Is ExpressToll the worst toll company in America?

Let me start by saying that Ashley was great. Ashley is a customer service representative with ExpressToll, which operates toll roads in Colorado, and when I was having difficulty opening an account with them, Ashley patiently helped me on the phone. Thank you, Ashley.

Sadly, Ashley is pretty much the only part of ExpressToll I can praise. Otherwise, over the last month, I have found ExpressToll to be a disaster of a business. 

I'm not alone. On Yelp, ExpressToll has earned a miserable 1.3 rating out of 5 (there's also a separate page with a 1.7 rating for ExpressToll Customer Service). 

Some of the reviews:  

"Such a horrible company." (Pat S.)

"If I could give them negative stars I would." (Mike H.)

"Possibly the worst service on planet earth. I hate them so much." (Jacquelynn L.)

You might wonder what a toll agency could be doing that is so wrong. After all, this seems like a pretty straightforward business: People drive on the toll roads, you bill them for it, they pay. Simple transactions. 

Yet somehow ExpressToll frustrates customers at almost every turn. 

I was preparing for a trip where I would be renting a car at Denver International Airport. Checking my planned route, I saw that I would be using the toll roads operated by ExpressToll. 

Using a rental car on a toll road adds a small complication. Since modern tolls are assessed based on license plates and billed to the vehicle's registered owner, the invoice will go by default to the rental company, not the renter. The rental company will, in turn, bill the renter — and add an extra fee that is often ridiculously high. 

I don't mind paying tolls, but if I can avoid the added fees by rental car companies, I will.

Many customer-friendly toll agencies offer one-time payment options where rental car drivers can pay  by going online and entering a payment method within 48 or 72 hours of using the toll road. Some also offer "short-term license plate accounts" to pay tolls that have been recently incurred or that you expect to incur in the next 30 days. 

Alas, ExpressToll offers neither option. To register my rental car required opening a full account. OK, fine. I've opened plenty of different accounts online; how hard could this be?

On the ExpressToll website, I began the process of creating an account in the usual ways: Entering my name, address, phone number, email address, and creating a login and password. You have to accept the user agreement, of course.

Then it asks you to add a vehicle to your account. Since I was only using this account for a rental car, I tried to skip this step, but it wouldn't let me ("add at least one vehicle to continue"). With no other option, I painstakingly added my own car even though I had no plans to ever use it on Colorado roads. 

Then it said I had to put at least $35 into my account to start. So I entered a credit card number, prepared to authorize the charge, and clicked "continue." 

And then ... nothing. Nothing happened. No confirmation, no error message, no way to move forward. 

Reluctantly, I started over, enter all my personal info, the car info, and the credit card info. And again ... nothing.

"Your automated system is a total piece of crap!!!" (B.W.)

Puzzled, I called ExpressToll and was put into a hold that promised a three-minute wait. Ten minutes later, I was connected to Ashley.

As I said, Ashley was terrific. She set up my account for me, painstakingly entering all the information as I relayed it to her. It worked. I had an account. She also warned me that when using the ExpressToll site, you will often get mysterious error messages. It just meant, she explained, that I should log out and log in again. I'm glad she said something because soon I would discover that error messages on the ExpressToll site are as prevalent as Bronco fans in Denver. Like this: 

Now that I had an account, I decided I should download the ExpressToll app to make it easy to use on my trip. One problem: ExpressToll does not have an app. That's right, in 2026, a company that does many millions dollars of transactions, does not have an app to help its customers. 

So I would have to use the website. Each time you log in to the website, it sends a two-factor code to your email and you have to retrieve it and enter it. That's common, of course, but customer-friendly websites also offer a "Remember me" option so that you don't have to enter the code every time. ExpressToll does not.

If you're keeping score at home, we have a company that doesn't offer a user-friendly way to pay tolls, doesn't offer an app, has a rigid system for creating new accounts (that doesn't work anyway) and offers an error-prone website. Customer-friendly, it is not. 

