DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2020 by Random House Audio. Read by the author, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. Duration: 4 hours, 53 minutes. Unabridged. Villavicencio is a "Dreamer", also known as a DACA kid. DACA is the program started by President Obama to deal with immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. Generally speaking, the only country they've ever known is the United States and they had no say in immigrating to the United States. Congress refused to deal with this situation so President Obama created a program through executive orders. This meant that when President Trump came to office he was able to undo a lot of this plan with another executive order.  Villavicencio's very personal look at the DACA program and the general mess of our immigration policy in The Undocumented Americans was inspired by the election of Donald Trump, but it was not what I was hoping for when I started listening to this audiobook. I was really hoping for policy analysis wit...

Published in September of 2020 by Macmillan Audio. Read by Kevin Stillwell. Duration: 4 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. MacWilliams is a sociologist who studies authoritarianism. He has done a number of surveys over American attitudes towards the Constitution and the freedoms of their fellow citizens and there are areas of concern that he outlines in On Fascism . For example, "31% of Americans agree that having a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections is a good way of governing the United States" and "30% of Americans agree with the statement 'I often find myself fearful of other people of other races.'" Other stats of concern are: "44% of Americans agree that increasing racial, religious and ethnic diversity represents a threat to the security of the United States" When you break down the numbers about "18 percent of Americans are highly disposed to authoritarianism. Another 23 percent or so are attitudinally jus...

Published by Beacon Press in May of 2018. Read by Ron Butler. Duration: 11 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. Howard Bryant's The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America and the Politics of Patriotism takes a hard look at athletes, particularly African-American athletes, using their position to make commentary of social issues. Bryant brings a wealth of experience as a sports writer for ESPN.com, ESPN the Magazine and NPR.  Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Olympics  Bryant does not come at this topic as a person critical of athletes taking political stances. Rather, he is very much in favor of it since athletes have a very large soapbox that they can climb upon and shout from, if they chose to do so. Some have. Bryant speaks in great detail about Jackie Robinson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tommie Smith, John Carlos and especially Muhammad Ali. Bryant starts, oddly in my mind, with someone who was an athlete (played 15 games in the NFL in the 1920's for teams that n...

Published in May of 2016 The 2016 Presidential election cycle has been wild, to say the least. A rookie politician with an unstoppable mouth and a veteran politician with a long, checkered past are an unlikely pairing. Throw in a couple of strong third party candidates and the fact that these are the two most hated candidates in a generation and you may very well have an election in which no one wins a majority of the votes in the electoral college. What would happen in no one actually wins, or if it is too close to call? Aaron Burr (1756-1836) Veteran White House correspondent Fred Lucas gives us some insight as he tells the story of six troubled Presidential elections: 1800, 1824, 1876, 1888, 1960 and 2000. With each election Lucas describes the political environment of the time, the major players in the election and the reasons why it became a disputed election. He details how it finally worked out and then offers informed speculation as to what would have happened if the...

Published in 2012 by HighBridge Audio Multicast performance Duration: 2 hours, 16 minutes This collection was inspired by listeners who wrote NPR and commented on why these stories from their vast treasure trove of stories have stuck with them for so long. Some are funny, some are sad and some are thought-provoking. They are also a mixed bag. Some are great, some are so-so and some had me wondering why they were included at all. Pretty typical of the collection is a skit called "Complexities of Modern Love in the Digital Age". It features the two voice actors that you most typically hear when you call a big corporation for customer service and they lead you through the phone tree. In this case, they have the two voices talk to one another and date. The idea is sort of cute but the actual skit was not as funny as the idea of the skit. A Kathy Griffin interview. Eh.  The Cookie Monster interview was fun. I loved the story about a stray cat that wandered into ...

This 2009 edition has been updated to reflect new developments and includes new material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. I am torn about this book.  If you are not familiar with Pat Tillman, in the broadest terms, he was an NFL player who quit the NFL to join the army after the 9/11 attacks. Where Men Win Glory  focuses intently about the war in Afghanistan, the ongoing war (when this review was written in 2014) that has been mostly forgotten and ignored. Krakauer's review of the recent history of Afghanistan makes this book worth reading in and of itself. For most people, the reasons that Al Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base of operations is murky at best. The descriptions of how Tillman's unit operated and where they traveled are very vivid. Krakauer's 2000 Presidential election spin (the Florida recount - he only tells part of the story and does not mention numerous "recounts" by the media had Bush winning - about as many as had Gore w...

