This book is about Mary Tudor, who was the daughter of Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII. Carolly Erickson is a wonderful historian. Her writing is detailed and engaging. I learned a lot about her, and Erickson makes you feel like you are really getting to know the subject she is writing about. This book was wonderful, and I enjoy her other books so much. 

 In the fifth installment of the Anita Blake series, Anita travels to Branson, Missouri to participate in a mass zombie raising with her necromancy job. She gets enlisted to investigate another series of disappearances and murders for the local Branson police. Subsequently, we learn quite a bit about the world of the fey, which is complex and intriguing. Anita phones Jean-Claude to get some information about the vampire she is looking for, and accepts the help he offers. Jean-Claude, of course, takes advantage of this opportunity to attempt to dissuade Anita from continuing her engagement with Richard, much less actually following through. (I still have no good feeling toward Richard, and hope he goes away!) The death toll for this book is fairly high. I enjoyed this book greatly, and cannot wait to continue the series. 

 The Battle of the Bulge (Ardennes Offensive), took place in the dense forests of the Ardennes. The battle lasted from December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945. This battle was the last major offensive attempted by Axis powers during World War II. The objective of this offensive was to deny Allied powers access to Antwerp, as well as to split their lines, encircle them, and defeat them. Some of the notable commanders in this battle were Sepp Dietrich (6th Panzer, Germany), Generals Patton, Bradley, and Eisenhower (United States), and Montgomery (UK). There were heavy losses and injuries on both Allied and Axis sides, and fighting in the winter caused its own host of misery for all combatants. This book goes into pretty great detail about the hardships faced by the soldiers and the results of their actions. The personal accounts and research were very engaging. This is a very good book. 

 This book is about Ricky Lee Green and his wife Sharon, who were a murderous duo. They went on a rape, torture, and murder spree in 1985. This book has a lot of information straight from the horse's mouth, though Patricia Springer does interview several other people and has plenty of information from records. Some of the stuff that Green says doesn't add up to me, and I just do not feel like he was being entirely truthful. I do believe his story of abuse at the hands of his father, which was corroborated by his siblings. I believe that abuse could help explain his errant ways, though I am not sure it was the only reason like some people claim. I am also not entirely sure that I believe his wife was forced to participate instead of participating willingly, but some people are certainly brainwasher or pressed into doing things out of fear. This was a pretty good book. I really enjoyed it. 

 The author of this book uncovered some interesting family secrets. One of those secrets, uncovered while he was at boarding school, was that his Uncle Harold was an enforcer for an organized crime syndicate. When the author pressed his family about Uncle Heshy, they just said he was a con and had written him off. He had been in trouble repeatedly throughout his childhood, was illiterate and generally uncouth, and wasn't good to his siblings or parents. The author started digging into the life and crimes of his great uncle, and this book was born from that. His uncle even threatened him, as an article that the author had written about his uncle was dissatisfying.

Harold Konigsberg, aka Kayo, was an enforcer for several organized crime outfits. He did what one would consider freelance work. It is reported that he is responsible for at least twenty murders. He was also a very difficult prisoner. He stole food from other inmates, scarfing it down. He gave the guards trouble at every possible moment. He acted up in the courtroom, even once pooping in his wheelchair to stall court proceedings. He once threatened another inmate with rape, to which the inmate committed suicide rather than deal with that. He served time in something like fifteen correctional facilities, totaling fifty years, for on murder that he was linked to, before being paroled. He moved into an assisted living facility in Florida, where he was terrible to the other residents. He died in 2006, at age 89.

I love a good mobster book, and this one was really interesting. I had never heard of Harold Kayo Konigsberg, so I enjoyed learning about this person. I can imagine he would have been utterly impossible to put up with, and I doubt anyone was sad to see him die. Perhaps his daughters and their families, but certainly not the people who were impacted by his crimes, the inmates and guards he terrorized, or the residents at the assisted living center that he was hateful to. If you are into organized crime, especially the little talked about Jewish gangsters, this is a book for you! 

 This book is about a German soldier fighting on the Eastern Front during World War II. I try to read as many books as I can from all sides during the war to keep myself from bias as a World War II major. I found the account of Gunter to be horrific. People often see the Nazi's as all insanely evil people, but I think that people often forget that there were normal people fighting in this war because they were called up for service, much like men from other countries. Not everyone was a die hard Nazi, and it is hard to separate that sometimes. I cannot imagine being forced to fight with hardly any food or proper equipment in the middle of a Russian winter. That is insane to me. I feel for these people, even though they were the enemies of the world and got up to some awful things. 

 In this, the sixteenth installment of the Anita Blake saga, she finds herself caught up in the interworking of a were-clan struggle. There is yet another pregnancy scare moment. Plenty of sex, basically rape if we are honest. Richard needs to get lost, I am beyond sick of him. Everyone is whining about relationships and families. I'm getting tired of being let down, and getting tired of saying it. 

