DWD's Reviews

The first edition cover Published with the alternate title "The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death." Originally published in 1969. Listed in Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels Since 1923. Slaughterhouse-Five is the most famous, most celebrated, and most controversial novel of Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007.)  My synopsis: The book serves as a memoir to Vonnegut's horrific experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II and as a sci-fi exploration of the concept of time travel.  Vonnegut's very green unit was rotated to the front in December of 1944 in order to give experienced combat troops a break. The weather was bad, the terrain was bad, and the Germans had been retreating regularly. It was presumed that the Germans would be content to settle in to winter quarters, rest, refit, and pick up the fighting in 1945.  Instead, the Germans launched a surprise offensive and what followed was the Battle of the Bulge . Lots of Americans were captured and taken back...

Originally published in 1962 Mother Night  is one of Kurt Vonnegut's (1922-2007) early novels (his third) and the first that is not a work of science fiction.  The book features Howard W. Campbell, a defendant awaiting trial in Israel for war crimes in Israel. He is wanted for being a well-known voice for the Nazis on broadcasts that he made during World War II.  Campbell freely admits that he did what they say he did, but he does have a defense - he was working as a double agent for the Americans and was passing secret messages during those broadcasts.  The book sets itself up to be a legal thriller - will the hero of the book be saved? Can he prove what he says is true? But, there's none of that in this book. Campbell probably would have been the voice of the Nazis in the broadcasts no matter if he was recruited as a spy or not? He is just a self-absorbed author of plays that was way more concerned about bedding his German wife than politics or any "trivial" things...

  Originally published in serial form in Raw magazine from 1980-1991. Originally published in book form in 1991 by Pantheon Books. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Years ago, the high school where I used to teach had a daily silent reading time. We were encouraged to build a classroom library and I had a great one. Two stand alone shelves (one tall, one short) and a little rug in the corner with a chair. I had a lot of books from a lot of different genres but the star books were Of Mice and Men and the two volume paperback version of  Maus . Kids kept on stealing Of Mice and Men (If a kid likes it so much that he doesn't want to return it - fine by me) but so many students read Maus that the paperback binding broke and the pages fell out. It was held together with binder clips and big rubber bands.  What I remember about that book is that every student reverently took off that ridiculous clip and the big rubber band, spread the pages out and just read. Students wh...

  Published by Blackstone Publishing in September of 2022. Read by Nicole Zanzerella. Duration: 12 hours, 6 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: An Enigma Machine from World War II. Patton Harcourt is a very small town librarian in North Carolina. One morning, while cooking in the kitchen, a sniper round comes through her window and nearly hits her. She reacts well (thanks to her previous career in the military) and finds a stranger at her door.  He is not the sniper, but he is an assassin that was hired to kill another person in town. Against her better judgment, she joins with the assassin to elude the sniper team. All of that happens in the first 10 minutes or so of this audiobook. From there, they discover a handmade copy of World War II Enigma machine (the British machine that broke the German secret codes) and are off to confront modern-day Neo-Nazis... My Review: This book was certainly action-packed, extremely fast-paced ,and had some good moments. But, it also had some prac...

  Published in 2021 by Pushkin Industries. Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell. Duration: 5 hours, 14 minutes. Unabridged. Before there was a U.S. Air Force, there was the U.S. Army Air Corps. Before the Army Air Corps (re-organized as the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942) built the largest collection of flying fighting machines to relentlessly bomb the Axis Powers in World War II, they had a tiny budget and a few air bases. One of these was Maxwell Field, a training facility in Alabama. That facility became the intellectual home of a group of pilots who espoused the concept of precision bombing. They were known as The Bomber Mafia. Precision bombing is the theory that teaches that you don't have to blow an enemy's entire military to pieces, you can just hit certain key industries and choke out their ability to produce more weapons/feed their people/move soldiers and so on. This was intended to be a more humane way to wage war - an antidote to the mass slaughter the world saw in W...

  Published by Hourly History in 2020. 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 in. The long history of India is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of ignorance. Subhas Chandra Bose was one of those people for me. I had heard of him, but only described as sort of an "anti-Ghandi". He wanted independence as much as Ghandi did, but thought the non-violent protests were a waste of time. Subhas Chandra Bose was not only willing to fight - he thought it was the only way India would be free of English rule. Bose was born in India but formally educated in England. He was poised to take his place in the bureaucracy of colonial India. But, he rejected that offer and became active in the independence movement.  As World War II loomed, Bose saw it as an opportunity to free India. He approached the Fascist powe...

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Peter Berkrot. Duration: 11 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. Just a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart was a new recruit in the U.S. Army angling for the chance to fly a bomber in combat. At the time, he was the reigning male actor in Hollywood, having recently received the Oscar for Best Actor . But, deep down, Jimmy Stewart wanted to continue the family tradition of military service. The Army tried to divert Stewart to a non-combat role, aided by some string-pulling by his movie studio. But, Stewart pulled some strings of his own and eventually found himself training to fly bombers, despite the fact that he was easily at least ten years older than all of the other trainees. Stewart and his men flew their bombers to England and joined the massive collection of planes involved in the bombing campaign in November of 1943. Stewart's age and extensive pre-war flying experience played a part in hi...

I have rarely been carried into another (horrible) world so thoroughly as I was by this audiobook. Published by HighBridge Audio in April of 2012. Read by Kyle Munley. Duration: 12 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. Paul Grossman's   The Children of Wrath is a dark detective story set in one of the most tragic situations in all of history: The Weimar Republic in the weeks before the rise of the Nazis. A series of murders of boys combined with the impending failure of Germany's experiment with democracy, the collapse of the American stock market and the open street fighting between the Nazis and the Communists makes this tragic piece drip with a sense of the impending descent of Germany into the madness that enveloped it after the Nazis took command. Willi Kraus is the only Jewish detective in the Berlin police force (and perhaps all of Germany). He is a decorated veteran of World War I but his country treats him with no respect because he is Jewish. His fellow detectives...

Good history - for 4th to 8th graders I am reviewing this as a high school world history teacher who is looking for high-quality historical fiction of all skill levels that I can add to my classroom library. While Spy for the Night Riders: Martin Luther is too easy for the average high school student, it would be a good fit for the 'reluctant reader' or the student interested in the Reformation. The plot moves along pretty quickly and does a good job of telling about Martin Luther's big moment at the Diet of Worms and his travels immediately before and after his hearing. Some previous knowledge of the Reformation would be helpful. I give this one 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon here:  Spy for the Night Riders (Trailblazer Books Book 3) Reviewed on May 6, 2006.