bradley_jf's reviews
1247 reviews

Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World by Alison Games

4.0

Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 by John Higham

3.0

Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America by Eiichiro Azuma

4.0

Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 by George J. Sanchez

3.0

Ender's Game Alive: The Full Cast Audioplay by Orson Scott Card

4.0

It was interesting. I haven't read Ender's Game in years. It seemed like the story had been updated a bit to reflect modern politics and some modern technology like texting, but the story was essentially the same. Sometimes female voice actors can voice young boys well and it's not that obvious. This isn't one of those times. That was one of the things that kept throwing me off. I couldn't tell what sex the person speaking was until there was more context added to the conversation, but it's not enough to cause me to give the total experience a bad rating. The music was good and it was an interesting touch, though the musical lead-ins to new chapters could have been a bit shorter.

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America by Mae M. Ngai

4.0

Making Foreigners: Immigration and Citizenship Law in America, 1600-2000 by Kunal M. Parker

4.0

Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction by Kevin Kenny

3.0

Guns by Stephen King

5.0

Balanced and still relevant

I went into this expecting a very liberal argument for strict gun control like maybe banning gun ownership, but what I got was a common sense argument for additions to existing gun restrictions. King uses the real example of gun restrictions in Australia to show that limiting the types of weapons people can buy can have a dramatic impact on the number of gun-related deaths. This is about a 30 to 45 minute read from a middle perspective on gun ownership in the US. I recommend it, and if you have Amazon Prime, you can read it for free with Prime Reading.

The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas by Mahatma Gandhi

5.0

This is an awesome resource for primary material (Gandhi's own writings). The book presents excerpts from multiple sources, both from his time in South Africa and in India, in what seems to be a mostly chronological order. The way it's written makes it easy to read, almost like a first person novel.

In terms of the content itself, Gandhi was brilliant and way ahead of his time.