Hedgehog Book Recommendations from the Depths of the Jungle!

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Hello book. Well, I am still trying to claw my way off a leash shore that I struck yesterday uh in making videos where the day did not want to cooperate.

[00:00:10]The videos did not want to cooperate where suddenly a staple of my of my day of my late morning was beyond my reach.

[00:00:19]I couldn't make videos work. I made I made some videos but I I couldn't make them work. I couldn't make them feel right.

[00:00:25]Uh so I am trying to uh pull my way from that today by sticking to basics. Uh I did the mail and although I would consider the mail to be a basic, it was one of the things that failed yesterday. Uh and aside from that, I thought I would just chat books and not branch out into anything else today and then I'll hope for better on the weekend. Uh so I thought I would do another hedgehog book recommendation video where I recommend a a handful of random books to you.

[00:00:55]uh named after uh the cartoon hedgehog of this little corner book, Christopher Russell, who's even now in an ashram somewhere in the depths of India seeking enlightenment. And any of you who remember his channel will know that's going to be a long process.

[00:01:13]So, so we might be a while. Uh I've got I've got some hedgehog book recommendations for you today that bounce all over creation and usually don't follow any theme at all. there is no theme today although two books are linked uh under the idea that you know well like I mentioned yesterday under the idea that sometimes a random recommendation will just hit you right it'll just be okay I didn't know I wanted to read that but now I do now in that sense I am doing you a service and I'm happy to do it I've loved scattershot book recommendations forever I love connecting people with books love it uh in another sense I might be doing a disservice because I am not checking ahead of time to see how available these things are. And I've heard from a number of you saying o over the time that I've been doing these hedgehog book recommendations saying, "Well, you know, I watched your latest one and I was interested in some things, but one of them did ping for me exactly in the way that you describe." And I went on eBay and it's $200. I'm not that's not intentional. I'm not trying to do that.

[00:02:11]I'm just not checking ahead of time. Um, so we'll start with Edward Stewart.

[00:02:16]Edgar Stewart. This is uh his book Kuster's Luck. All about well you hear the title and you think uh that this is about uh just George Armstrong Kuster and the Battle of Little Bigghorn and it's not. It's not.

[00:02:33]It's a much bigger tapestry of a story.

[00:02:36]It's it's how Little Big Horn came to happen.

[00:02:39]If you read a book just about the battle of the little big horn in isolation, and God knows there've been hundreds of them, it's easy to get the impression of a a a pluckucky underdog getting slaughtered by by the marauding hordes when of course that isn't true. Kuster might have cut a dash, but he was an emissary of empire.

[00:03:01]He was a a catpaw of manifest destiny.

[00:03:05]He wasn't He barely could be said to have existed at all on his own. I mean, his his mistake, the mistake that cost him and his men their lives at Little Bigghorn was definitely his own decision, and he made his own decisions during the American Civil War. But if it hadn't been when it comes more broadly speaking to to what happened at Little Bigghorn and elsewhere, if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else. It was departmental policy. And this book does that in really readable pros, I should say. But this is a bigger, more institutional view of what climaxed at Little Bigghorn in a way. what climaxed at Little Big Horn in it's an essential custer book to read.

[00:03:41]It's it's older. It's a little older and it I loved it when when I first read it.

[00:03:47]I absolutely loved it. Thought it could not be beaten as a Kuster book and it was it was beaten by Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell. But even so, there's no law that says you can't have two great books on one subject. This is terrific. Just terrific. Um then we have Max Brand. And you might think since we're on the doorstep of June on the Range that I am recommending one of his many, many, many westerns. He wrote a lot of westerns and I've enjoyed a lot of them. I plan on reading more of them for June on the Range. But he also wrote a series for which he was famous that is not a western series. The Dr. Kildair novels about a a young doctor and his adventures in a hospital, his his adventures treating and helping people.

