Book Review: The Kinderhook Creature and Beyond: A Personal Reminiscence by Bruce G. Hallenbeck

The Kinderhook Creature and Beyond: A Personal Reminiscence by Bruce G. Hallenbeck
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The town of Kinderhook, New York is where The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was born, it turns out that Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman isn’t the only supernatural or mysterious local in the area. The Kinderhook Creature and Beyond: A Personal Reminiscence by Bruce G. Hallenbeck details the unusual phenomena that his hometown, his family, and himself experience in a very interesting start to the 1980s.

The term “high strangeness” truly applies to the incidents and events that Hallenbeck relates from his life, that of his family, and from others who have contacted him over the years but specially during the early 1980s. The first half of the book covers such unique phenomena as ghosts, supernatural entities like fairies or something similar, and UFOs all happening in the Hudson River valley but several on Hallenbeck’s family property that he and or members of his family encountered or witnessed. But Hallenbeck also relates similar incidents that have been reported to him over the years as he investigates all types of strange occurrences over the decades. The second half of the book concentrates on the sightings and vocalizations of sasquatch that locals began calling the ‘Kinderhook Creature’ even though several times more than one was witnessed at the same time. Hallenbeck himself never saw ‘the creature’, however his grandmother and cousin had multiple encounters which both wished they had never had. During the peak years of the creature’s time in the area numerous people outside of Hallenbeck’s family had their own incidents which eventually came Hallenbeck’s way, adding to his collection of everything he could find to figure out what was going on. Overall, this 180-page book is an easy-to-read account of the strange 1980s in a small town in New York state.

The Kinderhook Creature and Beyond: A Person Reminiscence relates strange times in the 1980s in not only Kinderhook, New York but all along the Hudson River valley mostly from the personal recollections of Bruce G. Hallenbeck along with reports from his family and complete strangers.

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Book Review: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is one of mysteries greatest cases from one of, if not the, greatest writers of the genre and it’s been adapted numerous times in film, television, and other genres. Murder on the Orient Express is one of Agatha Christie’s best-known Hercule Poirot mystery novels with a compelling crime on a passenger train stuck in a snowstorm in Yugoslavia that looks to be connected to a dark crime in the United States and a dozen suspects that keep readers guessing until the end.

After solving a mystery in French colonial Syria for the military there, Poirot hears news of a ongoing case in England he quickly arranges a spot on the next coach to Calais thanks to his friend the direction of the passenger train company. Once on board, Poirot notes the number of passengers and their various origins. The next day one of them is murdered while the train is stopped thanks to a snowdrift, Poirot is asked to investigate the crime as the Yugoslav police don’t put officers on trains. This is the setup as the Poirot looks to find the answer, which thanks to the cultural zeitgeist I was spoiled to the ending a long time ago but a part of the joy of reading mysteries is figuring out how the protagonist figures it out based on the clues the author gives. After finishing the book, I can see why it is just a classic in the mystery genre and a page-turner to boot. Unlike the previous Poirot novel that I read, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, this was written in the third-person and I enjoyed seeing more Poirot as a character. Frankly a great read and just shows I need to read some of Poirot in the future.

Murder on the Orient Express is one of, if not the, most famous of Hercule Poirot’s cases and just shows why Agatha Christie is seen as the “Queen of Mystery”. A great read from beginning to end.

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Book Review: Ordeal of the Union, Volume Two: A House Dividing, 1852-1857 by Allan Nevins

Ordeal of the Union, Vol 2: A House Dividing, 1852-57 by Allan Nevins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Compromise in politics is not clean, nobody gets a 100% of what they want but to get some what they do and to keep peace they’re willing to endure something they dislike, but when one side decides to betray the other…hell hath no fury. Ordeal of the Union, Volume Two: A House Dividing, 1852-1857 is the second of Allan Nevins’ eight volume series on the lead to and history of the American Civil War with the focus on how a compromise to keep the peace was undermined by one of its architects and how all concerned reacted.

Nevins begins the volume by introducing the factor that he believed upset the hard fought and crafted Compromise of 1850 between North and South, Franklin Pierce. A dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1852 that benefited from being seen as the candidate that supported “the Compromise” only to show his fickleness and weakness by appointing those on either side of the anti-Compromise North and South into his administration thus sowing the seeds of discord. With a weak President potentially causing a rift in the party along with various economic factors at stake, Stephen Douglas brought further the Kansas-Nebraska Bill which shattered the Compromise he helped pass, destroy the Whig Party while dividing the Democratic and bringing furth the Republicans, and causing bloodshed on the plains of Kansas. Nevins shows how a weak man, another in a line of such men to occupy the White House, allowed the nation to literally begin killing over the future of slavery in the nation just a few years after it appeared everyone had peacefully agreed on a ‘final’ settlement. But while the domestic situation was tearing a part, internationally the United States looked incompetent as its ambassadors in Europe made fools of themselves while private citizens waged wars of conquest in various Latin American nations. Over the course of one Presidential term, the nation went from peaceful to threatening to tear itself apart when the election of 1856 saw the nation decide upon the one candidate that looked like he would bring peace and unity back to the nation, James Buchanan, surely things would be looking up.

Ordeal of the Union, Volume Two reveals how the United States unraveled so quickly towards civil war thanks to the poor judgment of one individual compounded by another. Allan Nevins explores not only the political, but the economic and cultural situations in both North and South which revealed shows the two halves of the nation apparently becoming two, as if a clash was becoming unavoidable.

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