Apple TV's Franklin: A Sort of Review

When Hollywood takes on a historical subject I am interested in, I greet the news with cautious joy.  If I’m lucky, I’ll get something as good as Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.  If I’m unlucky, I’ll have to endure Ridley Scott’s Napoleon.

It was with this happy trepidation that I tuned into Apple TV+’s historical miniseries, Franklin.  The 8-part series is based on Stacy Schiff’s* book “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America”.

* I haven’t read the book, but I have read Schiff’s excellent biographies of Cleopatra and Samuel Adams.  She is an accomplished historian who is deeply knowledgeable of the period

The show does some things very well, others less well.  And perhaps has a fatal flaw that prevents it from rising to greatness – something that was within its grasp.

Keatang’s Rules of History Movies

I have some rules for history movies or miniseries.  Or, to paraphrase Dr. Peter Venkman, they’re more guidelines than rules.  Let’s see how Franklin did:

Use a Smaller Story to Tell a Bigger Story

One might think a show titled Franklin would be a full-scale biography of one of our great Founders.  

But you won’t see him sign the Declaration of Independence or create the US Postal Service.  There are no scenes of him kite-flying in a thunderstorm or inventing bifocals.  Neither George Washington nor Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton or Madison, will grace the screen.

Franklin wisely zeroes in on an important period in Franklin’s life and the life of our country: the  near-decade he spent in France, first trying to gain France's support (military, financial, and diplomatic) for the American Revolution, then negotiating the Treaty of Paris ending that war.

This approach works.  Napoleon (a movie I will not be kind to in this piece) failed for many reasons, not least of which is that Ridley Scott tried to capture 28 history-packed years into 3 hours.  Even a filmmaker as unconcerned with historical truth as Scott can’t do that.  

Get the Period Details Right 

I have spent little to no time in pre-Revolutionary France, so maybe they didn’t get the details right.  But boy it sure it felt like they did.

Much of it was filmed at Versailles itself, and in spots throughout Paris, and it shows.  Spectacularly so.

The wardrobe and makeup seem to capture the ridiculous glamour of the Ancien Regime.

I have an admiration for historical shows that realize the world was much darker before Franklin discovered electricity (jk) and have the courage to show that, while still properly lighting the scene.

And Franklin does a masterful job of slipping back and forth between English and sub-titled French.

Finally…and this is a tricky subject…but unlike some other recent period films, there is no colorblind casting.  There are Black actors but they are playing Black characters.  There are good reasons for colorblind casting, particularly in a fictional setting.  But when a production is doing so much difficult and expensive work to make you believe you are in 18th century France, that can be undone by, say, 18th century French Ministers of Finance that look nothing like 18th century French Ministers of Finance.  

And having Black characters, rather than Black actors playing white characters, makes it possible to show period attitudes towards race.  Colorblind casting will show said Minister of Finance meeting with the King, and everyone in the room is cool with the fact that the Minister of Finance is Black.  When in actual 18th century France, I assure you, they would not be cool.  Instead, we get to see French nobility react to a louche young noble bringing an "African" actress to a ball, or see the the casual racism of John Jay compared to the more enlightened John Adams.  

The Truth is More Important Than the Facts

Novels, movies, and miniseries based on history are not documentaries.  They are fictional retellings of historical events.  And it is impossible to be completely faithful to the facts in this medium.

For example, the peace negotiations for the Treaty of Paris ran from April 1782 through its drafting in November, to its signing in September of the following year.  That’s a year and a half.

Director Tim Van Patten* had about 45 minutes of screen time to show this.  Some telescoping is necessary.

So, while what we see isn’t necessarily what happened, it is faithful to the truth of what happened.  Well done. (You’ll be shocked to hear that Napoleon got the truth and the facts wrong.)

* TVP is the half-brother of Dick Van Patten, the Dad from Eight is Enough.  His filmography is a list of the best television shows of the last two decades.  He has directed episodes of The Wire, Deadwood, Rome, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, and more.

I'd be remiss however if I didn't object to the characterization of John Adams. Adams is used as a foil against Franklin.  Where Franklin is charming, Adams is rude and awkward.  Franklin's French is imperfect but passable; Adams' is clumsy and intelligible.  Franklin reads every person and moment perfectly; Adams blunders about cluelessly.  

