DWD's Reviews

Published in 2015 by Macmillan Audio Read by Tom Wopat Duration: 8 hours, 49 minutes Unabridged As of late, Bill O'Reilly has become quite the writer of history books. His " Killing... " series has garnered quite a bit of attention but Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Real West is different than those.  For one thing, it is not focused on the death of an historical figure. Also, this book was actually not written by O'Reilly. O'Reilly writes the introduction of the book and mentions that he used to talk about all of these historical figures and tell their true stories when he taught history in a classroom long ago. I can only assume that David Fisher and Bill O'Reilly sat down and discussed who to include in the book and the general tone of each entry. The topics are as follows: Billy the Kid (1859-1881) -Daniel Boone; -Davey Crocket; -Kit Carson; -Black Bart (Charles E. Bowles); -Dime Novels and their influence on our perception...

Published in September of 2013 The Assault (Recon Team Angel #1) is the first in a series of books about teenage human soldiers used to infiltrate the ranks of alien invaders of Earth through secret missions. The premise is that a group of aliens called Bzadians arrived at Earth and settled in the Australian Outback because it was most like their home. Their ships had no propulsion systems to let them take back off of Earth and humanity was persuaded to let them settle in Australia. But, it turns out that these original ships were the advance force for a full-fledged invasion. Australia became their stronghold and the from their the Bzadians invaded Asia, Africa and Europe. Now, only the Americas hold them off.  Because of the slight, short stature of the Bzadians, human teenagers have been recruited to undergo plastic surgery and go behind enemy lines to gather intelligence and, if possible, actually do some damage. In this book, the target is the massive rock fo...

Published in July of 2015 by Fideli Publishing Inc. The World War II generation is rapidly passing away and with them go their individual stories.  Ronald May has collected a number of these stories and had them published in the Martinsville, Indiana newspaper as a regular feature. Our Service, Our Stories is a collection of these stories with a lot of full color pictures. Some of the stories have been expanded. Typically, each story tells a little about each man's life before his military service, focuses on his time in service and then tells about life after the war (some went on to serve in Korea as well but those efforts are not highlighted in this book). For me, the most interesting part of the book is reading about the wide variety of jobs that these men held during the war. When you read the history books or watch the movies you tend to think that everyone carried a gun, flew a plane, maintained the planes or worked in a hospital.  To be sure, those stories...

An intriguing mix of the old to make something new Published in March of 2016 The best cooks can take a couple of tired old recipes and do something special to mix them together and make something that feels like it is brand new.    Mishell Baker has taken bits of several popular movies and thrown them together with a a couple of well-known book genres and created something entirely unique in Borderline . Take a handful of Jack Nicholson's 1974 classic movie  Chinatown , fold it into Will Smith's Men in Black , add to it a pinch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis   and a giant handful of Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever  and you have an approximation of what this book is like. It is a crazy jumbled mess that comes pretty close to being brilliant. Millie Roper is a former film student who shattered her body when she jumped off a building in an attempted suicide. She suffers from mental illness, has two prosthetic le...

Published in 2008 Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is still on special assignment from the Governor in Blood Trail . What this means is he has no home territory and is always on the edge of being fired But, he is kept around because he has a knack for solving big problems involving dangerous people. Joe's strength does not come from his tracking ability (he's good but not great), or his ability as a crack shot (he's horrible with a pistol) or his abilities as an outdoorsman (he is very good but he is not a survivalist). No - his strength comes from his own family and from a sense that the rules are important. Joe is a straight arrow who does all that he can to stay within the rules. IF he has break one of those rules, he does not rest easily. Joe is called away from a long-needed session of household chores to a crime scene in a hunting camp. The only thing he knows is that it is a gruesome scene. The sheriff and the Warden that now covers his old territory race to the...

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2013 Read by Holter Graham Duration: 9 hours, 53 minutes Unabridged If you are a big fan of the TV show Criminal Minds  or the movie The Silence of the Lambs  you will probably enjoy this book quite a bit. For me, the fascination of getting into the head of a serial killer has long since passed and I end up feeling soiled and abused after every excursion into this area. But, I read The Highway because I do enjoy C.J. Box's work quite a bit and I grudgingly like his Cody Hoyt character - he is exasperating and full of gigantic character flaws but just when you have had enough of him he pulls himself together and he gets the job done. In a bit of a reach (actually, in a real big reach) the young female characters from his book Back of Beyond  are caught up in another dangerous situation and Cody Hoyt is called out to rescue them once again. This time they have a run-in with a long haul trucker that kills himself the Lizard King. T...

