No Labels edited by Jon Huntsman

Title: No Labels

Author: ed. Jon Huntsman

Publisher: Diversion Books

Pages: 102

Release: January 14, 2014

Anyone who looks at the state of the US government today has to agree that there are some serious problems. The left thinks that we need more government, the right thinks we need less. Both sides view the issue as a zero sum game and are fighting to win this game. In the meantime the vast majority of Americans want their elected officials to make things work, and make them work well.

The No Labels organization has stepped in to this gap between left and right. Members in the organization come from all sides of the political spectrum. The aim of this organization is to get leaders to sit down, agree on goals, and then work towards those common goals. This is a refreshing change from the rancor that has wracked the political world for over a decade now. The organization was founded by veteran political strategists Mark McKinnon and Nancy Jacobson. At the national level the organization is led by Jon Huntsman and Joe Manchin. 

Edited by Jon Huntsman, former Governor of Utah and Ambassador to China, this short book lays out the mission of this organization in several short goals. Each chapter describes a need or goal and then has short statements from members of the organization. Each section is equally weighted between members on the left and right. The mission is quite simple. The nation needs goals. The purpose of this organization is to encourage leaders is to create goals that can be agreed on. The primary goals set out are the kinds of issues that most, if not all, americans can agree on.

1. Create twenty-five million new jobs over the next ten years
2. Reform Medicare and Social Security so they are secure another seventy-five years
3. Balance the federal budget by 2030
4. Make America energy self-efficient by 2035.

The historical examples they use in the book show us how this worked in the 20th century. Eisenhower had a goal. That goal was a national highway system that would make the nation safer, and help to grow the economy. John F. Kennedy set the goal to place a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill came together to make the tax code simpler. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich worked together to balance the national budget. In all of these cases the leaders in question, on both sides, had to give something up to accomplish these goals.

Today Americans want leaders who will look past the pettiness of the ideologue. We don’t want more controversy where legislation is dependent on one party dictating to the other. Get this book. Look at these ideas. Then find out more about this organization. I knew nothing about No Labels before I read this book. Now I want to know a lot more.

Lost City by Jay Stringer

Title: Lost City

Author: Jay Stringer

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 314 Pages

Release Date: January 14, 2014

Eoin Miller’s day was going pretty well until he got the call from his boss. At first it seemed straight forward. A stoned john got rough with one of the hookers and she knifed him. Simple fix. Except Eoin knew the john and he wasn’t the violent type. Then another murder happens. Before long Eoin is in a race against time to protect himself and the crime family he works for. He uses the skills he learned when he was a cop to piece things together. The only question is can he get the answer before it is too late.

This novel is full of interesting and dark characters. The protagonist, Eoin Miller, is a half-Romani (Gypsy for those who don’t know the term they use for themselves) living in a modern world still loaded with prejudice against his father’s people. He was a police officer before he left the force and went to work for a crime family. The other characters are just as conflicted. Veronica Gaines runs the Gaines crime family, yet all the while she is trying to find a way to get the family free of its criminal enterprises. There is his ex-wife Laura. What is happening with their relationship? How does she fit in to all of this?

Lost City takes place in an area outside Birmingham, England. This is classic hard-boiled pulp fiction at its best. There is a surprise around every corner. Stringer keeps the reader guessing as to what will happen next. The pacing of the book is very quick. I found myself flying through the book. Now be warned, by its nature hard-boiled fiction has sex and violence. No one wears a white hat in this story.

Ever since Philip Marlow appeared in The Big Sleep hard-boiled detective stories have had a following. Years of reading these novels have taught me that while it is easy to write bad novels in this genre, it is very difficult to write good novels in this genre. Jay Stringer has managed to write a very good novel and I look forward to reading more Eoin Miller mysteries in the future.  This book is recommended for anyone who loves to sit down with a fast paced story full of twists and turns.

St. Peter's Bones by Thomas Craughwell

St. Peter's Bones
Thomas Craughwell
Crown Publishing
2014
144 Pages
Recommended for the lay Catholic and anyone with an interest in St. Peter's Basilica

In 1940, as part of a construction project at the Vatican, Pope Pius XII authorized a team of excavators to work under the Basilica of St. Peter. As the work progressed remains of an ancient Roman necropolis was discovered. As the excavators dug down layer after layer, they found many tombs from the first centuries of the Roman Empire. Among these tombs and mausoleums they found evidence of early Christian burials. Tradition holds that the Basilica of St. Peter is built over the site of the Apostle’s tomb. The excavators finally reached the location and what they found there is the subject of this short book.

St. Peter’s Bones tells the story of this excavation and also covers stories from the early church period. The book is not so much a work of history as a devout believer’s look at an important moment in the Church. The author’s own faith is very apparent in the first few pages. He does a very good job of explaining what relics are and why they are important. There is a nice summary of the ancient tradition of preserving the relics of martyrs.I won't give away too much since the author tries to lay the book out as a discovery. You will have to read it for yourself to find out what happens.