Adams was a brilliant man, and Franklin knew it.  They give him a bit of a redemption at the end, but I may have to rewatch the HBO John Adams miniseries to forget this rendition.

Don’t Cast a Famous Person in the Role of a Famous Person

Even in a country as historically disinterested as America, most people have an idea of what Benjamin Franklin looks like.  Bald, paunchy, kindly, wise.  

Hollywood’s makeup artists, I’m sure, could have made Michael Douglas look more like Franklin.  Instead we get a rather svelte figure whose hairline was not retreating like the British from Lexington and Concord.

The performance was charming, the lines well-delivered, the twinkle in the eye perfect.  But not for one minute did I believe I was looking at Benjamin Franklin, American Founder.  I was always quite aware I was looking at Michael Douglas, American Movie Star*.

* As my friend Lucky pointed out, if you want a believable performance of Benjamin Franklin, check out Tom Wilkinson in the John Adams miniseries.

But hey – he was many thousands times better than whatever the heck Joaquin Phoenix was doing in Napoleon!  (damn, that movie infuriated me; I should do a review of that but I’d have to watch it again).  

*  The exception to this rule is Daniel Day-Lewis’ sublime performance in Lincoln

Thank You Apple

Whenever I review a history move/show, I feel bad because I nitpick at the edges.  In truth, I am very grateful that Apple actually greenlighted this show.  

Imagine that pitch meeting:

“So, we want to do a miniseries about Benjamin Franklin.”

“Oh, interesting!.  Declaration of Independence, all of the Founding Fathers.  Sounds great!”

“Actually, no, it will take place in France.”

“What?”

“Yeah, there’s going to be hours and hours of Franklin negotiating with French ministers, followed by hours and hours of Franklin negotiation with British officials.”

“Um…”

“Did I mention most of it will be in French?”

“Wait…”

“With sub-titles.  And half of it will be French spoken poorly by Americans.”

“I dunno…”

“What if we had Michael Douglas looking geriatrically sexy in the title role?”

“Done!”

Seriously, I’m grateful this kind of television is being made.  I know more about this history than the next guy, and probably the guy next to him.  But I still learned quite a bit from the show.  It captured well the competing interests of great nations, life in the ancien regime, and the wily charm of one of our greatest Americans.

As for Ridley Scott...just as Bonaparte himself gave us Austerlitz and Waterloo, you gave us Gladiator and Napoleon.  You win some, you lose some, right?

Pete Rose RIP

Moments after the New York Mets finished the most exciting (and, depending on how things play out, the most consequential) regular season game of their 62-year history, news arrived that Pete Rose died.

(It also happened to be my birthday, but that is neither here nor there.)

As a sports fan, I have been married to the New York Mets for as long as I can remember. 

No choice really.  I was born in Flushing.  My Dad was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, so it was a National League house.  My Italian grandmother loved the Mets.  Ed Kranepool lived around the corner, and the restaurant he operated with Ron Swoboda was half a mile away. 

But in the late 70s and early 80s, while I remained in a loveless and passionless marriage with the New York Mets, I had a torrid love affair with the Cincinnati Reds.

I wish I could blame it on M. Donald Grant.  On June 15, 1977, Grant traded Tom Seaver from the Mets to the Reds.  I could say, hey, the Mets betrayed me, my hero went to the Reds, and I followed him there.

I wish I could blame it on the 1976 World Series.  The Reds swept the Yankees, and by the transitive property of ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’, I became a Reds fan.

But alas, the timeline doesn’t work.  My cheating had begun as far back as ’75.

And at the heart of my love affair with the Cincinnati Reds and the Big Red Machine was my man crush on Peter Edward Rose.

The Big Red Machine

As a kid I loved baseball.  I’d put baseball cards in the spokes of my bicycle.  I thought the height of fashion was a long sleeve shirt under a short sleeve shirt with a batting glove in the back pocket. I would buy Big League Chew, even though it was horrible gum, because it approximated chewing tobacco. 

And I would read baseball statistics.  No, not read…I would study baseball statistics.  