Published in January of 2014 by Regnery Publishing I n 2012 Kevin D. Freeman published Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It Can Happen Again . In that book, Freeman detailed how America's financial markets are vulnerable to manipulation by foreign powers by creating bubbles (like in the oil markets). Individual companies could also be targeted, individual sectors or the markets as a whole. The first part of Game Plan is a brief review of the vulnerabilities he described in Secret Weapon . To be honest, if you have not read S ecret Weapon , you can read Game Plan and get the general idea. He also includes updates, including letting his readers know that he has briefed the Pentagon on these vulnerabilities.  T he New York Stock Exchange. Photo by Urban. The rest of the book is devoted to telling the reader about the strengths and weaknesses of various kinds of investments, such as stocks, bonds, gold, etc. in a period of ...

Excellent and Quite Enjoyable. Originally published in 2003 by Doubleday We all understand that wars can profoundly change the world. History is full of wars that brought giant transformations, such as Alexander's conquest of Persia (and just about everything else he saw) and the spread of Hellenistic culture, the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and Peru and the Cold War stand off that shaped the world after World War II. If you have ever heard the phrase "In a post-9/11 world..." that tells you that the world has been changed by the War on Terror.  The simple idea behind Ripples of Battle is that it's not just wars but oftentimes single battles that change things. And, sometimes, it's not the battle that everyone knows, but a lesser-known battle that causes the most change. He uses the familiar image of a rock tossed into a lake with the outgoing ripples from the point of impact being the change. And, he does a pretty thorough job of showing that these rip...

Very Interesting History of the Modern Presidency Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2012 Read by Bob Walter Duration: 22 hours, 1 minute Unabridged Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, both editors at Time , have delivered a very listenable, fascinating look at each American president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. No matter their political persuasion, their life experiences or their qualities as a human being, all 12 of these men share one thing: they were once President. This is an exclusive club and it seems that just about every president has looked to a former president for a shoulder to lean on, advice or even as a personal envoy sent to convey a sense of urgency to the message. The Presidents Club is told in a rough chronological order starting with Truman. When Truman was President there was only one other member of the Presidents Club: Herbert Hoover. Yes, the same Hoover that Truman and FDR disparaged for 12 years. However, to his credit, Truman sent ou...

Published by Dell in 2012. Originally published in in 2007 by Delacorte Press I must live under a rock. I had not read any Jack Reacher novel until I read this one and I had not even heard of the series until last summer when a fellow blogger was excitedly talking about the latest release. So, what did I think? First of all, you do not have to have read any of the rest of the series to follow what is happening in this story. Jack Reacher is a drifter and he has been since he retired from the U.S. Army in 1997. In the military he led an investigation squad of the military police. Like Clint Eastwood's famed " Man WIth No Name " character from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Reacher says little, keeps his own counsel and does what he thinks is best, follow his own sense of justice and drifts from place to place. Lee Child In Bad Luck and Trouble , Reacher receives a message from a former member of his unit. He tracks her down and discovers that another fo...

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...

Very, very, very good. 5 discs. 6 hours. Read by Dick Hill Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies, But Some Actual Journalism  is a collection of Dave Barry's columns from the summer of 2000 through September of 2002. They are read expertly by veteran narrator Dick Hill. I usually hear Hill reading crime novels and the like but I was pleased to hear that he has expert comic timing and turns out to be a perfect narrator for Barry's offbeat sense of humor. Veteran reader Dick Hill Topics include: *The 2000 Democrat and Republican political conventions; *The 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games; *The Census; *Camping in a Wal-Mart parking lot; *and the silly tips in Cosmo magazine on how women can drive men wild. Dave ends with two long essays about 9/11. One was published on 9/12 and does a great job of summing up the raw feelings and shock of the time. The second essay is much longer - by far the longest of the book. It was published on the one year anniversary of 9...

My first foray into P.J. O'Rourke's books Published by Brilliance Audio Duration: 5 hours, 48 minutes Read by Dick Hill Unabridged I've read some of P.J. O'Rourke's columns and have heard an interview or two so I knew that I would most likely find one of his books to be most interesting. To begin with, I found Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism mostly dead-on accurate and depressing. Observations about the War in Bosnia, human nature in general and Israel were factually interesting but mostly deflating. Not that I am overly optimistic about human nature (being both a history major and a Lutheran has given me a fairly low opinion about the character of humanity) but P.J.'s account was even getting to me. But, in the middle it picks up - ironically with his description of 9/11 and the days that followed in Washington, D.C. I found his observations to be keen, interesting and, in an odd way, hopeful. His descriptions of the pro-Palestinian...

A thinking person's action adventure novel Set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, The Warlord's Son features Skelly, a middle-aged foreign correspondent who has decided to come out or retirement to find one last big story. It also concerns his "fixer", or translator, Najeeb - the outcast son of a border area warlord and Najeeb's girlfriend Daliya. The story passes from one to the other and the reader gets quite a bit of insight into the culture of this border area. The action is quick and good when it happens and the reader experiences the intrigue of all of the overlapping political, financial and cultural interests of the area. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Warlord's Son by Dan Fesperman . Reviewed on November 6, 2009.