DWD's Reviews

Heaven's Mirror was an interesting read. Graham's Hancock's theories are infectious and at times you find yourself marveling at all of the wonderful coincidences and halfway believing him. Other times, he takes liberal use of supposition (even going so far as to suppose what Albert Einstein would have thought of one of his ideas) and he throws out so many ideas that he reminds me of a desperate defense attorney who throws out any idea to throw doubt on the prosecutor's case. Here, Mr. Hancock throws out any number of theories, including Atlantis; aliens (but never says it - but he leads you that way); Egyptians coming to Europe, Asia, South America and Polynesia; the use of magic or an unknown force to build ancient megaliths and more. I enjoyed the book but there are occasional bad photographs that mar the book - he refers to one picture two or three different times and the picture is not clear - the image has been worn too much over time. That would have been th...

Touching, Powerful Look at Extreme Poverty and at What Christians Can Do Richard Stearns has been the president of World Vision U.S. , perhaps the leading Christian relief organization in the world, since 1998. In The Hole In Our Gospel Stearns lays out powerful, persuasive arguments for the need for Christians to act out their faith, especially when helping "the least of these." (Matthew 25:40) The book's title comes from the visual image of literally cutting out the parts of the Bible that are uncomfortable for you. Stearns asserts that we have cut out the parts that demand the church act because of a desire to avoid the concept of doing good works to get into heaven. Clearly, the Bible states that faith alone is all that is required. The church has stopped with that and is ignoring the opportunities to do good works in the name of Christ. Stearns is quick to affirm that good works without faith is pointless for salvation. But, he is fond of quoting Matthew 25 ...

An amazing tale, fascinating to this non-Catholic Christian (a review of the audiobook) Published by Random House Audio in 2008. Read by Kirsten Potter Running time: 7 hours, 7 minutes Unabridged Let me start this review of Called Out of Darkness by saying three things: 1) I am not a Catholic (I am a Lutheran); 2) I have never left the faith in any meaningful way; 3) This is my first Anne Rice book - I've never even seen more than a tiny bit the Tom Cruise movie. I have never had much interest in the topic of Vampires and Vampire LeStat series was literally of no interest to me. When I noticed that Rice was writing the Christ the Lord series I had the same thought that she expressed in this book - what is she going to do to mess with Jesus? So, I ignored that as well. But, when I ran across this audiobook I suddenly grew interested and I was not disappointed. The book is broken into three general sections: her childhood in New Orleans, her college/career/atheism and ...

Very good despite a few little factual errors. Published in 2000 by William Morrow Paperbacks Some of these are really thought-provoking and well thought out. I especially enjoyed the one concerning Teddy Roosevelt following through with his plan to ban college football unless they did something to curb the extreme violence (23 young men died in the 1905 season). The consequences were interesting and I thought very plausible. The book is marred by a few factual errors. They really are not terribly important to the outcome of the author's alternate histories but show a sloppiness in editing. Some examples are placing the Revolutionary War fort of Kaskaskia in present-day Kentucky when it is actually in Illinois and saying that people blamed Lincoln's assassination on people who were wanting to revive the Union cause (obviously the Union cause was in great shape by the point of the war - I assume his editors did not catch it and he meant to say Confederate). Despite the erro...

A marked improvement in the series . This is part of a series of books about Jenny Cain and her police detective husband, Geoff. In most of the books, Cain runs a philanthropic organization. In this book, she has left the foundation and is casting about for the finances to start another foundation in order to help the people of the New England seaport city of Port Frederick. While this is happening her husband has a mysterious visit from a teenage boy who claims that Geoff is his biological father and he wants nothing to do with Geoff except that he use his position as a policeman to re-investigate the murder-suicide of his parents and come up with a different conclusion. This novel is mostly notable for the fact that its author makes a serious effort to raise the bar in this series of run-of-the-mill mysteries. What she's created here is an actual novel - full of themes and interesting trips into her character's psyches. This book has all of the necessary ingredients f...

