DWD's Reviews

  Published by Random House Audio in 2011. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 14 hours, 5 minutes. Unabridged Any fan of the Jack Reacher series knows that they are not written in chronological order. T he Affair is set in Reacher's later years in the Army. He is a major and, as fans know, he is part of the military police. Chronologically, it is set directly before the events of The Killing Floor , the first Jack Reacher book that was published. Jack Reacher has been sent to Mississippi as part of a two man team to investigate a murder of a young woman that took place outside of a military base. It is presumed that the murderer was a soldier on base, maybe even the captain of a team of Rangers that have been shuttling in and out of Kosovo on secret missions as part of the Balkan civil war that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. That is a problem because this captain is very connected politically. His father is a U.S. Senator that is on the committee that helps set the military budget...

  Originally Published in 1960 by Louisiana State University Press. Five Civil War historians were asked to present papers at the Annual Civil War Conference at Gettysburg College. While these were all experts on the Civil War, each had a slightly different topic to create a more well-rounded discussion in Why the North Won the Civil War. The first essay, God and the Strongest Batallions by Richard N. Current, looks at economic factors that gave the North a decided advantage and how the North exploited them. It also looks at things the Confederacy failed to do to maximize their strengths. T. Harry Williams wrote the second essay. It is entitled The Military Leadership of North and South. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) Norman A. Graebner's essay Northern Diplomacy and European Neutrality  actually looks at both Northern and Southern diplomatic efforts. This one interested me because it took a hard and sustained look at the responses of the governmen...

  Published in 2021 by HarperAudio. Read by Vikas Adam. Duration:  8 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. Day Zero is a book about Pounce, a top-level nannybot in an unspecified future time in the combined city of Dallas and Austin, Texas. The world is an unsettled place because robots like Pounce replaced people in all of the repetitive and unskilled jobs all over the world. But, those people didn't go anywhere, they are simply given a Universal Basic Income and left to live their lives without any sort of work. Some find productive ways to live their lives, some turn to drinking, drugs or even fringe political movements.  The author If you can imagine that Frosted Flakes' Tony the Tiger character as a robot, you get the idea behind Pounce. He was purchased to be the caregiver for an eight year old boy named Ezra.  Pounce works with Ezra's parents and the older housekeeper robot to help maintain a safe and supportive environment for Ezra. Pounce walks Ezra to and from sc...

Originally published in 2005 Published when Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was 82, A Man Without a Country is a series of short essays from a man who is pretty embarrassed by his country with the election and re-election of George W. Bush - thus the title. (One can only imagine Kurt Vonnegut's reaction to the election of Trump!) But, very little of the book directly deals with politics. He wanders from topic to topic - this sounds like it should be a mess, but each of these essays flow right along, breaking every rule that your English teachers taught you about having a proper opening paragraph, a clearly stated thesis, etc.  But, then again, your English teacher wasn't Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut, by the way, strongly recommends against the use of semi-colons. I absolutely agree.  If you haven't read Vonnegut, brace yourself. He is angry, sarcastic, insightful and brilliant. He writes about a wide variety of topics. Some are dated, like the comments about the fights over placing t...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2018. Only available in audiobook format. Read by the author, Michael Lewis. Duration: 0 hours, 54 minutes. Unabridged. Originally, Has Anyone Seen the President was originally written for Bloomberg View , the editorial/opinion site of Bloomberg News. Lewis went to Washington. D.C. during the run up to President Trump's "State of the Union Address". Lewis visits the press room in the White House, speaks with a former press secretary from the Obama Administration and visits with Trump advisor Steve Bannon. He also spends time with a former ethics official in the government who quit because President Trump and his administration openly flout the standards for ethics that were established in previous administrations (like divesting your portfolio of investments that could be a conflict of interest with your position in government). Finally, Lewis ends up watching the State of the Union with Steve Bannon in Bannon's home with runn...

