Edward I was born in England, the son of Henry III. Henry III named his son after Edward the Confessor, the saint to whom he was devoted. He grew quite tall, something over six feet, which earned him the nickname "Longshanks". He also had a droopy eyelid and a lisp, but was still extremely imposing in his manner and speech. He fought in the Second Baron's War, and also went crusading. (I hate crusading, but that is neither here nor there.) He also went to war in Wales, colonizing that land for the expansion of England. He implemented a vast building program, and those places are still standing and available for tours today, which I would love to go see. Once he attained the throne, he was known to have quite a temper. As far as policies go, he was pretty capable. He did, however, exploit and expel the Jewish population. He taxed them, used their labor, and then decided they took up too much valuable land and space. (Reminds me of some other leaders we all know. Anti-Semitism is certainly not a modern concept, but it is still ridiculous and gross throughout the ages.) He eventually died after contracting dysentery, but he had lived a fairly long life in a time that wasn't easy to live in, dying at age 68.

For some reason, I did not make the connection that he was the father of Edward, notorious for his relationship with Gaveston. I have listened to podcasts about that several times, and also read a book about him, but I did not make the connection. This book was really good. It had a lot of good facts about Edward I, and plenty of stories taken from historical record. The research was well done, and the writing style was entertaining and educational. I'm glad I ran across this book. 

 Saratoga Springs, New York, hosts a spectacular Thoroughbred race course. Saratoga has been in operation since 1863, and is the oldest major sporting venue still in use in the United States. The track has several nicknames, often being called The Spa for the nearby mineral springs, as well as the Graveyard, because so many champions are defeated here. Several notable races are held during the meet season at Saratoga, including the Travers, the Whitney, the Alabama, and the Jockey Club Gold Cup. One notable burial at the course is Go For Wand, who suffered a catastrophic injury at the track.

This book focuses on the weird phenomenon of so many Grade I winners, a lot of whom are undefeated or rarely defeated, losing races at this course. Part of this reason is because so many races are ran in the meets all over the country previous and horses are raced out and tired of traveling. I really enjoyed reading this book at this particular time, as the Saratoga meet is still ongoing. The Travers was just raced (my horse lost). I enjoyed reading the stories about some famous names as well. This was a pretty good book. 

I picked up this book, in part because I read a lot of things about disasters and in part because I like reading books about firefighters. I grew up in a fire family, and I find myself to be considerably more appreciative of the people who put their lines on the line to serve where they are needed. This book was about the surviving member of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, who died while working a fire. This team member survived, because he was separate from his group monitoring weather conditions. This was a truly tragic event, and I cannot begin to imagine the amount of loss and survivor's guilt that he must have felt. Everyone should read this book, and others like it, and really get a good understanding of what our emergency services workers go though. This was by far the most moving book I have read this year.

 This book is about McClean Hospital. I had never really heard much about McClean Hospital, other than it was supposed to be an elite hospital. I learned that Frederick Law Olmstead chose the land that the hospital and surrounding buildings were placed on. I also learned that this hospital provided treatment for some of the most famous and the wealthiest people in the United States. Some people even came from abroad to be treated at this facility. Aside from the hospital and it's fate, we learned about some of the patients and methods of treatment employed at this facility. It was a very educational and interesting read, though I found it a bit boring at times. 

 This book covers the massacre of nine members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. This took place on June 15, 2017. I was in Charleston, and drove right past this church without realizing what happened here in 2020. I just thought it was a beautiful old church, and I guessed it was historic, but I didn't realize this was the one that I had heard about in the news. I love the city of Charleston, and this book certainly taught be a lot about it. As far as this particular event goes, Dylann Roof scoped out this church and entered through a side door to attend the Bible study. When the study concluded, he fired 77 times at the people who welcomed him with open arms. He was taken into custody not long after, but this book really goes into detail about the hardships these members and their families faced in the aftermath. I am disgusted by the treatment of the families by the church leadership. They opened mail that was addressed to the families, took out donations, and absconded with a lot of the money. That "Bishop" and subsequent pastors behaved in a shameful manner and were happy to play into the tragedy, without caring for the people. Those that survived and the families of those that did not felt unwelcome in their own house of worship, and that is just gross behavior to me. Two other things that I learned were that during segregation, phone numbers of black people were listed in their own index behind white numbers in the phone book. I never knew that. I also learned that the horrifying bridge that I drove over, the Arthur Ravnell Bridge, was named after that politician for lobbying to have the money raised....but he was also a supporter of segregation and the flying of the Confederate Flag on the capitol grounds and liked to make snide, slick statements that were nasty in public. This was a really good book, aside from the tragic nature, and I would highly recommend it. 

