotech, advanced medical science, and robotic animals, you might consider reading Counting Heads, but I recommend looking elsewhere.   However, it’s possible I missed its greatness somewhere; if you’re the person to set me right, please leave a comment for–

Poseidon’s Scribe

 

April 30, 2012Permalink

Book Review — Ship of the Line

It’s clear to me now:  reading C. S. Forester’s series of Horatio Hornblower novels in the wrong order is not the way to go.  After reading Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1st in chronological order, 6th one written in the series) some time ago, I just finished Ship of the Line (8th chronological, 2nd one written).

I listened to the Books on Tape version of the book, narrated by Geoffrey Howard.  This novel features Horatio as captain of the 74-gun HMS Sutherland.  He is shown as being more in love with Lady Barbara Wellesley, wife of Rear Admiral Leighton, than his own wife Maria.  He struggles to find enough sailors to man his crew and is forced to settle for untrained ruffians.  Once his ship is fully manned, he conducts a series of attacks to harass the French forces on coast of Spain.  He chaffs under the incompetent leadership of his squadron commander, Admiral Leighton.

If you know little about the British Navy of the early 1800s before reading the book, you’ll feel like an expert afterward.  Forester gives just the right amount of detail for a reader to picture the scene without getting bored.  There is also so much to admire in Hornblower himself.  His strengths (bravery, audacity, cleverness) make him the perfect naval hero, while his weaknesses (jealousy, tone-deafness, and obsessive self-criticism) don’t detract from his professional life.  If, like me, you skip from Hornblower as a midshipman to Hornblower as captain, you’ll marvel at his maturity and the traits he’s taken on.  Geoffrey Howard did a fine job with the book’s narration.

I wish I’d read these books while I served in the U.S. Navy.  Actually I couldn’t have, for I served during Hornblower’s time period, long before Forester even wrote the books.  Seriously, all Navy personnel can learn much from Hornblower’s decision-making methods, his boldness, his tactfulness, and his leadership style.

There were things I didn’t like, however.  Hornblower’s jealousy, his secret love of Lady Barbara, and his disdain for his own wife were off-putting.  Hard to maintain sympathy for a protagonist like that.  I was dissatisfied by the book’s ending.  Without spoiling it for you, let me say this was more like a long chapter in a huge book than an integrated novel in its own right.  The ending of a book ought to resolve the main conflict in some way.  This book’s ending seemed to resolve nothing.  But it did set things up for the next novel.

Using my world-famous seahorse rating system, I give Ship of the Line four seahorses.  I enjoyed it a lot, and you will too.  For these nautical stories, you should just take my word for it because, after all, I’m–

                                                                           Poseidon’s Scribe

 

March 31, 2012Permalink

Book Review — The Lost Goddess

I just finished reading The Lost Goddess, by Tom Knox.  I listened to the Recorded Books version on audiotape, narrated by Christopher Evan Welch.  This is the first book I’ve read by Knox.  From the blurb, it promised to be an interesting historical thriller.  I’d say it delivered.

The book follows the lives of two people whose paths are destined to connect.  Julia Kerrigan is an American archaeologist digging at a site in a French cave.  Jake Thurby is a British photographer trying to snap money-making pictures in Southeast Asia.  The novel alternates point-of-view between these characters throughout.

The novel is exciting, gritty, and packed with mystery and adventure.  The scene-setting is very good, especially the detailed descriptions of Cambodia and Laos.  The author really puts you right there, close to both the beauty and the ugliness.  I see by his website that he conducted considerable research on that region.  I thought the Julia character was well drawn; she seemed strong and had believable motivations.  There’s some interesting sexual tension, though not between Julia and Jake, but this is no romance.  The secret mystery of the book is compelling and fascinating; a great weaving together of some historical facts into a grand and fairly believable theory.  I won’t spoil anything for you, but you won’t put it all together until near the end.  Some readers might find the mystery’s explanation morally objectionable, but I’d encourage them to lighten up and remember this is a work of fiction.

