I recently was given a copy of George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire, written by Peter Y. Choi. Like a lot of people who know a lot about the history of the American colonies or of religious history, I knew who George Whitefield (pronounce WIT-field) was. Whitefield is often portrayed as a preacher who played a huge part in the Great Awakening. He’s often painted as a saint. This book seems to paint a more balanced portrait of the preacher.
George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire tells of the life of Whitefield, not just as a preacher, but as someone who also was a flawed individual, like all of us. Yes, he preached to the masses during the Great Awakening, but he also owned slaves, had questionable practices with regards to his orphanage, tried to found a college, and involved himself in politics during the War of 1812.
Even though I knew some things about Whitefield before reading this book, there was a lot more to this book that I didn’t know. Although a lot of things in this book (looking from a 21st century perspective) were not good, like pushing for slavery in Georgia, it was good to learn about these other aspects of his life as well.
The book was a fairly scholarly book, so it wasn’t one that I could read straight through. It wasn’t a book that I couldn’t put down, and I did read a few other books while I was working on this one, but the information in this book was interesting. The book is worth reading if you want to learn more about this preacher.
I realize that there have been several non-YA book reviews over the last week and a half, and unfortunately, that’s just how it worked out… I really couldn’t move the dates of my reviews because I wanted the ARCs to get out in a timely manner, and I also wanted to keep my upcoming Throne of Glass and Red Queen reviews together. On Thursday, we will resume our normal YA reviews with Strange the Dreamer.
1,000 Years, 1,000 People is a book that ranks the 1,000 most influential people of the last millennium. I just finished reading the book this week; you might be thinking “aren’t we 18 years into the new millennium?” Well, we are, but I finally got around to reading this book.
This isn’t a book that you really sit down and read all in one sitting, like a lot of the books that I’ve reviewed here. Even though I bought this book years ago, it was misplaced until just recently. I decided to start reading it earlier this year. I typically would only read about ten entries a day.
This book ranks the people who had the most lasting influence over the last millennium. Since it’s hard to judge people’s lasting influence if they’re still alive, there are some people that were really influential in the 1900s that didn’t make the book (still, 136 people did). There are people represented in this book from every century, although 417 people that lived in the 1800s made the list, so it’s still fairly skewed towards people that lived more recently.
Even though 1,000 Years, 1,000 People does represent worldwide influence, the book is still fairly heavily skewed towards the United States (267 of the people in the book lived there). Then again, the US has been the most influential country in the world since about World War II. This book was published in 1998, which was right after the Cold War had seemingly ended and was before 9/11. It was a time when the United States seemed to have an unprecedented influence over the world.
Each entry has the person’s name, the years they lived, a short caption about them, and an approximately 150 word blurb about what they’ve done. The only exception is Fernão Lopes, who was ranked 780. Instead of a caption saying why he was important, there is a footnote notation after his name. The footnote reads “1. father of the footnote”. Each entry is fairly witty like this, as well as being informative.
With 1,000 people on the list, there’s bound to be some people that you don’t recognize. The highest ranked people are bound to be people that you recognize: Johannes Gutenberg, Martin Luther, William Shakespeare, etc. At the bottom of the list, there were a lot of people that I had never heard of, like Bernard Cornfield and Joseph Bramah. Even at the bottom of the list, almost everybody did something that you’ll be familiar with, like inventing the stethoscope or disposable diapers.
All sorts of people are represented in this book. There are artists, inventors, politicians, and even some sports heroes. It seemed to be a nice balance.
1,000 Years, 1,000 People is a book that you can read and learn something interesting from. If you’re interested in learning about a wide variety of historical figures, but don’t want to read a ton of biographies or peruse dry entries in Wikipedia, you might find this book worth reading.
I was recently given the opportunity to read The House of One Thousand Eyes by Michelle Barker, in exchange for an honest review. This is an important book to read, especially if you are unfamiliar with the days when the Soviet Union and East Germany existed.
The House of One Thousand Eyes is set in East Germany in the year 1983. Back in those days, there were informants in East Germany everywhere. You never knew who you could trust. The German secret police, or Stasi, could scoop you up and take you to prison, or make you disappear completely. As an aside, I recently was watching a video on security and privacy where they mentioned that the Stasi would sometimes go into a person’s house and move things around just to mess with them and make them think they were crazy. This was a place where real repression happened.
