DWD's Reviews

Originally published in 2002. To America: Personal Reflections of a Historian  wanders and meanders its way through American history and, while this may bother others, personally, I love it. For me, it was as if I were able to sit and listen in on a conversation with a master story-teller. Ambrose discusses such things as the hypocrisy of Jefferson ('unalienable rights' for all men - how about your own slaves?) and most of the Founding Fathers - but still he does not just topple them for their hypocrisy - he also points out, with wonder, that they accomplished the near-impossible. He also notes the seeds for social change that they all planted, such as universal education (Jefferson). In fact, he directly confronts the 'but he was a slaveholder' mentality - acknowledge the terrible fault - in fact, insist on acknowledging it. But, judge them by the whole of their work. Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) Ambrose covers such flawed men as Andrew Jackson, Theodore Ro...

Check out the audiobook - it is worth it Published by Phoenix Books Read by Burt Reynolds Duration: 6 hours, 52 minutes Unabridged I avoided this audiobook performance of Chance because its read by Burt Reynolds and I figured that if anybody has a chance to ruin a Spenser novel it would be Burt Reynolds. Not that Burt is a bad actor, but he tends to do what he wants to do rather than what he's told to do. Boy, was I wrong. Despite his talent for finding bad movies, Reynolds is, underneath it all, a real actor. He finds the voice for the wise-cracking Spenser and hits it dead on. Spenser's observations and one-liners are read perfectly. Not only that, but he covers the voices of all of the mob leaders and his characterization of Shirley Meeker/Ventura gives the reader a great deal of sympathy for how truly pathetic and harmless she was as she got herself caught up in events beyond her control. Burt Reynolds Reynold's portrayal of Hawke was different (more...

Believe the hype - this is a fantastic book! Originally published in 2010. Sometimes books, movies, or restaurants get a lot of hype and buzz but really are not what they are cracked up to be.  Unbroken is everywhere nowadays - bookstores, my local grocery store is selling it. I just saw online that there is a movie deal.  Is it the real deal?  Laura Hillenbrand  Yes, Unbroken is an amazing biography, and it is most definitely the real deal. I plowed right through 450 pages of text in near-record time, devouring chunks of a story that continued to take new twists and turns and lead me to follow Louis Zamperini from the heights of athletic glory in the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the literal pits of despair in a digging out prison camp latrine with his bare hands in order to earn enough grains of rice to barely fuel his ravaged, starved body. Louis Zamperini grew up as a juvenile delinquent in Torrance, California - a restless kid who, at the...

An enthusiastic 5 stars! A fantastic book. Published in 2009. I was offered  Joker One  as part of the Amazon Vine program and I decided to take it because I am a history teacher and I decided I needed to read a book about the Iraq War just to have a greater sense of what was/is going on and to be able to speak more intelligently about it to my classes. So, I picked  Joker One  and I let it sit on my pile of books. I let it sit and sit because I was afraid it would be preachy, depressing and difficult. Finally, with classes over I picked up  Joker One  and I was hooked by page 2 with Lt. Campbell's description of an explosion that he had just avoided. It was filled with honest emotions, including a bit of honest, self-deprecating humor. I shot through Joker One . I carried it everywhere I went. I read passages to my long-suffering wife. I told her shortened versions of the stories. Literally, I laughed (his account of their first night missio...

Fits the Bill Perfectly Published in 2004 Some people have criticized this book for not having enough detail. Well, this book is just intended to be an introduction to a number of the world's great religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shinto. The descriptions are short (20-40 pages) and full of enough detail to give the reader a useful outline of the religion's teachings. For more detail on a particular religion, I would recommend the 'Complete Idiot's Guide to Islam (or Buddhism, or Judaism, etc.) I was searching for a textbook to use for my school's new 9 weeks-long program on world religions. This book fits the bill perfectly - there is enough here to get us off to a very good start towards discussing any of these religions. Less useful are the sections on similar ideas that span all world religions and the section on ancient and (basically) dead religions such as worship of the Ancient Egyptian...

"This is the devil's country...and you are fighting the devil's war" Published in 2007 by Doubleday The Afghan Campaign is one of two pieces of historical fiction that Steven Pressfield has written about Alexander the Great (the other is The Virtues of War ). Pressfield has written about several historical eras but his real area of interest seems to be the Greek and Hellenistic eras. His most famous and, in my opinion, his best novel is Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae . Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) The Afghan Campaign is a solid novel. Pressfield does his best to put us on the ground with the troops, much like he did with Gates of Fire .  The reader follows a group of young Macedonian recruits as they ship off to join Alexander's army as it approaches what is now known as Afghanistan.  Pressfield's choice to view the war from the level of a raw recruit (Matthias) as he learns to fight and eventually becomes a sergea...

