DWD's Reviews

Published in August of 2025 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, John Fugelsang. Duration: 9 hours, 24 minutes. Unabridged. John Fugelsang is seemingly omnipresent on the cable TV news/political talk show circuit. He is a talented debater because he knows how to bring the goods to an argument, especially when Christian Nationalism is involved. Fugelsang had a unique upbringing in a super-Catholic household. Why was it unusual? His mother was a former nun and his father was a former Franciscan friar. They fell in love, had a bunch of kids, and made sure that they all went to church whenever it was having a service.  In a a lot of ways, this felt a lot like my childhood. No - my parents weren't nuns or priests. But, I grew up in rural setting where my Lutheran church was one of the centers of my life. Church every weekend, most of the holiday services, Sunday school, Christmas programs, church youth group, vacation bible school, and I worked at a church summer camp for fi...

Originally published in 1985. Audiobook published in 2012 by Audible Studios. Duration: 16 hours, 26 minutes. Read by Paul Boehmer' Unabridged. I distinctly remember loving this series 40 years ago and excitedly visiting my local bookstore to pick up a new one when they were published. I was an avid player of Dungeons and Dragons and a book series released by the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons was a guaranteed win. As the series continued to print new books, I kept on buying them. I probably owned dozen or so of them. Somewhere along the way I sold off my Dragonlance collection. I worked part time at a used bookstore at one point and they probably ended up there. When I found the books in audiobook format, I decided that it was time to revisit these books and see if they held up to my memories of uncritical acclaim. Synopsis: In The Dragons of Spring Dawning , the forces of the Dragon Queen are rolling up victory after victory. But, rather than confidently rolling up the scatt...

Originally published in book form in 1985. Audiobook published by Audible Studios in 2013. Read by Paul Boehmer. Duration: 17 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The war against the Dragon Queen continues. The forces of good pulled off a major victory at the end of the last novel, but now the forces of evil are looking for revenge.  Tanis, Flint, Goldmoon, Laurana, and the rest of the intrepid companions head off in search of new ways to fight the Dragon Queen's advancing armies. Or, if that fails - lead a refugee exodus. They use an ancient map from before the Cataclysm to find a legendary seaport only to find that it is no longer anywhere near the sea due to the immense destruction of the Cataclysm. As the companions try to figure out their next steps, an armada of dragons attacks the city, breathing flames from above. Dragon Army ground troops swarm into the city and the companions are split into two groups while Tanis faces the decision of a lifetime. My Review: This is a ...

Published in 2025 by Little, Brown and Company. Read by Peter Giles. Duration: 10 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis The Lincoln Lawyer returns for another case in The Proving Ground . Mickey Haller has moved away from defense work to civil litigation. In this case, an AI program designed to be a friend substitute to young adults and teens told a teenage boy to get rid of his girlfriend in a way that could easily be interpreted as killing her. So, he took his father's unsecured pistol and shot her in the high school parking lot. Haller is suing the company for marketing a faulty product towards teens. He is pretty sure he has the goods - bad programming and an unethical marketing team that is more concerned about demonstrating the potential of the AI so the company can be absorbed by a bigger company with deep pockets. They wanted the payoff rather than making it safe. But, as Haller and his team start to dig, they find they are out of their depth. Tech writer Jack McEvoy come...

Originally published in 1979. Synopsis Jailbird is the fictional story of William F. Starbuck, the least important member of the Watergate conspiracy to go to prison.  The story begins with the day that Starbuck is released from a makeshift federal prison (and very cushy, for a prison) on a Georgia military base. He has no idea what he is going to do and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he figures that he will be okay - after all, he has a degree from Harvard and he learned how to be a bartender in a correspondence class while he was in prison. What follows is a wild tale of good and bad coincidences that take Starbuck to a broken-down residential motel in New York City. Like the hotel, Starbuck is a broken man in many ways - he is an ex-con, his wife of many years has passed away, he never speaks to his son, and he feels shame for accidentally ruining the career of one of his friends due to an offhand comment he made during a anti-Communist Congressional hearing lead by then-C...