Non-stop action from start to finish. The Mullah's Storm is an action adventure set in Afghanistan. It features U.S. Air Force Major Michael Parson, a navigator of a C-130 Hercules transport plane and a female army interpreter named Sergeant Gold. The book starts on the run with the plane transporting a high value elderly mullah to the prison at Guantanamo Bay right before a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm. But, on page 4 the plane gets hit by a handheld rocket and crashes. The survivors are attacked by Taliban forces who are trying to free the mullah. Gold, Parson and the reluctant Mullah flee the wreckage and the chase commences. Young has a great ability to describe action sequences so that the military layman can understand what is going on. A variety of weapons, tactics and pieces of technology are used throughout the book (including a nifty description of how airdrops are guided to the ground) and Young never made me feel lost.  The author, Thomas W. Young, who ...

A Fascinating Look at the Iraq War Don Teague was an NBC correspondent assigned to Iraq twice - once during the invasion and once during February 2004, the beginning of the insurgent bombing spree that was finally ended by the famous "surge." His translator during this one month hitch was a beautiful and rebellious young Iraqi woman named Rafraf Barrak. Teague is an 11 year veteran of the National Guard (helicopter pilot) and knows enough about fighting and war to be very respectful of the dangers of it all (unlike some of his more fearless, less experienced colleagues). Rafraf is one of 10 children - but a handful. Smart enough to know better, Rafraf often flouts the rules dares to do things like eat lunch with boys she meets at her university and express what should be carefully guarded opinions to foreign reporters. As the situation in Iraq grows worse and worse, Teague realizes that Rafraf will become a target of the insurgents or simply die as a victim of the may...

A Review of the Audiobook Published in 2005 by Hachette Audio Duration: 11 hours, 37 minutes Read by Adam Grupper Unabridged In The Lincoln Lawyer Michael Connelly leaves Harry Bosch behind for a while to introduce a new character - defense attorney Mickey Haller. Haller plays all of the angles all of the time. He knows all of the ins and outs of the L.A. court system and knows all of the ways to create revenue for his practice - he needs every penny because he has two ex-wives and a child to support. Haller saves money by using his car, a roomy Lincoln, as his office. His driver is a client who is working off what he owes to Haller. Haller is asked to defend a very rich Beverly Hills playboy in an attempted rape/murder case and soon Haller's world starts to become even more complicated. Ethical considerations, murder, love of family and the desire for justice for a man unfairly imprisoned all get tangled together. Michael Connelly The audiobook is wonderfully re...

Excellent Series of Essays Victor Davis Hanson's The Father of Us All is an excellent series of essays about war - why we fight, how we fight, the compromises societies make with themselves as they fight, what causes some countries to keep fighting while others grow weary of it, what types of societies deal best with the stresses of war, the future of war and a look at the American way of waging war. Many of these essays have been previously published (or substantial parts of them) in magazines but Hanson has re-worked and amplified them. I only recognized one essay and the new version was longer and more substantive. Hanson is a brilliant essayist - he expands the reader's point of view without talking down to him. Instead, in plain language he discusses large ideas and, happily, he includes plenty of references to other authors and other books that he has found interesting and informative. Reading Hanson is liking talking to an old friend who not only informs, he als...

Are you sure you saw what you think you saw? In a fascinating, humorous and insightful book Chabris and Simons point to the research that shows that you really don't know what you think you know. Why not? Because you're simply not paying attention. Or, maybe you've convinced yourself that they way you think it happened is the way it happened. Or, maybe you are just a horrible judge of your own capabilities. Whichever the cause, we really don't know what we think we know. Chabris and Simons look at research (such as their famous "gorilla" experiment - click here to see it on youtube ), well known events (such as the infamous Neil Reed/Bobby Knight "choking" incident), popular fallacies (such as eyewitnesses being infallible and subliminal messages in movies and TV), continuity errors in movies (and real life experiments that explain why we don't notice them in movies) and faulty conclusions that are promoted by other authors (they are especi...