 Excellent beginner's history to Luther and his times Published in 1966 by Lutheran Church Press. Fischer's book on the life and works of Luther is obviously intended to be a school-age biography of the great leader of the Reformation. I would suggest it for Middle or High School age students.  Luther has several simple pencil illustrations spaced throughout the book that neither add nor detract from the text as a whole. This would also be an appropriate book for anyone new to Martin Luther or the Reformation. Martin Luther (1483-1546) Fischer starts by setting the scene for the reader. His description of life and politics in pre-Reformation is Europe is one of the best short summaries that this world history teacher has ever read. Fischer sets the scene wonderfully for the reader to understand Martin Luther and the magnitude of his demands for the Church to reform itself. Fischer takes great care not to cast the Catholics as devils and Luther as an angel. All of L...

Excellent. Absolutely Excellent . Originally published in 1971 Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters is written by the man who co-wrote and narrates   the classic movie A Christmas Story , Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) . Shepherd's book  In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash  is the inspiration for that movie, although the infamous dogs in the kitchen scene comes from  Wanda Hickey. If you love the movie  A Christmas Story, you will absolutely enjoy this book. Set in Hammond, Indiana (he fictionalizes it as Hohman, Indiana) in the 1930s, Wanda Hickey is actually a set of 8 semi-fictional short stories loosely based on actual people and events in Shepherd's life. Hohman is described as being "nestled picturesquely between the looming steel mills and the verminously aromatic oil refineries and encircled by a colorful conglomerate of city dumps and fetid rivers" which is an unkind, but not inaccurate description of Indiana's ...

A Great Read! Originally published in 1994 Synopsis: Detective Harry Bosch of the LAPD shot and killed a suspected ritualistic serial killer in a controversial but "righteous shoot" several years before. Now, the killer's widow is suing the city for killing the wrong man and new victims of the serial killer are showing up - victims that definitely were killed after Bosch shot his man. First - let's address the title. There are actually two concrete blondes in the book. One is the concrete statue of lady justice outside the courtroom. The other is one of the victims - a blond prostitute/porn actress who was found encased in the concrete floor of a self-storage unit. Michael Connelly Second - this is a great cop story. I won't go into much plot detail, but I will say that the story twists and turns in so many directions that it is hard to put down. Just when you think you have got it figured out, you find that Connelly has been waiting for you and your er...

Originally published in 1998 . As the title suggests, America's Strangest Museums: A Traveler's Guide to the Most Unusual and Eccentric Collections  is a tour of more than 100 bizarre little museums people (and a few corporations) have set up across the USA ( and a couple in Canada). Some include: -The Museum of Menstruation (started by a single man in his 50s) -The Tooth Fairy Museum (now closed) -The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices (closed now, unfortunately) -Spam has a museum . -So does Combat, the bug spray company. They also have a contest in which you can send them dead roaches dressed up in dioramas. -The Bull Hall of Fame. My favorite is  The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA)  in Massachusetts. Since I am a proud Hoosier, I'm pleased to note that Indiana offerings include: -The Old Jail Museum in Crawfordsville -The Dan Quayle Center and Museum in Huntington -Drake's Midwest Phonograph Museum in Martinsville -The Bird's Eye View Mu...

Quite the Thriller! Originally Published in 1995. Mind Prey  is the seventh in a series of novels featuring Lucas Davenport, a tough police detective in Minnesota. It is the third and definitely the best that I have read in the series. Davenport is more than a detective, he also designs role-playing and computer simulation games, a hobby that blossomed into a multi-million dollar business. The twist in this plot is that the bad guy is a psycho who happens to love role-playing games. He kidnaps one of his former therapists to fulfill some of his twisted fantasies and then gets a bigger thrill when he discovers that the designer of some his favorite games is on the case. (Imagine a 'Dungeons and Dragons' player matching wits against Gary Gygax and you've got the scenario) Mind Prey  is really quite a good thriller - it was very difficult to put the book down while reading the last 75 pages. This book can be found on Amazon here:   Mind Prey     I rate thi...

