DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2005. Winner of the 2006 Alex Award from the American Library Association. Winner of the 2006 New Visions Nonfiction Book Award from the Quality Paperback Book Club. Note: I read because it is on a list of books that Republicans have asked to be banned in one way or another. I call it the  GOP Censorship List . More about that down below.  Julia Scheeres grew up in around Lafayette, Indiana. She grew up in a fundamentalist household. When she begins this memoir, she has older brothers and sisters who have moved out of the house and lives with her parents and two adopted brothers out in the country outside of Lafayette. Her family is unique in that her two adopted brothers are black and the rest of the family is white. The first part of the book deals with her horrible home and school life. At home, her father is mostly a distant figure. He returns home from work and dispenses discipline - often with great physical violence. These are not spankings - these are beatings wi

  Published in 2008 by Random House Audio. Read by John H. Mayer. Duration: 17 hours, 16 minutes. Unabridged. A reconstruction of what the Viking village in Newfoundland may have looked like Tony Horwitz set out to fill in a big gap in his understanding of American history. He vaguely knew that the Vikings arrived in the New World and did something or other and he knew about Columbus' voyage in 1492 and he knew about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock and the First Thanksgiving in 1621, but what happened in between? Also, what about the people that were already here? Horwitz decided to find out what he didn't know and this book is a combined travelogue and history lesson. He starts with the small failed Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada, moves on to the Dominican Republic to learn about Columbus and comes to the United States to look at the first Spanish explorers and settlements in New Mexico and Florida. He also looks at the epic and eventually tragic expeditions of explo