The Wizard of London (Elemental Mages #5), by Mercedes Lackey

DAW Hardcover, ISBN 9780756401740, October 2005

I listened to the audio edition. Amazon continues its foolishly short-sighted practice of not allowing linking to Audible editions, even though they own Audible and presumably make money from the sale of Audible editions. So, I'm linking to a print edition.

I hadn't read any Lackey in quite a while, having grown tired of what I thought of as her typical output. A friend recommended this, and I was very pleasantly surprised.

The Violinist's Thumb:And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code, by Sam Kean

Little, Brown, and Company, ISBN 9780316202978, July 2012

This is a fascinating look at the history of genetics, both the science itself and the often quirky and peculiar personalities who moved it ahead. Sam Kean starts off with the story of his own parents--Gene and Jean Kean--and how their accidentally punny names both afflicted and fed his own interest in genetics.

That's merely the appetizer, though; the main course consists of the major breakthroughs in genetics, starting with Gregor Mendel, a wildly strong personality whose major work ground to a halt when he was elected abbot of his monastery, and whose notes (but not his published work, blessedly) were burned after his death, to avoid further scandal related, not to his scientific work, but to the tax dispute between the monastery and the Austrian government.

Democrat & Diplomat: The Life of William E. Dodd, by Robert Dallek

Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780199931729, November 2012

This biography of William E. Dodd, American Ambassador to Germany during the years leading up to the start of World War II, was originally published in 1968. As such, it reflects not only the era it's about, but also the era its author grew up in. Consequently, there are times when commentary on race relations in he US will read oddly and be a bit shocking to modern sensibilities.

That gave me pause at certain points. However, while it's well to bear such limitations in mind, this is overall an excellent book.

The Mapping of Love and Death (Maisie Dobbs #7), by Jacqueline Winspear (author), Orlagh Cassidy (narrator)

Sound Library, ISBN 9780792771203, 2010

Maisie Dobbs is once again working on a mystery with potentially explosive consequences for a family. Dr. Charles Hayden, the American doctor she met during the war and has continued to correspond with, has referred to her some Boston friends who want to know what happened to their son. Edward Clifton, the son of a major British shoe manufacturer, left England for America as a young man, and made his own fortune in America. In 1914, his youngest son, Michael, a cartographer, bought some land in California and then, hearing of the start of World War I, travels to England to enlist in the British army. He never returns, and his body, along with the rest of his cartography unit, has just been found now, twelve years after the end of the war. Because he was "missing," the family has been unable to resolve his estate; more importantly, Michael's journals and letters he had received and saved show that he had met and fallen in love with a young woman. His parents would like to find her, to close the circle on their son's life.

What Dr. Hayden and Mr. Clifton know from the French autopsy, but Mrs. Clifton hasn't been told, is that Michael didn't die from the shelling that killed the rest of his unit. His skull was crushed by a blow from behind, before the shelling.

As Maisie works through the evidence, looking for Michael's killer and his lost love, she quickly learns that the killer may be nearby. The Cliftons are attacked, Maisie is knocked down and her document case stolen. This isn't just a dozen-year-old crime; the danger is real and present.

Meanwhile, Maisie's personal life is getting complicated. Maurice is very ill. Billy Beal's wife Doreen is home from the hospital (due to events in prior books), but still very shaky. Andrew Deane is married, but her friend Priscilla introduces her to a jourmalist friend of her husband's, who is very interested. And James Compton is back from Canada to stay, and inviting her to go to a car race with him.

Maisie is juggling a lot here, but she does it with charm, grace, and intelligence as usual. Another worthy entry in the serious.

Recommended.

Hex (Coyote #6, by Allen Steele (author), Tracy Sallows (narrator)

Ace, ISBN 9781937007515, April 2012

I listened to the unabridged audio edition; however, Amazon will not allow me to link to that, so I've linked to the paperback edition.

Andromeda Carson, captain of the Coyote merchant ship Montoya, is getting bored with standard commercial runs where, due to the fact that humans aren't yet fully accepted or trusted in the Talis, she and the crew rarely even get to disembark, much less explore. She's beginning to reluctantly contemplate retirement when her boss, Ted Harker, approaches her with an unexpected proposal. The most mysterious race in the Talis, the danui, have indirectly approached Coyote with an offer of a human-habitable planet in their home solar system.

Allies and Enemies:How the World Depends on Bacteria, by Anne Maczulak

FT Press, ISBN 9780137015467, July 2010

Most of us mainly know about the bacteria that are bad for us--with good reason. Harmful bacteria can be very harmful indeed, so it's natural that they capture most of our attention.

And that's too bad, because harmful bacteria are a tiny minority, and many of the remainder aren't just harmless. They're vital to such basic functions as digesting our food. They play essential roles in making Earth habitable. The earliest bacteria played a crucial role in creating the free oxygen that made life as we know it possible.

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, by Rachel Maddow

Crown Publishing Group, ISBN 9780307460981, March 2012

This isn't a perfect book, but it's an important one. Maddow covers some important history that we've largely lost track of: all the effort that the Founders went through to make it hard for us to go to war.

The Founders recognized the attractions of war for the executive, and that if it was easy for one person to commit the country to war, the temptation to do so would be powerful. You can't make war by committee, and command of the armed forces was vested in the executive--but the power of declaring war, as well as funding it, was vested in Congress. They also had a strong bias against a standing army, on the grounds that an available army will be used. That bias became a part of our political culture. Each war required enough popular support that Congress would declare war, and Americans would enlist in the armed forces in large numbers to fight that war.

Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake #1), by C.J. Sansom (author), Steven Crossley (narrator)

Recorded Books, November 2011

The cover image is a link to the abridged edition, because Amazon for some reason won't let me link to the unabridged. However, I listened to the unabridged edition.

This is the first of Tudor-era lawyer Matthew Shardlake's adventures, several years earlier than the book I previously reviewed. He's not quite as established and prominent as in the later book, and the household and strong network of friends we see there has not yet come together. And Matthew is still deep in politics, working for Thomas Cromwell.

Class War?: What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality, by Benjamin I. Page, Lawrence R. Jacobs

University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226644554, April 2009

Page and Jacobs argue that there is, in fact, no "class war" brewing in America--that in fact a philosophically conservative American public, in a natural fidelity to fundamental American values of hard work, independence, basic fairness, and equality of opportunity, broadly favors some pragmatically "liberal" government policies. Those policies include public education, progressive taxation, food stamps, and other economic support programs that make it possible for the poor to maintain themselves and those born into poor families to have a genuine opportunity to achieve better lives. Merely saying, "you can do it if you work hard enough," is not enough. For our egalitarian values to mean anything, they have to be backed up by access to the tools that a talented and determined young person can really use to achieve success.

New Tricks (Andy Carpenter Series #7), by David Rosenfelt (author), Grover Gardner (reader)

Listen & Live Audio, ISBN 9781593164249, August 2009

Andy Carpenter is a lawyer in the happy position of being rich enough that he only has to take cases that interest him, and over the last few years he has come to be mainly interested in animal welfare cases. So it's not much of a surprise when a judge calls him in and appoints him to represent, and take temporary custody of, a dog who is the subject of a custody dispute between his deceased owner's son and widow. It seems a minor additional complication that the deceased owner was murdered.