DWD's Reviews

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. If you are a writer, Superman can be limiting as a character. 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 the reader an interesting opportunity to see these tried and true characters anew. This was a fun plotline - an interesting and entertaining read. The choice to use the Adam West TV show Batmobile was grea...

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...

Originally published in 1976. Published by Audio Literature in 2002 Duration: 3 hours, 24 minutes Performed by Harlan Ellison. Unabridged 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 o...

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 songs ...

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 ? 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 introduced to the fro...

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. 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 reread 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 breaking up to move to America and other places...

Another winning book by Russell Freedman Published in June of 2012 by Clarion Books (DWD's Reviews received an advance copy for review purposes) Russell Freedman received the Newbery Medal for his 1989 book Lincoln: A Photobiography and he returns to familiar ground with this dual biography. He begins with Douglass and then alternates back and forth between the two men, highlighting important aspects of their lives and the areas that they had in common (such as being self-educated, self-made men). The almost square shape of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship lends itself to pictures and Freedmen fills the book with drawings, etchings and photographs of the era, including the image I have included here of a "Watch Meeting." Thousands of people gathered together to await word of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation (he had promised to do so several months earlier unless the Confederate States returned to the Uni...

Lessons on how to grow and then kill a restaurant chain Published in 2011 by CreateSpace I n Flameout , John P. McDonald tells the story of Burger Chef, the one burger company that outpaced McDonald's and could have taken its place at the top of the fast food heap. In 1971 there were 1,200 Burger Chef restaurants and less than 1,300 McDonald's restaurants. By 1982, what was left of Burger Chef was folded into the Hardee's chain and was no more. I was particularly interested in this book because when I was a kid, the Burger Chef Fun Meal with Burger Chef and Jeff and all of the punch out things you could make with the tray/box were just about the best restaurant experience a little boy could have. This could have been a very boring tale, but McDonald makes it interesting. He tells about the innovations that took Burger Chef from being just a demonstration restaurant (it was designed to showcase the restaurant equipment manufactured by General Equipment) to the fast...

Published in June of 2012 Note: DWD's Reviews received an uncorrected proof advance copy from the publisher (Harper) in exchange for an honest review. Dan Ariely's The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty is a fun look at a serious topic - lying. Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, describes his simple experiments and details his results in a light, easy to understand way. His results are often surprising and counter-intuitive. For example, it is often considered that people are dishonest because they have calculated the risk of being caught and the reward if they get away with the dishonesty and act accordingly. Ariely demonstrates that this is incorrect and spends the rest of the book showing what conditions are more likely to cause dishonest behavior and what conditions decrease dishonesty. This could have been a stupefyingly dull book, but Ariely has a deft touch and makes it a very fun and very quick read. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. ...

Published in 2002 by Crown Publishers (Random House) This book is aimed at students from grades 5-12, although I found it interesting and learned a lot. World War II histories abound. Histories of the complete war, various theaters, biographies of units and single officers fill the bookshelves. I have seen books that look at the role of women in the war - the home front, as pilots, intelligence officers and so on. But, I have never seen anything about female war correspondents. I did not even know that there were female war correspondents in World War II - I simply assumed that the sexist attitudes of the day would have not allowed them to work. Happily, I have been enlightened by Penny Colman and her book Where the Action Was . She tells the story of the war through the eyes of several female war correspondents - sometimes through direct quotes, sometimes through reproductions of the headlines of their articles that are placed throughout like in a scrapbook. The history of the w...