Edward C.

DeGaulle was maddening, Jackson’s book is enlightening

Revisado: 02-24-24

Once Paris was liberated, and especially after V-E Day, it turned out that everyone in France was in the Resistance. The truth was much different and far darker, reality that France has never acknowledged in any meaningful way.

Charles DeGaulle, on the other hand, played an honorable role even if he drove Churchill and Roosevelt to distraction. Apart from a number of chapters on obscure French philosophers and novelists, this excellent biography is well worth listening to.

Despite France being an unimportant (yet incredibly insecure) country after World War II, DeGaulle made it a player on the world stage for good and ill. Great material worth listening to and first-rate narration.

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25 hours and 2 minutes of drivel

Revisado: 08-02-23

Who knew that Joseph Stalin was a liberal democrat, trapped by Franklin Roosevelt and George Kennan into a chrysalis of totalitarian frustrations? And that they, not Stalin and his fellow thugs, led the world into the Cold War and its “war of nerves”.

Or perhaps Osip Mandelstam got it right:

“We live, deaf to the land beneath us/ Ten steps away no one hears our speeches/
All we hear is the Kremlin mountaineer,/
The soul-corrupter and peasant-slayer /
His fingers are fat as grubs/
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips/
His cockroach whiskers leer/
And his boot tops gleam.”

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Opinionated and important book

Revisado: 02-22-23

The writer leaves no doubt where he stands on the papacy and the modern Catholic Church in this bio of the man who may be the only believing Christian to ascend to the papacy.

The narrator does a great job telling the story. For once there are no faux accents when quoting sources from various countries and backgrounds.

Had he lived longer perhaps John XXIII would have transformed the Church into a better institution that would have met the needs of many more people across the world.

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Harrowing

Revisado: 10-17-22

Incredibly harrowing story of Marines in World War II. Well written and narrated, comes highly recommended by reputable military historians. The only glory in this story is that earned by sacrifice, loyalty and personal courage—all worn modestly.

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Excellent clear narrative

Revisado: 09-19-22

Of all the books I’ve read or listened to about the Battle of the Bulge, this is the best. Clear story lines narrated well for the listener make this book well worth a read or a listen by people of any age.

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Classic John Keegan

Revisado: 06-13-22

Erudite, kaleidoscopic and humane story of D-Day and well narrated. An enjoyable listen and a great read.

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Band of Boobies?

Revisado: 04-03-22

A cynical and bitter story of American soldiers in the European theater in 1944-45 by a writer who apparently served honorably and earned medals for his service. Perhaps he never got over his feelings of fear and danger but this story is a shallow effort at best and marred by a supercilious narrator. Buy the book in paperback if you need toilet paper.

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Inside scoop on FDR justices

Revisado: 03-13-22

Well written and narrated, this long book was definitely worth listening to from start to finish. Poignant to realize that the moral midgets appointed to the Court by HW Bush, his idiot son W and the former criminal-in-chief Donald have taken seats once held by these scorpions — William Douglas, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Robert Jackson. How far we have fallen as a country!

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Complex story written and narrated well

Revisado: 01-22-22

Well worth reading or listening to — an important series of events in American political history. Had FDR’s court packing strategy worked, we would very likely be living in a different and better country. For one thing, far more people would have the contempt for the US Senate, its rules and procedures that it has so richly earned as a barrier to real democracy and justice for all Americans.

One facet of these events is still mysterious: WHY did Roosevelt misjudge the politics so badly and do it so many times in 1937? Another interesting story from the book is about naked US senators swimming in the pool at the Little Rock Country Club in July 1937.

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Fiction or non-fiction? Either way it’s drivel

Revisado: 09-04-21

Read or listen to this book if you to understand how a famous author phones it in. There are numerous factual errors, basic information that is just wrong. The book’s content is predigested drivel, scooped up by a perfunctory scan of secondary sources on the level of People magazine and recycled newspapers. Makes me wonder about the rest of her books.

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