Audiobook published in 2010 by Listening Library. Performed by MacLeod Andrews and Nick Podehl. Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the story of two Chicago area teens named Will Grayson who attend different schools and do not know one another. One Will Grayson is determined not to risk hurt romantic feelings by not putting himself out there to make connections and possibly get hurt. Instead, he focuses on knowing all about obscure bands and lives vicariously through his over-the-top best friend, Tiny Cooper. Tiny Cooper is a massive mountain of young man who is also gay and is also the school's most talented athlete. Think of the biggest football lineman you have ever seen, make that lineman great at every sport, able to sing show tunes at the drop of a hat, and the biggest social butterfly in the school. The other Will Grayson is a closeted gay teen who has found an online boyfriend from Ohio. He muddles through high school life by g...

Originally published in 1962 in  the magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction. Published in 2017 by Author's Republic. Read by Phil Chenevert Duration: 19 minutes. Unabridged. 2 B R 0 2 B is set in a future world where the population is kept at a strict limit so that the living can live in a clean and safe environment. When a new person is born into the world, someone must volunteer to leave because aging has pretty much been cured. The Federal Bureau of Termination keeps track of all of the births and deaths to be sure that the math works out. The phone number for the Federal Bureau of Termination is 2 B R 0 2 B - pronounced "two be or naught to be." The story is about a father whose wife is about to give birth to triplets. One of the grandparents of the triplets has agreed to die. Unless something changes, the future parents will have to pick out two babies to kill... This is an intentionally provocative short story that had a quick and brutal ending that surprised me.  ...

Originally published in 2000. Performed by Andrew Cullum. Duration: 14 hours, 49 minutes. Unabridged. Also published under the alternate title "The Archer's Tale" Harlequin is the tale of Thomas of Hookton during the early years of the Hundred Years' War . Hookton was a tiny English fishing village that was destroyed by French raiders from a ship. The raiders burn and loot the village, kidnap as many women they can, burn the village, and steal a religious relic - the famed lance that St. George used to kill the dragon. Thomas heads off to join up as an English archer so he can get his revenge on the French noblemen that destroyed his hometown and get St. George's lance back. The bulk of the book is about his adventures in France in a series of battles in the Hundred Years' War serving as a harlequin.  A harlequin was the French term for an English long bow archer. The battle scenes in this book are unbelievably well-told and Andrew Cullum's performance as...

Published in 2013 by The Great Courses. Lectures delivered by the author, Philip Daileader. Duration: 12 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. The idea behind The Great Courses is that anybody can have access to high quality college instructors who are truly experts in their fields. In this course the focus is the Early Middle Ages (roughly 300 CE to 1000 CE).  Daileader starts with the start of the decline of the Roman Empire, somewhere around the year 300 CE. He looks at the trends of the late Roman Empire and how they led to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Rome, not Constantinople) and how those trends led to the political and economic systems that typify the time period we know as the Middle Ages. There is a heavy focus on what is now France, which is well-deserved since Charlemagne is one of the biggest historical figures of this era. But, other areas get a fair amount of attention, like Ireland, Spain, and the Islamic world. The sudden appearance of the Vikings contribute...

Published in 2025 by Hourly History. Hourly History 's biography of Franklin Pierce offers a concise but comprehensive telling of Pierce's life. He was a politician, but his wife hated Washington, D.C. and spent as much time away from the capital as possible.  He had two major foreign policy successes - the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico and opening Japan to foreign trade, but I was really interested in his policies that helped lead to the Civil War. Franklin Pierce is one of that group of 8 Presidents in a row from Van Buren to Buchanan that did not serve more than one term (two died in office) leading up to the Civil War. Some were stronger than others, but, as a group, these Presidents didn't show the kind of leadership needed to push the nation away from Civil War.  Pierce was a New England Democrat that vociferously took the side of Southern Democrat slaveholders. His working theory was that there needed to be unity in the country and uniting behind slavery was a way t...

