DWD's Reviews

Comments from a history teacher Okay - so hear I am once again reading a kid's book. However, it is for my classroom library - I try to read them all so I can make recommendations. Sgt. William Carney  of the 54th  Massachusetts, the first African American to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor For those not in the know, Undying Glory: The Story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment   is a brief history of the 54th Massachusetts - the first official regiment of blacks in the American Civil War. The unit was immortalized in the Academy Award winning film Glory , starring Denzel Washington. Cox has the great majority of his facts straight (I have some quibbles, such as when he claims that a good soldier could load and shoot a civil war rifle in about 45 seconds, when the reality was that a competent soldier could do it up to 3 times per minute.) The larger problem goes from being factual to the problem of being written in such a way that young people wo...

A literary phenomenon Published in 2006 Read by Kerry Beyer Duration: 4.5 hours Unabridged I teach high school Spanish and history but even if you don't have much interaction with young people, you'd have to live in a cave not to have noted the literary phenomenon that is the novel Holes . Although my students don't read Holes in my class, they have mentioned it so I decided to listen to it as an audiobook during my drive to and from school. The plot itself is fairly unique in that there are literally no loose ends. Nothing is introduced that does not have a consequence later on, be it the prison guard quitting smoking and chewing sunflower seeds instead or the references to peach preserves, it all ties together. All of that makes the story less believable, more like a dark fairy tale but all of the more enjoyable. Louis Sachar The story itself is pretty solid. There's a mystery, a sense of camaraderie and an awful tale of injustice in the flashbacks. It i...

Interesting Characters. So-so mystery. The Corruptible is the second in the Ray Quinn mystery series. It is written by now-retired police officer Mark Mynheir who adds a touch of authenticity to his work (although he misses the most obvious clue at the beginning of this mystery). Ray Quinn is a former Orlando police officer turned Private Investigator who was forced to retire due to disability as a result of being shot through the hip. His replacement hip is painful and he needs to walk with a cane and he often deals with the pain (physical and emotional) with a few stout shots of Jim Beam. He has a partner named Crevis who is trying to pass the entrance exam to be a police officer and a parochial school teacher that also helps him keep his business records straight. In this story, Quinn is hired by an investment company to recover stolen client information by downloading it onto a portable hard drive. The number one suspect is a an acquaintance of Quinn, an employee of th...

A throwback to the early days of 'Spenser' Published by Putnam Adult in 2005 This edition of Spenser reminded me of the early days of the series - the days before Spenser would assemble a gigantic posse of bad guys and policemen (ie, Potshot ) in order to get the job done. Thankfully, this one is also basically Susan Silverman-free (not that I mind Susan, it's all of the repeated conversations about their relationship - it just gets old!) Unfortunately, School Days is also Hawk-free, so the experienced reader of Spenser books will definitely miss the witty banter the two often share. However, Spenser manages to get in a few good lines without the extra help and he does get a bit of outside help from some unusual sources from the past. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon here:  School Days (Spenser) Reviewed October 9, 2005.

This is my first Forsyth novel and for the first 250 pages... ...I had determined that it would be my last. Forsyth spends the first half of of the 500+ page  Icon just setting the reader up for the real plot of the novel. Unfortunately, the setup consists of a series of disjointed flashbacks interspersed with seemingly unrelated tales of what is going on in the present of the novel (1999-2000 in the old USSR, now Russia). Frederick Forsyth Suddenly, once the flashbacks work their way up to the present time the real story starts and it is a great adventure story! The meandering story redeems itself. There is a lot of action, intrigue and a bunch of frustrated Nazis. Unfortunately, the ending is just too neat - it ends the book with everything too well resolved. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Icon by Frederick Forsyth . Reviewed on October 9, 2005.

A prototype of the current crop of approachable books on economics Originally published in 1980. Duration:12 hours, 15 minutes Read by James Adams Unabridged. Free To Choose: A Personal Statement is the manifesto on the power of capitalism and freedom (and how they go hand in hand) that was designed to be read, digested and discussed by the common man, not the economist. In fact, this is the book that was designed as a follow-up companion to a 10 part PBS mini-series that fleshed out the ideas in the series and addressed issues and further questions that came up in the making of the television program. Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1976 (he always credited his wife for helping develop his theories so I would imagine he considered it a shared prize). The audiobook follows the lead of the mini-series and has 10 broad areas that it covers, including: -The Power of the Market; -The Anatomy of a Crisis (an in-depth study of the Great Depress...

