Book Break - June Edition
We love movies…but we also love books.
Each month we’ll take a quick Concession Stand break to take a look at some of the things from our reading stack and bookcases and let you know what we think of them.
Grab a cup of tea, sit back, and settle in for a few books that entertain, enlighten, and in some cases are just guilty pleasures.
Ex-Isle (2016)
Peter Cline’s Ex-Heroes series is one of my guilty pleasures.
The premise is pretty straightforward: What if superheroes were real? And what if a plague (we won’t spoil it, but it is tied to the heroes) triggers a Walking Dead style zombie apocalypse?
This won’t be for everyone, but if you enjoy either of the genres in this mash-up you’ll have fun with this series. The characters are interesting and relatable (as far as possible), the storylines are (comic book) realistic, and the writing is tight.
Cline has released five books in the Ex-Heroes universe: Ex-Heroes, Ex-Purgatory, Ex-Patriots, Ex-Communications, and Ex-Isle.
We are only about half way through Ex-Isles but so far it is a very solid…
Three out of Five Stars.
⭐⭐⭐
Elements of Argument (2000)
From zombies to rhetoric, reasoning, and good writing…
Elements has been around for over twenty years and is currently on its 11th or 12th edition (the picture is the 6th edition - the copy on my desk).
It is, for my money, one of the best introductions to effective writing and critical thinking that is out there. If you want to write persuasively, argue effectively, or just have a better understanding of why you (and others) think in a certain way, this is the book for you. I reread several of the essay’s each year and keep it close whenever I am considering how to frame a particularly tricky argument.
Four out of Five Stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2005)
Another guilty pleasure is reading biographies. One of subjects I’ve read the most about has been Josef Stalin - perhaps a dozen books in all. The only ones to take up more bio-book space on my shelves are Washington, Lincoln, and the Buddha.
Perhaps the most informed and effective biographer of Stalin is Simon Sebag Montefiore (who also has an amazingly cool name).
Court, along with his 2008 Young Stalin, provide the most comprehensive and enlightening studies of the Soviet dictator to date.
Did you know that Stalin attended seminary?
That his two earliest jobs were bank robber…and government meteorologist?
Montefiore’s image of Stalin is not sympathetic. At the same time, it presents aspects and shades to his character - and insight into a talent for management that was as genius as its effects evil - that most biographers have missed.
Five out of Five Red Stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Outline of History (1920)
H.G. Wells wrote a lot of science fiction: The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and a bunch more. He also wrote one of the most ambitious histories of humanity of the time - over 800 pages detailing the human condition from pre-history to the twentieth century.
Historians have learned a bit since Wells and some of his views and conclusions have been overcome by new information, but Outline remains perhaps the single best overview of history yet released - as much due to his talent as a writer and storyteller as historian.
I have this on my shelf in hardback (a copy I have owned for more than forty years) and paperback and “reread” via Audible at least once a year.
This is the book I recommend to people when they ask me where to start studying world history.
Five out of Five Stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
We Are Still Here(1998)
One of the most frequent (non-movie) questions I’m asked is “Can you recommend a good book on Native American history?”
I can - in fact, I’ll give you two.
The first is featured here: We Are Still Here, by Peter Iverson and Wade Davies. Although 360 pages, it manages to be both a quick read and a relatively comprehensive study of Native Americans since 1890. This is the place to start if you want to understand modern Native issues and the relationship between Indian Country and the U.S. government.
The unofficial companion to this is Dee Brown’s masterful Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which concludes around the same place We Are Still Here begins.
Like Well’s Outline of History, this is a book I return to every year or so,
Three out of Five Stars.
⭐⭐⭐
What have you been reading lately?
Drop us a Comment and let us know!
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