 This book was about John Gotti and his crew of gangsters. Gotti was a well known member of the New York Mafia, and a complete character. I was hoping to enjoy this book, but I did not. I found it tedious. I had a really hard time forcing myself to finish it, and was glad to have it behind me. 

 I really like George Anastasia. I have read a couple of his other books, and they are well written. He definitely does his homework, and I can see why he is considered a mob expert. I don't know a lot of names from the Philadelphia mob, so between this book and Google searching all the people mentioned, I learned quite a bit. 

 This is the personal account of William Manchester and his travels back to the places that had so shaped his life during World War II in the Pacific Theatre. I think this was a very moving book. I don't have very many books about the Pacific Theatre, and I have been trying to buy more of them. This was a great purchase. 

 Charles Cullen was born in New Jersey in 1960. He claimed to have had a very unhappy childhood, rife with bullying and insecurity. His mother wound up dying when he was in high school, a result of a car accident. He dropped out of school, joining the United States Navy, which he hated and claimed he was hazed and bullied by other seamen. He attempted suicide while serving in the Navy, and took several trips to the Naval Psychiatric Hospital.He also stated that his first suicide attempt occurred at age nine. He drank chemicals from a chemistry set, but was unsuccessful...much to the dismay of everyone whose lives he ruined. He was recieved a medical discharge from the Navy, from there going to nursing school.

The first murders occured in 1988, where he tampered with IV bags and injected medications to patients. He left there for another hospital in 1992, injecting people with digoxin, a heart medication, causing death. One of his victims told a family member that a sneaky male nurse had given her a shot a few hours before she wound up dying. He repeated this process, moving to another hospital once he was allowed to resign for shenanagins or moving on when he felt the heat under the pan was too hot. In each hospital or care facility, he continued to access patient records, order and cancel medications, tamper with IV bags, inject patients, and act weird. The hospitals continued to cover up for him because they did not want to deal with the legal repercussions, which is disgusting to me. Healthcare should not be about profits, it should be about the patients. I won't go into how he was finally caught, but he was given a plea deal: no death penalty in exchange for full cooperation in the investigation. Authorities think that he may have killed up to 400 people, but because of issues with records and his inability to remember every patient name (and also not being at work on days when contaminated IV bags were used) an actual number is unlikely to ever be known. He did admit to the attempted murder of six people, and the actual murder of 29 people.

I bought this book for my mom a while ago. (She is a nurse and heard about this guy on a crime show she was watching.) She was cleaning up and decided to get rid of the book, so I figured I would read it. I had also watched an episode on Netflix or something about Nurses Who Kill and added this book to my want to read list. I felt that the book was very well researched. It went into a lot of detail about his career movements, as well as medical information. If you feel bogged down by medical information and court cases, this may not be the book for you. I thought it was very engaging and I was not bored reading it, even though I had watched some of these facts on the show a while back. I think the author did a good job getting his quotes from interviews as well. I thought this was a pretty good book over all. 

 This book is about the court proceedings of Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, two former members of the New York Police Department. These two were in bed with members of organized crime. They were convicted of labor racketeering, extortion, narcotics, illegal gambling, obstruction of justice, eight counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in 2006. One of the witnesses for the prosecution was Mafia associate Burton Kaplan, who testified once his own legal troubles were pressing the life out of him. The two were later sentenced to life in prison. The stories that Kaplan had to tell in this book were wild, and also extremely believable given similar stories from other gangsters and their associates. This book was free to listen to with Audible Plus, and was certainly worth the five hours it took to listen to. I do love a Mafia related book, so this was right up my alley.