DWD's Reviews

An enthusiastic 5 stars! A fantastic book. Published in 2009. I was offered  Joker One  as part of the Amazon Vine program and I decided to take it because I am a history teacher and I decided I needed to read a book about the Iraq War just to have a greater sense of what was/is going on and to be able to speak more intelligently about it to my classes. So, I picked  Joker One  and I let it sit on my pile of books. I let it sit and sit because I was afraid it would be preachy, depressing and difficult. Finally, with classes over I picked up  Joker One  and I was hooked by page 2 with Lt. Campbell's description of an explosion that he had just avoided. It was filled with honest emotions, including a bit of honest, self-deprecating humor. I shot through Joker One . I carried it everywhere I went. I read passages to my long-suffering wife. I told her shortened versions of the stories. Literally, I laughed (his account of their first night mission and the pack of dogs is hila

My first foray into P.J. O'Rourke's books Published by Brilliance Audio Duration: 5 hours, 48 minutes Read by Dick Hill Unabridged I've read some of P.J. O'Rourke's columns and have heard an interview or two so I knew that I would most likely find one of his books to be most interesting. To begin with, I found Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism mostly dead-on accurate and depressing. Observations about the War in Bosnia, human nature in general and Israel were factually interesting but mostly deflating. Not that I am overly optimistic about human nature (being both a history major and a Lutheran has given me a fairly low opinion about the character of humanity) but P.J.'s account was even getting to me. But, in the middle it picks up - ironically with his description of 9/11 and the days that followed in Washington, D.C. I found his observations to be keen, interesting and, in an odd way, hopeful. His descriptions of the pro-Palestinian

A Fascinating Look at the Iraq War Don Teague was an NBC correspondent assigned to Iraq twice - once during the invasion and once during February 2004, the beginning of the insurgent bombing spree that was finally ended by the famous "surge." His translator during this one month hitch was a beautiful and rebellious young Iraqi woman named Rafraf Barrak. Teague is an 11 year veteran of the National Guard (helicopter pilot) and knows enough about fighting and war to be very respectful of the dangers of it all (unlike some of his more fearless, less experienced colleagues). Rafraf is one of 10 children - but a handful. Smart enough to know better, Rafraf often flouts the rules dares to do things like eat lunch with boys she meets at her university and express what should be carefully guarded opinions to foreign reporters. As the situation in Iraq grows worse and worse, Teague realizes that Rafraf will become a target of the insurgents or simply die as a victim of the may

Slow start, rushed ending. Land of Marvels: A Novel is set in the pre-World War I Ottoman Empire, it what will eventually become Iraq. The main characters are Somerville, a British archaeologist in the midst of leading an excavation in a Tell (the ruins of a built up area that was once a city - usually a hump in the landscape), his wife, his two suboordinate archaeologists and Jehar, an Arab "fix-it" man (he does not fix machines, he fixes situations - he smoothes out situations with the local labor, finds out information that Somerville may need and so on). As the title for this review noted, the book very slow at the beginning. One would think it would be very interesting with the spectre of international intrigue, the challenge of the excavation, the cultural chasm between British gentry and their Arab laborers. Nope, it just moved slowly along - the only interesting character, for me, was Jehar and his infatuation with a 15 year old girl. His efforts to raise the c