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Showing posts with the label Great Depression

PALM SUNDAY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE by Kurt Vonnegut

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  Published in 1981 by Delacorte Press. Kurt Vonnegut offers this collection (he calls is a "collage") of fiction, non-fiction, interviews, and even a musical based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  As is the case with all collections, some parts of the collection are excellent and some parts are not very good. I believe that he first half of the collection is the best, mostly because of the inclusion of a history of the Vonnegut family in Indianapolis. Ironically, it was not written by Vonnegut, but by a family member who had married into the Vonnegut family.  Indianapolis is my adopted hometown and this Vonnegut family history reads like a history of the city from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. I found it fascinating reading, especially the story of the subscription brothel gentlemen's club that was frequented by the city's elite in an area that still has political "clubs" with fancy dining and smoking rooms more than 100 years later. It would be tacky to pay

ESPERANZA RISING (audiobook) by Pam Muñoz Ryan

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  Originally published in book format in 2000. Published by Listening Library in 2003. Read by Trini Alvarado Duration: 4 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Esperanza is the main character in a fictionalized version of the author's grandmother's adolescence.  In Mexico, Esperanza is the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Aguascalientes. On this ranch, life is wonderful. She has servants and attends a private school. But, life in Mexico in 1930 is fraught with danger. It is only 10 years after the 10 year long Mexican Revolution and armed bands still roam the countryside. One of these groups kills Esperanza's father and her conniving uncles take the ranch and burn the house down to make sure they keep the land.  The author, Pam Muñoz Ryan Esperanza and her mother join a family of their servants (the ranch manager, the household manager, and their son) and flee to America (California) with false paperwork. They hope to work on American farms and re-establish themselves.

FIGHTER PILOT: THE WORLD WAR II CAREER of ALEX VRACIU by Roy E. Boomhower

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  Published in 2010 by Indiana Historical Society Press. Alex Vraciu (1918-2015) was a World War II flying ace, ranking fourth in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He destroyed 19 Japanese planes in the air and 21 on the ground.  This short book is very approachable and tells the story of Vraciu's childhood during the Great Depression in Northwest Indiana (now commonly known as "The Region") and his college years at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.  Vraciu took advantage of a U.S. government program that trained civilians to be pilots with the understanding that if the U.S. went to war those pilots would become military pilots. He trained in Muncie, Indiana and immediately joined the U.S. Navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Vraciu had a remarkable military career over the next 23 years. Besides destroying 40 Japanese planes, he lost multiple planes, including being shot down over the Philippines and leading a group of guerrilla figh

THE GRAPES of WRATH (audiobook) by John Steinbeck

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  Originally Published in 1939. Audiobook version published in 2011 by Penguin Audio. Performed by Dylan Baker. Duration: 21 hours, 1 minute. Unabridged. Winner of the National Book Award. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Declared to be the best-selling book of 1939 by the New York Times. I last read The Grapes of Wrath when I was in high school, nearly 40 years ago. It was assigned reading for my English class and all I really remembered about it was a couple of scenes. I remembered the last scene, with the flood and starving man. And I remembered and early scene where the tractor operator is plowing up the farms, the farmyards and even intentionally damaging homes in Oklahoma. Besides that, I had nothing but a pervasive memory of sorrow and injustice. I've always thought of this book and Of Mice and Men as kind of a set of books about migrant farm workers during the Great Depression. I've read Of Mice and Men  5 or 6 times, though - a fact that I can one hundred percent attribu

PROHIBITION in the UNITED STATES: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

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  Published in 2019 by Hourly History. Hourly History  publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for larger topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it works out about right for this topic. This history goes all of the way back to the arrival of the  Mayflower in 1620. Turns out the Puritans brought hundreds of gallons of alcoholic beverages with them to the New World and immediately set up the means to produce even more. The book then goes on to show the ups and down of America's relationship with alcohol. When the reader gets to the temperance movement, there is a solid context to understand why the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1919 and why it was eventually abolished by the 21st Amendment a mere 14 years later. For a short read, this book provides a lot of good, basic information.  I rate this e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.c