Published in 2025 by Hourly History . There are a few towns whose names are synonymous with the Old West, such as Dodge City, Kansas and Tombstone, Arizona. Deadwood, South Dakota is one of those names. It keeps on coming up in novels and movies. It brings to mind smoke-filled bars with poker games, gold rushes, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok.  This was Deadwood's wild and turbulent beginning and this short e-book covers that well. But, it also covers the part that no one ever mentions - what does a small, out of the way city do when the gold rush is over and the saloons and casinos have moved on? To be honest, I hadn't really thought much about post-gold rush Old West cities. But, I have seen the same problem back in the Midwest where I live. Instead of gold mines that petered we had a manufacturing boom that has been in steady decline for 60 years. Factories close, the supporting businesses follow, and a dying town is left in their wake. What happened to Deadwood is not a...

Published in 2024 by HarperAudio. Performed by January LaVoy. Duration: 10 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Troy, Georgia is, on the surface, an idyllic small town. But, the book banners have gotten active and removed a whole list of books from the school libraries and the public library.  The school board president, Beverly Underwood, was surprised at the arrival of this committee of book banners and how they manipulated social media to scare the town led by the local lady curmudgeon, Lula Dean. As a compromise, the school board president agrees to store all of the disputed books in her basement until things can get sorted out. Meanwhile, Lula Dean has set up one of those "little free library" boxes in her front yard with alternative books that she considers wholesome. It features titles like The Art of the Deal, Chicken Soup for the Soul books ,  and "Lost Cause" histories of the Civil War that she purchased at a Goodwill store in a nearby store in the barg...

Published in 2024 by Seven Stories Press. The 2008 Financial Crisis and the Great Recession that followed led to a myriad number of local problems all over the United States. In some places, major projects slowed or stopped. In others, manufacturing came almost to a halt. In others, there were so many subprime mortgages issued in that area that the housing market practically collapsed. Detroit is famously home to tons of auto-related factories and they all slowed dramatically. It was so bad during the Great Recession that the American auto industry had to be bailed out by the federal government. Those job losses left the Detroit economy in a shambles. On top of that, Detroit was one of the places with simply too many subprime mortgages. It wouldn't have been a problem if Detroit's economy didn't have any hiccups. The problem is that the Great Recession was much, much more than a hiccup - it was like a financial bomb went off in the city. This graphic novel details the finan...

Published by Little, Brown, and Company in 2025 Read by Will Damron. Duration: 9 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Michael Connelly takes a break from his Lincoln Lawyer series, his Harry Bosch series, and his Detective Ballard series to explore something new - Catalina Island. Los Angeles County has jurisdiction over Catalina, a 75 square mile island a little more than 20 miles from mainland Los Angeles. Almost everyone takes the express ferry to Catalina, a boat ride that takes a little more than an hour.  The separation means that Catalina is a very different place than Los Angeles. Cars are rare - almost everyone drives golf carts or walks. Less than 5,000 permanent residents live on the 75 square mile island and the pace of life is quite a bit slower. It is widely believed that the Los Angeles Sheriff Department sends its screw up cops to Catalina for a little more seasoning or to find a safer place to make enough mistakes for the department to boot them out. Nightshade ...

Originally published in 1973. Published in 1977 by Commission Press . Co-written with Mel and Lyla White In the Presence of Mine Enemies is, in reality, two kinds of books. It is a biography of Captain Howard Rutledge's (1928-1984) time in the prisoner of war camp nicknamed Hanoi Hilton by its prisoners in North Vietnam from 1965-1973. It is also a faith tract. The book gets right to the point - Rutledge is shot down in the fifth paragraph and captured by the sixth page. The book rarely gets bogged down in technical details and is very approachable by any reader. More on this in a moment. The descriptions of his captivity, such as the food, how the prisoners managed to communicate with one another, how they mapped out the prison despite no one ever managing to see all of it, the physical torture, the difficulty of solitary confinement, and the joy of finally being able to be with another prisoner are all told in sufficient - but not grotesque - detail. If you are looking for any ...

