DWD's Reviews

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...

Looks like I've got a new series to read! Published in 2001. A fter reading rave reviews for another C.J. Box book on Amazon.com, I decided to give the series a try. So, I found the first one, Open Season , and gave it a chance. In spite of being able to tell who the bad guys were from the first 75 pages (including motivations), this is one heck of a good story. The characters are interesting. Joe Pickett is as likable of a protagonist as you can imagine and his job is interesting. The descriptions of the countryside are also quite vivid and easy to imagine. The drama is real and visceral. The conversations don't sound forced or contrived. In short, despite being a first novel, this is really very, very good, in spite of the transparent plot. Maybe even because of it - I could see the big climax coming from a mile away but the entire time I was wondering how bad it would be when it happened. I rated this book 5 stars out of a possible 5 stars. This book can be found o...

What's not to like? The Yogi Book is a short book but worth your time to read. Yogi explains the origin of his famous timeless expressions and includes lots of fun pictures to boot. It won't take you long to read but you'll read it more than once. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Yogi Book .  Reviewed July 10, 2010

Nearly 20 years ago I saw the movie The Last of the Mohicans . I knew it was probably not too much like the books, but I was inspired to read James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales I; The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie , a collection of his work featuring Natty Bumpo (Hawkeye) and I found them to be horrible. Not just bad, but darn near unreadable. Note that I am a top reviewer at Amazon. I love books. I hate this author even though I love American history (I am a history teacher), I love frontier stories and I was certainly pre-disposed to like his works. But, I've always kept my opinions to myself, despite the fact that he had one sentence that lasted more than two pages describing a banquet table that featured a near endless string of semi-colons. James Fenimore Cooper Until now. If Mark Twain, the quintessential American writer finds Cooper wordy, clunky and darn near unreadable (to be specific, Twain calls his work "a crime agains...

Before reading this brilliant essay you must be familiar with Percy Bysshe Shelley , a 19th century English poet and perhaps, nowadays, most famous for being married to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein . His most famous bit of poetry in modern times is: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Before reading this essay, read a short online biography about Mr. Shelley so that you can follow along with some knowledge of the basics. Twain's essay is actually a long review of a biography of Shelley by Edward Dowden: Life of Shelley , a book that is extremely dismissive of Harriet Shelley, Percy Shelley's first wife - the one he left pregnant and with a child at home so that he could run away to Europe with Mary. In no way is Twain's essay fair towards Percy Shelley - it does not try to be and I do not think that it should be. It's hard to defend a man who leaves his pregnant wife for a teenag...

Rules of Betrayal  is the third installment of the "Rules" series starring Jonathon and Emma Ransom. Jonathon is a doctor who has worked with Doctors Without Borders in the past but is now freelancing in Afghanistan. His wife is a former double agent who was assigned to marry Dr. Ransom and his world-hopping assignments as a member of Doctors Without Borders as a cover to do her spy work in the past. All of this is quite complicated, but deftly explained by Reich in the first few pages of his new book. I had never even heard of Reich before I read this book, let alone read the other books in the series and I was not lost (although I will not be going back to the other books to catch up either - Reich has already caught me up). The premise of the book is that Dr. Ransom and his estranged wife Emma are both caught up in an international arms deal that involves the Taliban attempting to get hold of a WMD that the U.S. Air Force lost in 1984 in the mountains of Pakistan n...