DWD's Reviews

I am not a fan of Matthau but he is undeniably strong in this one. Produced in 1990 by Qintex Entertainment The Incident is an Emmy-winning made for TV movie about a fictional POW camp for German soldiers in World War II. They are being held in Camp Bremen, in Bremen, Colorado (the movie was actually filmed in Colorado Springs).  During the World War II, the United States held thousands of Axis POWs in similar camps in rural areas throughout the country. The local town doctor is also the POW camp doctor. He is murdered at the camp and a German sergeant looks to be guilty. A civilian trial is ordered due to political considerations and the local ne'er-do-well attorney played by Walter Matthau is appointed by the judge (played by Harry Morgan of M*A*S*H and Dragnet fame) to defend the German suspect. Matthau is strong with a wide variety of emotions displayed - not overdone, not underdone - just right. He has several strong scenes with his character's grand...

Despite the lack of details about "Survivor" it is a solid autobiography Published in 2007 by Life Press Rupert Boneham is one of the few bona fide celebrities to have come from the "Survivor" television show. Rupert tells about his difficult family life growing up in Kokomo, Indiana, his difficulties as a young man struggling with alcohol, drugs, tricky female relationships and his own desire for an instant family. However, through it all that big heart of his shines through and the reader is rooting for him to find his way. Despite his gruff and bearlike appearance, Rupert: Just Being Me confirms that the attribute that we loved him for on Survivor was no act - this man is a Teddy Bear with a heart as big as all outdoors. Most enjoyable is Rupert's discussion of helping troubled teens. Even at his lowest, Rupert helped out kids - often his program was their last chance to stay out of jail. Rupert proudly details some of his successes and ...

Thoroughly enjoyable. Quick, thought-provoking read Published by New Beginnings Press in 2007 The Real Stars: In Today's America, Who Are the True Heroes? is inspired by Stein's "Nick and Jessica" column - a column that was copied and pasted and forwarded to millions of e-mails across the world. Stein has collected a series of columns from the years 1978-2006, mostly from the 1998-2005. Topics range from Elvis and the celebrity culture to Richard Nixon to current foreign policy to the widows and orphans of fallen soldiers to the deaths of his parents. Ben Stein Often profound and usually very funny, Stein usually has a gentle wit and tries to put a gentle spin on things. But, 2 or 3 of these essays demonstrate that Stein can be cutting (however, his cutting observations are correct) and those are all of the more powerful since they stand out from the norm. Although this is a relatively short book, Stein's essays about his parents are worth the price of...

Published in 2012 by Orbit This short story (Amazon's Kindle Store estimates its length to be about 32 print pages) is the tale of a North Korean tank commander named Choi Chung Ho in a future war against the Americans on a frozen planet. The North Koreans and the Chinese combined forces are taking a beating from an advancing formation of American tanks. There are four people in Choi Chung Ho's damaged tank and two are rookies. His under-gunned, practically crippled tank is the only thing that can prevent the American forces from completely sweeping the field. Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) The story of how Choi Chung Ho repairs his tank and goes back into the fight is interesting enough, but McCarthy spices things up by throwing in little tidbits like having the North Koreans cloning Kim Il Sung (the original member of the Kim family to rule North Korea) over and over again to lead North Korea. Kim Il Sung #58 is in charge now. It seems a little crazy at first, but then again, ...

A review by an infrequent reader of comics Published in 2005 by Titan Graphic Novels. Originally published in 2004 by D.C. Comics First things first. I am not a gigantic comics fan. I've never been to a comic book shop. I know the big names. Basically, if they had a live action TV show, I know them. So, my opinion is not as well-informed as that of some. Superman has always been of limited interest to me. He can't be hurt (technically, I know he can but who has Kryptonite sitting around?), he has the tools to deal with any situation. He has a healthy psyche. Good guy to have on your side but not particularly interesting. Batman, on the other hand, he oozes character exploration opportunities. Surprisingly, Loeb and company have made Superman very interesting, by looking at him through the prism of Batman, and also by seeing Batman through Superman's eyes. Their chosen format of having dueling interior thought lines from Batman and Superman offer t...

A thoroughly entertaining audiobook experience Published in 1994 by Simon and Schuster Audio Division Read by John de Lancie Duration: 2 hours, 59 minutes Abridged I picked this audiobook up at a library sale - they were clearing out all of their audiobooks on cassette. So, I picked up a bunch of them and dusted off the Sony Walkman (literally) and gave it a listen. Back in the day (1994) most audiobooks were edited to about 3 hours. This book was originally over 400 pages long so it was edited extensively as well, although the cover does not admit to it. That being said, the editing was very well done here. This could have been an extraordinarily confusing book considering that it bounces around in 3 different universes, but the editors have demonstrated a great deal of skill. All that being said, Q-Squared is not an audiobook for the Star Trek newbie. In the original Star Trek , Captain Kirk and company encountered Trelane, a being of extraordinary power but very little matur...