BLUEBEARD by Kurt Vonnegut

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  Originally published in October of 1987. The premise of this book is that it is the autobiography of a has been artist named Rabo Karabekian. Karabekian also appears in an earlier Vonnegut book ( Breakfast of Champions ). Karabekian is an abstract expressionist, like the real-life famed artist  Jackson Pollock , who is in this novel as a friend of Karabekian. Karabekian's paintings are basically canvases covered with a coat of house paint and then some strips of tape. They were popular for a while. Karabekian's paintings are really a way for him to deal with his PTSD from World War II. He doesn't want to deal with the details so he basically paints pictures of nothing. A self portrait of Kurt Vonnegut. Karabkeian tells about how he got started in the art business, kind of hints around at his World War II experience and intersperses the whole thing with talk about what is going on in his life as he is writing.  I read the book with Karabekian and his author friend Paul Sla

THE HOUSE of DANIEL: A NOVEL of WILD MAGIC, the GREAT DEPRESSION, and SEMIPRO BALL by Harry Turtledove

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  Published in 2016 by Tom Doherty Associates (A Tor Book) Harry Turtledove specializes in alternate histories. Usually, he has a big twist - what if the South won the Civil War? What if Atlantis were a real continent? What if the Colonies lost the Revolutionary War? What if MacArthur actually dropped atomic bombs during the Korean War? The House of Daniel is a different kind of story, with a twist. To be perfectly honest, I read the description of this book, with its references to The Great Depression, baseball, "hotshot wizards" and zombies and missed the fact that it was actually referring to actual wizards and zombies, not metaphorical wizards (the whiz kid experts that FDR hired) and zombies (the unemployed masses who are desperate for work). I really thought that Turtledove had just written a straight book about semipro baseball in the Great Depression. And, basically he has. 85% of this story is about baseball. Jack Spivey does odd jobs, plays semipro baseball for a f

OF MICE and MEN (audiobook) by John Steinbeck

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Originally published in 1937. Penguin Audio edition published in 2011. Read by Gary Sinise. Duration: 3 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged.  The narrator, Gary Sinise, as the character George in the 1992 film version of this novel.  This is probably the 5th or 6th time that I have read this book. I reviewed it as a print book 10 years ago (click here to see that review ). Gary Sinise read this book and did a fabulous job, especially with the voices of Lennie and Crooks. He played George in one of the many movie adaptations of this novel in 1992. This was my first time hearing this book as an audiobook and I was very impressed that it was an even more effective book when read aloud than in print. This review of one of the most-read, most-celebrated novels in the English-speaking world will not include a plot synopsis - what's the point? Instead, let me say that this short novel has an amazingly tight plot. In this 3 hour and 11 minute story, nearly every scene, and most lines o

THE YEAR of FEAR: MACHINE GUN KELLY and the MANHUNT THAT CHANGED the NATION (audiobook) by Joe Urschel

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Published in 2015 by Macmillan Audio. Read by Jeremy Bobb. Duration: 9 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. George "Machine Gun Kelly" Barnes (1895-1954)  and his wife Kathryn (1904-1985) In the early years of the Great Depression, kidnapping became a fairly common crime, especially in the Midwest. It was viewed by some as a safer alternative to bank robberies, especially since unsuspecting victims were often not armed. The most famous kidnapping of the era was the Lindbergh baby case. It ended tragically, but did result in a Federal anti-kidnapping law. That law got its first test when George "Machine Gun Kelly" Barnes and his wife Kathryn planned the kidnapping of oil tycoon Charles F. Urschel (no relation to the author of this book, but he admits to initially researching the topic due to the victim having the same last name as his). Urschel was taken from his home in Oklahoma to a farm in Texas. The moment they crossed the border, the kidnapping became a fe

A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE BOOK that INSPIRED the HILARIOUS CLASSIC FILM (audiobook) by Jean Shepherd