This book has many good qualities, but alas it also contains some flaws. I will look at the flaws first because the book is good and I want to leave you with the good points. First of all this is not a work by a historian or a even a popular historian. The narrative is a little disjointed. The style works, but it made this reader wish that the author would stop bouncing around and stay on topic. More than anything else the style resembles the writing on a television show like NOVA or National Geographic. This is not a bad thing, but the style certainly works better on television than in print. As stated earlier this is not designed to be a straight forward work of history, much less a scholarly text, but it would have been nice if the author had included at least one source for his statements. He often makes assertions and moves on. There was not a single footnote or endnote to cite the source. There were some other quibbling points, I would love to see any source that states the primary language of Rome in the first century was Greek, and that they only reverted to back to Latin later.

On the positive side this book gives a nice introductory look at the subject. The author makes it very easy for someone with no knowledge at all of the period to at least get their toes wet. I had not read anything on this particular subject, so it was interesting to read about the excavations and the findings. I did enjoy the book and I hope that more will be written on this fascinating topic. This book is worth the money and the short amount of time it will take to read it. I hope that the author is able to find someone in television, like PBS or the History Channel, to make a show out of this. I believe that this book will appeal primarily to lay Catholics, though anyone approaching this subject for the first time will find a lot to learn here as well. The book is short, 144 pages, and the author does a good job of making the subject accessible.

The Birth of Classical Europe by Simon Price and Peter Thonemann

The Birth of Classical Europe

Author: Simon Price and Peter Thonemann

Publisher: Viking

Pages: 416

Rating: 5 Stars

There are thousands of books about the classical world so one might ask if we really need another. The answer is yes we do. Our understanding of the past is constantly changing as new information is discovered. New writers have new ways of looking at old subjects. Most of all as the world we live in changes we need new books to help us connect with a past that is constantly moving.

The Birth of Classical Europe is a wonderful introduction to the ancient world. The authors focus on Greek history and then move on to Rome. They do not spend a lot of time on the civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Ancient Near East, and Egypt. That is not because of any Eurocentric prejudice, but rather they focus their story on one specific region. They spend a lot of time on Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. Using archeological discoveries from the last 20 years they build up a picture of the ancient world that is a little less catastrophic than the previous pictures that we have had. They argue more for a story of a sequence migrations that ends with assimilation. This is a little less sudden than the image of hordes of invaders wiping out the natives and resettling the region.

The authors spend a lot of time with ancient authors and recognize the value of the ancient sources. They do not accept the ancient stories at face value, that would of course be a mistake. Instead they look at the archeology and see how that illuminates the stories. Often credible theories of the past can be built when one uses this method.

This book is not meant to be a comprehensive history of the ancient world. Instead it is an introduction to the period. As the first volume of The Penguin History of Europe its purpose is to give the reader an understanding of the foundations of European civilization. The book is designed for the general reader. If you are not well read in the period you can pick this book up and learn a lot. I consider myself to be moderately well read in the period and I learned a lot. The Further Reading section at the end has a wonderful list of books, both scholarly and general reader, that should keep the person interested in the period satisfied for a long time to come. 

I highly recommend this book for anyone who would like to learn about the ancient world. This can be read as a general reader book and could also be used as a high school level textbook for home schoolers or others interested in providing anyone, young or old, with a well written book that is informative and enjoyable.

Red Sonja Volume 1: Queen of Plagues by Gail Simone and Walter Geovani

Red Sonja Volume 1: Queen of Plagues

Writer: Gail Simone

Artist: Walter Geovani

Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment

Pages: 186

Publication Date: February 25, 2014

MSRP: $19.99

Rating: 5 Stars

Let me say right off that I am not a huge reader of comics. I love good storytelling in any genre and I love good comic books. Most of the time I don’t find a lot to keep me interested these days. I am a sucker for classic sword and sorcery books and comics. So when I saw this new series from Dynamite starring everyone’s favorite redhead with a sword I was excited. Gail Simone has written some great stuff over the years and this volume is no exception.

This is classic Red Sonja material. It is also something new and fresh. Sonja’s story has been updated for this new run. Of course the old themes and images are there. What would a Robert Howard character be without seeing her family butchered and then taking revenge. What’s nice in this arc is that Simone takes time to give us brief flashbacks of Sonja’s past. She makes these interesting. The flashbacks are long enough to give us a scene, but short enough that they don’t slow down the narrative. 

In the story a king who once saved Sonja from a horrible fate is in trouble. Sonja comes to the rescue. We meet a lot of new characters. The sisters Ayla and Nias are very interesting. The character of Dark Annisia is well written. It’s great that our She Devil has an opponent who is equally strong and a woman.