Good Early Spenser novel Published August 1st 1988 by Books on Tape, Inc. Read by Michael Prichard Duration: 5 hours, 4 minutes Unabridged Robert B. Parker and Tony Hillerman are the two authors I most consistently check when I go to a library or a bookstore. When it is a great day, one of the two has a new book. When it is a tremendous day, they both have a new one out and I have to decide which to read first! In the meantime, I am making do by going back over their collected works as audiobooks. I have a long drive to work every day and Spenser makes a very good ride-along companion. I have long-since read all of the older Spenser books, but the beautiful thing about a faulty memory is that the plot lines get a bit hazy over time and now I can enjoy them all over again! Besides, it is always interesting to see how the reader interprets Spenser and the gang. One of the best to capture Spenser smart-aleck comments was Burt Reynolds, although his inte...

Abridged Published by Simon and Schuster in 2000 Read by Chris Meloni Duration: 4 hours, 41 minutes I am a relative newcomer to the works of Steve Martini, this being my third book, the second one as an audiobook. As a listener, I can tell that Martini's craft has improved quite a bit - my first experience with a Martini audiobook ( The Judge ) only accentuated Martini's overuse of the simile (he moved like a cat, etc.) - it was so obvious that I began a running count of how many times I heard them! This plot is not as strong as that one, but his skills as a writer have improved so that the entire effect is actually one of improvement. Steve Martini Paul Madriani and his partner Harry are back for another turn as protagonists in The Attorney , although Harry largely takes a backseat in this one, which is too bad. Nevertheless, the plot moves well, suspense builds nicely until the ending comes along and there is a bit of a letdown. However, I am not one t...

Published in 1999 by Dark Horse The Battle of Thermopylae is one of my favorite things to teach about in my world history class so this graphic novel was of particular interest to me. Miller takes some liberties with history in the graphic novel 300 , such as the homophobia of the Spartans and the ethnicity of the Persian emperor. But, he gets the heart of the story correctly. Thermopylae was one of those "turning points in history" battles - not for the events of the 3 days of the battle itself but rather for the time it gave the rest of Greece to prepare (and evacuate, in the case of Athens) and for the inspiration it provided (Think about Texas and the battle cry, "Remember the Alamo!" and you get the idea). A more accurate portrayal of the battle in a piece of fiction would be found in Pressfield's Gates of Fire . However, as a piece of art and as a simple introduction to the Spartans and to the battle, this book is quite good. Of course, this gr...

Published by Audio Literature in 2002 Duration: 3 hours, 24 minutes Performed by Harlan Ellison City of Darkness is my first foray into Ben Bova's work. I've seen his stuff around but never quite picked any of his books up. If this is typical of the quality of his work, I will be back for more. The story is set in a future United States in which the cities have been closed. New York City is cut off from the rest of the country except for the summer months - where it becomes a tourist destination away from the unrelenting tedium of suburbia (called "the tracts"). Our protagonist runs away to the city and gets locked in after it is closed at the end of the summer - and he finds out that the city is not empty after all... Harlan Ellison makes this audiobook seem like a one man radio play. He does a first-rate job at making the story sing and zing. Take the word of a listener who has heard more than his share of mediocre readers - Ellison deserves a...

null Published in May of 2012 by Regnery Publishing Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament and the the leader of the third largest political party in the Netherlands, but he is forced to live his life under protection. Since 2004 he has to have armed protection every day, everywhere he goes because of multiple death threats from extremist Muslims. His crime? He dared to take the threats to Western freedom seriously when, in 2004, Muslims killed Theo Van Gogh (a filmmaker whose film Submission criticized the treatment of Muslim women. Van Gogh was stabbed multiple times and a note was stuck to his body with a knife explaining why Van Gogh was murdered) Muslims rioted over the famed Muhammad cartoons in 2005, when they threatened to kill politicians who question why there are "no-go" zones that have basically been ceded to Muslims. Wilders believes that Islam is more than a religion, it is a totalitarian political ideology that has no tolerance of dissent and i...

WOW! An anti-Communist Manifesto Published by Drawn and Quarterly in 2005 Right off the bat, Delisle shows where he is heading in this anti-communist manifesto when he tells how he snuck a copy of George Orwell's "1984" into North Korea (a banned book) - any moderately well-read person can identify the constant presence of the photos of "The Great Leader" and "The Dear Leader" with Orwell's omnipresent "Big Brother". It is intended to be a bit of foreshadowing to tell the reader where he is going with the book - and he hits a home run with it! This is an anti-communist triumph from beginning to end - not with the soaring rhetoric of a Kennedy or a Reagan, but rather with its gentle story-telling style and its simple emphasis on communism's absurdities - from the lack of information, to the lack of food, electricity and choices of what to watch on TV and listen to on the radio. The constant barrage of revolutionary song...