"Would give these incompetents zero stars if possible. Tried to pay a toll and their third party site gave me an error and then charged my card twice and refused a refund on one of the payments." (Claire F.)

When I picked up my rental car in Denver, I carefully entered the car license plate and other details into the ExpressToll website before I hit the road.

It took some nine days after my trip before my tolls showed up in my account. The tolls were deducted from my $35 deposit, leaving me a balance of $21.65.

I then set out to close the account and get my remaining deposit returned. After all, the only reason I had created an account was for this one trip. It was over.

So I logged in to my account and looked for a way to close my account. I couldn't find one. We all know how companies like to make it hard to close an account, but there is always a way, you just have to dig for it.

But not in this case. Not only was there literally no way to close my account, nothing on the site disclosed this. I searched "close account" in the ExpressToll system and got this response: "No questions match your search."

I emailed a request to close my account. A day later I received a response: "ExpressToll accounts must be open for 6 months before being closed."

Wait a minute, what?? Surely, there must be a misunderstanding, so I called and eventually connected to a rep, who told me that my account could not be closed until six months after opening. She said this was explained in the user agreement.

OK, I said, I don't really care if you close the account or not, just refund my money. No, she said. "We can't refund your money until your account is closed and we can't close your account for six months. It's our policy."

I will be the first to acknowledge that my $21.65 is a piddling amount of money. But how is it possible that any company refuses to close your account and give back your money? How many people is ExpressToll denying refunds to? Can you imagine going to, say, your bank to close your account and being told you will have to wait six months to get your money? 

I spoke to two more "customer service" reps and was told me basically the same thing, again citing the User Agreement.

When I later looked for the User Agreement, it wasn't easy to find. Perhaps not surprisingly, the link that ExpressToll had sent me for the agreement when I created my account didn't work.

When I did locate the agreement, I found something interesting: It did not say anything about have to wait six months after account opening to get your money refunded. Nothing even remotely close to it. 

Perhaps I should be thankful I didn't have even more issues with ExpressToll. Yelp users have reported other, wide-ranging problems.

 I've started receiving weird toll bills from Express Toll months ago from the license plate of the vehicle was totalled in the car accident as of December 2024 . (Olga M.)

"I live in California and have never driven in Colorado but just got a bill for $4.65 for a toll!" (Lynda S.)

"I get an ExpressToll bill every other month. I haven't owned the car in over three Years (Scott H.)

When you add it all up, it is actually kind of impressive how many different ways ExpressToll frustrates consumers. There's an account creation process that is unable to create accounts. There's no app or one-time payment option. There's the fleet of error messages you get when logged in to your account. There's the refusal to give customers their money back. 

So is ExpressToll the worst toll company in America? Do you know of one that is worse? Leave your comments below. 

Book review: "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

Note: This review contains spoilers. But this book has been out for 72 years, so if you haven't read it yet, that's on you.

There's something about being stuck on an island that just seems ripe for drama. Look at the compelling stories told in the books "Robinson Crusoe" and "Swiss Family Robinson," the TV series "Lost," and the movie "Cast Away." I'm sure you can think of more.

Stranded on an island, you're on your own, dependent on the limited resources of the island. While some stories tell of individuals marooned alone, many more place the unlucky characters in the company of random strangers. Fate has brought them all together in the dire scenario. Can they cooperate to survive? Will they work together, or turn on one another? 

One of the best-known books in this genre is William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," first published in 1954. It tells the story of a group of young boys who are stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash. There are no adult survivors. 

Golding does not explain why the plane was filled only with boys (other than the pilot, who died in the crash), but we do know that this odd collection of young strangers, none older than  age 13, are now bound together in a life-or-death situation. It's an intriguing premise. 

At first the boys create a civil society with rules (at meetings, only the person with the large shell known as the conch can speak), but gradually a schism develops between two rival leaders, Ralph and Jack.

