DWD's Reviews

  Published by John F. Blair in 1997. There are several books like this one on the market. History books are full of interesting, odd stories that add a little spice to the narrative and there is a certain logic to having a book of just the spice.  This book is organized in a loose chronolgical order, rather than by theme. Sometimes the stories blend into each other, sometimes not. There was nothing particularly good or bad about this collection. Some of the stories are more amusing than outright blunders and there is a bit of anti-Union and anti-Lincoln bias that can be detected, especially at the beginning. But, not enough to derail the book. I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  Civil War Blunders by Clint Johnson.

  Published by HarperCollins Publishers Limited in 2016. Read by Mike Grady. Duration: 7 hours, 33 minutes. Unabridged. Peter Wohlleben is a forester in Germany, meaning that he manages a commercial forest in Germany but he is a real fan of true "old growth" forests. Over the years he has gone out of his way to really study the way forests work as a complete unit.  His observations and research combine to tell an active, but very slow story of trees. Compared to people, many trees live a much slower life (centuries vs. decades), but a forest of trees is more than just an accidental accumulation of trees whose seeds all landed in the same place.  In many ways, a healthy forest is a lot like a giant organism - it shores up its weak parts, it sustains itself, it is extraordinarily complicated and if one part is out of whack, the whole thing can suffer. Wohlleben explores these themes in some detail with a lot of surprising details. But, a forest is also a place of deadly competi

  Published by Thomas Nelson in 2017. Read by Simon Bubb. Duration: 6 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. Dion Leonard is an ultramarathon runner. Ultramarathons are technically marathons that are longer than a traditional 26.2 mile marathon, but Dion Leonard likes to run extended multi-day ultramarathons. He was running a multi-day race in the Gobi Desert in China when he met a scruffy little dog as he was lining up to start day two of the race. To be accurate, the little dog was attracted to him - it wouldn't leave him alone! Gobi with Dion Leonard When the race started, Leonard assumed that the dog would follow for a while and then return home, wherever that was. But, the dog followed him every step of the way - 23 miles. That night, the dog stayed with Leonard in his tent and went with him again on the 3rd stage of the race. As they headed into the desert, Leonard worried that the dog could be hurt by the higher temperature more brutal landscape. So, he arranged for the dog to be ca