If someone said Ty Cobb had the highest single season batting average, I would correct them.  “Nope, Nap Lajoie hit .426 in 1901.” 

I knew Joe Gordon won the MVP* the year Ted Williams won the Triple Crown.

I could reel off the top 10 hitters on the all-time hit list.

And I would absolutely devour the backs of baseball cards.  I studied them like Hebrew scholars study the Talmud. 

And in the mid-70s, when I was really into baseball statistics, the Big Red Machine had the most awesome statistics, the most fun-to-read backs of baseball cards.

How stacked was this lineup?

• Joe Morgan won consecutive MVPs
•  Johnny Bench was the best-hitting catcher of all time
•  George Foster’s 1977 season was the best by a hitter over 3 decades
•  Tony Perez, arguably the 5th best hitter on the team, is in the Hall of Fame

Heck, even the lesser players…

• Cesar Geronimo won 4 Gold Gloves from 74-77 and oh by the way hit .307 in 76
•  Dave Conception played in 9 All Star games
• Ken Griffey Sr. hit .300 over the 5 years he was on the Big Red Machine, and presaged his son’s career with fabulous outfield play

But the most exciting player on the team, at least for me - and, based on the recent documentary, Charlie Hustle and the Matter of Pete Rose, the entire city of Cincinnati+ - was Pete Rose.

He had the stats, of course.  Batting titles and consecutive 200 hit seasons and hitting streaks and so so many doubles.

But it was more than that.  He was such a baseball player.  The headfirst slides.  Sprinting to first base.  All-star at 5 different positions.  Switch-hitter.  It was hard to imagine anyone loving baseball - loving playing baseball - as much as Pete Rose.

By the mid-80s, a lot had changed.  The Big Red Machine had long since idled.  The Mets had awoken from hibernation and were exciting again.  The New York Football Giants had my attention, almost as much as any baseball team.

And yet, I must have still been into Pete Rose.  Because my sister – on September 30, 1985 – 39 years to the day before Pete’s death – gave me a scrapbook for my birthday.  It is filled with newspaper and magazine clippings of Pete’s 1985 season – the year he caught and passed Ty Cobb on the all-time hit list. 

The Tragedy of Pete Rose

I won’t dwell on all that came after.  And I won't weigh in on the Hall of Fame candidacy - I have mixed feelings about that.  

But I do want to say the remainder of Pete’s life was a Shakespearean tragedy. 

(There are wonderful Shakespeare quotes about roses – not just the famous “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, but also ‘the rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem for that sweet odour which doth in it live.”  But really the most accurate quote for this section comes from the hair metal band Poison: “Every Rose has its thorn”).

Here’s the thing about the great Shakespearean tragedies: the protagonist’s downfall comes about because of a fatal character flaw.  Indeed, that flaw is sometimes too much of a virtue.  Macbeth’s ambition.  Lear’s vanity.  Othello’s jealousy.  Hamlet’s intellect.

Pete Rose might well be the most competitive sonofabitch in modern American sports.  And competitive people love the action.  (Michael Jordan, another possible contender for the competitor throne, was known to place a bet or two.)

And when gambling threatened to destroy his life he did what all problem gamblers do – he doubled down.  He lied for decades about gambling on baseball.  Watching the recent documentary I got to thinking that Pete had embodied the George Costanza theory of lying: It’s not a lie if you believe it.

Pete's competitiveness, the fire that made  him one of the most exciting athletes of my lifetime, is a big part of what brought him down.  

All these years later I’m not quite sure how I feel about Pete Rose.  But I can’t help but think that the Twitter wit behind Super70s Sports said it best:

"Super Sky Point to Peter Edward Rose. He was crass. He was selfish. He was full of shit. He was his own worst enemy. But nobody played harder, nobody loved baseball more, nobody won more games, and nobody got more hits. He’ll always be a Hall of Famer to this kid. #RIP"

 

* Gordon led the AL in strikeouts and GIDP, and led all 2nd basemen in errors!  That, my friends, was an injustice

+ Local banks in Cincinnati wouldn't let people use 4192 as their ATM pin because it was too easy to guess

 

The Third Miracle

Dickey Betts, RIP

[I wrote this with the album Brothers and Sisters on.  It would make my day if you read it the same way.]