The boys divide into two groups and Jack's band becomes progressively more hostile and "savage," painting their bodies, engaging in fevered dances, placing the head of a killed pig on a spike. Violence ensues, and two boys die, including the lovable Piggy, a portly near-sighted kid whose glasses had been stolen from him to help make fire. 

It reminds me of the 1972 plane crash in the Andes that left about two dozen young men, mostly Uruguayan rugby players, trying to survive in a bitterly cold environment without the guidance of older adults. These survivors were not kids, but they still showed a lot of immaturity during the ordeal, and their mistakes probably contributed to more deaths than were necessary. They did not, however, turn to violence. 

Golding imagines a similar situation but with children. He raises a fascinating question — would humans devolve into a more crude existence if they were freed from the normal standards of society?

Unfortunately, most of the book is exceedingly slow. 

For the first two-thirds of the book, not much happens. The boys quibble over and over about whether it's better to keep a fire going to signal rescuers or to hunt wild pigs for food (hint: you can do both). They bicker over whose turn it to speak. They worry about a "beast" somewhere on the island, a fear enhanced by the fact that the events of the book take place in the dark of night, the murkiness of the jungle or the hazy dawn or twilight. These various scenes largely go nowhere. 

The last third of the book has more action and is more engaging but like the rest is still plagued by unnecessary wordiness. Throughout the book, I found myself skipping ahead by paragraphs without fear of missing anything. The book could easily be 25% shorter, and would be a much tighter read if it were. 

Book review: "Mornings on Horseback" by David McCullough

First, to be clear, I admire and respect author David McCullough. I found his book "1776" to be a compelling page-turner. His other books, plus his work on PBS's "American Experience" and Ken Burns' "The Civil War" have earned him a righful place as one of America's preeminent historians. 

That said, McCullough's 1981 book, "Mornings on Horseback," is not his best work. The book, which includes the "origin story" of Theodore Roosevelt among its various topics, suffers from a lack of focus and too much minutiae. 

Even the subtitle of the book — "The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt" — hints at McCullough's uncertainly over the scope of the book. The blend of at least three topics with frequent digressions of questionable relevance results in an uneven mixture. Not all the storylines deserve the detailed attention McCullough gives them.

Before I go too far down this negative track, let me emphasize that "Mornings on Horseback" is not a bad book. McCullough clearly dug deep in his research, combing through Roosevelt family letters and diaries, as well as other historical documents, and some of what he has to share is quite eye-opening.

First, there is Teddy Roosevelt's father, Theodore, who turns out to be almost as interesting as his future-president son. Theodore Roosevelt Senior, McCullough explains, was a wealthy man who devoted much of his life to philanthropy and public service, so much so that he earned the nickname "Greatheart." He worked to find homes for homeless children, established New York Children's Orthopedic Hospital, helped fund the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, and supported efforts to rid government of corruption.

Clearly, Teddy Roosevelt got his core principles of honesty, fairness and public service from his father. After the elder Theodore's death, Teddy wrote, "I shall try to lead such a life as he would have wished, and to do nothing I would have been ashamed to confess to him."

Another surprise from this book (for me, anyway) is how wealthy the Roosevelts were. The enormous family fortune, built from selling plate glass and investments in real estate and banking, dated back at least three generations before Teddy Roosevelt and was eventually passed down to him. 

He grew up in one Manhattan mansion before his family moved to an even grander mansion uptown when he was 15. The latter home was so large the Roosevelts once sent out 500 invitations to a party to be held there. Another mansion, at Oyster Bay on Long Island, came later. At each home, family needs were tended to by footmen, maids and butlers. 

His family spent a year touring Europe in style when Teddy was 10 and 11, and another well-funded year in Egypt, the Middle East, and Europe when he was 14 and 15. At Harvard, Teddy lived on stipend that was more than the college's president salary.  