On the negative side, I found the title a bit of a misnomer.  Oddly, the book is sold under a different (and better) title in the United Kingdom — Bible of the Dead.  While I said Julia was a strong character, Jake is not.  He seems almost pathetic and stupid at times, always asking for explanations, seemingly swept along by events.  Not the kind of character I care much about.  Normally I have kind things to say about the narrator readers of audio books, and it’s not a bad performance by Mr. Welch.  It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to tell that he’s speaking in Jake’s voice when Jake is speaking.  The book’s ending seems to drag on a bit long.

Although I’m giving the book a rating of three seahorses according to my unique seahorse rating system, I recommend the book to lovers of mystery-adventure books set in exotic locales.  Those readers will really enjoy The Lost Goddess.  I enjoyed it, but I can only speak for–

                                                                                  Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

 

March 21, 2012Permalink

Book Review – Behemoth

I enjoy a good steampunk novel.  Two years ago I read Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, and it was high time to read the next book in the series.

That book is Behemoth, and I listened to the CD version put out by Recorded Books and read by Alan Cumming.  This series is aimed at the young adult market, grade 7 and up, and should appeal to either young girls or boys.

Whether you start the series by reading the first book or the second, Westerfeld transports you right into his world, and it’s different.  Some of the World War I setting is the same as our world’s history–the countries are involved in the war, languages and accents, etc.  However, in Westerfeld’s world, the main technologies of the 19th Century have evolved into two distinct branches.  Some countries chose one path, some the other, and some a mix of both.  One branch is mechanized, and includes the technologies of steam, gears, and even walking machines.  This is termed “clanker” technology and is represented by Germany and Austria-Hungary.  The other branch is the manipulation of DNA to form animals into creatures designed to be useful to man, including “message lizards” that can parrot human speech, and even living airships.  These are the Darwinists and are represented by the United Kingdom and Russia.  Other countries such as the U.S. and the Ottoman Empire employ mixtures of both branches.

Deryn is a young British girl who has chosen to disguise herself as a boy named Dylan and serve as a midshipman within the British airship Leviathan.  She is in constant fear of being found out.  Alek is a prince, legal heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, but he cannot claim the throne yet and is driven into hiding from the Germans who want to kill him, as they did his father.  Where Leviathan chronicled the separate adventures of the two teenagers, only having them meet near the end, in Behemoth, the two are together for much of the book when the airship arrives in Istanbul, giving a chance for their relationship to start to mature.

I found the world-building aspects of Behemoth to be excellent, with plenty of details to make Westerfeld’s world believable and interesting.  Deryn’s language is peppered with expressions such as “Barking spiders!” to indicate surprise, “beasties” as a term for various Darwinist creations, and “gone pear-shaped” (an actual British idiom) meaning “gone wrong.”  There’s plenty of action in the book including aerial attacks, secret underwater missions, and a revolutionary overthrow of a sultan featuring mechanical walking machines. The book’s characters are multi-dimensioned and complex, not steampunk tropes.  Westerfeld never talks down to young readers, and the book includes an Afterward that separates real history from the alternative history of the novel.  I found the book’s ending satisfying, which can’t always be said for first or second books of trilogies.  Lastly, the narration by Alan Cumming is excellent; he makes it easy to distinguish the characters by their accents and tone.

The book is so good I am tempted to give it my highest rating.  However, I find the plot to be rather contrived.  Westerfeld is determined to have both characters join up with revolutionaries in Istanbul who are bent on overthrowing the Ottoman sultan.  Their reasons for doing so seem out of character in the case of both Alek and Deryn.  However, the target audience is unlikely to object to this and will accept the situation and read on.

I’ll give this novel a rating of four seahorses using my trademarked seahorse rating scheme.  Still, it is very close to five.  I strongly recommend it for teenage boys or girls, who will find it easy to identify with the struggles of the characters.  Alek and Deryn each want to be accepted, but they also yearn to discover their true selves; Westerfeld conveys these conflicts well.  That’s the assessment of–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

March 10, 2012Permalink

Book Review — Remarkable Creatures

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.  To that I’d add “or its blurb.”  I just finished listening to a book on tape, Remarkable Creatures, © 2010 by Tracy Chevalier, put out by Recorded Books Productions, narrated by Charlotte Parry and Susan Lyons.   More about that blurb below.

