DWD's Reviews

Published by Random House Audio in 2012. Read by Daniel Davis. Duration: 14 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. This book came HIGHLY recommended to me from a massive Star Wars fan that I work with who has told me on multiple occasions that this was an amazing book. If you loved the political intrigue of The Phantom Menace and loved the fact that it was basically the story of a trade dispute that got out of hand, you will LOVE this book. Let's face it, the problem with this book is that it is very similar to  The Phantom Menace  - the book actually overlaps with the movie. The problem with this book is that  Episode I is generally considered to be the worst of the 11 Star Wars movies and doesn't compare well with the TV shows, either. It's probably better than the Star Wars Holiday Special , but I haven't seen that since it first aired so I can't trust my judgment as a ten-year old viewer. This book fills in all of the questions that you probably didn't have

Published in 2016 by Tantor Media. Read by Kaipo Schwab. Duration: 3 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. A couple of years ago I requested my library order this audiobook. Honestly, I asked for it because I was looking to find a little bit of that Tony Hillerman magic in a new book series. But, just because a book is set in the same place as another book series and has a similar theme to another book series doesn't mean it is anywhere near the quality of the other book series. I finished this audiobook because the library paid for it because of me and I felt I owed it to them to give it an honest listen. Plus, it was short at just 3 hours and 45 minutes. So, what was wrong with the book. Technically, nothing major. The mystery was okay, but not great - kind of like a real-life mystery. An Bureau of Indiana Affairs investigator from Washington, D.C. comes to the Navajo Reservation to look into some problems with some water rights contracts that Reservation leaders have signed. She

Published in 2015 by Franciscan Media. Read by the author, Richard Rohr. Duration: 7 hours, 34 minutes. Unabridged. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan Friar from Kansas who comes at Christianity with a little bit of a different take than most. He would argue that it is a truly Franciscan take, and it might very well be. I would not know because I am not a Catholic - but I did find this work to be very intriguing. He does not approach the text from a purely Catholic point of view - he praises and criticizes typical interpretations from Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox perspectives. This audiobook is actually a series of lectures given by Rohr as part of a tourist cruise of Greece. In reality, it should have been called "In the Footsteps of St. Paul and St. John" since they do make a stop at Patmos and see where St. John purportedly spent many years in exile. Nevertheless, Paul's writings and Rohr's take on them dominate the lectures. One of the more interesting obser

Originally published in 1991. John Shelby Spong is the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. He has written a series of books with themes similar to this one, but Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism is one of the earlier explorations into this topic. Seeing as how it is an early look, it is a little muddled. Sprong makes a compelling argument that the entire Bible is not actually literal written history. This is an easy argument to make with some books. Jonah, for example, clearly has a point about people valuing things and/or revenge over other people.  This does not mean that the book does not have value - it is my favorite book in the Bible because of the points it makes, regardless of the value of the book as a history text. Spong's embryonic thesis is that these stories had great value in their time period and had great meaning according to their world view but don't necessarily have to be real. He did not make this analogy, but I will. Compare them to

Published in 2015 by DK Publishing. Originally published in 2008.  DK Publishing consistently publishes strong "coffee table" type books. This book covers a more serious topic than most of their books, but it is immensely readable and compelling. The text tells the basic history of how the Nazi party took control of Germany, started to implement their anti-Semitic agenda and eventually invaded their neighbors to start World War II. It also tells the story of a series individual Jewish victims as the timeline unfolds. The book doesn't just cover the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, but goes out of its way to include the other victims as well. The liberation of Dachau in April of 1945. This picture appears as a two-page spread in the book.  The pictures are excellent, the text mostly consists of captions for the pictures or a couple of paragraphs that go with the theme of the page. Considering how disjointed this approach usually is in these sorts of books, this

Published by Hachette Audio in October of 2019. Read by Titus Welliver and Christine Lakin. Duration: 10 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Michael Connelly has been publishing Harry Bosch since 1992. Harry Bosch started as a grumpy older detective and Connelly has decided to let him age (unlike, say, James Bond who has been basically the same age for almost 60 years). Bosch is now 70 years old and is long past being a LAPD police detective.  The author, Michael Connelly But, he's still on the hunt. Renee Ballard is a police detective who has been relegated to "the late show" - better known as the nighttime Hollywood beat. It's a world of homeless camps, prostitutes, food trucks and party people going to and from the latest clubs. It's a punishment because she turned in a superior officer for sexual harassment and the old boys network believed the man rather than the woman. This is the second time Ballard and Bosch have worked together. She has the power o

Published in 1991 by Scholastic. 93 pages of text.  9 pages of a bibliography, a glossary, an index and picture credits. A photo from the book of a Union hospital in Washington, D.C.  Behind the Blue and Gray is a simple introduction to what the average Civil War soldier. I would recommend it for grades 5 and above. However, saying it is for those grades does not mean an adult interested in starting to study the Civil War would not find this book interesting. It is similar to the introductory books that are published by the National Parks that you can find at Civil War battlefields. The book follows the progress of a few Civil War soldiers as they enroll in their respective armies, set up camps, train, march and eventually fight. It also explores what happened to prisoners and the injured. At the end, it discussed the aftermath of the war and ends with a photo of elderly former Union and Confederate soldiers at a reunion gathering. There is not a lot about women in the war a

Published by Random House in 2005. Robert Carter holds a unique place in American history. He was a massively successful plantation owner in the Revolutionary War generation. He knew and worked with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Virginia legislature. He was not particularly effective as a politician, but he was effective at something that all of the above failed at. He freed his 450+ slaves while he was still alive and managed to keep his fortune and his property. He did it over a series of years, but he did it. Thomas Jefferson thought that it couldn't be done and often wrote about the quandary he found himself in. A good student of American history will remember that Washington freed his slaves - but that was after the death of Martha Washington. Carter did it while he was alive. Carter's motivations seem to have been a combination of religious ideals and political ideals, motivated by such things as the soaring rhetoric of the Declaration

Jack Reacher vs. The Patriot Act Published by Random House Audio in 2009. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 14 hours, 47 minutes. Unabridged. Jack Reacher is in New York City, riding the subway after taking in a late night show in a bar. He notices a woman who is exhibiting all of the signs of being a suicide bomber that he learned years ago while being trained in Israel. When Reacher intervenes, he gets way more than he bargained for and gets sucked into a complicated mess and discovers that the powers granted to the federal government by the Patriot Act are not to be trifled with. The audiobook was read by multiple award-winning reader Dick Hill. He is my favorite reader of the Jack Reacher novels. But, even Dick Hill couldn't save some of the convoluted dialogue that comes from the villain's mouth as the book progresses. I was reminded of the famous line from Harrison Ford as he was filming Star Wars. He told George Lucas, " George! You can type this s***, but you sure

Original edition published in 2000. Updated edition published by Hachette Audio in 2006. Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell. Duration: 8 hours, 34 minutes. Unabridged.  Paul Revere (1735-1818) on his famed midnight ride on April 18, 1775 Malcolm Gladwell's first book is about "tipping points" - that moment where an idea, a fad, a political candidate, a disease (or whatever) catches on and spreads like wildfire. Gladwell looks into the human factors that contributes to spread of all of the things I mentioned in the first paragraph boils it down to three types of people that are needed. He details those personality types, describes why they are important and provides real world examples of those personality types. For example, he goes into a lot of detail into why Paul Revere was absolutely necessary for the success of his midnight ride. There was another rider, but he achieved little. Paul Revere, on the other hand, was wildly successful for a number of reason