DWD's Reviews

  Published by Hourly History in March of 2024. Hourly History publishes an extensive line of histories and biographies that are intended to be read in about an hour. With that limit, none of these are the definitive biographies, but most of them  give the average reader a good sense of who the person was and why they were important.  Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) was the 36th President of the United States. One thing I particularly like about this biography is that it tells about his formative experiences in Texas as a young man, especially his short stint as a public school teacher in a very poor area of rural Texas. Getting to know those students really gave him the desire to want to create government programs to help alleviate poverty.  This biography is a little skewed towards Johnson's early life, but it's not particularly hard to find information about LBJ's time as President and the series offers books on the big events of his administration like the Vietnam W...

Illustrated by L. Fury and Nate Powell. Published by Harry N. Abrams in 2021. This spring I read the MARCH , the three volume graphic novel series about Congressman  John Lewis  (1940-2020) and the Civil Rights movement. When I finished the series, I thought to myself that it would be interesting to see how John Lewis ran for Congress and the struggles he encountered in an era where the KKK still openly marched. My Synopsis: The graphic novel RUN picks up right where MARCH  trilogy left off. At the end of the  MARCH trilogy, there was a celebration of the passage of the Civil Rights bills - a moment of success. There was also the murder of a volunteer who was helping with the celebration by anti-Civil Rights forces. RUN explores what happened after the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had it first taste of success.  At the end of  MARCH , there was a celebration of the passage of the Civil Rights bills. With that, a long-term goal achiev...

  Published in 2016 by Top Shelf Productions Written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin. Illustrated by Nate Powell. 2016 National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature 2017 Printz Award Winner 2017 Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner 2017 Sibert Medal Winner 2017 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner 2017 Walter Award Winner Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) continues his life story in book three of the March series, focusing on his struggles in the Civil Rights Movement. The book starts with the 16th Street Birmingham Church Bombing in September of 1963 and ends with the signing of the Voting Rights Act in August of 1965. These were, by any account, much like the famous Charles Dickens line from A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the...

Published in 2018 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by Beau Bridges. David Morse, Richard Thomas, Jay O. Sanders and the author. Duration: 18 hours, 5 minutes. The author, Doris Kearns Goodwin Unabridged. Doris Kearns Goodwin often is labeled with the title "presidential historian" and, really, that is a pretty accurate term for her. As a young historian, she worked personally with Lyndon Johnson on his presidential memoirs. She has written about both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Her book Team of Rivals is a modern classic and has redefined the popular image of the Lincoln administration. In this book, she looks at various qualities of leadership that each of these very different men exhibited. She begins with interesting pre-presidential biographies of each of these men. She focuses on Lincoln's expressed desire to become a person that was worthy of the esteem of his community. Theodore Roosevelt's ceaseless energy and desire to experien...

Published in 2018 by Random House Audio. Read by Fred Sanders and the author, Jon Meacham. Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. In The Soul of America , Jon Meacham takes a look at Presidential leadership from the Civil War onward, particularly the power of the President to lead the country to "do the right thing" in a time of crisis. He has a particular focus with how the President deals with people who want to abuse the rights of others. Well, to be completely honest, Meacham does not have a complete clear thesis in this book and I am not 100% sure what his overall goal was. What it turned out to be was an interesting, rambling work that looked at several crisis points in American history and how the politicians, mostly presidents, responded. He looked at Lincoln (the source of the title), Grant during Reconstruction and the rise of the KKK, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Eisenhower, JFK and LBJ. There is a little discussion...

    I have rarely been so glad to have been done with an audiobook as I was with this one. Published in 2013 by Post Hypnotic Press Narrated by Michael Puttonen Duration: 21 hours, 56 minutes William Egan Colby was present at the beginnings of the CIA and served as an inserted commando with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in both France and Norway during World War II, pioneering the kind of action he advocated for during his years in the CIA. T William Colby (1920-1996) he beginning of this audiobook is excellent as it details Colby's life and his World War II exploits. But, as it transitions from World War II to the early years of the Cold War to the Vietnam War the book becomes bogged down, especially in the endless detail about the politics of South Vietnam. Clearly, the Vietnam War was a pivot point for America and for Colby so it should be stressed. However, hours and hours of details about the governing elite of the doomed country were simply tedious....

