It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Thomas Paine

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? 

Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence

by Harlow Giles Unger

 

https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Paine-Clarion-American-Independence/dp/0306921936/

This post is the one-hundred and seventy-first entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]


This was the other book I got at Christmas time. I’ve not read a full biography on the controversial Thomas Paine, so this is that opportunity. Unger is a good writer/historian.


Book Description from Amazon:

From New York Times bestselling author and Founding Fathers' biographer Harlow Giles Unger comes the astonishing biography of the man whose pen set America ablaze, inspiring its revolution, and whose ideas about reason and religion continue to try men's souls.

Thomas Paine's words were like no others in history: they leaped off the page, inspiring readers to change their lives, their governments, their kings, and even their gods. In an age when spoken and written words were the only forms of communication, Paine's aroused men to action like no one else. The most widely read political writer of his generation, he proved to be more than a century ahead of his time, conceiving and demanding unheard-of social reforms that are now integral elements of modern republican societies. Among them were government subsidies for the poor, universal housing and education, pre- and post-natal care for women, and universal social security. An Englishman who emigrated to the American colonies, he formed close friendships with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and his ideas helped shape the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

However, the world turned against Paine in his later years. While his earlier works, Common Sense and Rights of Man, attacked the political and social status quo here on earth, The Age of Reason attacked the status quo of the hereafter. Former friends shunned him, and the man America had hailed as the muse of the American Revolution died alone and forgotten.

Packed with action and intrigue, soldiers and spies, politics and perfidy, Unger's Thomas Paine is a much-needed new look at a defining figure.


Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? 

Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers: 

The Texas Victory That Changed American History 

by Brian Kilmeade

 This post is the one-hundred and seventieth entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]

https://www.amazon.com/Sam-Houston-Alamo-Avengers-American/dp/0525540539/

This book was a Christmas Gift. Brian Kilmeade is a good storyteller, so I knew there would be some new stories to add to the classic Alamo tales. I've not been disappointed. Easy reading book. Nice explanation in back of how he used the many sources to come with his own version of the stories.


Book Description from Amazon:

A New York Times bestseller.

In March 1836, the Mexican army led by General Santa Anna massacred more than two hundred Texians who had been trapped in the Alamo. After thirteen days of fighting, American legends Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett died there, along with other Americans who had moved to Texas looking for a fresh start. It was a crushing blow to Texas’s fight for freedom.

But the story doesn’t end there. The defeat galvanized the Texian settlers, and under General Sam Houston’s leadership they rallied. Six weeks after the Alamo, Houston and his band of settlers defeated Santa Anna’s army in a shocking victory, winning the independence for which so many had died.

Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers recaptures this pivotal war that changed America forever, and sheds light on the tightrope all war heroes walk between courage and calculation. Thanks to Kilmeade’s storytelling, a new generation of readers will remember the Alamo—and recognize the lesser known heroes who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.


Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Blowout

It’s Monday, What are You Reading? Blowout: 

Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the

Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth 

by Rachel Maddow

This post is the one-hundred and sixty-nineth entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]

https://www.amazon.com/Blowout-Corrupted-Democracy-Destructive-Industry/dp/0525575472/

I wasn’t going to get this one, but the topic is so current that I could not resist…

Book Description from Amazon:

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy—Winner Take All

In 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia—including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove—was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry.

With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West’s most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, “like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature.”

Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world’s most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, “Democracy either wins this one or disappears.”


Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? The Sterling Affair

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?
The Sterling Affair (The Forensic Genealogist Book 8) 

Kindle Edition
by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

This post is the one-hundred and sixty-eigth entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]

https://www.amazon.com/Sterling-Affair-Forensic-Genealogist-Book-ebook/dp/B083ZJP7JC/


This was the longest of the 8 books in the series, but it was also the most complex, using DNA extensively in solving the case. I have enjoyed each book by Goodwin, and look forward to #9.

Amazon Description:

When an unannounced stranger comes calling at Morton Farrier’s front door, he finds himself faced with the most intriguing and confounding case of his career to-date as a forensic genealogist. He agrees to accept the contract to identify a man who had been secretly living under the name of his new client’s long-deceased brother. Morton must use his range of resources and research skills to help him deconstruct this mysterious man’s life, ultimately leading him back into the murky world of 1950s international affairs of state. Meanwhile, Morton is faced with his own alarmingly close DNA match which itself comes with far-reaching implications for the Farriers.

This is the eighth novel in the Morton Farrier genealogical crime mystery series of ten stories, although it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story.