[00:04:30]uh a kind of naive old school version of the pit with uh with a a crucial element in the Dr. Kildair novels that Brand I don't think ever I don't know I I've never read a biography of Max Brandt so I have no idea what he was like as a person but I get the strong impression every time I read a Dr. Kildair novel and there are a whole bunch of them that he was unaware of one of the major elements of his own character which is that Dr. Killer is dreamy, which you know, it doesn't play a major part in any of the books, but uh it's not just that he's skilled and especially compassionate. Brand hits on his compassion all the time. Uh and I want here I just want to recommend The Secret of Dr. Kildair, although it doesn't have to be this. It could be really any Dr. Kildair novel. This is uh a novel that's going to cause a lot of wincing to some of you, especially if some of you are dealing with mental health problems. And uh if you're dealing with with serious mental health problems, you know, the real kind, not the misdiagnosed or overdiagnosed kind, if you're dealing with the real kind in America, then you know perfectly well the nightmare of the system.

[00:05:38]Half of the American Medical Associ medical system is still in 2026 kind of unwilling to admit that mental health problems exist at all. Did you just get up and walk it off? Crap like that. Uh, and if you have encountered that or if you have reason maybe of a loved one who's encountered that and you know what that's like, parts of this are going to be a little cringey for you to read. I I would maybe pick another Kill Dare novel instead of this one. Or if you're going to read this one because of that connection, just be prepared. This is this is very antique views of mental problems of mental health as opposed to physical health. Although there's there are physical health problems involved too. And even if you you cringe a little at the book's characterization of that sort of thing, you can still pay attention. You can still enjoy what Brand is doing in this novel. I think you will still find it enjoyable. Uh I wish that I had all the Dr. Killer novels. I wish that I did. They're they're really rereadable. Uh and then this is this is the linked pair that I'm talking about because that that book automatically made me think of this book. This is by Eric Seagal who did Love Story. He wrote a little novel like 90 pages long called Love Story.

[00:06:49]And it sold 80 gazillion copies, I believe is the mathematical term for it.

[00:06:54]It sold 80 gazillion copies. So that everyone in the world thought, "Wow, well, this book has certainly peaked. It sold about as many copies as a book can sell." And then a movie was made out of it. And it sold another 80 gazillion copies. So Eric Seagal could have just retired on the strength of Love Story. He could have just stopped. Uh, and a couple of the books that he wrote subsequent to Love Story kind of made me wish that he had. Uh, but one of them I really liked.

[00:07:22]One of them I thought was really good and that is Doctors. This is a a familiar thing to him. He did a couple of novels like this. He did one called The Class. That's almost as effective as this. uh where he takes a graduating class of Harvard or Harvard medical school or whatnot and follows them throughout their life in a way that is designed to give you different facets of the the professional world that they go on to inhabit. And I don't think that that formula is never more effective than in this book. This is actually very effective novel. Uh, one character in particular who I think I think Eric Seal just I mean he he knew what he was doing as a writer. I he struck gold which is often deadly for a writer but he knew what he was doing. I can't help but believe that when he was in the drafts of this book it's not a short book. It's like 500 pages long. I I can't help but believe that when he was in the drafts of this book he knew that one of his group of characters was much more compelling than all the others. I I can't help but believe that he knew that. But I bet that he had the original idea of following a group of people and just didn't want out of stubbornness didn't want to abandon that. So he doesn't make this one person's book. Uh but really good. Again, a little bit of caution because some of it is outdated.

[00:08:39]Uh but nevertheless, uh then we can move on to a a classic. This is edited by Michael Patrick Hearn. This is the annotated Huckleberry Finn.

[00:08:50]Big and a bigger thing, a broader thing.

[00:08:52]a square big square book and it is uh it's always a tricky thing for me annotated editions I recognize right away and I'm willing to sing from the rooftops all the editorial work and artistry that goes into making a really good annotated edition of anything. I'm I'm willing to praise that to the daylights out of that because that takes a huge amount of work while at the same time I'm often feeling like I should be a bit of an advocate for the original book because most of the big annotated editions that I've seen come out from Princeton or Yale for instance or Harvard University Press uh are unnecessary in the strictest sense of the term they are unnecessary like uh well Huckleberry Finn might be that's why I'm I'm kind of centering on this one. An annotated edition of Huckleberry Finn will give you a lot that you might not get otherwise necessarily since this is taking place in a different world and the novel is entirely ruled by an institution that of formal slavery that we have we've eliminated in this country. The current government of this country wants it back and we certainly haven't eliminated slavery itself from the world. there are more slaves in the world now than there were at the time when this book was the time this book is dramatizing. Uh but even so that's that modern slavery is not acknowledged as such. Uh and the formal institution of bondage slavery has not yet been reinstituted.