The term ‘Southern Rock’ was always a bit of misnomer.  The signature bands of the genre not only had differing influences – everything from the obvious country and blues to the less obvious British invasion and jazz – they often had very different instrumental lineups.

Lynyrd Skynyrd, for example, was the only major Southern Rock band with a pianist in the main lineup of the band.

The Marshall Tucker Band had Jerry Eubanks, whose saxophone and flute were regularly featured.

Genre pioneer Charlie Daniels was, quite famously, a fiddle player.  

And The Allman Brothers Band had Gregg Allman playing organ.  

But the true signature sound of Southern Rock was the dual – and sometimes triple – guitar attack.  

Dickey Betts, alongside the virtuoso Duane Allman, completely reinvented the idea of two lead guitars.  The traditional lead/rhythm was replaced by two leads going back and forth with each other.  

You can hear this sound on Layla, with Duane and Eric Clapton, and on most of the Skynyrd catalogue featuring Gary Rossington and Allen Collins.  

But in its purest form, listen to Dickey Betts and Duane Allman on ‘Blue Sky’, a Betts composition.  In particular, listen to them in this extraordinary recording at Stony Brook University*:

* for reasons I’ve never understood, Southern Rock was always hugely popular in the New York suburbs, and Long Island in particular

And then, Duane Allman died.

Surely, a band that loses its leader, the gifted musician whose session work got The Allman Brothers Band a record contract in the first place, would mean the end of that band?

But the Allman Brothers had another Allman, Gregg, who was a great songwriter and an extraordinary vocalist.

And they had a third miracle: Dickey Betts.  On the first album after Duane’s death, ‘Brothers and Sisters’, all he did was write two classics:  Rambling Man and Jessica.  

Rambling Man was by far ABB’s biggest hit.  And Jessica has remained a classic rock staple.

Dickey Betts is in the conversation of most underrated classic rock star.  Maybe it’s because he was in a band called The Allman Brothers and his name wasn’t Allman.  Maybe it’s because the lost promise of Duane Allman and the celebrity journey of Gregg Allman overshadowed him.  

But Forrest Richard Betts was a true classic rock Renaissance man.  He was a songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist.  He wrote songs that can be deemed country, blues, rock, and jazz.  He was trying to make a living, and doing the best he can.  And his best was pretty damned good.

Rest in Peace, Dickey Betts.  

--

Quick personal story: when I was a pre-teen falling in love with music, me and my friends went to a pizza joint in Massapequa Park called Bi-County Pizza.  This place had the worst jukebox.  Disco crap like ‘Ring My Bell’ and Donna Summer.  There were exactly two rock songs on this jukebox: Third Time Lucky by Foghat.  And Blue Sky by the Allman Brothers Band.  As you might imagine, we played Blue Sky A LOT. 

The Johnny Bingo Awards - 2023

Best Books Read by Me This Year

It’s the moment that readers around the world didn’t know they were waiting for – The Johnny Bingo Awards!  As a reminder here are the criteria for The JBs – actually, criterion – which I have slightly updated due to the fact that the Dick Clark reference was getting a bit dated:

This award too has only one criterion – for a book to be eligible, I had to have finished reading it this year. It could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BCE or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe.  As long as I read the last paragraph before the clock hits midnight on December 31, New York time, it is eligible for a JB.

In my quest to be as inconsistent as possible, this is (I think?) my first-ever Top 10 list.  Also, for the first time this year, I'll list all eligible books at the bottom.

But first, I need to take my annual swipe at the Nobel Prize in Literature.  This year’s winner was Jon Fosse.  Heard of him?  Me neither! 

Apparently he is a Norwegian playwright/novelist who is largely unknown around the world.  His Wikipedia entry, in a quest for accolades, can only come up with kudos like “the second most performed Norwegian playwright” and “ranked number 83 on the list of the Top 100 living geniuses by The Daily Telegraph”.  Well, if this doesn’t melt your snow, I don’t know what will.

Cormac McCarthy, on the other hand, will never give an acceptance speech in Stockholm.  He died this summer.  

On to the winners!