Published in 2002 by Berkley It's a collection, and like all collections Alternate Gettysburgs suffers from the fact that it was written by a dozen different authors. Some are very good, most are decent. Two are awful. The gimmick in this alternative history is, of course, 'What if the Battle of Gettysburg had turned out differently?' It is inspired by this Faulkner quote: Confederate Major General George Pickett (1825-1875) 'For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happ...

An interesting piece of history Note: this is not written by "THE" Winston Churchill. This one was written by an American novelist and essayist with almost the same name who lived from 1871-1947. Sir Winston Churchill signed his works Winston S. Churchill in order to differentiate between the two. The essay is inspired by a 1917 visit to the battlefields of Europe during World War I. Churchill's essay is an interesting bit of history in that it appeals to old ideals of the old Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are many comments that hold to all of the hallmarks and ideals of the movement, including an obsessive faith in science and psychology (line 200) and a belief that human nature is basically good but just needs to be re-educated (line 228). He advocates a new political party based on the teachings of modern social science (line 290), a centralized economy in order to be more efficient (line 360) and he proposes that ...

Lackluster characters hurt a very interesting premise Read by David Colacci Published by Tantor Media, November 2010. Duration: 9 hours, 56 minutes, Unabridged. Ultra-prolific author Alan Dean Foster introduces yet another series with The Human Blend , the first installment of a trilogy set in a relatively near-future Savannah, Georgia. In this interesting new world the direst predictions about global warming have come true. America’s southern states have become near-tropical. Flooding ocean waters have buried coastal cities, forced them to move onto stilts or have caused cities to move inland. Much of Florida is underwater, the Everglades have swallowed the rest. Political changes have swept the world as well. The United States is now part of a larger country called Namerica. Several countries in Asia are equal to, if not more important than Namerica. The moon, Mars and Jupiter’s moon Titan have been colonized as well. Alan Dean Foster But, the most important changes ar...

2000 years in 387 pages - A great effort but somewhat unsatisfying. Published in 1997. Don't get me wrong - I am came to The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years as a true fan of Bernard Lewis. His book The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror was one of the more thought-provoking books I read last year. However, this book is quite different than 'Crisis'. It's scope is massive, and it is a history book rather than a work of examination and informed conjecture. Lewis addresses these shortcomings in his introduction and admits that it will be a difficult undertaking to do it well. He acknowledges that whatever format he chooses to cover this history, it will be unsatisfying for some. I give him credit for doing it well, but not as great as the other books and articles of his that I've read. Bernard Lewis The book is broken up into three general sections. The first is a general overview of the Middle East over the last 2,...

Published in 2002. Beyond Suspicion is a quick-moving book and is a sequel to Grippando's first published novel 'The Pardon'. I read 'The Pardon' many years ago, but reading the first book is not a necessary requirement - Grippando sets the stage very well in this book so it can be a 'stand alone' novel. I shot through this book very quickly - the plot drags you in pretty well and Grippando's writing style keeps the book moving along at a quick pace. The main character is fairly average and his world is suddenly turned upside down by one case and its connections to the underworld. Murder, mayhem and one family crisis after another keep it interesting. Grippando fills this novel with a multitude on interesting characters, any one of which would be strong enough to be the main character in a book. A good solid read - a great summertime novel. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Beyond Suspicion . I rate this book 4 stars out of...

So, what is a 'rawboned' mystery? My copy of  The Man Who Met the Train had a snippet from a review from the Chicago Sun-Times in which they said it was a 'rawboned' mystery. I was intrigued by that characterization and can now report to you what that means. It means that this mystery is sparsely written - no extravagant detail and most conversations aren't even fully fleshed out. It's a quick and dirty read about some quick and dirty crimes set in two small towns in Depression-era South Dakota. In style and setting it reminded me of a western. The hero, Carl Wilcox, comes upon a wrecked car. Inside are four dead adults and one survivor - a little girl. Wilcox is eventually hired on by local bigwigs to investigate the circumstances of the crime, seeing as how he has previous experience as a police officer. Wilcox starts to pull at the loose threads of this crime and starts to discover that some very prominent local names are being implica...

A great legal thriller The oddly titled The Jury (it's not about the jury at all - they are barely mentioned) is a sharp, tight legal thriller that hums right along until the neat little twist at the end. Steve Martini Paul Madriani and his law partner Harry Hinds have are defending a murder suspect, a genetic researcher named David Crone. The book joins the trial already in progress. Madriani and Hinds have one big problem, though. The unflappable Crone keeps so many secrets - trade secrets, research secrets and vital information that he just didn't think was important enough to mention to his attorneys that they don't really know where they stand in any of this. Throw in a family friend with a genetic disorder that may be cured by Crone's research, you get a solid mixture of urgency, ambiguity and frustration that kept me glued until the end. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book is found on Amazon.com here: The Jury by Steve Martini . Review...