[00:10:22]The the the constitutional amendments that ban it have not yet been rescended.

[00:10:26]Uh because right now in order to rescend those amendments you need a whole sort of agreement in Congress. you don't need merely the the ruler of the country saying that it's rescended. Uh so that ele introduces an element of stranges and this book helps to smooth that out. The only reason that I feel a partisan defensiveness towards some of the books that get annotated editions like this is for instance Sherlock Holmes famously there there are big annotated edition multi-olume annotated editions of Sherlock Holmes when the Sherlock Holmes stories don't need it.

[00:10:59]annotated edition of census disability.

[00:11:00]Sensus disability does not need annotations. And and I don't think I'm probably being alarmist because I don't think a lot of people look at annotated editions and think you won't understand the book if you don't read the annotations. Probably I'm just being touchy on the subject. But as far as annotations of classics go, this is terrific. Uh so and really really uh it keeps in mind the weird ambiguities of Hark Finn which is written off as a children's book. Twain always had a rye smile whenever people wrote it off as a children's book. He's perfectly happy to do that as long as it's sold. Uh but there are weird ambiguities all throughout it and this this particular annotated edition is very sensitive to them. U then we have something by Carlton Smith and Tomas Gillian. is the search for the Green River killer.

[00:11:49]Uh, and this is the uh just that this is this is the story of a guy named Ridgeway who killed dozens and dozens and dozens of women over a killing spree that went on for a long time that stopped and then resumed and went on for a long time. He again when you this is the I think the best book on the Green River Killer. It it is oddly not coming into my purview. I am currently doing a gigantic editorial project on on serial killers. I'm actually behind on my next sectional deadline. It's coming right up and I have I am not prepared. So, I need to I need to address that this weekend.

[00:12:26]Uh but that serial killer project that I'm doing doesn't involve the Green River Killer at all because uh Rididgeway was heterosexual.

[00:12:36]He he killed women and he he violated them before, he violated them during and horribly. He would often go back and violate them afterwards. He would go back to where he had deposited the bodies just to spend time with them. Uh truly truly a monster and and underscored all the more thoroughly by uh the prolific nature here where it's not just five victims or something like that. It's it's like 40 victims. Uh the the one thing in this book, the one thing that I think was inadvertent on the part of the authors, they are they are very uh thorough. Uh I I guess there's a part of me that kind of wishes this made better reading, but maybe that's an illicit part. Maybe I maybe it's sacrilegious to want a serial killer book to be better reading than it is. but an inadvertent effect of concentrating on the search for the Green River Killer because there were years and years where law enforcement in two different states had no idea where to even begin, where to even begin.

[00:13:41]There were these dead bodies and for the longest time no one even cared. They were they were discardable women. They were women that, you know, they live violent lives, dodgy lives on the edge of society. And so the local police would think nothing if they turned up dead. And believe you me, that was intentional on Rididgeway's part. I wanted to go undetected. That that is usually the way that serial killers work. They find a group of people who either won't be missed, won't be mourned, or whose death will be viewed as largely their own fault.

[00:14:16]Uh it wouldn't allow for a Ridgeway today. It wouldn't allow for a Green River killer today. Forensics is just too good today. Today, the only way that you could be this prolific, a serial killer, and I believe there are two at large in the United States whose body count is about this high by now, the only way that you can do that now is to evade forensics by never stopping anywhere. Originally, he had a home, he had a business. You you couldn't do that now. I don't think you could do that now. I think even local law enforcement would have the forensics to find you almost immediately. Not to mention the fact that we live in a surveillance state. So where almost every inch of you is is documented almost all the time. I guarantee you that there's a camera of some kind trained on me right now other than the one I'm talking to. Uh so again, if you have the urges and if you are a serial killer, you've had these urges your whole life. You've had them since you were a little boy. Uh you know what you are. In other words, by the time you you graduate from tormenting animals, killing house pets, uh tormenting people, by the time you get to the point where you want to kill someone, a human, you know what you are.

