Book Review - Lakota America - A New History of Indigenous Power

Title: Lakota America - A New History of Indigenous Power
Author: Pekka Hamalainen
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍
My Review: I am an absolute fan of books on Native Americans. This book is a fire hose of information and details about Native American tribes from early 16th century to present. As such, it became a little overwhelming. I especially enjoyed the later chapters that described first encounters with white Europeans and the evolution of the various Native American tribes. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people who really want to learn more about Native Americans.

 
Description (Audible): This first complete account of the Lakota Indians traces their rich and often surprising history from the early 16th to the early 21st century. Pekka Hämäläinen explores the Lakotas' roots as marginal hunter-gatherers and reveals how they reinvented themselves twice: first as a river people who dominated the Missouri Valley, America's great commercial artery, and then - in what was America's first sweeping westward expansion - as a horse people who ruled supreme on the vast high plains. The Lakotas are imprinted in American historical memory. Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull are iconic figures in the American imagination, but in this groundbreaking book they emerge as something different: the architects of Lakota America, an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations. Hämäläinen's deeply researched and engagingly written history places the Lakotas at the center of American history, and the results are revelatory.

Description (ChatGPT): Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power reimagines the story of the Lakota people, flipping the script on traditional narratives to reveal a history of resilience, resistance, and sovereignty. With sharp insights and compelling storytelling, this book doesn't just tell the Lakota story — it empowers it, offering a fresh lens on the fight for land, culture, and identity. It’s history, but not as you’ve ever heard it before.

Book Review - Becoming Earth How Our Planet Came to Life

Title: Becoming Earth How Our Planet Came to Life

Author: Ferris Jabr
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍
My Review: Pending...

Description (Audible):One of humanity’s oldest beliefs is that our world is alive. Though once ridiculed by some scientists, the idea of Earth as a vast interconnected living system has gained acceptance in recent decades. We, and all living things, are more than inhabitants of Earth—we are Earth, an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. Life and its environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates its climate. Humans are one of the most extreme examples of life transforming Earth. Through fossil fuel consumption, agriculture, and pollution, we have altered more layers of the planet in less time than any other species, pushing Earth into a crisis. But we are also uniquely able to understand and protect the planet’s wondrous ecology and self-stabilizing processes. Jabr introduces us to a diverse cast of fascinating people who have devoted themselves to this vital work. Becoming Earth is an exhilarating journey through the hidden workings of our planetary symphony—its players, its instruments, and the music of life that emerges—and an invitation to reexamine our place in it. How well we play our part will determine what kind of Earth our descendants inherit for millennia to come.

Description (ChatGPT): Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life is a thrilling, time-traveling odyssey that zooms from the cosmic chaos of the universe's birth to the quiet drama of Earth's earliest days. With a blend of science and storytelling, it uncovers how our planet went from a swirling mass of rock and gas to the vibrant blue orb we call home — all in the blink of a geological eye. Think of it as Earth’s origin story, told with a wink and a whole lot of science.

Book Review - Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion

Title: Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion
Author: Michael Taylor 
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍
My Review: Pending...

Description (Audible): When the twelve-year-old daughter of a British carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from the country's southern shoreline in 1811, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had in fact discovered the "first" ichthyosaur, and over the next seventy-five years—as the science of paleontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited radical new theories of evolutionary biology, and as scholars began to identify the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures—everything changed. Beginning with the archbishop who dated the creation of the world to 6 p.m. on October 22, 4004 BC, and told through the lives of the nineteenth-century men and women who found and argued about these seemingly impossible, history-rewriting fossils, Impossible Monsters reveals the central role of dinosaurs and their discovery in toppling traditional religious authority, and in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind's place in the world.

Description (ChatGPT): Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion is a rollicking ride through history’s most jaw-dropping clash—dinosaurs versus dogma. Michael J. Boulter digs into the bones (pun intended) of how science and religion have tussled over the truth of our past, all while dinosaurs lurk in the background. It’s part adventure, part intellectual brawl, and all fascinating. If you’ve ever wondered how we went from believing in fire-breathing dragons to discovering fossils that challenge the status quo, this book will show you the jaw-dropping journey.