Book Review #1

My wife told me that she was probably going to start reviewing books that she had read on her blog, and so I decided to steal her idea. But first I have to say that I have never been a good reader. I am a slow reader and it tends to put me to sleep so I can only read so much at once. Consequently I haven't read much other than the scriptures and text books since I was 12. Even in English classes I would try to buy the book on tape of a book I was assigned to read.

Well after we canceled our DirecTV and suddenly there was a lot less to watch on TV, I started reading for really the first time.



The first book I read was Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police by John O. Koehler. Koehler worked for the Associated Press in East Germany and was once even approached to be a spy for the Stasi. He used the opened archives of the Stasi along with first hand accounts to tell of the oppression and injustice that the Stasi and their "friends" the KGB imposed on the East German people. He also chronicled the efforts of the Stasi to further the cause of communism in the West and in the third world.

Although the book seemed slow at times due to the lack of unifying story line, it was eye opening for me. The fall of the Berlin Wall occurred when I was eight and its significance was completely lost on me. I can only remember my 5th grade teacher trying to impress upon me the importance of the new European maps that the school had finally gotten. I had had little understand of what it was like to live during the height of the Cold War, let alone behind the Iron Curtain. It gave me a greater appreciation of the freedoms that we enjoy and the sacrifices that are made to preserve those freedoms.

Stasi is 478 pages, making it the third longest book I have ever read, behind the Book of Mormon and Red Storm Rising. Although it was not a nail-biter, per se, I would recommend it. I would say that if you hit a chapter that doesn't draw you in, such as the Stasi efforts in Central America, then just skip ahead to the next, since the book does not carry a single story line.