Most important is the character of Sonja herself. Simone brings a lot of humanity to the character. One of the flashback scenes is particularly moving. We see Sonja as a young woman. Her family and village is wiped out in front of her. After escaping from one of the raiders she then buries the dead in her village. We learn that among her people the dead are never left unburied. This is where Simone really hooked my interest in the depth of the character. Among ancient cultures such customs were sacred and binding. The part about a young Sonja digging graves until her hands bled made the story seem so real. I don't want to give away too much. There are some great plot twists in this arc and saying too much will spoil some of the surprises.

Sonja is a difficult character to write well. After all, this is a woman who is supposed to be this amazing warrior. She is an expert with every weapon and every form or fighting. She is a strategist and an unstoppable killer. She manages to do all of this while wearing a bikini suit of armor. The question is how does one take this character seriously, yet keeping the classic look. Simone manages this with great skill.

The artwork by Walter Geovani is wonderful. It’s not over the top, but it is not subdued. He captures the perfect look for Sonja and the other characters. He work captures the mood and feel of Simone’s writing. These two make a perfect duo for sword and sorcery comics. There is action and fun, but there is also an emotional depth that is not normally found in fantasy comics. I plan to come back for more and recommend that you do too.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl is a well written edgy novel by bestselling author Gillian Flynn. Flynn is known for writing books with dark and edgy characters. Gone Girl carries on that tradition. The background seems simple enough at first. Nick and Amy Dunne are about to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. Amy is from the northeast, the daughter of two famous psychologists and authors. Her parents created the popular Amazing Amy series of books. Nick is the son of a working class divorced couple from North Carthage, MIssouri. He moved to New York to work as a writer for a magazine. Both lost their jobs in the publishing industry and eventually moved to North Carthage to care for Nick’s sick mother.

Then the unthinkable happens. Amy disappears. The door of the house is open and there is blood on the floor. The place has been turned upside down. What has happened to Amy? Is Nick responsible? As the story unfolds people begin to take sides and as secrets come out no one seems to know how to distinguish truth from fiction.

The story is told in first person by Nick and through Amy’s diary. This makes for interesting pacing. Everything in the story is narrated as something that has already happened. At the same time it becomes clear that our narrators are not altogether honest with themselves, or with us. Gone Girl is one of those books that is difficult to review because there are so many plot twists and turns and a good review should never spoil the story.

Gillian Flynn has crafted a taut, edgy, thriller that will keep even seasoned readers guessing what is going to happen next. I am usually one step ahead in most mystery novels, I was in the dark through much of this book. That is not normal, but was quite enjoyable. I won’t say that the characters are likable, they are not. They are not meant to be likable. Flynn examines the dark side of life and shows that what you see on the surface may not be what you find when you dig a little deeper. This is a riveting story and is highly recommended.

Target Lancer by Max Allan Collins

Thirty years ago Max Allan Collins introduced his private investigator Nathan Heller in the novel True Detective. In the course of that novel Heller witnesses the slaying of Mayor Cermak of Chicago who was shot down by a killer who claimed he was trying to kill President Roosevelt. Thus started the story of Nathan Heller. Over the last thirty years he has appeared in fourteen novels and over a dozen short stories. Now thirty years later in the character’s timeline he is wrapped up in another assassination plot. The plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in Chicago.

This time Heller is contacted by his old friend Bobby Kennedy. It is October 1963, and there is a strong likelihood that an attempt will be made on the president when he visits Chicago. Heller is wrapped up in this plot in more ways than one. Years earlier he had been the intermediary who hooked up the CIA with organized crime. The CIA wanted to kill Castro, but they needed deniability. The Mob wanted Castro dead as well, so Operation: Mongoose was launched. Unfortunately these attempts were laughably inept and everyone is getting worried.

On a bodyguard job Heller witnesses his client pass a payoff from Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa to an old childhood buddy of Heller’s, a man named Jake Rubenstein. Rubenstein had changed his name by that time to Jack Ruby. After his client is murdered Heller promises the widow that he will help track down the killer. So, while his agents try to locate a murderer, Heller is temporarily assigned to the Secret Service to prevent the assassination of the President.

Of course we all know that President Kennedy did not die in Chicago in November 1963. He died in Dallas. We also know that mobster Jack Ruby, with a sudden rush of patriotism shot down the man who killed Kennedy. While the story and some of the characters are fiction, Collins puts a lot of work into his novels. This research gives the stories an air of believability.  I was unaware of the story of the Chicago plot. Who was involved? We may never know, but Collins gives us a tight, tense narrative. If you enjoy fast paced, hardboiled detective writing then you should be reading the Nathan Heller novels. If you have not read any of these books then do what I did, take a chance. You won’t regret it.