DWD's Reviews

"He chose to live a bold life rather than settle for mediocrity" Published by Back Bay Books in 2006. "The only certainty about Columbus is that, for better or worse, he chose to live a bold life rather than settle for mediocrity." (p. 268) That is how Dugard ends a lively and informative biography of Christopher Columbus. As the title indicates, Dugard focuses on the fourth voyage of Columbus and its successes and mishaps. In order to properly place this voyage in its correct context, he uses the first half of the book to give the reader a fairly comprehensive biography of Columbus, as well as a thorough look at the politics of the day and other voyages of exploration, especially those of the Spanish and Portuguese. Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) Columbus has been a whipping boy for the politically correct crowd for decades now. Dugard does a solid job of putting Columbus's actions in their proper context without becoming an apologist ...

Written like a textbook with double columns, American History Revised is intended to be a supplement to the history your high school textbook ignored or glossed over. This is a fine goal because almost every history textbook is a dry, tedious tome that bores its readers to sleep before they can learn any history. "American History Revised" approaches this challenge with a scatter-gun style of random facts that are very loosely grouped into categories like "Forgotten by History", "In Pursuit of Riches" and "Simple Mathematics, My Dear Watson." I can only imagine that those who are not already well-acquainted with history would find this jumping back and forth style quite confusing. But, that is not the reason for my concern. I am concerned because there are blatant untruths throughout the text. "Facts" that are not facts. Please note that I an reviewing an uncorrected proof and maybe, just maybe these items have been addressed i...