  Published in 1951 by Random House. I n the 1950's and 1960's Random House created an extraordinary history series for children called Landmark Books. There were 122 books in the American history series and 63 in the World Landmark series. A very solid description of the series can be found here:  link . When I was a kid my little hometown library had what seemed like an endless shelf of these books (I even remember where it was in that little library nearly 40 years later). Undoubtedly, these books are part of the reason I am a history teacher. I have started a collection of these books. When I run across them at library sales and thrift sales I pick them up. Some of the texts have aged well, some have not. Custer's Last Stand  is aimed at students from 3rd to 8th grade. It is a simple read with line drawings. It could use a few more maps.   The history is basically accurate in the broad strokes, but it is full of "quotes" and scenes that never happened in order...

Published in 2020 by Random House Audio. Read by the author, Alicia Garza. Duration: 9 hours, 31 minutes. Unabridged. Alicia Garza is one of the founders of the organization Black Lives Matter .  This reader decided that he only had a superficial knowledge of the movement and wanted to learn more. The Purpose of Power seemed like a reasonable place to start. The first part of the book is basically a recounting of Garza's early life and her beginnings as a community organizer. This was quite enjoyable. Garza is a talented writer and she tells her story well. The author, Alicia Garza The middle part gets bogged down with some esoteric political movement talk. Lots of discussion over meanings of words like "intersectionality." I thought she made her point very clearly early on and kept on making it. This was clearly very important to the author, but the lay reader who is not heavily invested in the movement and its specific language would, like me, find this to be too much ...

Published in 2019 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by Robon Miles. Duration: 5 hours, 53 minutes. Unabridged.   Erica Armstrong Dunbar brings us an accessible biography of one of the true heroes of American history - Harriet Tubman. She Came to Slay is long enough to give a decent picture of her life but short enough that it doesn't intimidate potential readers. A traveling statue named honoring Harriet Tubman named "Journey to Freedom" I am not going to go through the entire biography of her life, but this book covers all of the major points of her life such as:  -Her escape from slavery;  -Her multiple trips back to Maryland to free family, friends and anyone that would go; -Her work in anti-slavery societies where she met and worked with people like Frederick Douglass, William Seward and John Brown; -The communities she helped start in New York and Canada; -Her work with women's rights groups and her struggles to get white women to include black women in their fi...

  Published in 2017 by Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Timothy Snyder is a historian that specializes in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930's and 1940's. This coincides with the rise of the Nazis in Germany the rise of the USSR as a world power.  In On Tyranny , Snyder has written up several mini essays about the dangers that he sees in modern day politics that are actually echoes from the past. Or, as he puts it: "History can familiarize, and it can warn." (p. 11) He also warns, "We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex." (p.13) The author, Timothy Snyder Snyder is clearly warning against the movement that brought Donald Trump to the Presidency, but as a Never Trump Republican, I am of the opinion that both parties do all twenty of these things. But, I am a Never Trump Republican because I am certain th...

  Published in 2016 by The Great Courses. Read by the author, Eric H. Cline. Duration: 12 hours, 37 minutes. Unabridged. Eric H. Cline is a well-respected and highly experienced archaeologist who is a professor at George Washington University. He has excavated at several sites for a total of 30 seasons, doing everything from being an inexperienced newbie to being Co-Director of well-established sites. Turns out that Cline is also a very likable guy who does a good job of explaining archaeological techniques. He tells about a number of sites that he worked on and some of the most famous digs in history (King Tut's tomb, Troy) in the first half of the book. It was a bit frustrating for me because they were all within 100 miles of the Mediterranean Sea.  In the second half of the book, Cline tells about other digs around the world - Machu Pichu, the Terracotta soldiers, Teotihuacan and more.  On the whole, this was a pleasant if not particularly riveting listen as an audiobo...

Originally published in 2011 by Doubleday. I don't often read zombie novels. I have reviewed 1600+ books and this is only my second one featuring zombies. They're not really my thing, but I figured that if an author who won two Pulitzer Prizes wrote a zombie book, it must be worth reading. I was wrong. The premise behind ZONE ONE is quite good, but it is an over-written mess. Mark Spitz (a nickname) is a man who has gone through his life as a B/B+ type of guy. Never the smartest guy in class, never the first guy picked to play for the schoolyard games, but certainly not close to the last. He kind of floats through life being "good enough." The reader meets Mark Spitz well into the Zombie Apocalypse. He is working as part of a mopping up crew in New York City. He and his crew are seeking out Zombies that the military may have missed in their sweep through the city. The worst of the Zombie attacks has passed and a provisional government is working out of Buffalo, New Y...