     Fascinating! Informative! As the title implies,  Character Above All: Ten Presidents from FDR to George Bush   is a collection of biographcial essays on each of the 10 presidents from FDR to George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) by 10 different authors who are either expert historians or knew the President while in office. The thing that ties them all together is that each essay is supposed to look at each man as president and find that one part of his character that made him the type of president he was. Each essay is about 30 pages and it makes for interesting reading. Doris Kearns Goodwin A good sample would come from Doris Kearns Goodwin's look at Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She asserts that the most valuable component of his personality was his self-confidence. I thought this quote from FDR makes the point wonderfully: "I'll tell you...at night when I lay my head on my pilow, and it is often pretty late, and I think of the things that have come before me ...

240 beautiful, beautiful pictures With an introduction by Scott Russell Sanders ("This Piece of the Earth We Call Indiana") Wild and Scenic Indiana is a beautiful collection of more than 240 pictures of all parts of (mostly) rural Indiana taken by professional photographer Rich Clark. Clark moved to Indiana from Colorado and, as he puts it, is "amazed at how alluringly beautiful my chosen state is." (pg. 7) Clark has mastered capturing what he calls "Indiana's demure beauty" (pg. 7) and he proudly shows them off on the oversized 12 in X 12 in full color pages. The book is broken up into chapters based on the physiographic map of Indiana. This means it is based on the major geographical zones of the state. It is an odd way to organize the book, but it does have a certain sense of logic to it. This is a beautiful coffee table book, one that any Hoosier would be pleased to flip through. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be foun...

Originally published in 1921.   As a classroom history teacher, I realize that I am out of my league in reviewing this book. Charles and Mary Beard are "name brand" historians. There are precious few historians that make it to that level, and for me, a classroom teacher, to deign to review the work of a historian that has an entire school corporation named for him (in his hometown of Knightstown, IN) takes some professional chutzpah on my part. It's the equivalent of a local bar band writing a criticism of the Beatles or a piano student evaluating Chopin. Well, here's to chutzpah! On a general level, the Beards' History of the United States is an excellent textbook. Two general themes of the Beards are: 1) economics is a dominant driver of history. 2) America is a story of expanding rights - more groups of people are securing their rights as time goes on. The book focuses on social issues such as how things were manufactured and societal hierarchy rathe...

On September 11, 2001 the United States closed its air space in reaction to the 9/11 attacks because it was unknown if there were more attacks planned. While this certainly made sense it created certain problems for the planes that were inbound. Where would they go if they did not have enough fuel to return to their aiports of departure? It turns out that Gander, Newfoundland had a ready-built solution for 38 planes carrying 6,595 passengers - a gigantic Cold War era runway that was big enough to be an emergency landing runway for a space shuttle. Jim DeFede Upon landing, the problem ceased to be a technical problem and quickly became a human problem - what do you do with 6,595 people in a relatively poor town of barely 10,000 people? Jim DeFede relates the story of church groups, community groups, schools and local businesses rising to the occasion and welcoming strangers from all over the world for 6 days. They slept in their schools, churches, comm...

A good, tight story Published in 2009 by Brilliance Audio Read by Robert Crais , the author Duration: 8 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged. I am a gigantic fan of Crais' Elvis Cole novels, a series that introduced Joe Pike to the world as Cole's enigmatic, tough and very quiet partner with a soft spot for mean old cats. But, I have been reluctant to get into the Joe Pike novels due to a fear that Joe's facade would be burst wide open and mysterious Joe Pike would be laid wide open and no longer be a mystery. Not to worry. We learn more about Joe, but what makes Joe Pike tick is still a mystery. Plus, as a bonus we get a healthy serving of wise-cracking Elvis Cole throun in as a bonus to make the story even more fun.  Robert Crais The First Rule 's title comes from an Eastern European thieves code that demands that no gangster have a family so that their loyalties will never be divided (much like the story of Keyser Soze from the movie The Usual Suspects ). A fr...

Very approachable history Published in 2010 by Thomas Nelson. The Revolutionary Paul Revere is a great history for newbies to the Revolutionary War's history as well as a solid history for those that are more well read. Joel J. Miller begins his history with Paul Revere's father, Apollos Rivoire, a French Huguenot who fled to Boston for religious freedom as an indentured servant. Miller follows the family and weaves into the narrative the complex and often tense relationship between England and its American colonies. Despite the very informal tone of the book, this is a fairly detailed biography of America's most famous messenger, who was also a founding member of the Sons of Liberty and who personally knew John Adams, Sam Adams and John Hancock. Most people know that Revere was a silversmith, participated in the Boston Tea Party and of course the famed "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." But, what happened after that? For most of us, Paul fades away from the ...