[00:15:30]And a lot of these a lot of these killers, they might not be completely human. Rididgeway was just a monster, but they have an unbelievably heightened sense of cunning. They they very much know the box on the stick. They very much know a trap. They elaborately game out in their minds what might be a trap.

[00:15:48]They don't want to stop killing. It's not that they don't want to lose their personal freedom. They don't have personhood in that sense. Notice for instance how little it bothered John Wayne Gasey that he spent the last years of his life in jail. The being in jail didn't bother him at all. What bothered him is that he wasn't it wasn't able to do what he was the only thing that he wanted to do.

[00:16:09]That's what they they care about serial killers. That's what they they want to avoid. Not not jail, but not being able to kill. They see them as two different things. Uh and once you realize that, once you realize that's what you are, usually you will use that animal cunning to find ways to avoid detection. Oddly enough, some of the most notorious sealer crows did not do that. I mean, John Wayne Casey did, but Jeffrey Dmer didn't. exactly go out of his way to to to scrupulously avoid detection. He was just swinging wild in a world that did not care until it was too late. whereas and so was Rididgeway because local law enforcement found these dead women and well to put it bluntly didn't care and he got he knew very well that they wouldn't care and then when they started to care and of course like I mentioned before on this channel we our moral sense in some ways some for some people has has advanced in the last 50 years.

[00:17:15]So a local jurisdiction would care a lot more about a dead body. It would be an urgent drop everything thing no matter who it was. And also the person would be easily findable. You would you would be able to okay the body is here. What forensics is on it? It's almost a miracle to leave no forensic trace of yourself on a dead body especially if you've gone back to visit it. Uh and also well this this stretch of road well we this stretch of road is under camera surveillance. Not not at this time but now it is. So it would be the work of very little try l very little time to zero in on someone like this. unless they consciously avoided it, as I believe at least two serial killers alive in the United States right now are doing. And that would mean that you're a long haul trucker. Basically, that's what that would mean. It would mean that you're a long haul trucker. So, you are on the road and hunting in some of the few places left in the country where you are not under immediate surveillance.

[00:18:12]You could probably be found by satellite feed, but those satellites aren't available to local law enforcement. They they are privately owned most of them.

[00:18:18]So you need to go through a ton of hoops to get, you know, precise information from thousands of feet away, thousands of miles away. Most of the time, no, there's no chance of that. So, and you know that you know that you can't stop, you can't slow down, you can't ever be in one place for long, and you have to have the forensics down pat, the onseen forensics down pat. It has to be that there can't be any trace of view anywhere near the crime scene. Um, Ridgeway. Sorry for the long question.

[00:18:49]You got me talking about serial killers.

[00:18:50]I could talk all day. Uh, unfortunately, I wish I wish it were raccoons instead or bats. Nobody ever pays me to write about research bats. Ridgeway grew more and more sophisticated in that. And one, like I was saying a million years ago when I started that digression, one of the inadvertent aspects of this book, as you can see right in the title, is that it it accidentally highlights uh the bumbling nature of law enforcement.

[00:19:18]I shouldn't call it bumbling nature.

[00:19:19]Hindsight always makes it seem that way.

[00:19:21]It's only rarely that that it is that way. It's only rarely that that you look back at the efforts that law enforcement was doing to catch what they knew was now an unusual killer and think, boy, they did a terrible job. Even by the standards of their day, they did a terrible job. Like for instance, the Yorkshire Ripper. You look you look into the details of the Yorkshire Ripper, the first thing that's going to jump out at you is these I understand there was nothing like this. There had been nothing like this in the world before now, but even so, these cops were pretty dumb.

[00:19:54]But but not usually usually that's hindsight and I so I shouldn't I shouldn't stress it here but you let's just say you will be you'll be cursing at at the page. You'll be saying ah no that's more important than you think it is. Why aren't you linking these two things?