Published April of 2012 by AudioGo. Narrated by Paul Blake Duration: 15 hours, 23 minutes Unabridged. I did not read or listen to the other three installments of Conn Iggulden's Emperor Series, but I was already familiar with the last few years of Julius Caesar's life so it was not difficult to join in here at the end. Book IV of the Emperor Series starts with Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon River with his army when he was ordered home from Gaul. This actions begins a civil war, with Caesar leading one faction and Pompey leading the other. From there we get the other highlights - Caesar's triumphal entry into Rome, the defeat of Pompey's army in Greece, the pursuit of Pompey into Egypt, the romance of Caesar and Cleopatra, the return to Rome and Caesar's murder by the Senate. Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) It's all standard issue history textbook stuff but Iggulden makes it a story that demands to be listened to. To be sure, he has fidd...

Published in 2010 by Triumph Books I n a sentence, this book is about a 27 year-old Hoosier Marine who lost his leg due to an explosion in Iraq, re-built his life and got a job with the Indianapolis Colts as a community spokesman. All true but the book is so much  more than that because Bleill makes his story resonate with the reader. Josh Bleill joined the Marines at age 26. He never quite finished college. He never quite got serious with his girlfriend. He never quite got serious about his career. He just never quite going with much of anything until he decided to join the Marines, much to the surprise of his family (and to the dismay of his mother). Bleill tells the story of his experiences in basic training and the special training he received for Iraq with a lot of humor and gives the reader a sense of how difficult this training can be. Bleill takes us to Iraq and tells of his "one bad day" - the day he lost his legs and two of his friends when his Humvee dro...

Published by Orbit in March of 2012 I approach this review with some trepidation. This is a hell of a science fiction novel but to call it a sci-fi novel is to undersell it. It is a hell of a war novel, but to call it a war novel is also underselling it. It really is the story of a woman finding out what it is to love, to be loved and to know where one stands with God - in short, to be human, but that seriously undersells this book and makes a violent tale of war, genetic mutation and out-of-controls science sound like some piece of warm and fuzzy chick lit. Exogene is certainly not that. So, what is Exogene ? T.C. McCarthy First things first - Exogene is the second book in a series by T.C. McCarthy . Read the first book, Germline , for the background necessary for this book. Germline (see my review by clicking here ) explores a future war for trace metals in Kazakhstan between the Russians and the Americans. In Germline a group of cloned teenaged female warriors are i...

Libertarianism thought delivered painlessly by nice guy Stossel Published April 10, 2012 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the author, John Stossel Duration: 9 hours, 14 minutes The title of this audiobook , No, They Can't ,  is a play on the 2008 campaign slogan of then-candidate Obama, "Yes We Can!" Stossel, of course, is the TV consumer reporter turned anchor of ABC's 20/20 who now hosts a weekly show of Fox Business News and a series on one-hour specials on Fox News. He has won nineteen Emmy Awards. He begins his book with an explanation of why he left ABC after more than 20 years and how the culture of ABC made it very uncomfortable for him to explore stories in any way except the tried and true politically correct way. The premise of the this audiobook is that the entire thought process behind that campaign slogan is wrong  - the government cannot do a lot of the things that people want it to do, and even if everyone agreed it should give those thin...

The first of a set - "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "Collapse" Published by  W. W. Norton and Company (April 1, 1999) Most readers of those two books read Guns, Germs and Steel before Collapse in the order in which they were published. I, however, read them in reverse order of publication. Many were critical of Collapse because it was too close to Guns, Germs and Steel in theme and topics covered. I suppose that I am a bit disappointed as well, but not too much. Yes, they cover some of the same material, but really they are the twin sides of the same coin - the rise of societies and the fall of societies. With a little bit of editing, Jared Diamond could have merged these two books into one and created one monster-sized tome (800 plus pages) on the rise and fall of societies around the world. Diamond's theses are cogent, coherent and clear. Really, it is a wonderful volume for the student of world history who wishes to take some steps into the...

Multicast performance Published by Galaxy Audio Duration: 2 hours, 17 minutes First published in the magazine Unknown in 1941, The Crossroads is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. The book is performed by several cast members and are reminiscent of the old-time radio shows that were popular when the stories were written. This audiobook consists of 3 short stories. The first story is the title story. The Crossroads is the story of an old farmer in the Depression who thinks that the Roosevelt Administration's orders for farmers to destroy food (in an effort to raise prices for food) is ...

A True Classic First published in 1939. Winner of The National Book Award in 1940. Richard Llewellyn (1906-1983) I read How Green Was My Valley way back in high school more than twenty-five years ago and I remembered it fondly, if vaguely. I found it on the bargain shelf at a local bookseller and I picked it up on a whim. Sometimes, when you re-read a book from your childhood it is much worse than you remember because tastes mature. In this case, I found How Green Was My Valley to be even better than I remembered. The book is set in Wales and features a family of Welsh coal miners and is told through the point of view of Huw Morgan, the youngest member of the family. Llewellyn captures small town life and Welsh customs and makes the reader feel the rhythm of their lives. These are turbulent times in Wales - the wages for coal miners are dropping because there are fewer jobs to be had and more men than ever to fill them. Their world is changing and families are breaki...