By far the most interesting throughline in this book is the story of how Teddy Roosevelt developed from an asthma-ridden child —   "embarrassingly undersized and underweight, a scrawny frame with stick arms and stick legs," writes McCullough —  into a unstoppable personality who stormed through college, led groundbreaking reforms in government even as a young man, and worked tirelessly on a North Dakota cattle ranch.

At Harvard, his peers mocked him for his high-pitched voice, but were wowed by his unending energy. "He was a figure of incessant activitiy (as he himself said), of constant talk, constant hurry, a bee in a bottle."

He was elected New York's youngest state legislator ever (to that time) at age 23, voters drawn to the tireless candidate who seemed committed to working for the average person, "In a political fight, he fought tooth and claw." 

McCullough carefully debunks some myths from Teddy's early years (the book covers his life up to age 28) while also detailing some astonishing truths.

Teddy did, in fact, knock out a drunk cowboy with one punch in a Montana bar after the man had pointed two guns at him. He did, in fact, work for 40 hours on horseback through storm and rain to round up cattle who had stampeded away.

If only McCullough had stuck to the stories of Theordores Junior and Senior. Perhaps feeling a historian's duty to be thorough, McCullough also details the lives of Teddy's siblings and other Roosevelt relatives, but their lives are largely dull — a fact the author acknowledges. Prior to Teddy, McCullough explains, "One searches the Roosevelt family history in vain for a sign of daring or spontaneity or a sense of humor."

 "Mornings on Horseback" is one of McCullough's earlier books, his fourth of 13, and while the quality of research is unquestioned, he too often buries the reader in trivial and unimportant details.

In describing the 1884 Republican convention, McCullough pointlessly informs us that, "The Pennsylvanians wore brilliant blue neckties and cream-colored plug hats and matching cream-colored silk handkerchiefs in their coat pockets, a spray of lily of the valley on the lapel." 

Describing two mansions owned by other families, McCullough notes that one faced east and the other south, even though this doesn't matter in the least. 

He offers tedious listings of social occasions: "There was a 'jolly little dinner' at the Iselins', a 'very pleasant little party' at Aunt Annie's, dinners at the Leavitts', the Griswolds', the Weekeses', the Keans', the Morans; the Tuckermans' ..." and on and on.

McCullough seems unable to resist a good digression, wandering off to tell us stories with only peripheral connection to Roosevelts. He goes into excessive details about the Civil War commerce raider ship Alabama, the inner machinations of the 1876 Republican convention, and a North Dakota cattle farmer named Marquis de Mores. (These stories are not without merit; they just don't fit in this book.)

The bottom line is that is that if you want to get the most out of "Mornings on Horseback" you will need to skim and skip parts. (To be fair, even McCullough's book "1776," which I liked, contains a unneeded first chapter.) Stick as much as you can to the stories of Theodore Roosevelt, Junior and Senior, and you'll enjoy the book more.                                                                                                                              

Book review: "The Wide, Wide Sea" by Hampton Sides

An amazing life, a shocking death, a riveting book.

"The Wide, Wide Sea," a 2024 book by Hampton Sides, tells the extraordinary story of English Captain James Cook's third (and last) voyage. It was on this voyage, from 1776 to 1778, that Cook's two ships explored the vast Pacific Ocean from as far south as New Zealand to the bitter icy edges of the Arctic Ocean at the north. 

Along the way, Cook made the first European contacts with numerous native cultures. Most significantly, he and his crew were the first non-Polynesians to reach Hawaii. It was there that Cook would die in a dramatic and tumultous conflict with the islanders. 

It is a fascinating book, stuffed with details, about a remarkable time when men could venture into blank spots on the map, finding places they never imagined, and meeting people who were far different from them. And doing it again and again. Such was the life of Captain Cook. 

As Sides describes him, Cook was both a tireless explorer and a master mapmaker. The later skill should not be minimized. Whereas earlier explorers clumsily created maps that were largely (or completely) inaccurate, Cook employed the best tools of the day to read the positions of the stars and the sun, and his knowledge of trigonomety to place his discoveries precisely on the map. And once on the map, they would soon be greeting a lot more visitors. 

