DWD's Reviews

Published by Del Rey in 2014. Illustrated by Caanan White. Synopsis: The Harlem Hellfighters is Max Brooks' history of an all African American unit (the 369th Infantry) that fought on the Western Front alongside French units. They mostly came from New York. This unit was allowed to fight precisely because they were assigned to a mostly French army. The American army would not let African Americans fight and had originally used the 369th as laborers, alongside civilian laborers. The French were in need of immediate manpower. French white soldiers already had experience fight alongside regiments of soldiers from their African colonies and were eager to bring American troops to the front, no matter their color. The 369th spent more time than almost any other American unit on the front lines. They may have spent the most time on the front lines. They were the first Allied unit to reach the Rhine River.  Legend has it that the nickname "The Harlem Hellfighters" was given to t...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024. Read by the author, Fareed Zakaria Duration: 13 hours, 2 minutes. Unabridged. Fareed Zakaria's Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present  is exactly what the title says it is. Zakaria writes about the beginnings of capitalism, multi-cultural societies, globalism, democracy, the industrial revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Fascism, the failed Arab Spring, LGBTQ+ rights, and the rise illiberal democracy and the return on authoritarianism and the forces that pushed back (or overturned) them. The author Zakaria has clearly done his research and writes in such a way that it flows from one topic to another almost as if they entire book was just one big story (which it is, if you look at it as the story of humanity, especially The West.) If you find yourself wondering how we got here, this is a good place to start. Zakaria breaks down complex movements and ideas and makes them understandable. ...

  Published in 2022 by Hourly History This was a very odd choice for me to read for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't normally enjoy the gossip magazine type of stories. 2) I don't follow the modern English royal family - I find them to be annoying. 3) I don't really follow the English royal family in the history books, either. Here's how we got here.  Hourly History offers several free e-books every weekend and I picked up the book on Princess Diana for some unknown reason. And, six months later I accidentally picked the Princess Diana book with my fat thumb while using my e-reader app on my phone. I could have removed the download, but I decided to just go with it. Turns out, this was a happy accident. I am not going to go over Diana's life story in this review. I will just say that this rather short biography (the publisher intends that its books take about an hour to read) was interesting and pleasant to read. A lot of it was information I remember just from bei...

E-book Published by Amazon Digital Services in 2010. I have a real soft spot for books about travel - especially travel in odd ways. I have read a book about a guy who backpacked across Europe, a man who hiked across Afghanistan in 2002, a man who biked from England to India, two women who biked from Turkey to China, a man who hiked from Mexico to the Darien Gap in Panama, the same man hiked the length of the Nile River, a man who found a little dog while in a hiking competition in the Gobi Desert, a man who hiked all 48 mountains in New Hampshire with his little schnauzer dog, and more. One of these travel stories was by this author, Keith Foskett. Last year, I read the story of his trip up the Pacific Crest Trail  - from Mexico to Canada and almost all in the mountains. This hike was much more sedate and featured less extremes in the weather. The Camino de Santiago is a well-established route. It has been an pilgrimage route for more than 1,000 years and in the last 30 years or ...

  Published by Hourly History in December of 2022. The short histories produced by  Hourly History  are designed to read in about an hour. In some cases the size limit makes for a very incomplete history. In this case, I thought that topic and the size limit matched up pretty well. The Gallipoli Campaign was an unmitigated disaster during World War I. Winston Churchill (yes, the famous one from World War II) was the head of British navy and thought up a plan to do three things: 1) relieve the pressure on Russia from the Germans and the Ottomans; 2) possibly knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war; 3) encourage the Germans to divert more troops away from the French front to support the Ottoman Empire. The plan Churchill came up with was to land thousands of soldiers from France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the edge of the Aegean Sea in a quick and bold attack. Troops from Australia and New Zealand landing at  Gallipoli - April 25, ...

Published by Recorded Books in 2012. Read by L.J. Ganser. Duration: 16 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. In 1783, at the end of the Revolutionary War, Loyalists (Americans who opposed the American Revolution and stayed loyal to Britain) had a choice to make - stay and ride out the anti-Loyalist bias in the United States or move somewhere else. In the two years between the last major engagement (Yorktown) and the official end of the war and withdrawal of British troops the British decided to evacuate any Loyalists that wanted to go to other parts of the British Empire. One of the biggest advocates of this position was Guy Carleton, the British commander in America after Yorktown who later went on to become the Governor-in-Chief of Canada. He had more to do with what happened in this history than any other single person. Guy Carleton (1724-1808) The British government made an effort to make things right for these Loyalists. Not many Loyalists were completely reimbursed, but the fact that an...

  E-book published by Hourly History in 2020. Hourly History specializes in histories and biographies that take about an hour to read. In the case of the Crimean War (1853-1856), I think that's about right. The war was the result of European alliance politics. Russia was looking to push into Ottoman territory. The Ottomans were considered to be pretty weak and certainly on the decline after centuries of being a major power. The Austrian Empire was a traditional ally to the Russians, but decided to stay neutral. The Prussians were just starting out so no one really cared what they did. Even though they had been traditional rivals for centuries, England and France decided that they had to intervene on behalf of the Ottoman Empire in order to stop Russia from becoming too powerful.  The French and the English sent troops all of the way to the Ottoman Empire and then up into the Black Sea and landed troops on the Crimean Peninsula and the war was on. The war itself is worthy of n...