Originally Published in 1975 If you have not read a Spenser detective novel and you love the detective genre, pick one up and start reading. There are 40 original novels and they all follow a basic premise: Spenser gets a case. Spenser noses around, makes a lot of wisecracks, irritates people who certainly deserve to be irritated, and then he sees if there is a reaction to his nosing around. Usually, that is someone trying to warn him off or, perhaps, trying to kill him outright. From there, Spenser knows who is after him and can figure out why and he knows where to proceed and solve the case. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Of course, it is. And, the finest of wines are really just grape squeezings. Simple - but yet there is something else there. The Spenser series is one of the few series that I am willing to re-read. In this case, I undoubtedly read Mortal Stakes nearly 20 years ago and I mis-remembered it more than I remembered it, so it made for a good re-read.  In Spe...

Originally published in 1947. In the 1930's, the "Childhood of Famous Americans" series was started with a simple biography of Abraham Lincoln's childhood. Eventually, there were dozens of books in this series. In my childhood I remember my small town library had a shelf full of these books and I read them all. Nowadays, this series has been picked up by Simon and Schuster. This book focuses on the childhood of Martha Washington (1731-1802), or Martha Dandridge, nicknamed Patsy. There is not really an over-arching story here. Rather, this is mostly a series of scenes from her childhood including having a bear cub as a pet, posing for a portrait and learning to ride a pony. There are also visits from local Native tribes. This book could be read not just as a biography of Martha Washington but also as a sample of what life on a plantation would be like for the family that owns the plantation. That being said, it doesn't really address the issue of slavery, pre...

Published in 2014 Normally, I am not much of a fan of short stories. For me, by the time I figure out what's going on in the story it's over and then I have to go through the whole process again in the next story. The exception to this has always been Stephen King - he creates characters that the reader can buy into very quickly in a story. I will add C.J. Box to that list with Stephen King. Throughout Shots Fired  Box quickly establishes the parameters of the story and then delivers 10 good short stories. Four of them feature his previously established characters joe Pickett or Nate Romanowski. Nine of them take place in modern times. Nine take place in Wyoming. The one that does not take place in Wyoming features members of the Sioux nation who are working at Euro-Disney in France. It is one of my favorites in the collection. A quote from the book: "Giving alcohol to an alcoholic makes him happy, but it doesn't help him. Buying stuff for people wh...

Published in 2011 by Random House Audio Read by Dennis Boutsikaris Duration: 11 hours, 33 minutes John Grisham returns to familiar ground in this novel - the world of mass tort litigation, a topic covered thoroughly in The King of Torts in 2003. Despite the similar legal theme, The Litigators is a much different novel and, I think, the better of the two. The book focuses on a tiny law firm with just two partners and a self-trained legal secretary with attitude. The firm calls itself a "boutique" firm, implying that they do specialty work and stay small out of choice. In reality, if they have a specialty it is car crashes, slip-and-fall cases and divorces. They are barely making it and sometimes they are literally ambulance chasers. They cruise funeral homes looking for wrongful death cases. Into this sad firm comes another lawyer. He's drunk, he's obnoxious and he's read the name of the firm on an ad looking for work. He's a Harvard-educated attorn...

Audiobook published in 2003 by Skyboat Productions. Read by Stefan Rudnicki. Duration: 11 hours, 7 minutes. Unabridged. David Morrell excels at the thriller but he really excels at a subset of the thriller - what I call a "chase novel." His first novel, First Blood, was this type of book. The protagonist is being chased by someone or a group of people and the reader gets taking along for the ride. The Protector is like that as well. A research scientist named Prescott hires a private security team to guard his life from drug dealers and perhaps a compromised government agency. Either way, Cavanaugh is sent to meet the client and assess his needs. In the middle of that meeting highly trained men storm the building and Cavanaugh and Prescott barely escape. But, once Cavanaugh and Prescott can take a breather, Cavanaugh realizes that Prescott may be a lot more than he imagined and Cavanaugh may have to protect himself from his own client... This was an enjoyable, if not ...

Published in 2008 by The Indiana Historical Society Press In the great state of Indiana 4th grade is the year that the social studies classes focus on Indiana history. My youngest daughter is in 4th grade and her entire class read Alone: The Journey of the Boy Sims . The book is set in 1833 and even though it has been a state since 1816, in many ways Indiana is still a wild frontier, especially in northern Indiana (the Ohio River was often the route that settlers took to Indiana in the early days and it forms the southern border of the state). Road crews are working on building Michigan Road - a roughly built "road" that will connect the Ohio River to Lake Michigan, a distance of more than 250 miles. While somewhere in the vicinity of what will eventually be Logansport, Indiana a thirteen year old member of the crew is sent to Detroit all by himself for more ink to draw out the maps and keep track of the surveys that the crews were taking. This trip is well more th...