 John Ross was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828-1866. His mother was a Cherokee, and his father was of Scottish decent. He was born in Turkeytown (this is a real place), Alabama. Because most Native cultures are matrilineal, he was considered to be born to his mother's family and part of the Bird Clan. He lived near Lookout Mountain, which is about thirty minutes from my house. (In fact, his cabin can be toured in Rossville, Georgia, and I have been there. We also have Ross's Landing in Chattanooga where a lot of concerts and things are held by the river. He founded a lot of Chattanooga, and did so with enslaved black people. I always found it odd that we never learned about him in school, and it wasn't until I was an over 20 adult that I learned about this man.) He was educated at home, attended tribal festivities, and was also educated by Reverend Gideon Blackburn, who had opened schools in southeast Tennessee for Native children. (Of course, classes were taught in English to both Natives and mixed race Natives. Later in life, he did not speak Cherokee, but had throughout his youth until it was "educated" out of him.) He later attended another school in Kingston, Tennessee, which is about 40 minuets north of my house.

Pathkiller or The Ridge was born around 1772 in along the Hiawassee River in Tennessee. He was born to the Deer Clan. His mother was a mixed race Scottish/Cherokee, and his father was believed to have been a Cherokee. He was trained as a Native warrior. He was involved in several wars and skirmishes between other Natives, as well as white people. He had an altercation with Tecumseh, who was spreading his message in the South, even threatening to kill him. Pathkiller was allied with John Ross as a participant in the Cherokee National Council, and worked hard for their people. Unfortunately, they had a falling out over the Indian Removal Act. This led to what was essentially a civil war between various Cherokee clans. It was sad to see, and sadder still that so many people died on The Trail Of Tears. Pathkiller was executed in compliance with the Cherokee Blood Law by members of Ross's faction. It was really just a bloody and tragic thing all around.

I'm not sure about where other people live, but I live smack in the center of Civil War and Cherokee Removal land. I was told that there were Cherokee people in my family tree, and I have not yet discovered them. I am sure that there is probably at least one, since my family has lived in this area since right after the American Revolution. I have always been interested in Native affairs, because everywhere you drive around here there is a sign for an original Trail of Tears route, or some place that is important to Natives. I feel like the least that I can do as a white person in this day and age is to learn about what these people went through, how the past is impacting the present, and what can be done going forward to ensure good relationships between everyone living in this country. I didn't ask for my ancestors to come here. I didn't ask to be born here. Most of the time, I don't even want to live here, at least in this state. Native people didn't ask to have their way of life disrupted and be subjected to genocide, or to have to share their land with people who think they can come into someone's home and take over. The least I can do is be aware of the past, teach my children about the things that happened, and do the best I can to respect other human beings.

This book is a very important book for Americans to read, but especially people living in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia. We have such a strong group of Natives in this area that are really amazing people. This is their history, and it is also our history. We are living here in this area that was founded by these people. We are living in this area that has seen so much violence across the centuries. Burying our heads in the sand benefits no one. If you are in this area, I encourage you to attend some of the Native festivals that are open to the public. You will meet some amazing people, learn some amazing things, and experience some truly beautiful art and culture. This book was really important to me once I discovered that it was about people whose names are so familiar to me. 

 I thought that I would like this book when I bought it, but I put off reading it for a long time. I can see now that it was some mystery intuition that kept me from wanting to waste my time on this book. I saw that the book had great reviews on Amazon and some fairly good ones on Goodreads, but I genuinely hated this book. Maybe it is a personal issue and not an issue with the book itself. Perhaps I am just genuinely sick of politics at this point and was not into a political book. Either way, I thought the book had a lot of hearsay in it. I was hoping that it would be a bit more factual than it appeared to be. The caption on Amazon boasted about insider contacts, but just because you have an insider contact does not mean they have an unbiased opinion about something. I do not doubt, however, that the Clintons and Obamas do not care for each other. I can think of a list of reasons each one of these people wouldn't be my friend, so I can imagine they probably have those feelings towards each other. I'm glad that I only paid 75 cents for it. This does not have my seal of recommendation at all. 

 This book covers the Freeman family murders in Pennsylvania that occurred in February 1995. Dennis (father), Brenda (mother), and Erik (bother) were brutally murdered by Bryan and David Freeman, along with their cousin, Nelson Birdwell. At the time of the murders, Bryan was seventeen, David was sixteen, and Nelson (aka Ben) was eighteen. Though raised as Jehovah's Witnesses, the boys decided that form of cultism wasn't for them, choosing to embrace white nationalist (Nazism) instead. They shaved their heads, got racist tattoos, and began using drugs. Their mother was scared of their behavior, and made several comments about it before the murders. The bodies were discovered by Valerie, sister of the victim. The brothers stated that the motivation for the murders was just general animosity for their parents and brother, but the brutality of the crime suggests more than just general animosity to me.

I started this book last night, read a good portion while waiting on the kids to dismiss from school, and then carried it in to finish up this afternoon. I meant for this to be my car book for next week, but I got too into it and had to finish it. This book was only 250 pages, so if you are looking for a short true crime book, this might be one to pick up. I am not terribly familiar with Fred Rosen, but I have a couple of his books. He is suggested on a lot of true crime lists as well. I thought he did a good job of conveying the facts of the case, as well as giving an accurate picture of the family life. I wish he would have included more detail about the community. I come from the South, and I know that generational ignorance and racism is certainly a thing, organized religious subscription is a thing, and the attitudes by and large impacting people really influence all of that. I wish that it would have had more of a focus on how they truly came to be involved with this ridiculous skinhead movement, so I was disappointed in that regard. As an aside, this case was featured on an episode of Killer Kids, which I have not watched yet, but am now planning to.