DWD's Reviews

Originally published in 2002. As the title states, in Bull's-Eyes and Misfires: 50 People Whose Obscure Efforts Shaped the American Civil War , Clint Johnson has found 50 people from the Civil War (25 from each side) who played an important role, but are generally speaking, not big names. So, you won't find Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, William T. Sherman or Stonewall Jackson in this book, except in passing.  All of those men would have admitted that they didn't win (or lose) the war by themselves. It was a big war and it involved literally millions of people inside and outside of the military and even outside of the government. Some of those were very helpful and are labeled as "bull's-eyes". Some people, though, got in the way more than they helped. They are the "misfires". Some of the misfires and bull's-eyes that Johnson lists are clearly misfires or bull's-eyes. For example, the first person listed in the book is Union Major Willi...

Published by Macmillan Audion in 2018. Read by the author, William Shatner. Duration: 5 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged William Shatner gets personal in this look back at his life. He offers advice, although to be fair you have to know his first piece of advice - don't take his advice. Why not? Because his life is his life and you are you and the situations are different. That being said, he does offer one really good piece of advice - say "yes" to new opportunities. Besides the advice, he fills the book with stories of his life and discussions of situations he faced and how he dealt with them. He is brutally honest about his childhood and his lifelong inability to make real friends. Leonard Nimoy was one of his few friends, but at the end of his life Nimoy had refused to talk with him for five years. The author, undoubtedly being overly dramatic - and also interesting. Sometimes he drifts into sort "old man" ramblings about life in general and repeats himself, bu...

Published by Tantor Audio in 2010. Read by David Colacci. Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes. Unabridged. I heard about this book in a memorable interview with Tommy James on the old Dennis Miller radio show when this book came out nearly 10 years ago. It was one of the best radio interviews I have ever heard and I am not even a giant Tommy James and the Shondells fan. So, when I came across the audiobook I knew I had to listen to it - and I was not disappointed. For those not familiar with Tommy James, he is responsible for the songs "Hanky Panky", "Mony Mony" and "I Think We're Alone Now". He had two #1 hits and 14 Top 40 hits overall. He started his music career as a middle school kid in Niles, Michigan performing in bars and fraternity houses and pretending to be old enough to be in bars and fraternity houses. They did a lot of work in South Bend and Lake County in Indiana and eventually got regular work in Chicago. They even released the song ...

Published in 2009 by Blackstone Audio. Read by the author, Tamim Ansary Duration: 17 hours, 28 minutes. Unabridged. Tamim Ansary has done something that is very hard to do - he has written a long history of a complicated topic without making it boring and after more than 17 hours of discussion, he left me wishing that it was even longer. Ansary makes the observation that most histories that people in the West (Western Europe and the Americas) read are written from a Western perspective. That makes sense. But, the history of the world is not just the history of Western Civilization. There are multiple civilizations on the planet. Mesoamerica (the Mayas, Aztecs, Toltecs, etc.) is a separate civilization. China is the historic center of another civilization. So is India. And between the West and India and China is another one. Westerners usually refer to it as the Middle East. This book is a history of that civilization from the beginning of recorded history (empires like Bablyon) to ...

Originally published in 1933. The dust jacket from the original hardcover printing in 1933. Lost Horizon was the first novel published under the label Pocket Books (Pocket Book #1) and was one of the best-selling novels of the 20th century. My copy of this book was published in 1966 and it says it is part of the 62nd printing by Pocket Books. The story starts in Afghanistan where a local rebellion has caused the British government to evacuate all 80 of the white residents via airplane. The last airplane out is a high performance luxury airplane carrying just 4 passengers. Turns out, their pilot is a hijacker armed with a pistol and he takes them far off course into modern-day Tibet. They have a very rough landing on a high mountain glacier and the hijacker dies. The four survivors start to walk across the glacier but are soon discovered by a party from a nearby monastery called Shangri-La. They are escorted back the monastery and settle in for a long wait for the next supply p...

Published in 2014 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Pam Ward. Duration: 5 hours, 12 minutes. Unabridged. Sgt. Stubby wearing his medal vest (left), marching in a parade (upper right) and wearing his special gas mask (lower right). During the quick basic training for American forces heading for France in World War I, a stray dog found its way into a Connecticut National Guard training camp at Yale University. The unit was sprawled all over the campus and this Boston Terrier mix wandered around making friends all over. His friendly nature guaranteed a lot of table scraps. He marched with the men, learned the commands and blended in as well as a dog can. Somewhere along the way, someone taught him how to salute and hold the salute until it was returned. When it came time to board a ship and head to France, the soldier that he spent the most time with, Corporal James Robert Conroy, hid him under his coat as others provided a distraction. Once aboard, Stubby ensured he got to stay with his...

Published by Author's Republic in 2019. Multicast performance. Duration: 1 hour, 11 minutes. Unabridged This audiobook is a mixed bag. So, I will start with the positive side. The multicast performance in this audiobook is really, really good. The voice actors perform it like an old-fashioned radio play and they are excellent. It even has sound effects that are timed right, set to the right sound level and are not obnoxious. The story is another matter. It starts out with one plot (two university professors trying to grow the size of the practically nonexistent faculty labor union at a small private university in Indiana), drifts into a second story line and finally moves into a third, rather bizarre story thread that doesn't even come close to addressing the original conflict in this 71 minute story. This audiobook just slides around like a nervous six year old tells a story to a bunch of adults at a family get-together. I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It gets 2 ...

Published in 2014 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Bryan Stevenson. Duration: 11 hours, 11 minutes Unabridged. "...if he just had the money for a decent lawyer." Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who has spent his entire career working with people who have been wrongfully convicted and unfairly sentenced. He works through the Equal Justice Initiative with a lot of death row inmates in Alabama. He has succeeded in getting over 100 re-trials and/or re-sentencing hearings for people on death row. He has had multiple convictions completely overturned. Stevenson does a lot of work in Alabama because Alabama doesn't do much to subsidize the defense in death row cases. How much does the state spend for the entire case, including appeals? Just $1,000. Some counties help with that amount, but more than 70% of Alabama's death row inmates were represented by $1,000 lawyers. Considering that the average cost of a simple will is $375 , you can see that a $1,000 worth o...