DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2014 by Little A. Kodi Scheer was the writer-in-residence at a cancer center when she wrote this collection of short stories. They all have two things in common: 1) a focus on female characters and 2) a medical tie-in. This picture goes with the first story. Normally, I struggle with short story collections - they don't develop the characters enough or they tell too little for the reader to get any sort of handle on what is going on until the story is practically over.  This collection has a couple of weird stories that fit those characterizations, but it is mostly a set of strong stories that actually gets better as it goes along.  As I mentioned, there is a medical theme throughout the stories, but there is also a strong dose of the supernatural throughout these stories as well.   I rate this short story collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: INCENDIARY GIRLS: STORIES by Kodi Scheer .

Published in 1984 by Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company. This coffee table book is primarily a showcase of pictures highlighting beauty from all over the state of Indiana. The photographer is Darryl Jones and he has a good eye. Some of his pictures are truly great, most are solid and none are bad. There is not a single picture that could be construed as a negative one. The book is introduced by a rather lengthy essay by Jared Carter. The best part of the essay is his recollections of the days when he sat in the infield to watch the Indy 500. I am interested because I have gone to the Indy 500 for 35+ years. Scaffolding in the infield at the Indy 500. Note: this is NOT a picture from the book. Carter discusses how people would bring trucks to sit on in the infield so they could see the race better. Soon enough, people started sitting on the roofs of box trucks to get a better view. Not long after that, people would bring scaffolding and attach it to the truck and build a platform ab...

  Originally published in 1982. Originally published in completed form in 1988 by DC Vertigo. This iconic graphic novel has been on my to-be-read list for a long while. I tried watching the movie, but it had been a long week and I soon fell asleep. I assumed that the movie missed some of the pizazz of the graphic novel. I decided to go ahead and read the book when I noticed it was on t he list of some 850 books that a Republican Texas state legislator wanted to ban from all Texas schools.  V for VENDETTA is the story of a masked vigilante who decides to stand up against the fascist government of an alternative history version of the United Kingdom. The masked character has become the single most recognizable feature of the book and the face of the "anonymous" movement that swept over social media a few years ago. Many people assume that it was put on the censorship list because it features a character that fights back against a repressive government. They assume that Texas ...

  Published in 2022 by Hourly History . Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour. The first half of the twentieth century was a time of great turmoil for China. There were multiple wars, political chaos, multiple governments. There was also 15 years of civil war in two distinct phases, interrupted by the Japanese invasion of China during World War II. From 1927-1937, Chaing Kai-shek's Nationalist government and Mao Zedong's Communist government fought a civil war. When Japan invaded China, the civil war was suspended (sort of) and a united front was formed. Soon after the end of the war, the civil war resumed and the communist faction won, with the exception of the island of Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) and Mao Zedong (1893-1976) This short history suffers from a couple of problems. There is simply too much to cover. The b...

  Published in 2013 by The Great Courses. Lectures by William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman. Duration: 6 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. The idea behind The Great Courses is a simple one - take a college lecture course given by an expert that knows how to give an interesting lecture and package it up as an audiobook that anyone can listen to. In the case of this audiobook, there are two college professors that have a great chemistry together and really enjoy a discussion of St. Francis. Before this audiobook, I knew only the barest of details of St. Francis so I found the entire discussion interesting and informative. I do have a rather big complaint about the way the information was presented, however. They start with a biography of St. Francis up until the moment when he becomes recognized by the Pope and his movement is up and going. From that moment, they move to a thematic presentation and the listener hears about moments in his life that are not tied to any sort of biography....

  Published in 2022 by Macmillan Audio. Read by Eric Jason Martin. Duration: 6 hours, 39 minutes. Unabridged. McKibben looks back at his life in the suburbs in the 1960s and the 1970s and modern America and compares the two. In certain circles this is an invitation to complain about the modern world with comments like, "When I was a kid, we didn't have all of this blah, blah, blah foolishness." This is not that sort of book. McKibben looks at three general areas: 1) The way that history was taught and the ways that he perceived that his country acted ("The Flag"). He grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts and was a tour guide as a young man for tourists who came to celebrate the bicentennial in 1976. The more he has learned, the more he knows that he was taught a simplistic, feel-good version of American history in school; 2) The things that his church taught him and how churches have fared over the intervening years ("The Cross"). He grew up and was very...

  Published in 2020 by Hourly History. Despite me having talked extensively about Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in my recent review of an e-book about Francisco Franco , I am not an expert on Picasso, but I know way more than the average person. He has some paintings that I really like, but I am mostly not a fan.  This short biography hit the spot in that it covered the details of his life without focusing too much on one particular part. This covered his 70+ year career in an even manner and included his personal life well. Pablo Picasso in 1962 The real weakness of this e-book was the fact that they couldn't license his paintings and insert them into the book. But, since I read this on my cell phone it was pretty easy to switch to the browser and search the piece of art that was being discussed and take a look at it. I wasn't much of a fan of Picasso as a person before I read this book and my impression was not changed one bit. I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be foun...

  Published in 2014 by Lyons Press. This is my 142nd Civil War-related review. When I found out about this book, I found myself wondering how these 5 living former Presidents reacted to the Civil War. I also found myself wondering how no one else thought to write this book before. Former presidents have their own political power and impact current events. Nowadays, you can see this with Jimmy Carter's modeling of volunteerism and his attempts to be a peace mediator in the 1980s and 1990s, Bill Clinton's maneuvering to remain relevant, George W. Bush's refusal to endorse or approve of anything done by Donald Trump, the calls that the Biden Administration is really just the third Obama Administration and, obviously, the 45th President's refusal to admit he lost the 2020 election. DeRose starts with a rundown of the political careers of each politician involved: John Tyler, Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Abraham Lincoln.  Then, he d...

  Published in 1996 by Indiana University Press and Indiana Department of Natural Resources. From 1993 to 1995 the two authors combined to take pictures of Indiana from an Indiana Department of Natural Resources helicopter - one was the pilot and one was the photographer. They chose 100 pictures of the state for this coffee table book. There are 92 counties in Indiana, but there is not a picture of each county. However, these pictures are a good representative sample of the state ranging from the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan to the fossil bed at the Falls of the Ohio. The pictures include urban areas, suburbs, small towns, farms and pictures of Indiana's understated beauty. There are no commanding views like the Grand Canyon or the Rockies, but it is beautiful in its own way. Since the book is more than 25 years old, it was interesting to note some of the changes. The Indianapolis skyline has changed with the addition of at least two very large buildings on either side of downtow...