Of course, "discovery" is a fraught word for lands that were already occupied. But from the European perspective — or really any perspective other than the islanders themselves — Cook did discover scores of islands and outposts throughout his three voyages.

Cook, says Sides, seemed to have a preternatural sense — or was it just luck? — that enabled him to stumble onto new islands (including Hawaii). 

Each fresh encounter with natives usually begain tensely, with both sides warily approaching each other. While there was sometimes violence, more often the two sides slowly warmed to each other, exchanging gifts, trading goods, and introducing each other to their respective customs. 

Sides recounts the perilous landing of Cook and his men at St. Lawrence Bay, in what is today remote Eastern Russia, where hostile Chukchi natives aimed their bows and arrows at him. Cook told his men to wait at the water's edge while he gingerly stepped forward. "The Natives, still bellicose and untrusting, could have killed him an instant, and they showed every willingness to do so."

But Cook stood his ground, slowly approaching, his arms outstretched to show he was unarmed. And gradually the tension eased, Sides notes, the mood softened. 

Cook had performed iterations of this risky minuet on previous voyages, in assorted beach scenarios, striding ashore alone and unarmed. It was a kind of theater of first contact he had perfected. On one level, it involved a bravery and a confidence that bordered on recklessness. Behind it, though, was an optimism. He believed cultures could be made to understand one another: If he used the right tone and body language, if he looked them in the eye and showed proper respect, the chasm between radically different people could be bridged.

While others on the English crew sometimes dismissed or recoiled at the "primitive" practices of the natives, Cook tried hard to be simply an observer of local customs. On Tahiti, Cook even viewed a human sacriifice (the victim was killed earlier in the day; his body then brought to the ceremony), then did his best to objectively describe it in his journal. 

Still, one of Sides' themes of "The Wide, Wide Sea," is that Cook was behaving differently on this voyage than on his first two, and sometimes exploded with uncharacteric fury after things were stolen from his English crew. For example, after one of the Englishmen's goats was stolen on the island of Moorea, Cook flew into a rage, leading a party that burnt the natives' homes, destroyed crops and wrecked canoes. 

Sides speculates that the 48-year-old Cook may have been suffering from an unknown disease causing his erratic behavior, but there is no proof.

The book is not entirely about Cook. The most substatial sub-story is about a youg Tahitian man named Mai, who had been brought to England in 1774, the first Polynesian to reach England. It was a peculiar time when exotic people from faraway lands were brough to London as "human pets" (think Pocahontas) to be shown off.

Mai travels aboard Cook's ship on his return to Tahiti, hoping to come back to his homeland to gain vengeance on his people's enemies and earn a place of prominence on the island. Sadly, he never gets the respect, or the vengeance, he wants. I had never heard of Mai, and it is an interesting story, though Sides spends a bit too much space on Mai's time in London.

If that's a small weakness in the book, it's about the only one. Otherwise I loved the way Sides tells the story, in doses of just two or three pages. History doesn't always fit together neatly, so some of the passages are simply standalone vignettes, while othes help build the deeper story of the voyage.

Even in the best of encounters, the English learned that the islanders would come to resent their presence after two or three weeks. Cook could sense when it was time to move on. 

Cook's death on the Big Island in Hawaii was horrifying, but perhaps inevitable. He had been treated as a god on arrival, but relations between the English and the Hawaiians slowly deteriorated. Still, everything would have been fine if the English had sailed away from the island in February 1778 as planned.

But a a storm severely damaged Cook's main ship, the Resolution, and they had to return to the Kona Coast harbor to make repairs. The Hawaiians were not happy to see them. 

Soon, an important English boat was stolen, Cook became enraged, and his efforts to force the Hawaiians to return the vessel triggered an eruption of violence. Cook was beaten and stabbed to death. It was an ignominous end to his life but perhaps an inevitable one, writes Sides.