The novel is the story of a lower class woman in England in the early 1800s, and her dealings with an upper class spinster.  The story starts with the first woman, Mary Anning, as a child when the spinster, Elizabeth Philpot, is in her twenties.  They end up sharing an interest in gathering and understanding fossils.  Fossils had caused a stir in the scientific community since many seem to be from animals that no longer exist, which called Biblical teachings into question.  The two women develop a knowledge of these fossils that equals or surpasses some of the learned men of Europe, but it is a time when women were sadly powerless in many areas, including science.

The author really puts you in the timeframe, and you come to care about the characters.  If you don’t think you’re interested in fossils before you read the book, you might well be fascinated with them when you’re done.  You’ll be drawn in as the two women become frustrated with their inability to be recognized by the male scientific community, and with their lack of success in finding husbands.  All they really have is each other, and the author  skillfully leads you along the ups and downs of their relationship.

What I didn’t know when I began reading is, these women were real.  There really was a Mary Anning and an Elizabeth Philpot.  In fact, most of the characters and events in the book were real.  I had thought it was just a historical setting with made-up characters, but that is not so.

The narrators, Charlotte Parry and Susan Lyons, did a fine job in this audiobook.  The book alternates in point-of-view between Anning and Philpot, and the narrators take turns.  I wondered, at times, if it would have been more effective to have the ‘Mary’ narrator speak Mary’s actual lines and the ‘Elizabeth’ narrator speak Elizabeth’s lines, but Recorded Books chose the point-of-view method instead.

On the negative side, there is not a lot of action in the book.  Moreover the conflicts and problems of the characters are not well defined.  Fiction is about conflict and the attempted resolution of problems.  I understand it can be difficult to force such a fictional constraint on real historical people, but there is a reason real life tends to be more boring than fiction.  Fictional characters have well-understood goals and passions, and really important problems to solve.  It’s my understanding that someone has bought movie rights to this book, but if a movie is made, they’ll have to put more action scenes in it and make the conflicts more apparent and dramatic.  Either that or opt for a straight historical documentary.

I was enticed into reading the book by the blurb on the Recorded Books cover, including this intriguing sentence.  “Mary discovers she has the ability to ‘see’ and locate fossils buried deep in the cliffs near her village.”  That certainly makes it sound like she has some supernatural x-ray ability to see through rock, right?  Nothing of the sort.  Mary’s good at locating fossils, but due to the shifting of land in the area and the action of waves on the beach, new fossils become exposed on the surface quite often and it is these Mary can spot.  Although it was a good book, I feel a little cheated by the misleading blurb.  I can’t really fault the author for that, though, since she probably didn’t write it.

A surprisingly good book, I’ll give it a rating of four seahorses.  Whether you concur with my opinions or differ, I’d like to hear from you.  Just click on ‘leave a comment’ and you’ll get a reply from–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

February 25, 2012Permalink

Book Review – A Curse on the Cygnus

At DarkoverCon last November, I met author Kevin M. Houghton, and bought a copy of his book, A Curse on the Cygnus.  It’s the subject of today’s book review.

This steampunk novel follows Royal Defence Service agents Colonel Ian Grey and Lady Victoria Dallas on a trip aboard a British Imperial Airways airship called the Cygnus.  A murder occurs onboard, and the protagonists become involved in the investigation. The question is whether this is a straightforward, naturally explainable crime, or whether it has something to do with the airship’s cargo of ancient Egyptian treasures and an associated, rumored curse.

I found the story engaging and exciting; it’s high adventure in a wonderful steampunk setting.  The novel gives the reader a good feel of being in an airship, conveying a sense of being confined.  Lady Victoria Dallas is a strong character, well able to defend herself.  The author does a fine job of making clear the motivations of all the major characters so their actions are believable.  Tension builds nicely through the story to a dramatic conclusion.  Moreover, the book is short and written in an easy-to-read style.