Our protagonist, Lena, spent some time in a mental hospital prior to the beginning of the book. Her uncle, Erich, is a well-known writer. One day, he just disappears. Throughout the book, Lena tries to find out what happened to him. We follow her investigation as she works as a cleaning lady at Stasi headquarters. As we read the book, we find out what she found.
The book was enjoyable, but it wasn’t my favorite. I’m sure that there are people that will like this book more than I did, but I probably will not reread this book. This book is a book that is important more than anything else. I can’t think of any other fiction written during this time period, but I believe that it is more important than ever for people to know what happened there.
What I Liked About the Book
The book was well-written, and the characters were interesting. From what I know about East Germany at the time, I think that the things that happened (people disappearing, people ordering things and not getting them for eons, etc.) were realistically portrayed. I liked the use of German, and especially German slang used in the country at the time. The book had some suspenseful parts where I found myself trying to read as fast as possible because I wanted to find out what happened.
What I Didn’t Like About the Book
I think that I’m the only person that I’ve seen review this book so far that didn’t think that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. While I did like it, I didn’t think it was as über-wonderful as some people did. The main character, Lena, didn’t exactly make the smartest decisions. I find it difficult to believe that someone growing up in East Germany would be as dense as she was when it came to asking questions about her uncle after he disappeared. As she was investigating what happened to her uncle, she seemed to be a little more foolhearty than most people in her situation would be. When she has to make an important decision about her future towards the end of the book, I find it difficult to believe that she makes the decision that she did.
Trigger Warnings
While this book is being marketed as a YA book, I don’t believe that this book is really appropriate for younger YA readers. Lena is sexually assaulted on multiple occasions, by the same person; the attacks get worse throughout the book. I didn’t particularly like this part of the book, although I do realize that it is probably a realistic portrayal of the way things could have happened.
Overall…
The House of One Thousand Eyes is a book that you should consider reading, especially if you are unfamiliar with the time before the Berlin Wall fell down. We are in a time period where our privacy is becoming less and less and the power of the state is increasing. It’s good to read books like this in order to understand what could happen if a country became this powerful and overbearing. While it wasn’t the best book I’ve read this month so far, it was good for me to have read it.
Another book about East Germany that you may be interested in is Deep Undercover by Jack Barsky. That book is nonfiction and deals with an East German spy that went to America, but it’s also a good book to read as he continually had to deal with his handlers back in the Communist world. That book was one of my favorites from last year.
This book will be released on September 11th, but it is available for pre-order now.
The Indianapolis was the ship that was chosen to deliver the nuclear weapons that were used to help end World War II to Japan. After the ship made its top secret delivery, it was sunk by an enemy submarine. The captain was court-martialed, his career was destroyed, and the survivors felt that the whole situation was unjust. The captain was finally exonerated about 75 years later, after most of the survivors had already passed away. Indianapolis is the story of the delivery, the sinking, the destruction of Captain Charles McVay, and finally, his redemption.
I first heard of the Indianapolis last year, when I read Bill O’Reilly’s Killing the Rising Sun, which is another excellent book on World War II. Although that book focused on the war in Japan in general, I remember reading about the fate of the Indianapolis (and its captain) and thought that it was really sad. When I had the opportunity to read Lynn Vincent’s book on this ship in exchange for an honest review, I jumped at the chance.
Indianapolis tells the story of the ship from before the delivery of the atomic weapons to Captain McVay’s absolution. It tells about how the crew dealt with the sinking ship. It tells about how the crew fought off sharks, dealt with dehydration and hunger, and tried to keep from going insane. It tells about the incompetence of the Navy in even recognizing that such an important ship was lost in the first place. It describes what could potentially be thought of as corruption during McVay’s court martial, and the bureaucracy that prevented him from receiving justice for well over half a century.
The story was exciting. Vincent helps us get to know many of the sailors over the course of the book, which helped me care about what happened. The descriptions of the ship’s sinking and the sharks in the water were page turners, almost as if you were reading fiction. You feel for the captain as he realizes that his career was sunk. I cried tears of joy at the end when he was finally cleared of all charges, even though he had committed suicide years before.