Published by DC Comics in 2023. Written by Collin Keely and Jackson Lanzing. Art by Xermánico and Romulo Fajardo, Jr. Synopsis Clayface has moved away from Gotham City and has gone to Hollywood to be a movie star. The original Clayface character from 1940 comic where he premiered was a B movie actor named Basil Karlo. Basil Karlo is working as a waiter in Batman - One Bad Day: Clayface while trying to make it big in Hollywood. He's diligent about everything, but he does not have a light comic touch that is called for in romantic comedies. His roommate does, however. When they both read for the same part it becomes a problem when the roommate gets the part and Basil Karlo doesn't. Being Clayface means you can make yourself look like anyone - at least for a little while. Clayface kills the roommate and then assumes his shape so he can get his big Hollywood break. And then one murder leads to another. And another. And another. And another and so on. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in t...

Published by D.C. Comics in 2023. Written by Joshua Williamson Art by Howard Porter and Tomeu Morey Synopsis The One Bad Day series looks at individual top level Batman villains (If you are a fan of Johnny Karaoke, sorry) and gives them a comic that focuses on just that villain.  In Batman - One Bad Day: Bane we find Bane working as a professional wrestler in Mexico where he reenacts the moment where be broke Batman's back in match after match to the cheers of adoring crowds. Bane has wealth and fame, but he is broken inside. This graphic novel is the story that explains that brokenness... My Review Up until the halfway point of this graphic novel, I was sure that this edition of the One Bad Day tales was a dud. It was initially very confusing and the drawings seemed to be all overdone muscles, veiny arms, and monstrous faces. The moment that changed the book was a moment of great sacrifice. It changes the arc of Bane's life and makes this a surprisingly hopeful (and grisly...

Published by DC Comics in 2024. Written by Robert Venditti. Art by Gavin Guidry and Jordan Bellaire. Synopsis These are the further adventures of the Christopher Reeve Superman from the movie series that ran from the late 1970s into the 1980s. It has the feel of those movies in the simple and clear art style and the look of many of those characters. Interestingly, Superman looks nothing like Reeves and Clark Kent only looks like him from time to time. The plot of Superman '78: The Metal Curtain is pretty simple. The Soviet Union has created a super soldier suit powered by a giant hunk if Kryptonite. The suit is pretty much an Iron Man suit (I know, wrong publisher) with the added benefit that it's fuel weakens the Man of Steel. The Soviet Union is fearful of Superman. They perceive him as a weapon of the United States (because the events of Superman IV haven't happened yet) and plan to use the suit to defeat Superman and America... My Review I really liked the clean art st...

Published in 2024 by Grand Central Publishing Read by Charles Halford and Christine Lakin. Duration: 10 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis The Ascent features Kurt Argento, a former Detroit police officer. His wife died from cancer and he is not dealing with it well. During a small riot, he defied orders to protect a civilian and hospitalized several members of a gang with his night stick - he literally worked out some of his grief on their not very sympathetic bodies. It was heroic act, but because he disobeyed orders he was forced to resign. Argento takes his dog and heads out towards California. For some reason, he has it in his head that seeing the Pacific Ocean would be a good thing for his peace of mind. While traveling through Missouri he ends up in a scuffle with a corrupt local sheriff. The sheriff claims that his jail cells are too full so he can store Argento in a nearby for-profit state prison in hopes of Argento getting caught up in some sort of prison fight and perh...

  Originally published in 2001 by NBM Books. Ted Rall's graphic novel 2024 is a loose re-telling of George Orwell's classic novel 1984 . It feels like a healthy dose of Huxley's Brave New World has been thrown in as well.  This is an alienating tale - it is hard to find any character with any redeeming qualities at any point. It is hard to really understand their society and how it works - until you realize that Ted Rall was actually quite the prophet. In this world, the economy is controlled by massive corporate conglomerates that control the government as well. The main character is Winston. At work, his job is to re-write history (just like he does in the original novel). History has been re-written so often that even Winston can't keep track of what the official story is.  He spends a great deal of time day trading and shopping for items online that he doesn't really need. Parts that I thought were prophetic include:   -Winston's country, Canamexicusan, an...