  Published in 1998 by Enslow Publishers, Inc. Part of a series of 8 books, Confederate Generals of the Civil War was intended to be a classroom or school media center supplement for students to use as a resource. It is not a large book - 112 pages including a glossary, some charts comparing the the Union and the Confederacy, 2 maps and a timeline of the Civil War. There are 10 biographies, arranged in alphabetical order. Each biography is 8-9 pages, including a photograph of the general and a related picture (photo of a battlefield, drawing of a battle scene, etc.).  The biographies themselves are pretty neutral, although it does take some mild stands on a few controversial items. It states in a matter of fact manner that Robert E. Lee was anti-slavery (It was definitely more complicated than that). It puts a lot of blame for Pickett's Charge on Longstreet, not on Lee. And, it gets sappily sentimental in the last paragraph of Pickett's biography. I would rate it as very mild...

  Published by Disney Hyperion Books in 2008 Silverfin is the first of 9 books in the Young Bond  graphic novel series.  Bond's parents are dead due to an accident during while exploring. His aunt and uncle (a former spy) have sent Bond to  the super-elite boarding school Eton College (ages 13-18) which has long been known as a school for multiple royal families and future military and political leaders.  One of James Bond's signature lines being used as he arrives at Eton. Bond makes one really good friend and also one really devoted enemy who really tries his best to be James Bond's bully. When the term is over, he goes home to the family manor in Scotland and, as happens so often in teen movies and TV shows, he finds out that his wannabe bully lives fairly close by. In this case, the wannabe bully's family just bought a manor in the area. That could be rough - but it turns out that this manor is thought to be the source of a lot of strange activities that ha...

  Published in 2021 by Penguin Audio. Read by the author, John Green. Duration: 10 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. This collection of essays is, from what I understand, mostly a re-working of essays that Green has published on his blog or his YouTube channel. However, they were all new to me because I haven't seen more than a few snippets of his videos that my oldest daughter has shown me.  I know a bit about John Green because I live in Indianapolis, which is my adopted hometown just like it is John Green's adopted hometown. Green doesn't go out of his way to make his presence felt in his adopted hometown, but he is our current well-known author, replacing Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) with a completely different kind of vibe. Vonnegut gives off a whip-smart angry feeling with sarcasm to spare. Very clever. Green gives off a smart, understanding melancholy feeling. Just as smart as Vonnegut, but different. Vonnegut grew up here and moved away. He was always proud to be FROM In...

  Published in 2021 by Macmillan Audio. Read by the author, Ty Seidule. Duration: 10 Hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged I have been studying the Civil War since I was in college 35+ years ago. My thoughts on Robert E. Lee have evolved over the years. I used to be a lightweight proponent of the Lost Cause theory of the Civil War. I never was comfortable with the concept of slaves being content with slavery, but I certainly believed that the Southern officers were generally a noble and heroic lot when compared to the Union officers and the most noble and heroic officer of them all was Robert E. Lee.  My thoughts the war and Lee have changed as I have read more and gotten older and perhaps a bit wiser. This book will be the 131st book I have reviewed that has been tagged "Civil War" and the 42nd book tagged "Robert E. Lee". I have widened my readings to include more of the Antebellum Period and more of the Reconstruction Era. Reading the Declarations of Causes of Seceding S...

  Published by Highbridge in 2020. Read by Liam Gerrard. Duration: 5 hours, 46 minutes. Unabridged I picked up In Praise of Walking because I am a recent convert (the last 4 years or so) to the joys of walking and hiking and have personally seen it change my health. I was hoping to learn some more information about it and experience a bit of confirmation bias from an expert who told me what I already knew - walking and hiking are great forms of exercise with limited chances of injury. While O'Mara says all of this, I think that this book has been been mis-described in by its publisher. The title is very accurate when it says that this book is "a new scientific exploration." But, the blurb description starts by describing this book as "a hymn to walking, the mechanical magic at the core of our humanity." Calling it "a hymn" sounds like it is going to be a more literary, story-filled approach to the topic, as authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Mary Roach...