One of the problems that I have with some military books is that they sometimes tend to use a lot of military terminology without adequately defining them. As a former military officer, I’m familiar with terms like 1MC, forecastle, gunwale, bulkhead, and the like, but if you’re not familiar with shipboard terms, don’t worry with this book. Vincent doesn’t introduce naval terminology without defining it for you, and she often even tells you how to pronounce it. If you’re new to military books, this can be a great help.
If you like to read history and are familiar with the US fight against Japan in World War II, I highly recommend this book (if you need a refresher on the US fight against Japan, Killing the Rising Sun might be a good place to start). Indianapolis is a good book if you want to delve more deeply into the war and want to read a good story of shipwreck and survival.
Indianapolis won’t be released until July 10th, but you can pre-order it now.
I couple of days ago I put out my list of my favorite books that I read for the first time in 2016. I didn’t have a list in front of me of all of the books that I had read for the year, and was just going off the top of my head with the things that stuck out to me (this year I need to keep a record of the books that I read). There was on glaring omission to this book list: The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.
I apologize for the omission, but it truly belongs up in one of the top three books that I read this year. I just read it earlier in the year last year and didn’t remember it. So I’ll review it now.
“Thank God for the fleas.”
Whenever something bad happens in life, and I still want to try to be thankful, this is now the phrase I use. It has its origins in The Hiding Place; more on that later. I posted that on Facebook earlier this year and my mom was wondering why I posted it. No, we don’t have fleas in our house… but it reminds me to try to be thankful in all things.
While obviously not the place where Corrie and her sister stayed, this is an example of how conditions must have been like while she was in the concentration camp.
Corrie Ten Boom grew up in a modest family in the Netherlands before World War II. The early part of this book describes her childhood, all the family members that lived with her, the love that got away, and how she helped out at her father’s watch shop, which was attached to their house. It was a simple life where she was taught to honor and love God.
When World War II started, the Ten Boom family went through hardships like everybody else, but they were more fortunate than the Jewish people, who started to disappear. Corrie and her family end up getting involved in an elaborate scheme where they hid Jews until they could be moved to a safer place. A few of the Jews that she helped couldn’t be moved for one reason or another, and they lived with the Ten Boom family. An architect built a space in their house where the extra guests in their house could be hidden.
This was a dangerous business, because if they were caught, they could be killed. They had to hold drills where they had to hide all of the evidence of what they were doing as quickly as possible.
One day, they were caught, and the Ten Boom family was rounded up and sent to jail. Some of her family members were released; eventually, it was just her and her sister, Betsy, who ended up in a concentration camp together.
What the two sisters had to go through was horrendous, but one of the most inspiring things about the book is how they kept their faith through all of this. The Ten Boom sisters managed to smuggle a Bible into their sleeping quarters at the concentration camp; Corrie was disgusted by the fleas in the room, but her sister Betsy reminded her to be thankful for all things; even the fleas. The two sisters began to hold Bible studies in the concentration camp; I’m sure that there are several people today who are in Heaven today because of those Bible studies. Later, Corrie learned that the only reason why the Nazi soldiers wouldn’t enter their sleeping quarters, which allowed them to hold their Bible studies, was because of the flea infestation. They didn’t want to go near the place and the fleas. So today, when I feel like something bad has happened and I want to be thankful, I try to “thank God for the fleas.”
I find Corrie’s forgiveness after the war to be amazing as well. Instead of becoming bitter and wanting revenge, she showed forgiveness to her former Nazi captors. It’s easy, in times where everybody else is doing wrong, to go on the wrong track and partake in evil. Yes, the Jews needed healing after the war, but so were the former Nazis that got involved in evil because they were just trying to survive. Corrie showed forgiveness to them as well, which completely awed me.
The book was easy to read, and it was required reading for my kids last year, after I found the book on sale on Amazon.com. It’s not a happy book (I cried at times), but it is a beautiful, inspiring book. If you haven’t read it yet, please put it on your list of must-read books for the new year.
I recently was given a copy of George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire, written by Peter Y. Choi. Like a lot of people who know a lot about the history of the American colonies or of religious history, I knew who George Whitefield (pronounce WIT-field) was. Whitefield is often portrayed as a preacher who played a huge part in the Great Awakening. He’s often painted as a saint. This book seems to paint a more balanced portrait of the preacher.