However, most of the characters seemed rather stock steampunk characters to me.  I would have liked Ian and Victoria to each have an endearing character flaw to make them seem more human and compelling.  I found I didn’t care about them as much as I like to care about protagonists.  There were a lot of characters to keep track of, but the author did a pretty good job of giving the reader little reminding clues to keep them straight.

The story’s beginning was slow, it seemed to me.  I was confused by the Point of View throughout.  Third person POV is most common these days, but this novel seemed to either employ third person POV that flipped frequently within scenes (and once within a paragraph), or else employed omniscient POV.   I was never quite sure whose head I was in.  A large number of grammatical and editorial errors also detracted from my reading enjoyment.

Using my seahorse rating system, I give this novel three seahorses.  If you enjoy steampunk and like a good murder mystery with a touch of the supernatural, then I recommend you read A Curse on the Cygnus.  If you do so, and come away with a different impression, please leave a comment for–

                                                             Poseidon’s Scribe

February 18, 2012Permalink

Book Review – The Theory of Everything

Boy, do I feel smarter!  I just finished listening to The Theory of Everything:  The Origin and Fate of the Universe, published in 2006 by Recorded Books, LLC.  It was read by Dr. Stephen W. Hawking who, interestingly, has not endorsed the book and tried to block its publication.

Dr. Hawking is arguably the best known physicist in the world, not only due to his brilliant work with black holes and other phenomena, but also due to his compelling life story.  He suffers from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which confines him physically to a wheelchair and requires him to communicate via a computer, while mentally he roams the vastness of the universe, all of time, and every microscopic particle.

Among the books he does claim credit for are A Brief History of Time (1998), The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), A Briefer History of Time (2008), and The Grand Design (2010).  Such narrow topics!  He’ll have to strive for a more all-encompassing title for his next book.

Whether authorized or not, The Theory of Everything touches on the Big Bang, black holes, the relationship of universe theories to religion, the ultimate fate of the universe, string theory, and the search for the Grand Unified Theory.  Yep, just about everything.

Needless to say, I can’t comment on the validity of any of his contentions, but I will critique the other aspects of the book.  In the lectures that form this book, his meanings are clear to this layman without Hawking coming across as condescending at all.  He uses easy-to-understand analogies–globes, balloons, water glasses, etc.  Moreover, you might think you’re not interested in black holes or the Big Bang, but Dr. Hawking’s lectures will leave you fascinated by them.

On the negative side, I have to say that although the lectures are semi-related, they don’t hang together as well as if he was writing a coherent, integrated book with a central premise.  There’s some repetition within the book as well as repetition between it and A Brief History of Time.

Lastly, and I hate to say this, but perhaps the audiobook should not have been a recording of Dr. Hawking delivering his own lectures.  Yes, I know he is known by that distinctive, synthesized voice.  He even jokingly apologizes for its American accent, saying that he couldn’t get it to speak “proper English.” It’s just that some words spoken by his computer are difficult to make out.  I think Recorded Books LLC should have gotten one of their staff readers to read it.  In stating this I mean no disrespect to Dr. Hawking or anyone suffering from ALS.

These weaknesses, along with the fact that I discovered after reading it that it is not sanctioned by Stephen Hawking, lead me to give the book a rating of three seahorses, according to my seahorse rating scheme.  Good book, but I think A Brief History of Time is more worthy of your…well, your brief time than is The Theory of Everything.   Wishing I was half as smart as Dr. Hawking, I’m–

                                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

February 11, 2012Permalink

Book Review — Lost Empire

Over the years, I’ve read a lot of Clive Cussler’s novels, mainly because they’re exciting and they convey the author’s love of the sea and history.  Nearly all the Cussler books I’ve read were within his Dirk Pitt series.

I just finished listening to Lost Empire, which Cussler wrote with Grant Blackwood.  The audiobook was a product of Recorded Books, LLC and was narrated by Scott Brick.  This book involves a different set of protagonists.  Sam and Remi Fargo (nice pun–“far go”) are a wealthy, young married couple who enjoy treasure-hunting.  While scuba-diving in Tanzania, they discover a ship’s bell that gets the adventure going.