[00:20:11]That that sort of hindsight thing.

[00:20:13]Anyway, let's let's get off the subject of serial killers, shall we? Should do a hedgehog book recommendation video entirely about serial killers and just go on for two hours.

[00:20:23]Um then we have uh a novel by Kingsley Amos who talk about you know hitting it big.

[00:20:29]I mentioned Eric Seagal hit it big with love story. Kingsley Amos wrote a book called Lucky Jim a genuinely hilarious novel that when critics and ordinary readers read it plenty of them thought oh all right well this is an instant classic. This is something that's going to be reprinted forever. And Kingsley kept writing. He he wrote a lot of other novels and it would be wrong for me to say that all of his other novels are drastically uneven. They wouldn't be wrong because they are drastically uneven, but it would be wrong to say that as though to imply that Lucky Jim is not. Once you read Lucky Jim again in the context of the later novels, you realize how uneven it is. It's not universally hilarious.

[00:21:10]There are bits that are hilarious. One of if you know the novel, one particular bit that is absolutely hilarious, perfectly done, but not the rest. the a lot of the it's it's an uneven book and so much of Kingsley Amos is uneven. Now, I know what I want to attribute that to where he can't strike an even tone throughout a whole novel, even when the novel's not long, where he can't do it.

[00:21:35]So, there'll be drastic peaks and valleys. There be there'll be scenes and bits and motifs and even a character or two that are really superbly done. And then there'll be other stuff that is just lazy and boring and phoned in in the same novel over and over again. I know what I want to attribute that to. I think I recognize that very well. I think that's alcohol. Uh I don't know.

[00:21:59]Maybe maybe I'm sure that Kingsley Amos would swear that you know that it wasn't that if anything it was a help that without alcohol there wouldn't have been any of the peaks. But I don't know one way or another. But I reread The Green Man by Kingsley. did not read I did not read this edition. This is the New York Review of Books edition with an introduction by Michael Dera. No offense to Michael Dera, but I I can't imagine a circumstance in my life that would make me voluntarily read an introductory essay by Michael Dera about the green man by Kingsley. I can't imagine I can't imagine that I would ever be in such dire straits.

[00:22:37]This is this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I reread it thinking, "All right, well, maybe you've been too harsh on Kingsley Amos. Maybe there's a lot more to these things than you think."

[00:22:48]Uh, and no, no, there is one character in this book who who is obsessed with his own death and so obsessed that he seems to invoke the supernatural by the time the book is over. But all the rest of it is he that character is sharply observed and worth reading the book for. Hence in a recommendation video. But well, I wonder if you if you've read this book or if you you decide to read it because of this video, I want to know what your own estimation is. I am not closing the door on Kings Amus. It's entirely possible that I'm just missing the wavelength that he's operating on here. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think these are these are only partially effective novels. Uh and the thing about it, ordinarily, I wouldn't recommend a book on on that grounds, not like this.

[00:23:38]Uh, but the thing is the peaks of Kingsley Amos are so good that you're willing to I'm willing to put up with the rest of the book and that is definitely true here even though this is a weak novel. Uh, so I don't know if any of that made any sense. Then we get to a whopper of history. This is fairly recent. This is just a couple of years ago. This is uh Lucy Wooding. This is her big book Tutor England. Uh, very very good one volume summary of Tutor England. probably the best one that I've read written in the 21st century. Uh covers everything all the major it's not just the rulers on down. It covers all the drifts of society, the religious movements, all that sort of stuff. I have oh I don't even know I don't know how many books like this I've read. Honestly, I don't it's over 100. Uh and I have uh two or three that I go back to over and over again. And I I put this thing on the shelf right over there. I put this thing on the shelf and thought, well, you know, it I maybe I'll revisit it. I I have so many other one volume histories of the tutor era, but I go back to it a lot. I go back to it a lot. So, I definitely can recommend it. I don't know if it's out in paperback yet. No idea. No idea if I'm blurbed on the paperback. Wouldn't that be wonderful considering I like the book so much? But if it is in paperback, you might want to if you're interested in the subject, you might want to get it. Uh and then we can we can wrap up with uh Oh, no. Let's let's do a few more. Uh, like this next one. This This is the hard coverver illustration. The the uh paperback looks different. I have the paperback. Uh, but I just grabbed these pictures off the internet. This is Owen Jones. We little Owen Jones. Young Owen Jones is what everybody reflexively calls him. He's a columnist and a political commentator in the UK. Uh, and I myself just reflexively call him young Owen Jones. Although in in many many recent videos and video appearances, he's taking pains to point out to people that he is 40. That doesn't seem possible. He still looks like he's 20.