Fantastic. A must for Petty fans and fans of NASCAR history. Published in 2009 by Audiobook Publishing, LLC. 4 CDs Running time: approximately 4 hours Richard Petty sits down for Richard Petty's Audio Scrapbook with his cousin and long-time crew chief Dale Inman (the only crew chief to win 8 championships) for a retrospective on their legendary careers with Barney Hall, the famed radio voice of NASCAR for 40 years on MRN. Barney begins the interview by having the two cousins tell about their early lives in rural North Carolina. They tell about how they got involved in Lee Petty's racing operation as part-time garage help after school and how, once Richard turned 21, they were able to start racing themselves. The give and take between these two cousins and, more importantly, long-time friends makes this a fun trip down memory lane. Petty's Dodge Charger,  a legendary ride As the interview moves along following Richard's career bits of audio from races are ...

The reviews are right, this is an unoriginal book, everything in it has already been said (literally by McPherson himself!) but when McPherson writes about the Civil War it's worth my time to read what he has to say, and if you are at all interested in the war, it's worthy of your time as well. What is unique about the book is the focus on Lincoln as the leader of the armed forces. Yes, all histories of the war cover this aspect of Lincoln's presidency, but you have to tease it out of the larger text. For example, all of this was more than covered in Doris Kearns Goodwin's 944 page Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (an excellent read, by the way) but if you have little interest in the monetary policy of the Lincoln administration, the vagaries of the Lincoln administration's dealings with the European powers or don't care to read about the Homestead Act of 1862 (which had a profound affect on the development of the West) this may be yo...

 Originally published in 2007. Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia: A State of Becoming is one of the most thorough discussions about the topic of illegal immigration that I have read. Hanson is sympathetic to the plight of the aliens, is intimately familiar with the economic aspects that draw them to America (he owns a vineyard in the Fresno area) and he is witness to the changes and hidden costs that have come to California. He discusses the issue from the point of view of the illegal alien, the employers that hire them, the taxpayers that subsidize them, the way we used to bring immigrants into the larger American culture, the way we do it (or don't do it) now. It is not an anti-immigrant rant, despite some of the comments you may read in the reviews. I found this to be a fascinating read - It is much deeper than Geraldo Rivera's The Great Progression: How Hispanics Will Lead America to a New Era of Prosperity , a book that I've recently read that covers some o...

Chiefs is the debut novel of Stuart Woods. Woods is quite prolific and has gone on to write more than 30 novels. It is the story of a succession of police chiefs in Delano, Georgia, a small town. It reminds me of a James Michener novel in that the main characters change as time progresses, but the story continues on in the same locale. This novel is also the story of race relations in rural Georgia from the 1920s to the 1960s. The characters are very good - there's a wide variety of characters here. One of the sheriffs is especially vile, but you root for him as he is tracking down a serial killer that stalks, rapes and kills young men over the course of 40 years. Stuart Woods has settled in to writing formulaic detective thrillers, like the Stone Barrington novels, but this is undoubtedly the best of his books that I have read. Here is the highest praise I can give it - this book is a book that I wish I had written - it has heart, danger, loyalty and a host of other qualiti...

Well-written. Interesting. Nice amount of details. Originally published in 2003. Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg would be an excellent addition for any visitor to the battlefield. The chapters are short enough that a thoughtful tourist would have no problem reading them as he/she stood there. It is a bit pricey for its size but it's a nifty guidebook nonetheless. I know I've seen similarly-priced tour books that weren't as well-written. It would have helped to have pictures to help orient the tourist, but this would necessitate editing of the book if the Parks Department begins the restoration projects McPherson mentions (and hopes for). These include removing woods that have grown up since the battle and restoring fences and orchards that have been removed. I own a number of McPherson's books - he is this generation's preeminent Civil War historian - and I'll be glad to put this one on the shelf with the others. Whenever I can convince my wife to l...