Published by GraphicAudio in August of 2013 Multi-cast performance Duration: Approximately 5 hours Marvel Comic's Spider-Man swings into action in Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder . He is up against a robot attack against New York's Diamond District in a scene that was very reminiscent of the classic Superman cartoon " The Mechanical Monsters ." But, Spider-Man always has a different take on things than the Man of Steel. Spidey's comments and tendency to not quite have everything under control give this caper a unique twist. Of course, J. Jonah Jameson continues his media barrage against the webslinger, Peter Parker and M.J. are working through relationship issues and Spider-Man continues to struggle with his work/superhero/home life balance. But, in this story he faces other issues, including robot attacks from an undetermined source, a messed up Spidey Sense and a non-stop rainy weather pattern that make his webs a lot less effective and make it hard to swi...

Publish ed by HighBridge in April of 2015. Multicast Performance. Duration: Approximately 3.5 hours After 35 years on the air, there are no more Car Talk episodes being made.Tom has passed on and Ray Magliozzi is retired. But, they still are broadcast on NPR stations across the country. NPR is also going back and searching for great episodes to sell. This is a four episode collection that probably dates from the late 1990s, based on the cars that they were discussing.  In these episodes Tom and Ray weigh in on the following: -The lady in Alaska whose truck only goes up hills in reverse (and how she ended up in Alaska in the first place). -The woman whose husband bought a car to rebuild and restore that only worked in reverse. -The woman who had 33 different cars in the last 15 years. -The astronaut who called from the space shuttle and knew Tom and Ray when he used to go to their shop back when he was in college. -The freshman student who was suffering from inten...

Published in 2009 CreateSpace. I picked this novel because I am a sucker for books set in my adopted hometown - Indianapolis. The author is a resident (or, he was when he wrote the book) and you can really tell that he knows his way around the East Side of Indianapolis (I am a West Sider but I get all over town). Reservoir Road starts with a lovely couple who buy a fixer-upper on Indianapolis' East Side (Irvington) and he starts a career as a teacher. They have a baby and then he loses his wife and son in an unexplained double murder in Covington, Kentucky. The surviving husband doesn't even know why they were in Covington and the murder is never solved. He cannot deal with this and tries to solve the murder himself. He just cannot. But, he is moved to do something. While on the Crime Stoppers website (If you are not familiar with Crime Stoppers, they offer reward money for tips that lead to arrests and convictions) he realizes that there are so many victims like him - ...

Published in January of 2008 by Macmillan Audio Read by John Bedford LLoyd Duration: 11 hours, 58 minutes Unabridged The first C.J. Box book to make it to publication that did not feature Joe Pickett, Blue Heaven is set in north Idaho. The story can easily be classified as a modern version of a classic western story.  The story starts with a highly respected local rancher, a lifelong resident of the area, who is in danger of losing his beloved ranch to the bank. Newcomers, including an especially large number of retired police officers from Los Angeles, are moving in and local realtors want to take advantage of his financial troubles and turn his ranch into a series of McMansions with mini ranches so that the new residents can play at being cowboy.        Meanwhile, two kids get mad at their mom and decide to take her boyfriend's expensive fishing equipment out for a fishing trip that he promised to take him on but "forgot" about. Before they even get t...

  Libertarians and Conservatives - Natural Allies, Natural Rivals Published in 2015 by Crown Forum Charles C. W. Cooke is a writer for National Review  and as such he has been in the center of a storm as the political Right works through a new generation of thought on a variety of issues. In some issues, the political Right is united, such as on the concept of Limited Government and keeping taxes as low as possible. In others, they have a variety of opinions. Generally speaking, Libertarians bond more readily with the Right than the Left, which is why Ron Paul identified as a Libertarian for years yet caucused with the Republicans in the Congress and ran for president as a Republican. The dislike of the Nanny State on many issues pushes them together as temporary allies on many issues. But, on other issues such as the War on Drugs and Gay Marriage the Right is split and split deeply. In The Conservatarian Manifesto, Cooke is attempting to nudge the Republicans ...

Published on July 7, 2015 by Jubilo In many ways, the fight over whether Kansas would be a slave state or a free state was the first fighting of the Civil War.  In a shortsighted move, the Congress of the United States decided to let the Kansas Territory decide for itself if it wanted to be a slave or a free state. It was shortsighted because it put off a festering political problem and let it be decided in a far away territory with little thought to what would happen in that territory. Immediately, this became a real-life struggle, the physical embodiment of the arguments taking place across the country about slavery and its future. Slave states rightly determined that they needed to bring Kansas in as a slave state and they immediately sent financial backing to support pro-slavery settlers and pro-slavery men from neighboring Missouri who would cross the border and illegally vote in the election. Abolitionists sent settlers, financial aid and weapons to counter. Soon enough...