Best Unexpected Read

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab

Sometimes I take a chance on a book based on the title alone.  And I liked the name ‘Addie LaRue’.  Glad I did!  This is a delightful tale of a young Frenchwoman in 1714 who gains immortality, but at the cost of not being remembered by anyone who lays eyes on her.  We follow her through the centuries to the denouement in present-day New York  A fun read.

Best Series

The Hornblower Saga, C.S. Forester

Like many lovers of historical fiction, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series is one of the greatest pleasures of my reading life.  (And, a 2007 Johnny Bingo Award winner, the inaugural year of this prestigious prize)

The Hornblower Saga – 8 novels spanning the career of Horatio Hornblower from midshipman to Admiral – was an inspiration for Aubrey/Maturin.  Less literary and more of an adventure tale, it covers nearly the entire span of the Napoleonic Wars.  I highly recommend reading it in the order of Hornblower’s career, rather than the order in which it was published.

Best History Book by a Politician

The Naval War of 1812,Theodore Roosevelt

When Theodore Roosevelt was only 24 years old, he published the definitive history of the Naval War of 1812.  It was not just a thorough account of the war, but an argument for the importance of sea power.  The book was so well-received that a copy of it was placed on every ship in the United States Navy. 

Fourteen years later he was named Assistant Secretary of the Navy, where he successfully lobbied for a build-up of naval strength.  Five years after that he became President, and as President he sent the Great White Fleet on a tour of the globe – a friendly tour but one that said to the rest of the world, “Don’t mess with the US Navy.”  

For three decades, nobody did.  Then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.  It didn't work out well for them.

Anyway, a first edition of this book will hopefully be the next valuable addition to my library.

Best History Book by a Journalist

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Jon Meacham

The non-Presidential part of Andrew Jackson’s life is so fascinating, I thought a book focused just on his Presidency would be boring.  I was wrong.

I bought this book while visiting the Hermitage, Jackson’s home outside Nashville.  Like most great history books, it gives an insight into the world we live in today, and in particular how presidential power evolves, and is very different depending on who sits in the Oval Office.

And for this long time student of the Civil War, I was surprised to learn how that war nearly started 30 years earlier, and may well have if not for Andrew Jackson’s powerful belief in the Union.

Best History Book by an Actual Historian 

Power and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages, Dan Jones

Jones is an actual historian - a first-class history degree from Cambridge and 10 history books to his credit, mostly about medieval England.  But he's also a novelist, a TV presenter, a sportswriter...

Dan Jones is, above all, a story teller.  

This account of the middle ages is the kind of book that might make the serious reader cringe a bit.  The title, for example, is clearly trying to get the attention of Game of Thrones fans browsing the bookstore.  

But his passion for the stories he is telling, and his skill at organizing large complex histories into a compelling narrative, is truly a gift.  I'll be reading more of him.  

Best Classic Novel

Things Fall Apart (African Trilogy, Book 1), Chinua Achebe

Kudos to Amazon, who consistently recommended this book to me in Kindle ads, so I finally took a shot.  What an elegant novel about pre-colonial life in Africa, and how the arrival of European missionaries in the late 19th century shattered that.

Best Spy Novel(s)

Slough House series, Mick Herron

George Smiley, the chief protagonist of John LeCarre's novels*, has long been considered the ultimate anti-Bond.  Where James Bond is a natty womanizer who defends England with his gun, Smiley is a homely cuckold who defends England with his brain.

Jackson Lamb, the weathered MI5 agent who leads the gang of misfit toys known as the Slow Horses, makes Smiley look like Bond.  This is a wonderful series - legitimately good spy novels with earned comedy and excellent character studies.

I highly recommend the Apple TV series, with Gary Oldman having the time of his life as Lamb.

* A 2020 Johnny Bingo winner

The Best Book Most Likely to Make My Wife Kick Me Under the Table

 Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein

I first gave this award out in 2020.  Here's how I described it:

There's a certain kind of book - nonfiction, well-written, a colon in the title and a Big Idea at its heart - that will make me talk about it for months afterward.  Eventually, I'm out to dinner with friends and rambling on for entirely too long about how ancient Romans used memory palaces to commit multi-hour speeches to memory and - thwack! - my wife will deliver a well-placed blow to my shin.