  E-book published in 2019 by Hourly History . Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour. I think the Hundred Years War is one of those topics.  Before I read this book I knew a few facts about the war: It was over dynastic struggles over the throne of France, the Battle of Agincourt, Joan of Arc. Nothing in this book is incorrect, but I didn't really learn a lot more than I knew before. There is a parade of kings, royal family members and advisors - but there's rarely any detail that makes it interesting. For example, the book mentions an insane French king, but it does not mention that he believed that he was made out of glass and believed that he had to be careful that he would get bumped over and would smash to pieces.  If you know literally nothing of the war, this is an adequate place to start. I rate this audiobo...

Published by Hourly History in 2019. Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour. I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The British Royal Family is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of my own ignorance. King Henry VII of England (1457-1509) Henry VII was the king that ended the a civil war between competing royal families - The War of the Roses. It was not a sure thing, though. It was a long shot for him to even survive, let alone make it to the throne. Normally, these complicated royal stories bore me, but this one had a lot of dramatic elements - murder of children, escapes, battles, betrayal, the death of a k...

  Published in 2020 by Hourly History. Despite me having talked extensively about Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in my recent review of an e-book about Francisco Franco , I am not an expert on Picasso, but I know way more than the average person. He has some paintings that I really like, but I am mostly not a fan.  This short biography hit the spot in that it covered the details of his life without focusing too much on one particular part. This covered his 70+ year career in an even manner and included his personal life well. Pablo Picasso in 1962 The real weakness of this e-book was the fact that they couldn't license his paintings and insert them into the book. But, since I read this on my cell phone it was pretty easy to switch to the browser and search the piece of art that was being discussed and take a look at it. I wasn't much of a fan of Picasso as a person before I read this book and my impression was not changed one bit. I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be foun...

  Published by Random House Audio in November of 2021. Read by Steve Hendrickson. Duration: 16 hours, 31 minutes. Unabridged. When I read the title of this audiobook, OUR FIRST CIVIL WAR: PATRIOTS and LOYALISTS in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION , I was sure that I was going to be listening to an in-depth look at how the population of the young United States dealt with its neighbors and family that disagreed about the question of independence. The most famous example is Benjamin Franklin and his son William Franklin. William Franklin was the last royal governor of New Jersey and their relationship never recovered from the shock of the Revolutionary War.  This book deals with more of these issues than most histories of the Revolutionary War era, but that is not particularly hard to do - most of them mention the Franklin family situation and use it as a stand-in for all families. But, it does not go in-depth into this concept of Loyalists vs. Patriots. For example, I learned more about ...

  Published in 2014 by The New Press Synopsis: It is 1914 and World War I is starting. This story is about 5 young men who live in a small town in France leave together to join the fight.  If you have studied this war, you know that this war was a meat grinder from one end of it to the other, but the beginning of any war is especially rough. The technologies have changed but the techniques have not kept up. Men die and get maimed out of ignorance. This war is no different. My Review: I have no problem with the depiction of anything in this book. But, I do have a problem with the book's lack of passion. No one is particularly excited about life before the war, during the war and definitely not after the war. Everything is stated matter of factly. I lnow it's a style thing but it served to push me away from the story rather than draw me in. If the characters can't muster enough interest to care, why should I? I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com he...

  Published in 2015 by Thomas Nelson. Read by Dave Hoffman. Duration: 6 hours, 38 minutes. Unabridged A Hobbit, a Wardrobe and a Great War is a decent introductory history of World War I from the point of view of the common English soldier, a decent (but incomplete) look at the philosophical and religious trends of the West before and after World War I, decent introductory biographies of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and really kind of a pleasant mess of a book. Tolkien (1892-1973) and Lewis (1898-1963) All of these topics are thrown into the mix in a willy nilly. If that concept bugs you, this is not your book. I found it to be a pleasant enough listen, even if not particularly deep.  I think the author makes his best points about the complete and utter waste and despair of a World War I battlefield when he compares it to the waste and desolation of Tolkien's Middle Earth battlefields and its heroes. The heroes are not generally the big leaders - they are flawed. They refuse...

Published in 2007 by W.W. Norton and Company. First a bit of traditional blogging. I was going through some old receipts because I had plenty of time on my hands thanks to the Coronavirus lockdowns. This pile of receipts was 12 years old. It included some golden oldies like a Blockbuster receipt. I also found a receipt for this book. I had gotten a great deal on For Liberty and Glory - and it sat in my To-Be-Read pile for 12 years. I had no idea it was in that pile for that long. If you had asked me before I found the receipt, I would guess it had been 4 or 5 years at most. At that moment, this book moved to the top of my To-Be-Read pile. I should have read it long before now - it was an excellent read. Originally, I picked up this book because I simply didn't know much about Lafayette. I've read plenty of biographies of Washington and histories of the American Revolution. Lafayette always comes into the story somewhere in the middle. There's always a build up, with the ...

A question of who will find whom first.  Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2012. Read by Armand Schultz Duration: 12 hours, 3 minutes. Brad Thor changes things up a bit for his long-running character Scot Harvath in this installment. Usually, Harvath is out in the world at large fighting international terrorists. Harvath's unique talents and dogged determination make him a very powerful weapon in the world of counter-terrorism. In Black List , Harvath and a member of the Athena team (the all female Delta Force-type unit) are attacked when entering a safe house in Paris, France. She dies and Harvath barely escapes. He uses his extensive contacts to work his way to safety and try to figure out how the safe house was compromised. As he tries to re-connect to his employer it dawns on him that his entire network of operatives is under attack - and this time the enemy is not a terrorist network. This time, the enemy is an American enemy and Harvath is coming home to ...