First the good points. Remi is a strong female character–something missing from the Dirk Pitt novels.  Sam ends up dealing with most of the physical rough stuff, but Remi is no slouch.  The story is a rollicking adventure along the lines of most of Cussler’s works.  The tensions build nicely and the chapters are short, making for easy reading.  I haven’t done any fact checking to see how plausible the historical aspects of the plot were, but I didn’t detect any real howlers as I was listening to the book during my commute.  Scott Brick did a great job with the narration, providing authentic-sounding and consistent accents to the various characters.

However, the character physical descriptions are sparse and I didn’t get a great feel for the character’s inner selves.  In fact, there were times when I wasn’t sure whose point of view I was seeing the world from.  It seemed as if parts of the book were written rapidly; here’s an actual sentence from the book:  “I agree,” Sam agreed.  What’s wrong with ‘said?’  As with many of Cussler’s books, a character with the actual name ‘Clive Cussler’ makes an appearance and assists the heroes at one of their most desperate moments.  As a best-selling author, Mr. Cussler has earned the right to employ such deux ex machina devices, I suppose, but any such manuscripts from me would be rejected amidst gales of laughter.  Lastly, Cussler is starting to re-use concepts from earlier books; I seem to recall that his novel Treasure also involved a manic trying to create a modern version of the Aztec Empire.

You know my book rating system by now.  I give Lost Empire two seahorses.  If you enjoyed Mr. Cussler’s other books, or love easy-to-read adventure novels, then this book will pass the time effectively.  Otherwise, well, there are reasons some empires should become lost.  I could be wrong, though, and in that case you should leave a comment for–

                                                                 Poseidon’s Scribe

February 8, 2012Permalink

Book Review – Command and Control: Great Military Leaders from Washington to the Twenty-First Century

I enjoy books that address historical questions.  Historians often take the long view and explore enduring facets of human nature that are present in any age.  Such books are a reminder of what a snapshot a human lifespan really is.

So I just finished listening to another book on CD:  Command and Control:  Great Military Leaders from Washington to the Twenty-First Century, by Professor Mark R. Polelle.  It was put out by Recorded Books as part of The Modern Scholar series, and was read by the author.

The book sets out to discover what makes a good leader.  It focuses on Washington, Napoleon, Grant, Sherman, Lee, Moltke, Pershing, Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, LeMay, and Schwarzkopf.  Not all of these generals were American, of course, but Napoleon and Moltke did have important influences on the American way of war.

With so many generals to discuss, Professor Polelle doesn’t go into great depth on any of them, but that keeps the book from getting dull.  It is not overly academic in tone, and it was certainly interesting to this particular layman.  We learn some differences between each of the studied generals, and some common traits, as well as some developing trends over time.

If you’re looking for the direct answer to what makes a good leader, I don’t think you’ll find it here.  You’ll find much discussion about leadership, but it’s my opinion that great leadership can’t be spotted in advance, or even taught in any sort of effective way. Great leadership emerges, and can be identified only during or after the fact, never before.  That’s not a meant as a criticism of the book; I just think the author went after an unanswerable question.

Also, this isn’t the sort of history book where the author makes a bold or controversial contention and then proves it with historical evidence.  It is simply a review of influential generals with some discussion of leadership traits.  It performs that service very well; I just wanted you to know what to expect.

There was one annoying fact about the CDs I listened to–for four or five of the lessons, the narrator introduced the wrong lesson.  That is, the narrator would state the next lesson would be about Grant, and the professor would discuss Sherman. Very strange.

Lastly, most books I listen to on CD are read word-for-word from a text. However, this book sounded like the professor was referring to notes rather than reading.  He never seemed at a loss for words, but I got the sense he was making up his sentences as he went along.  That may well be a characteristic of all the books in The Modern Scholar series, for all I know.

In accordance with my book review rating system, I’ll award this book four seahorses.  I do recommend it; you’re likely to find out more about various American generals than you knew before.  If you’ve read it and think otherwise, please leave a comment for–

                                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

 

January 19, 2012Permalink