David Epstein was nominated for this award back then for The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance.  But alas, he lost to Joshua Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (that's the book with the memory palaces).

Anyway, I'm sure he's thrilled to win this year's award!

Best Sports Book

A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers, John Feinstein

Bobby Knight's passing this year put this book on my radar, and lo and behold, the 25th anniversary edition was sitting on my son's shelf.  So I swiped it.

In the preface to this edition, Feinstein addresses all of the theories as to why this book has resonated with people for so long (it was published in the mid-80s).  The timing, the access he had, the way it was written.  But Feinstein is right when he says what made this book so special is the unique character that is Robert Montgomery Knight.  

This clip rather perfectly captures that perfect.  RIP Bob Knight.

Best Book of the Year

People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks  

Occasionally you come across an author, and after finishing the last page, you say to yourself, "Self, I'm going to read everything she ever wrote."  Geraldine Brooks is one of those authors.

People of the Book is not one of her most lauded books, but a particularly timely one.  This book is part scientific/literary detective story, part historical fiction, and part romance.  But it's also a reminder of all the times in the past half millenium that the Jewish people faced existential threats - the expulsion of Jews from Spain, the Inquisition, Vienna in the 1890s, the Nazis, and more.  

But it's also a tale of ecumenical hope.   And we can all use a bit of that these days.

ELIGIBLE BOOKS FOR THIS YEARS JOHNNY BINGO AWARDS

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab

The Happy Return (Beat to Quarters): The Hornblower Saga #6, C.S. Forester

A Ship of the Line: The Hornblower Saga #7 C.S. Forester

Troy: Our Greatest Story Retold Stephen Fry

Flying Colors: The Hornblower Saga #8 C.S. Forester

The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789 Robert Middlekauff

Hornblower and the Atropos: The Hornblower Saga # 5) C.S. Forester

A Test of Wills: Ian Rutledge Mystery #1 Charles Todd

The Captain from Connecticut C.S. Forester

The Gods of Gotham: Timothy Wilde #1 Lyndsay Faye

The Naval War of 1812 Theodore Roosevelt

Readings in the Classical Historians Michael Grant

Things Fall Apart (African Trilogy, Book 1) Chinua Achebe

Rules of Prey, Lucas Davenport #1 John Sandford

War of the Roses #1: Stormbird Conn Iggulden

Dead Lions, Slough House #2 Mick Herron

War of the Roses #2: Margaret of Anjou Conn Iggulden

Mr. Churchill's Secretary: A Maggie Hope Mystery (#1) Susan Elia Macneil

The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper, Travis McGee #10 John D. MacDonald

Mistborn: The Final Empire #1 Brandon Sanderson

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy Anthony Beevor

Joyland Stephen King

God Save the Mark Donald E. Westlake

Real Tigers: Slough House #3 Mick Herron

Innocent Scott Turow

The Hot Rock: Dormunder #1 Donald Westlake

Power and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages Dan Jones

Look Before You Leap (includes: And Then He Went Away) Donald E. Westlake

The Four Foundations of Golf: How To Build a Game That Lasts a Lifetime Jon Sherman

Act of Oblivion Robert Harris

Cloud Cuckoo Land Anthony Doerr

Henry V William Shakespeare

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder David Grann

War of the Roses #3: Bloodline Conn Iggulden

One Fearful Yellow Eye: Travis McGee #11 John D. MacDonald

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House Jon Meacham

Pale Gray for Guilt: Travis McGee #12 John D. MacDonald

Portrait of an Unknown Woman: Gabriel Allon #22 Daniel Silva

Desert Rose: Harry Bosch/Renee Ballard mystery Michael Connelly

Essex Dogs: #1 Dan Jones

War of the Roses #4: Ravenspur Conn Iggulden

The Commodore: The Hornblower Saga #9 C.S. Forester

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World David Epstein

Down the River Unto the Sea: King Oliver #1 Walter Moseley

Lord Hornblower: The Hornblower Saga #10 C.S. Forester

Hornblower in the West Indies: The Hornblower Saga #11 C.S. Forester

A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers John Feinstein

Spook Street: Slough House #4 Mick Herron

People of the Book Geraldine Brooks

Girl with a Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier