DWD's Reviews

  Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in October of 2020. Read by the author, Pete Buttigeig. Duration: 4 hours, 46 minutes. Unabridged.   Pete Buttigeig was, for me, the most interesting Democrat that sought the 2020 nomination. The first I ever heard of was a lengthy interview he gave on NPR when no one on the national level had ever heard of him. I found him to be thoughtful and serious and open to new ideas and discussion.  This book is a short discussion on how politics (and life in general) depends on a certain level of trust to proceed. There is nothing really new here, but it is a worthwhile discussion and it is good to hear it reiterated in a time when trust is so short. To his credit, Pete Buttigeig doesn't feel the need just to stretch out a book just to pad the number of pages. At the end of the audiobook is a recording of Mayor Pete's speech where he announces that he is ending his Presidential campaign. I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on

  Published in 2020 by Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books. Read by James Patrick Cronin. Duration: 9 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged . Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living under assumed names around Houston, Texas. They are in hiding (the story eventually lets the reader know why) and live off of the grid as much as possible.  Tennant is a retired soldier who served a very rough tour in Iraq. He still has the skills that helped him survive: he is hyper-vigilant and always carries a weapon and tourniquet. On a trip to the mall to buy a new pair of boots a man attracts his attention. When he moves away, Tennant is relieved. When the man opens fire in a clothing store, Tennant leaps into action. He kills the shooter and saves a mother's life with his tourniquet.  And he runs because he knows he will be on the news and the people who desperately want to find Sean and Molly will be coming... I am a big fan of what I call "the chase book." That is a book where the hero

  Published by Octane Press in September of 2020. I thoroughly enjoyed this autobiography because John Andretti was my favorite race car driver - period.  I have watched auto racing for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are going to qualifications for the Indy 500. I have Janet Guthrie's autograph - not realizing when I got it that it was actually an amazing autograph to have. The sound of a single car circling the track with the roar and whine of the engine (it has both sounds at the same time) echoing off of the stands makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The history at that track cannot be topped by any other venue in the world. I attended my first NASCAR race at Michigan in 1981 with my father. The spectacle of the whole thing was amazing. It was won by my favorite driver at the time, Richard Petty. In 1986, we went to our first Indy 500 and haven't missed one since (the 2020 race doesn't count since no spectators were allowed due to Cov

Published in 2013. If you were a kid in central Indiana in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's you knew the local kid's TV show stars of Channel 4: Janie, Cowboy Bob, and Peggy. If your parents let you stay up late to watch scary movies, you also know Sammy Terry and his evil laugh. This book tells the story of how these characters came to be, why the television landscape favored these types of shows at the time and why they are no longer around nowadays. Getting to know a little about each of the actual people behind the TV characters was a lot of fun. Sammy Terry - an all-around TV guy and the owner of a music store. Janie - an elementary school teacher. Cowboy Bob - a musician and a TV cameraman who got a big break. Besides the big names, the book also tells about Brian (Jerry) Reynolds who started at WTTV while he was still in high school and soon enough was writing and producing for the various live action shows on WTTV. It was a small station and everyone had mu

Published in 1973. I n 1973, undoubtedly to prepare for the upcoming 1976 bicentennial of the American Declaration of Independence, BBC reporter and author Alistair Cooke released a book and a television mini-series telling the history of the United States to the U.K. The book and the series came to America as well with the book selling nearly 2 million copies. This massive "coffee table" type book has 393 pages and weighs in at 3 pounds, 9 ounces (compare that to a random paperback book I weighed at just 5 ounces). Photo by Lewis Hine Cooke presents a straight-forward history of America, skimming over lots of details but getting the highlights. This has to be the case when you cover more than nearly 500 years of history in less than 400 pages. He focuses half of the book on the exploration/colonial/Revolutionary War/Constitutional era and it is by far the strongest part of the book. This book is filled with beautiful, sometimes profound photographs. On pages 312-313

Originally printed in 2001. One of my favorite people in history is Levi Coffin. I have visited the Levi Coffin House (an official Historic Site maintained by the state of Indiana) so many times that it feels like I am making a semi-annual pilgrimage when I go.  The thing is, I find myself inspired every time I visit - both as a history lover, a champion of individual rights and as a Christian. Levi Coffin was an instrumental figure in the Underground Railroad and the abolition movement. He was not simply  a theoretical supporter of the movement that wrote letters and collected donations. He helped more than a thousand slaves escape, many of them spending time in his own home. His home in Indiana was even modified so that he could hide ten or more people at a time, if necessary. Here is a picture that I took of a great quote from Levi Coffin that is on the wall of the visitors center at his house in Fountain City:  This short book tells an interesting story of his life fr

Published by Tantor Audio in 2010. Read by David Colacci. Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes. Unabridged. I heard about this book in a memorable interview with Tommy James on the old Dennis Miller radio show when this book came out nearly 10 years ago. It was one of the best radio interviews I have ever heard and I am not even a giant Tommy James and the Shondells fan. So, when I came across the audiobook I knew I had to listen to it - and I was not disappointed. For those not familiar with Tommy James, he is responsible for the songs "Hanky Panky", "Mony Mony" and "I Think We're Alone Now". He had two #1 hits and 14 Top 40 hits overall. He started his music career as a middle school kid in Niles, Michigan performing in bars and fraternity houses and pretending to be old enough to be in bars and fraternity houses. They did a lot of work in South Bend and Lake County in Indiana and eventually got regular work in Chicago. They even released the song &quo

Published by Author's Republic in 2019. Multicast performance. Duration: 1 hour, 11 minutes. Unabridged This audiobook is a mixed bag. So, I will start with the positive side. The multicast performance in this audiobook is really, really good. The voice actors perform it like an old-fashioned radio play and they are excellent. It even has sound effects that are timed right, set to the right sound level and are not obnoxious. The story is another matter. It starts out with one plot (two university professors trying to grow the size of the practically nonexistent faculty labor union at a small private university in Indiana), drifts into a second story line and finally moves into a third, rather bizarre story thread that doesn't even come close to addressing the original conflict in this 71 minute story. This audiobook just slides around like a nervous six year old tells a story to a bunch of adults at a family get-together. I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It gets 2

Published in 2017 by Listening Library. Read by Kate Rudd. Duration: 7 hours, 12 minutes. Unabridged. High School students Aza and Daisy are best friends living in Indianapolis, Indiana. They are also investigating the mysterious disappearance of a billionaire who lives on the other side of the White River - the rich side of the river that doesn't flood. Well, they investigate when they aren't going to school, eating at Applebee's, studying, working (Daisy) or keeping appointments with the therapist (Aza). Aza has obsessive thoughts - they crowd out everything else when they come, and lately they've been coming at her hard and fast. It turns out that Aza knows the son of the missing billionaire and when she and Daisy run into him while they are investigating, it seems like there might be a spark between this boy and Aza... John Green is one of my favorite authors, which is weird because I have only read two of his books (this one and The Fault in Our Stars ) . But, I

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial - replica of his boyhood farm. Photo by DWD. Published in 2008 by Indiana Historical Society Press. Most know that Abraham Lincoln came from Springfield, Illinois. But, a lot of people are not aware that at age 7, Lincoln and his family moved to Indiana from Kentucky. Lincoln and his family stayed in Indiana until just after his 21st birthday. In a four paragraph autobiographical sketch written in 1859, Lincoln devoted a little more than a paragraph to these years in Indiana, including this nice little sentence: "There I grew up." All of the stories of Lincoln's childhood (reading by firelight, the legend of the rail splitter, his aversion to shedding blood of any sort, his kindness to animals and more) took place in Indiana. Hoosiers are happy to claim him. The author, William E. Bartelt, worked for fifteen summers at the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial as a ranger and historian and was the vice chair of the Indiana Abraham Lin

Published by Christianaudio.com in 2017. Read by John Pruden. Duration: 7 hours, 2 minutes. Unabridged.  In the 1960's to the 1970's, Steve McQueen (1930-1980) was the epitome of "cool" in Hollywood. Movies like The Magnificent Seven , Bullitt  and The Great Escape  made him one of the most sought-after actors in the world. But, there was a long back story to Steve McQueen and his tragic death due to cancer had a surprising twist for a man who seemed to be out to take as much out of life as possible. Greg Laurie, a super-successful California pastor (who I had never heard of, but his Wikipedia page is something else) decided to investigate a rumor that Steve McQueen became a Christian before his death. He decided to be methodical and investigate McQueen's life from its beginning in Beech Grove, Indiana to its end at Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. McQueen was born at St. Francis hospital in Beech Grove, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis. His family struggled from the ve

Published in 1993 by Scholastic. Levi Coffin House, a major stopping point of the Underground Railroad Jim Haskins' introduction to the Underground Railroad is aimed at grades 4-7. It is a solid little history of the origins of the abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad and slavery. It mostly focuses on the heroes of the abolitionist movement, but it does its best to try to work in a lot of individual stories of the Underground Railroad. For example, I enjoyed the letter that Jermain Wesley Loguen wrote to his former owner (he had run away) when she demanded that he pay for himself. It was the perfect blend of snark and indignant refusal. The longest biography in the book goes to Harriet Tubman with Frederick Douglass coming in a close second. That is appropriate since their stories are extraordinary. Haskins does a real solid job of introducing the two real-life people that the most famous African American characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin are based on and then

Published in 2008 by Hawthorne Publishing. Indiana native Sandy Allen (1955-2008) was the tallest woman in the world at 7 feet 7 inches tall. This book is an entertaining, but fictionalized, version of her years at Shelbyville High School in Shelbyville, Indiana. Rita Rose wrote the book with the full knowledge of Sandy Allen after having interviewed her towards the end of her life. Written as a coming of age YA book, the book is centered around Roseann, a high school student who has moved from the north side of Indianapolis to Shelbyville, a small town of less than 20,000 a little more than a half hour's drive from Indianapolis. Roseann is working hard to fit in and eventually finds a spot on the high school newspaper. She couldn't help but notice Sandy Allen, easily the tallest person she has ever seen at more than 7 feet tall. She is mercilessly teased by a group of boys no matter where she goes and is clearly experiencing some physical issues, despite the fact that

Published in 2018 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Donald Corren. Duration: 8 hours, 38 minutes. Unabridged. Rus Bradburd's All the Dreams We've Dreamed is both a complicated story and a simple story of two Chicago men whose lives have revolved around the game of basketball. It's a story of a coach and a player.  It's a story of connections between people and also a story of bureaucratic neglect.  It's a story of remorse and shame and a story of pride of place and love for one's teammates and players. It's a story of love and a story of catastrophic violence. Mostly, because it is set in the free fire gun zone of Chicago's West Side, it is a tragedy. The book centers on Marshall High School and its basketball program. Perhaps you have heard about the wave of gun violence that has swept through Chicago's South and West sides, earning it the nickname "Chi-raq" because it is reminiscent of Iraq during the bad old days of The Surge at t

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2005. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 14 hours, 37 minutes. Unabridged. Lee Child Technically, this is the ninth Jack Reacher book that Lee Child has published, but since Lee Child doesn't write the books "in order" there are two broad time periods that Jack Reacher novels occur in: 1) In the Army, 2) post-Army. This is post-army book. It is also the book that inspired the first Tom Cruise Jack Reacher movie, but if you have seen the movie you can read this book and have an entirely different experience. It inspired the movie, the movie didn't follow it too closely. Reacher doesn't appear for the first hour and ten minutes of this audiobook. Instead, the readers are witness to a mass shooting in southern Indiana that draws Reacher from Florida because he knew the accused shooter in the Army. Once he arrives, Reacher immediately knows that something off and finds himself in a rare moral quandary. But, Reacher figures out how

Published by Listening Library in 2004. Read by Dick Cavett Duration: 3 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) A lot of people aren't aware that the plot for the classic Christmas movie A Christmas Story was not written as a coherent novel but was actually a collection of short stories that the author had written about his childhood in northwestern Indiana during the Great Depression over the years that were then skillfully edited into a movie. These stories don't follow the plot of the movie exactly, but all of the high points are here, including the infamous lamp, the bully, the BB gun, the visit to Santa and the Bumpus hounds.  Interestingly, this audiobook was not read by Jean Shepherd, who was a professional radio personality and told most of these stories over the air (he is also the narrator in the movie). Instead, it is read by television host Dick Cavett. At first, I was disappointed but Cavett did a great job. This audiobook was a lot of

Published in 2013 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Jim Gaffigan Duration: 5 hours, 26 minutes Unabridged Despite the title, stand up comic Jim Gaffigan's first book is not about weight or food. No, Dad Is Fat is about being a parent and raising 5 little kids in a small New York City apartment. Jim Gaffigan If you are not a parent, there is probably not much about this book that would appeal to you. This is a point that Gaffigan makes at the beginning of the book in a story early on about when he and his wife traveled with parents of a new baby. True, those parents were obsessive to the extreme, but just about any parent could look at that extreme and think to themselves, "Yeah. That's nutty...but it's not crazy nutty. For me, the best part was when Jim talked about his own parents and growing up in northern Indiana. His impersonation of his father and his constant throat clearing (something that Jim never points out but always does) was funny and

Published in 2015 by Blue River Press Not many people know about the horrible story of the Sultana , a paddlewheel steamboat that sank into the Mississippi River in April of 1865. It is the worst maritime disaster in American history but was largely overshadowed by the events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and his dramatic funeral train tour from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois. The Sultana  was grossly overcrowded. It was designed to carry 376 passengers, but it was carrying 2,155 passengers when three of its boilers exploded in the early morning hours of April 27, 1865.  Most of its passengers were survivors of the infamous Andersonville prisoner of war camp that were being shipped home.  This book is technically a sequel to Saint Patrick's Battalion . It continues the story of a boy who traveled with an American army during the Mexican War. In Fire in the Water , that boy has grown up and become a famous war correspondent. He is traveling to S

Published in 2011 by Boaz Publishing Company First - a confession. I know the author of this book. However, the last time I spoke to him was most likely in December of 1989. We had one class together in high school and 3, maybe 4, classes together at the School of Education at Indiana University where we discussed movies, a mutual love of reading and Roy Orbison. But, I've kept track of Chris as a writer in magazines and newspapers - mostly essays about his new family and his globe-trotting life teaching in all sorts of places, including ten years at a men's prison in Indiana - the subject of this book. The book Mike Tyson Slept Here is set in and around the Plainfield Correctional Facility, where Mike Tyson served nearly three years for rape from 1992 to 1995. Tyson does not appear in the book, but he was its most famous resident, seeing as how he went in at the height of his career. Mike Tyson Slept Here is not an autobiography, but there are semi-autobiographical elem

Published in 2015 by Cumberland House 273 pages including end notes and a bibliography Lincoln's Gift: How Humor Shaped Lincoln's Life and Legacy is an excellent short biography of our sixteenth president with a special focus on his legendary storytelling abilities. When one considers who integral Lincoln's humorous stories were to his successes both as an attorney and as a politician, I felt that this biography is one of the few biographies or histories that gave me much of a sense of Lincoln as a man. Leidner wisely chooses to provide a lot of detail about Lincoln's life before he became a national figure - these stories give the reader a feel for the man long before he became president and give a frame of reference for his reactions and his stories while he was in office. Very few of his stories are truly laugh out loud funny, but he often told humorous or rustic tales to make his point or distill a complicated idea into something very simple. A classic examp