[00:25:33]Uh but I guess I've been reading him for a long time, so he can't. Time doesn't stand still. Except for yours truly, right?

[00:25:44]Why the prize? Uh I guess he's not a party circuit 20some anymore. Instead, he's that rather embarrassing kind of item. a party circuit 40-year-old. Uh but he's a hell of a writer.

[00:25:58]Whether you like him or not, he has plenty of people that don't like him.

[00:26:00]They don't know anything about his politics. They just don't like his a effect. Uh he can sometimes come across as a spoiled brat, especially infamously, he walked out of a of a TV discussion interview. Uh and you know, uh he got a lot of flack for doing that one particular interview show. And I I understand why he got the flag cuz it looks terrible. If you have the sound off, it looks terrible. Looks petulant.

[00:26:25]But he was entirely right to to be outraged. The circumstances that caused him to walk off that stage at that moment. He was almost speechless with outrage in the framing of what the conversation was. The framing was so incredibly dehumanizing. And he was right to feel that outrage. I think he would have served his cause better by voicing that outrage and shaming the people on the stage with him rather than walking off. That hands the victory. But anyway, anyway, he's written a number of books. He wrote a breakout book called Chavs that is really, really good and surprisingly funny. Um, and he, this is the book that I want to recommend, The Establishment and How They Get Away with It. Uh, all about God, this is such a preant book. Oh my god, I don't I don't know that he's ever mentioned it. He he he is perpetually working on another book. I I'll believe it when I see it.

[00:27:16]Uh it's a lot harder to recover yourself if you are a 40some party circuit boy.

[00:27:23]It's a it's a lot harder to bounce back from that. I've heard uh uh but this is terrific. All about the depradations of the ultra wealthy.

[00:27:33]Uh how they have bought society. And if if it was true when this came out what 10 years ago, how much more true is it now? Good lord. Uh just just and also uh really engagingly written. Uh so uh and then well we can finish we could go on.

[00:27:50]We could go on forever. Let's just finish up with uh an old travel book. So this is one of those ones that'll either be 25 cents on eBay or $2,500 on eBay. I don't know. It's going to turn up at the Brattle someday for $3. So I don't care.

[00:28:03]But you might care if you don't have the Brattle near you. This is in the Amazon jungle. This this is what it looked like originally. this these green boards with an inset photo there. It had inset artwork. And this is a an old style, you know, Victorian Eduwardian trek through the the thickness of the Amazon jungle by Algot Lang, an explorer named Algot Lang wrote this. Uh, and he's got a good solid pros line as he and I mean travel guys like this can be a little bit difficult to uh to read.

[00:28:41]Usually they are steeped in a sentimentality, a blood a blood soaked sentimentality about the natural world that we I hope don't share anymore unless you are the sons of the United States president where we where we don't think it's just a place where we can go and kill things for fun anymore where we are ecologically minded.

[00:28:59]Uh and you you go into this and you think you're just going to get a jinguistic account like that. I mean theore Roosevelt wrote a book a lot like this at around the same time uh that was that way. But but Lang is different. He is much more attuned to our way of thinking about the natural world. Not as much as I would like, but still this is a a fascinating read. It's it's not at all callously brutal in the ways that you would expect. It still is a little bit, but but it's really good. Really, really good. Really good to find. I don't know how expensive will be for you to find. Uh but anyway, there are some some hedgehog book recommendations for you for a Friday. uh just to to try and feel my way back to the world. So I will the world of video making. So I'll wrap this up and I will see you soon.