What was perhaps more surprising than Cook’s violent death was that it hadn’t happened earlier, at some other island. For how many times had he landed upon unfamiliar shores—alone or nearly alone—a stranger, surrounded by thousands of understandably suspicious Indigenous people who could not know his true intentions? Over the years, across the hundreds of thousands of oceanic miles, how many opportunities had there been for disagreements to erupt? Cook had cheated death so many times, at so many of his anchorages, that it was a wonder he had lived this long.

Book review: "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck

Early in my reading of "Cannery Row," I kept waiting for the main characters to appear.

The first character John Steinbeck introduces in thie 1945 novel set in Monterey, California, is Lee Chong, a taciturn Chinese grocery store owner who provides much of the neighborhood's food and liquor, while giving out just enough credit keep all the locals in his debt.

Next, Steinbeck introduces us to five seldom-employed men who squat in a small building formerly used to store fish meal that they call the Palace Flophouse. The men "had in common no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and contentment."

Then there's Dora Flood, who runs a busy brothel nearby, and Doc, a scientist who collects marine specimens to sell to laboratories, while at night sitting home alone listening to classical music and sadly recalling a lost love. 

All of these seemed like side characters to me, so it took me a bit to realize they are the main characters.

And I guess that's the point. Steinbeck is not interested in showing us the lives of the rich or the powerful, or even the ordinary middle-class. "Cannery Row" is all about the lives of people on the fringes, imperfect people who build a quirky community of their own. It is based on real people Steinbeck met while living in Monterey in the 1930s.

Steinbeck braids together a collection of stories, some of which are tied loosely together and some of which are stand-alone vignettes. 

To say this a quirky tale is an understatement. There is a embalming gone wrong, a quest for a beer milkshake, and a man building a boat with no intention to finish it. It is amusing to watch the Palace Flophouse guys attempt to throw a party for Doc, but end up getting it disastrously wrong.

The book mixes touches of poignancy with Steinbeck's wry sense of humor. Refering to the ubiquity of the Model T Ford at the time, and its persistent need for repair, the author says, "Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars."

"Cannery Row" is a fairly short book, but I didn't read it fast. This is partly because Steinbeck loads every paragraph with a lot of meaning. If you read too fast, you'll miss it. Here, for example, is his description of Hazel, one of the Palace Flophouse gang.

"Hazel’s mind was like wandering alone in a deserted museum. Hazel’s mind was choked with un- catalogued exhibits. He never forgot anything, but he never bothered to arrange his memories. Everything was thrown together like fishing-tackle in the bottom of a rowboat, hooks and sinkers and line and lures and gaffs all snarled up."

Mostly the book centers on Palace Flophouse men, led by a man named Mack. Sure, they steal food, overdrink, fail to pay their debts, and botch their attempts to help people, but Steinbeck looks at them and respects them for their commitment to a simple life:

"What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums."

This is only the second Steinbeck book I have read. The other is "The Pearl." "Cannery Row" is better.

How to reach the Los Angeles County Tax Collector

If you've tried to contact the Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector recently, you've discovered something disturbing: You can't.

If you call the Treasurer and Tax Collector's number (213-974-2111), you will enter the obligatory phone tree and after selecting some combination of choices, you will always end up hearing this recording:  

"We are current experiencing a high call volume. Please call back during our non-peak hours of 8 am and 10 am and 2 o'clock to 4:30 pm."

 And then the Treasurer and Tax Collector will hang up on you. Every. Single. Time. 

I've called the office nine times and have been hung up on nine times. And each call was during the supposed "non-peak hours."

So you can't get through by phone. Can you email them? While the TTC's website does not offer an email address, it does have a contact form for submitting a message. 

Don't get your hopes up, though. I submitted queries through the TTC's official system 17 days ago and am still waiting for a response.

So if they don't answer the phone and they don't respond to messages, how do you reach our public servants at the Treasurer and Tax Collector's office?

Two words: Gardenia Guerrero.