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Published by Listening Library in 2004. Read by Dick Cavett Duration: 3 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) A lot of people aren't aware that the plot for the classic Christmas movie A Christmas Story was not written as a coherent novel but was actually a collection of short stories that the author had written about his childhood in northwestern Indiana during the Great Depression over the years that were then skillfully edited into a movie. These stories don't follow the plot of the movie exactly, but all of the high points are here, including the infamous lamp, the bully, the BB gun, the visit to Santa and the Bumpus hounds.  Interestingly, this audiobook was not read by Jean Shepherd, who was a professional radio personality and told most of these stories over the air (he is also the narrator in the movie). Instead, it is read by television host Dick Cavett. At first, I was disappointed but Cavett did a great job. This audiobook was a lot of

1944: FDR and the YEAR THAT CHANGED HISTORY (audiobook) by Jay Winik

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A Review of the Audiobook Published in 2015 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by Arthur Morey Duration: 21 Hours, 10 minutes Unabridged Josef Stalin (1878-1953), FDR (1882-1945) and Winston Churchill (1874-1965) at the Tehran Conference in 1943. The premise of 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History is that 1944 is the most important year of World War II - the year that the Allies grew certain that they were going to win the war, the year that post-War plans were laid out, the year of the D-Day invasion and more. This effort by Jay Winik is very readable and was an informative and entertaining listen. There are times when he creates fabulous images in the listener's mind that are worthy of any novelist. His description of the extent of anti-Jewish operations throughout Europe and particularly in Auschwitz and other death camps are so vivid and so striking that I can readily recommend this book as a good place to start for anyone who wants a serious look. The book

THE JEFFERSON RULE: WHY WE THINK the FOUNDING FATHERS HAVE ALL the ANSWERS (audiobook) by David Sehat

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Published by Tantor Audio in May of 2015 Read by Tom Perkins Duration: 8 hours, 16 minutes If you are a person that likes to debate on the internet than you have undoubtedly experienced Godwin's Law . Godwin's Law states that if you debate long enough on the internet, someone will inevitably make a comparison to Nazism, Hitler, the Holocaust ("You don't like Donald Trump's hair? What are you the hairdo Nazi?!?").  A similar rule exists when discussing American politics - eventually someone will refer back to the Founding Fathers. It is especially easy to quote Thomas Jefferson - he was so prolific and well-written that it is easy to break out a quote to support your point of view. In the case of Jefferson, it is often too easy because he was extremely inconsistent in his political views. To start easy, he did write " We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unaliena

TO KILL a MOCKINGBIRD (audiobook) by Harper Lee

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    Published by Harper Audio in 2008 Originally published in 1960 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a Library Journal poll Read by Sissy Spacek Duration: 12 hours, 17 minutes I almost feel silly writing a review for a book that is nearly universally regarded as one of the best, if not THE best, novels written in the last century. This book is read in schools across the country, was adapted into an amazingly successful movie that is as highly regarded as the book. This book is not just respected - it is loved. I also hate to admit that it had been nearly 25 years since I had read To Kill a Mockingbird.  Although I remembered that I loved the book, I had really forgotten why. So, when I was offered the chance to review this audio version by the publisher for free I jumped it at. It had been such a long time that I needed to remind myself why it was so great.  I am not going to waste everyone's time by re-telling the story in

Umbrella Mike: The True Story of the Chicago Gangster Behind the Indy 500 by Brock Yates

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Incorrectly Named and a Rather Disjointed Effort Published by Thunder's Mouth Press in 2006 Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of the Indy 500. I have been to every 500 since 1986 and I live within earshot of the track. I have whiled away many a day at the track watching qualifications, practice or just going through the gift shop during the winter when the track is silent. I was dimly aware that a Chicago gangster had fielded an entry in the Indy 500 in the 1930's so I hoped that this book would tell that story. And it does, but the title of the book makes it sound like Umbrella Mike (Mike Boyle, the crooked boss of Chicago's International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) somehow saved the race or even financed the construction of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He did not. Wilbur Shaw in 1939 in one of the Boyle Maseratis. He won the 1939 Indy 500 in this car. Photo courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society What he did was use his race teams to launder

The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity (audiobook) by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy

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Very Interesting History of the Modern Presidency Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2012 Read by Bob Walter Duration: 22 hours, 1 minute Unabridged Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, both editors at Time , have delivered a very listenable, fascinating look at each American president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. No matter their political persuasion, their life experiences or their qualities as a human being, all 12 of these men share one thing: they were once President. This is an exclusive club and it seems that just about every president has looked to a former president for a shoulder to lean on, advice or even as a personal envoy sent to convey a sense of urgency to the message. The story is told in a rough chronological order starting with Truman. When Truman was President there was only one other member of the Presidents Club: Herbert Hoover. Yes, the same Hoover that Truman and FDR disparaged for 12 years. However, to his credit, Truman sent out feelers and disc

Under the Wire: Bestselling WWII Memoir of an American Spitfire Pilot and Legendary POW Escape-Artist by William Ash and Brendan Foley

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Re-published by CreateSpace in November 2012. Despite the fact that this will be the third posting of the year for me, this was actually the first book that I read in 2013 and it may very well be the best book that I will read all year. William Ash, now age 95, and his co-author Brendan Foley have created an immensely readable, very enjoyable story about young Bill Ash, an American who joined the Brits in fighting the Nazis by flying a Spitfire (a fighter plane) before America even joined the war. Ash begins his story by telling about the difficulties of growing up in the Great Depression in Texas. Somehow, he managed to get a college degree, even though there were no jobs to be found for this new college grad. So, he hit the road, riding trains, traveling the country and living in hobo camps. One day he heard that the Canadians were looking for fighter pilots to send to England and they would even take Americans who renounced their citizenship. The last operating Spitfire

Truman (audiobook) by David McCullough

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Published by  Simon and Schuster Audio in 1992. Read by David McCullough, the author Includes parts of recordings of speeches by Harry S. Truman and Douglas MacArthur Duration: approximately 6 hours Abridged Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) While I am a world history teacher, my favorite times in American history are the Revolutionary War Era, the Civil War Era and an interest in the Frontier as it moved across the United States. While I knew a great deal about Truman before listening to this audiobook, I really felt that I needed to know more. David McCullough's treatment of Truman is friendly, but not overly rosy. The audiobook version I listened to was abridged. I assume that the areas that were not focused upon in the abridged edition are more fleshed out in the unabridged edition. (Note: this abridgement was not sloppily done - I didn't even notice it was abridged until about 3/4 of the way through the book - it just seemed like he was glossing over the

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents from Wilson to Obama (P.I.G. Series) by Steven F. Hayward

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An entertaining read and a great way to rate the presidents Published in 2012 by Regnery Publishing, Inc. First and foremost, the latest entry in the P.I.G. series is a great read. Steven Hayward is to be commended for making what could have been a very stale read into an entertaining read - he has a light touch. Secondly, how sad is it that grading presidents by how well they "preserve, protect, and defend" the constitution is a unique idea? Hayward begins with a look at what the founders wrote about the office of the president and compares that to the modern presidency. He then looks at the presidency in the 19th century and how most presidents took the restrictions of the Constitution very seriously. As Hayward proceeds to grade the 17 presidents we have had from 1913 until the present on an A to F scale (just like in school) he gives a thumbnail sketch of each president with the major issues of the election and/or his time in office, where he diverged from th

Ronald Reagan: Our 40th President by Winston Groom

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Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. in 2012. Winston Groom, forever to be known as the author of Forrest Gump , has busied himself with a series of non-fiction books as of late. His latest is this short biography, Ronald Reagan: Our 40th President . The publisher lists this book as "juvenile nonfiction" but this adult also enjoyed this 148 page biography. This is not a controversial "let's set the record straight" book. I detected no political bias except for the fact that is a generally friendly book towards Reagan. That being said, Groom covers the lows of Reagan's personal (strained relationships with his children, for example) and political life (Iran Contra - it gets more attention than almost any aspect of his presidency) and covers them as thoroughly as a book of this size should. Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) This is a great book for high school students because it is easy to read, does not dwell on topics for too long and covers all parts