DWD's Reviews

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024. Read by the author, Frank Bruni. Duration: 9 hours, 46 minutes. Unabridged. Frank Bruni, as the title The Age of Grievance implies, looks at how people of all political stripes act as though they are aggrieved at so many things. Sometimes, it's kind of funny and harmless, sometimes it's deadly serious to our values (forcing speakers off campus because they are too conservative) and sometimes people's lives (January 6th.) If you follow the news, especially political news, not much is new here except grouping them all together and adding analysis.  He is not saying grievance is always wrong. For example, the Civil Rights movement was a grievance movement. But, he is saying that it has to be informed grievance. For example, he discusses the fact that most people that are convinced that China's economy is larger than America's economy (China's economy is about 2/3 of the size of the U.S. economy with 3 times the popul...

Published by Brilliance Audio in July of 2024. Read by Sophie Amoss Duration: 10 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. My Synopsis Broken Bayou features Dr. Willa Waters, a child psychologist with a very popular podcast who lives in Texas. After a disastrous local television interview goes viral, Waters runs to Broken Bayou, Louisiana. This is where her two great aunts lived in a mansion on the edge of town. When she arrives in town, there is an uproar because a body has been found in the bayou and then a young schoolteacher and her car went missing. But, some of the locals still remember her because Waters spent most of her childhood summers in Broken Bayou with her great aunts. Waters and her little sister would be brought to town by her mother. All three of them would move in and her mother would spend the summer having a good time with the locals.  In many ways, her great aunts were the closest thing to proper parents that Waters and her sister had.  Her great aunts passed away ...

Published in 2014 by WordFire Press My Synopsis: Veteran (and prolific) author Kevin J. Anderson delivers a compelling short story/novella in the tradition of the golden age of sci-fi with Comrades in Arms .  Humanity is at war with an insectoid race that uses psychic energy to create weapons and even peer into the future.  The story is set in an asteroid belt way out in the middle of nowhere. Some of the asteroids have breathable atmospheres, but they're not comfortable for either race to live on for long.  Even though the asteroids have limited value, there is no way either side will give them up so the war has ground itself into a stalemate of sorts.  However, humanity has developed a new weapon that is starting to turn the tide. Mortally wounded humans are brought back to the base and given the Robocop treatment. Their bodies are refitted with armored limbs, organs are replaced, and a "werewolf trigger" is installed deep in the brain. The werewolf trigger sets th...

Book version originally published in 2023. Audiobook published in July of 2024 by My Story Productions. Read by Shamaan Casey. Duration: 12 hours, 7 minutes. Unabridged. Wings of Redemption is the final installment of the Forgotten Fleet Trilogy . This sci-fi series is about a future war between humanity and an insectoid species. The series focuses on a squadron of space carrier-based fighter pilots on the front lines. The fact that it is focused on this relatively small group of people is the real strength of this trilogy. It doesn't get caught up in tales of political intrigue at the macro level, instead it follows these pilots on the bleeding edge of the front lines. There are successes and very tough losses. The risks are personal and also galaxy-wide. If these pilots can't help turn the tide, the war will be lost for everyone. Each book of the trilogy has a distinct feel. The first book ( Wings of Honor ) focused on the recruitment and training of these pilots against the...

Published in 2004 by Random House Audio as a book on cassette. Published in 2008 as a digital audiobook. Multicast performance. Duration: 1 hour, 8 minutes. Unabridged. Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) wrote well more than 100 novels and non-fiction works - maybe 200, depending on how you count them up. If you count individual short stories, you can add in hundreds more. L'Amour's writing career started out as a short story writer for magazines, beginning in 1938. I assume that this short story started out in a magazine but I could not find any record of when or where it was originally published.  The Turkeyfeather Riders was adapted from a short story into old style radio play for this production. This includes special effects and multiple actors playing different characters.  My synopsis. The plot is pretty simple. Jim Sandifer is a ranch foreman. He and his widower boss get along fabulously, but when his boss comes home with a fiancé and her son, Sandifer becomes suspicious of...

  Published by Hourly History in March of 2024. Hourly History publishes an extensive line of histories and biographies that are intended to be read in about an hour. With that limit, none of these are the definitive biographies, but most of them  give the average reader a good sense of who the person was and why they were important.  Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) was the 36th President of the United States. One thing I particularly like about this biography is that it tells about his formative experiences in Texas as a young man, especially his short stint as a public school teacher in a very poor area of rural Texas. Getting to know those students really gave him the desire to want to create government programs to help alleviate poverty.  This biography is a little skewed towards Johnson's early life, but it's not particularly hard to find information about LBJ's time as President and the series offers books on the big events of his administration like the Vietnam W...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024. Read by the author, Fareed Zakaria Duration: 13 hours, 2 minutes. Unabridged. Fareed Zakaria's Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present  is exactly what the title says it is. Zakaria writes about the beginnings of capitalism, multi-cultural societies, globalism, democracy, the industrial revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Fascism, the failed Arab Spring, LGBTQ+ rights, and the rise illiberal democracy and the return on authoritarianism and the forces that pushed back (or overturned) them. The author Zakaria has clearly done his research and writes in such a way that it flows from one topic to another almost as if they entire book was just one big story (which it is, if you look at it as the story of humanity, especially The West.) If you find yourself wondering how we got here, this is a good place to start. Zakaria breaks down complex movements and ideas and makes them understandable. ...

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Read by Bahni Turpin. Duration: 5 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. My Synopsis Ban This Book is the story of Amy Anne Ollinger, a fourth grade girl who is shocked when she gets to the library and finds out that her favorite book, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler , has been removed from the shelves as part of a book ban. Amy Anne reads all sorts of books (except Captain Underpants books - they're kind of silly) but she loves this book and comes back to it often. She has read it 13 times and wanted to read it again.  Amy Anne is told that a parent has complained to the school board about several books and they skipped the established plan to deal with these sorts of complaints and simply voted to remove them.  Amy Anne's parents buy her a copy of the book and she takes it to school to read when she can during the day. Her friends find out about the book ban, see that she has a copy and ask to read it. In return, they...

Published by Worthy Books in 2024. Read by Erin Bennett. Duration: 8 hours, 38 minutes. Unabridged. Elizabeth Neumann worked for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.  During the Bush Administration, the work of the DHS centered around preventing attempts by foreign groups, usually Muslim-based, to commit acts of terrorism on the United States or on Americans abroad. She became an expert on why some Muslims were radicalizing (or self-radicalizing), the signs of what to look for, and things that can be done to prevent radicalization. During the Trump Administration, she started seeing more and more reports about domestic terrorism, usually coming from self-radicalized ultra-conservatives who are encouraged by media. Two prime examples are the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter and the El Paso shooter. Both issued manifestos that quoted liberally from fringe MAGA Conservative theories, like the  Great Replacement theory pushed by p...

Illustrated by L. Fury and Nate Powell. Published by Harry N. Abrams in 2021. This spring I read the MARCH , the three volume graphic novel series about Congressman  John Lewis  (1940-2020) and the Civil Rights movement. When I finished the series, I thought to myself that it would be interesting to see how John Lewis ran for Congress and the struggles he encountered in an era where the KKK still openly marched. My Synopsis: The graphic novel RUN picks up right where MARCH  trilogy left off. At the end of the  MARCH trilogy, there was a celebration of the passage of the Civil Rights bills - a moment of success. There was also the murder of a volunteer who was helping with the celebration by anti-Civil Rights forces. RUN explores what happened after the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had it first taste of success.  At the end of  MARCH , there was a celebration of the passage of the Civil Rights bills. With that, a long-term goal achiev...