Published in 2013 by HighBridge Audio Multicast performance Duration: 3 hours, 40 minutes In American Chronicles: The Vietnam War , NPR has collected 24 stories that were originally broadcast over their radio network concerning the Vietnam War. All of the stories are high quality productions. Some are quite moving. All are informative. The collection starts with a look at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. followed by a story about a Washington, D.C. anti-war protest that was broadcast on NPR’s very first day (May 3, 1971). As the collection goes along the listener is treated to stories of Red Cross workers, orphans of the war, the analyst that leaked “The Pentagon Papers”, two stories by Walter Cronkite, actual tapes of Lyndon Johnson discussing how to present the war to the American people, the My Lai Massacre, refugees who fled the North Vietnamese conquest of South Vietnam, pilots and sailors that saved those refugees, the Kent State shootings and so much more...

Very Interesting History of the Modern Presidency Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2012 Read by Bob Walter Duration: 22 hours, 1 minute Unabridged Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, both editors at Time , have delivered a very listenable, fascinating look at each American president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. No matter their political persuasion, their life experiences or their qualities as a human being, all 12 of these men share one thing: they were once President. This is an exclusive club and it seems that just about every president has looked to a former president for a shoulder to lean on, advice or even as a personal envoy sent to convey a sense of urgency to the message. The Presidents Club is told in a rough chronological order starting with Truman. When Truman was President there was only one other member of the Presidents Club: Herbert Hoover. Yes, the same Hoover that Truman and FDR disparaged for 12 years. However, to his credit, Truman sent ou...

Published in 2012 by MacMillan Audio Duration: 8 hours, 25 minutes Unabridged Read by the author, Bill O'Reilly I was a little reluctant to listen to this audiobook because of the author. Not Martin Dugard. This is the third book I have read or listened to that he has written or co-written and I know he can really tell a story. No, it's Mr. "No Spin Zone" that I cannot stand. Our politics are similar but I just find O'Reilly difficult to stomach. That being said, I enjoyed this audiobook quite a lot. John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) O'Reilly narrates the book which means it's a mixed bag. He speaks for a living so he reads it well and knows what phrases and words he wanted to emphasize but, like I said above, a little O'Reilly goes a long way for me. Also, his frequent use of dramatically read foreshadowing that alludes to the date of JFK's assassination got very old very fast. But, the positives are the way the book is present...

Published by Crown Publishers in March of 2012 Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency is a biography composed mostly of snippets of interviews edited together to tell President Lyndon Johnson's story. The book is designed to give the reader a view of Lyndon Johnson - the man. Johnson was a controversial man  - easily one of the most controversial of the 1960's. He is easily caricatured and mis-characterized. This ambiguity is odd considering that he was one of the most successful presidents of all time when it came to pursuing and passing a legislative agenda. If not for the Vietnam War, his legacy might be much different today. Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) While I learned a lot more facts about Johnson than I knew before reading this book, I did not get a better read on the man himself. His motivations were so mixed and his outbursts so frequent that I could not (and still cannot) tell if he put himself behind legislation like the Civil Ri...

An entertaining read and a great way to rate the presidents Published in 2012 by Regnery Publishing, Inc. First and foremost, the latest entry in the P.I.G. series is a great read. Steven Hayward is to be commended for making what could have been a very stale read into an entertaining read - he has a light touch. Secondly, how sad is it that grading presidents by how well they "preserve, protect, and defend" the constitution is a unique idea? Hayward begins The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents with a look at what the founders wrote about the office of the president and compares that to the modern presidency. He then looks at the presidency in the 19th century and how most presidents took the restrictions of the Constitution very seriously. As Hayward proceeds to grade the 17 presidents we have had from 1913 until the 2012 (from Wilson to Obama) on an A to F scale (just like in school) he gives a thumbnail sketch of each president with the major issu...

     Fascinating! Informative! As the title implies,  Character Above All: Ten Presidents from FDR to George Bush   is a collection of biographcial essays on each of the 10 presidents from FDR to George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) by 10 different authors who are either expert historians or knew the President while in office. The thing that ties them all together is that each essay is supposed to look at each man as president and find that one part of his character that made him the type of president he was. Each essay is about 30 pages and it makes for interesting reading. Doris Kearns Goodwin A good sample would come from Doris Kearns Goodwin's look at Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She asserts that the most valuable component of his personality was his self-confidence. I thought this quote from FDR makes the point wonderfully: "I'll tell you...at night when I lay my head on my pilow, and it is often pretty late, and I think of the things that have come before me ...