Gardenia works for Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn and when I contacted that office looking for help it was Gardenia who stepped up, responded to me, and had somone from the Treasurer and Tax Collector call me. 

Here is Gardenia's contact info:

Gardenia B. Guerrero, MPA

Constituent Caseworker

LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn 

O: 562.256.1920 C: 213.631.8648 

E: GGuerrero@bos.lacounty.gov

Email or call her. Unlike the TTC, she actually will respond. 

Book review: "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens

It was not the best of books. It was not the worst of books. It was, uh, somewhere in the middle. 

When I began reading "A Tale of Two Cities" I knew little about it. Sure, I knew it was a classic by Charles Dickens, but I had no idea what it was about or whether a book from 1859 would be good reading in in 2026.

As it turns out, "A Tale of Two Cities" is good reading — in parts. It is also, unfortunately, overlong and overwritten.

The strength of the book lies in its portrayal of France before, during and (mostly) after the French Revolution. While it's called "A Tale of Two Cities," and there are some scenes in London, it's mostly a story set in and around Paris.

Dickens portrays pre-revolutionary France as a time of horrid inequities. The rich, the powerful, and the royal live in castles and on estates, well removed from the sufferings of the hungry masses. In one scene, a wealthy man's carriage runs over and kills a poor boy; the aristocrat tosses a coin to the child's father as compenation and then continues on.

Elsewhere, Dickens describes a youth who was sentenced to have "his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view."

It's enough to drive a people to revolt, and they do. Midway through the book, Dickens shows the French rising up and storming into the Bastille. 

But the joy of the revolution soon gives way to the horrors of the Reign of Terror, when thousands of people were executed at the guillotine — what Dickens coldly calls "the National Razor."

"It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red ... It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good."

Dickens describes rivers choked with drowned execution victims, and a daily parade of the condemned through the streets of Paris, many them innocent people swept up in the chaotic ferver of the day. A vengeful populace, the author says, was "headlong, mad, and dangerous" and demanded retribution against foreigners or anyone even remotely associated with the aristocracy.

Is this an accurate portrayal of the time? Honestly, I don't know enough about that era to say. But the images Dickens paints will stick in your mind. 

Still, to get to these sections of the book, the reader has some work to do. You must wade through a disjointed plot, elliptical and repetiive writing, stilled dialogue, and wooden characters.

Dickens can be witheringly sarcastic, skewering the arrogant, the rich and the smug, but he is often too much in love with his own words. He seems to never settle for saying something in one sentence if he can do it two, three or four. He prefers the longer and the redundant over the short and simple.

At one point, he says "More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone" rather than "A year had passed." Later, he writes "Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea," rather than "Fifty-two were to be executed that afternoon."  

There is a chapter where the characters of Lucie and Alexandre Manette, daughter and father, express their love for each other —  over and over. Not only is it repetitious, Dickens had already established, before the chapter, the characters' deep love. 

Dickens' wide-ranging plot goes from bewildering to borderline brilliant. In the first half, like someone dumping out the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the author scatters an assortment of seemingly disconnected plot lines. Characters are introduced, developed and then disappear. Events and secrets from the past are hinted at, but then dropped. The story abruptly jumps ahead in time, leaving behind questions unanswered 

For a reader looking for cohesiveness, it can be frustrating.

But in the second half, Dickens slowly takes all those disparate puzzle pieces and fits them cleverly into his grand saga. Almost everything from the first half has a place, an important role. It is quite masterful and impressive, though tempered by one factor: The book is so long, it can strain a reader's memory to recall the elements from the first half that become relevant in the second. 

I wish I could suggest a strategy for the prospective reader to get the rewards of "A Tale of Two Cities" without the poorer elements, but they are well intertwined. I will say that the book's weakest part is the start; I suggest skimming the first three chapters, which are filled with a lot of vague allusions that are difficult to understand. Don't get bogged down there, move on as quickly as you can to Chapter 4. The book gets better as you go along.