DWD's Reviews

This kindle short story is part of a multi-volume series about Amboy "Boy" Babbage, a young man with an unusual skill with machines. He is an engineering genius. Also, he is able to "weld" human tissue and machine together using mercury tears. This skill is the crux of the story. It begins on May 6, 1863 near the Chancellorsville battlefield. In the real world, Stonewall Jackson, the famed Confederate General lost his left arm due to a "friendly fire" episode and was starting to slip away to his eventual death on May 10 due to pneumonia. When he passed, his superior, Robert E. Lee, said, "Jackson has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right". Jackson was sorely missed a mere two months later at the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the major turning points (if not the major turning point) of the war. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson In Boy Mercury Amboy Babbage and his father are brought to Stonewall Jackson's bedside and A

Published in January of 2014 by Regnery Publishing In 2012 Kevin D. Freeman published Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It Can Happen Again . In that book, Freeman detailed how America's financial markets are vulnerable to manipulation by foreign powers by creating bubbles (like in the oil markets). Individual companies could also be targeted, individual sectors or the markets as a whole. The first part of Game Plan is a brief review of the vulnerabilities he described in Secret Weapon . To be honest, if you have not read S ecret Weapon , you can read Game Plan and get the general idea. He also includes updates, including letting his readers know that he has briefed the Pentagon on these vulnerabilities.  The New York Stock Exchange. Photo by Urban. The rest of the book is devoted to telling the reader about the strengths and weaknesses of various kinds of investments, such as stocks, bonds, gold, etc. in a period of fina

Excellent and Quite Enjoyable. Originally published in 2003 by Doubleday We all understand that wars can profoundly change the world. History is full of wars that brought giant transformations, such as Alexander's conquest of Persia (and just about everything else he saw) and the spread of Hellenistic culture, the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and Peru and the Cold War stand off that shaped the world after World War II. If you have ever heard the phrase "In a post-9/11 world..." that tells you that the world has been changed by the War on Terror.  The simple idea behind Ripples of Battle is that it's not just wars but oftentimes single battles that change things. And, sometimes, it's not the battle that everyone knows, but a lesser-known battle that causes the most change. He uses the familiar image of a rock tossed into a lake with the outgoing ripples from the point of impact being the change. And, he does a pretty thorough job of showing that these rip

                Excellent. Published in September of 2013 by Delacorte Press Imagine a world in which some people, seemingly random people, were given the powers of a comic book superhero. They are called Epics. Some have extraordinary powers, such as the ability to fly or the ability to control electricity or to heal people. Some have minor powers. But, these powers tend to warp the personalities of the Epics - the more they use them the more the Epics are disconnected from the world of regular people - the more they look at regular people as things to be controlled, used and eventually discarded. Brandon Sanderson. Photo by Ceridwen. 18 year old David lives in what used to be Chicago. It is now called Newcago and is ruled by an Epic called Steelheart. He has the power to turn anything into steel and he has turned Chicago into a steel-covered wasteland. Plus, he can fly among other powers. In the DC Comic world he would have powers equal to those of Superman. He has a troik

The un-named protagonist of the short (114 pages) e-book  The Professional Freelancer  has worked in a variety of entry-level jobs (fast-food, telemarketing, door-to-door selling, painting houses, lifeguard and more) and has not had any success at any of them (fires, accidents and government raids have all ended his employment).  Now, the computer genius friend or the un-named protagonist has used his connections to get the un-named protagonist a job at a software firm. But, three weeks into this job, he loses it thanks to yet another government raid. The government is looking for something and the un-named protagonist has no idea what it is (but...he does have a USB flash drive with some strange code that he has brought home and left in his car - the car that won't start and has been left to sit in the driveway for a while, now). So, the un-named protagonist goes out, gets dumped by his girlfriend, loses his apartment due to a failure to pay his rent (and two months back r

Published by Time Warner AudioBooks in 2005. Read by James Naughton Abridged Duration: 5 hours, 39 minutes Four outcasts form  The Camel Club, a team that keeps an eye on the government so that it can discover the "truth".   The club is led by Oliver Stone - not the director but a former CIA assassin who has taken the movie director's name. Stone literally stakes out the White House and watches who comes and goes. Reuben Rhodes is a former soldier and DIA member who works in a warehouse. Caleb Shaw works for the Library of Congress and often dresses like he was in the 19th century. The last member is Milton Farb, a computer genius with obsessive compulsive disorder. The White House These four witness a murder of a government agent on Theodore Roosevelt Island, D.C. area national park. When it looks like the murder is going to be treated as a suicide, the club swings into action with the support of a friendly Secret Service agent and discovers a conspiracy t