James McPherson is the gold standard when it comes to writing Civil War history. In The Negro's Civil War, Mcpherson has compiled a fantastic amount of source material concerning how Blacks felt and acted during the Civil War. In the forward McPherson notes that there is "a need for a documentary collection that will present all aspects of the Negro's role in the war largely in the Negro's own words...this book is designed to fill that need." McPherson strings together quote after quote from Black newspapers, letters and speeches with relatively sparse commentary in between. There was an unexplained hole in the record and, thankfully, McPherson filled it. The book addresses 22 topics - from pre-war commentary on Abraham Lincoln to postwar lamentations about the failure of Reconstruction. James McPherson My thoughts: Unfortunately, the very strength of this book (all of the quotes) made it, at times, a tedious read for me. I found the style of the bo...

Published in 2009 by Beacon Press. The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul is the story of a Malcolm Garcia, an on-again, off-again international correspondent that makes several trips to Afghanistan (and one to Pakistan that is not really a part of the story but is interesting nonetheless). Readers get to see a refugee camp up close, the physical degradation of Kabul, the sense of hope when American soldiers threw out the Taliban, the confusion of Afghanistan's government, the Afghan people's unfailing politeness to guests and, ultimately, the despair of Afghanistan - what one Afghan refugee calls "a tired country." While other reviewers have had complaints about Garcia's behaviors (couldn't remember names, etc.) I found this book exactly fit the bill for what I wanted: an eyewitness perspective of what it is like in Afghanistan. I was reminded of Rory Stewart's magnificent book The Places In Between . It is a series of snapshots ove...

Originally published in 2008. Winner of Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, 2008 Mouse Guard transports the reader into a new world (albeit, a tiny one) in which mice live in a medieval society with cities, towns and outposts, protected by the Mouse Guard, a group of trained soldiers who travel in small groups or individually, sort of like the famed Texas Rangers. While there's not a whole lot of background or character development there are a lot of wonderful pictures (just about any page could be blown up to make a wonderful poster) that move the story along at a whiz-bang pace - a thrill-a-minute introduction to this small world. These mice are not Mickey nor the Rescuers, these mice of the Guard are tough, fearless, smart and willing to sacrifice everything to live according to their principles. I rate this book 5 stars out of a possible 5 stars. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 . Reviewed on June 14, 2010.

Hardcover published in 2009. Winner of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, 2008. I only discovered Mouse Guard last week and have already shot through both volumes: Fall 1152 and Winter 1152. Now, I am eagerly waiting for more to come out. You really need to start with Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 in order to understand what is happening in Volume 2. For some, the action is too slow, but I think Petersen has paced the story fairly well. In just this volume, a fearsome hunter is defeated, a hero dies, a new hero takes up his mantle (?), two romances start, a traitor is exposed, a political settlement is achieved (?), the good guys save the day and they may have discovered a fearsome threat to their homeland that they didn't realize was quite so close. Throw in all of this with some of the most beautiful comic art I've ever seen and you can see why I find Mouse Guard to be such a treat. I ratee this book 5 stars out of a possible 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: M...

Published in 2008 by Syracuse University Press. Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II by Norman H. Gershman is full of beautiful stories of people helping people in the face of evil. In Albania, a country directly located across the Adriatic Sea from the "boot" of Italy, nearly two thousand Jews were saved from Nazi persecution in 1943 and 1944. Albania was fairly unique in that it had been majority Muslim for centuries. While Italy occupied Albania, the Jews were relatively safe, but with the withdrawal of Italy in September 1943, the Nazis assumed control of the country until late 1944. Photographer Norman H. Gershman travelled throughout Albania and neighboring Kosovo gathering family stories of the people who risked their lives and property hiding Jews in the surrounding countryside, in barns, in guest homes and, in many cases, taking them in their own households and claiming they were extended family. The book's title comes from the Albanian for giving on...