The Past and Present parts were very well done but... ...the future part was a different story. More on that later. Van Doren's A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future is a truly remarkable book. He breaks down a number of key philosophies and religions and makes them palatable to the reader and also demonstrates their influence over time. It is a very well written book - very enjoyable to read. He is particularly good at succintly describing why the end of the Roman Empire was such a disaster for knowledge and explaining why the Church was afraid of the astronomy discoveries of the Renaissance. Problem areas: -He almost exclusively focuses on Western Thought. Very little Asian philosophy, except for Confucius. How can it be a History of Knowledge when it leaves out most Asian thought? -Sometimes he blithely labels things as fact. For example, he claims that Jesus was born on December 25th while every Christian church body on the planet merely cla...

Very good, wonderful historical detail Hernan Cortes (1485-1547) In my mind, the Aztecs have been short-changed by modern authors. There has not been enough attention to them and their interesting story. And Cortes! If ever anyone should get high marks for having ambition and bravery in spades, it's him. Anyway, the historical details are well done in the book. Falconer almost makes you feel like you are there with the Spanish as the arrive at the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. He has created a multi-dimensional Cortes, rather than the stereotypical 'evil conqueror' Cortes (although, at the end I lost the feel for Cortes - I don't know if Falconer lost interest or he also lost his feel for the man). In most books and texts Cortes is portrayed as a gold-crazed, land-crazed conqueror - but his motivations are far more complex - including a complete disgust with the Mesoamerica's fascination with human sacrifice and the cannibalistic consumption of t...

Pretty good small budget movie While not the best movie I've ever seen, this movie does what it sets out to do - draw the viewer in for some thriller action. 2 friends and a little brother have travelled to Wisconsin for an evening of booze and girls at a backwoods bar in the winter. After a barroom brawl a 1950s Cadillac menaces them and eventually persues them - but our 3 protagonists have no idea why. Randy Quaid as the local yokel good ol' boy sheriff is the only actor you're likely to recognize but, in my mind, young, pez-consuming Josh Hammond steals the show The guys in the cadillac I am unwilling to be a spoilersport, so I won't go into great details, but you can imagine the tension that develops with car chases in the winter on twisty country roads, a hitchhiking sheriff in the backseat spouting off platitudes and asking pointed questions and a general feeling that things are spinning out of control make the movie work. The DVD commentary is intere...

A piece of history, yet still accessible I should note that I am a lifelong Lutheran and Martin Luther is one of my personal heroes, despite his numerous and many flaws. An Open Letter on Translating is a September, 1530 letter to Luther's critics concerning his translation of the Bible from Latin into German. This was very controversial at the time and it led to a lot of disagreement (even wars) over who should be allowed to read the Bible and who should interpret its meaning. Martin Luther (1483-1546) Luther defends his translation in his very best combative style. He correctly notes that not all turns of phrases translate literally from one language to another. He notes, along with a liberal dose of insulting names for his opponents, that he and his team of translators did a lot of research and took great care to make his translation accessible and accurate. What is perhaps most amazing is that this document is amazingly readable for anyone conversant with the iss...

Story of a trip by Mark Twain to Bermuda - starts fairly weak and ends strong Mark Twain (1835-1910) The title of this essay has it right - these are just a series of stories about a trip that Twain and some friends took to Bermuda from New York City. Twain wrote this for "The Atlantic" in 1877 and his wry style makes him an excellent travel companion. In reality, Twain's story of the trip is the story of the people he meets along the way. Most of the stories are humorous, some are duds and about an equal number are quite funny. I won't forget the story about the town with the cat situation for quite a while. Twain on Bermuda: " We never met a man, or woman, or child anywhere in this sunny island who seemed to be unprosperous, or discontented, or sorry about anything. This sort of monotony became very tiresome presently, and even something worse. The spectacle of an entire nation groveling in contentment is an infuriating thing ....

Pretty good thriller I feel silly, but it wasn't until I was 85% done with The Night Watchman that I actually read the entire description on the back of this book. In my defense, it is rather wordy.... Anyway, it was not until that point that I realized that this was actually a "Christian" cop book. That doesn't bother me since I'm a Christian. But, my experiences with Christian fiction have been mostly negative. A lot of it is clumsy, to say the least. So, I guess this is a long way to say that this one was not clumsy. Instead, it was different. It is a "Christian" detective story in which the main character is not Christian. Not even searching. Not even close. He carries a big gun and he uses it lots of times. He lies. He cheats. Praying bothers him. He suspects that church-going people are weak and does not believe that God can change a person's life. Mary Mynheir So, on to the book. The main character is Ray Quinn, a h...