DWD's Reviews

Published by Brilliance Audio in July of 2024. Read by Sophie Amoss Duration: 10 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. My Synopsis Broken Bayou features Dr. Willa Waters, a child psychologist with a very popular podcast who lives in Texas. After a disastrous local television interview goes viral, Waters runs to Broken Bayou, Louisiana. This is where her two great aunts lived in a mansion on the edge of town. When she arrives in town, there is an uproar because a body has been found in the bayou and then a young schoolteacher and her car went missing. But, some of the locals still remember her because Waters spent most of her childhood summers in Broken Bayou with her great aunts. Waters and her little sister would be brought to town by her mother. All three of them would move in and her mother would spend the summer having a good time with the locals.  In many ways, her great aunts were the closest thing to proper parents that Waters and her sister had.  Her great aunts passed away ...

  Published by HarperAudio in 2019. Read by the author, Tia Torres. Duration: 5 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. Tia Torres is the director of the Villalobos Rescue Center, a dog rescue center featured on the Animal Planet TV show Pitbulls and Parolees . The rescue center used to be primarily for wolves and wolf hybrids but it morphed into pit bulls when police departments and city animal shelters would ask them to take in pit bulls on the theory that if you could handle a wolf you could handle a pit bull. Turns out, they were right. Now she runs one of the largest pit bull rescue centers in the country. This memoir talks about Torres' early life, her family and her early experiences with animals. But, the primary focus of the book are the special dogs that she and her family have had over the years.  The author and one of her dogs I have to confess to being a fan of the show. My wife started watching it and I was drawn in. Soon enough, we had marathoned through all 18 seasons o...

  Originally published in 2009. In 1960, a six year old little girl named Ruby Bridges was to be the first African-American student to integrate an elementary school in Louisiana. To say it did not go well would be an understatement. Parents pulled their children out. So many pulled their children out that Ruby was in a class by herself at first. There were so screaming, protesting mobs of parents. There were threats of violence. It was so bad that federal marshals were sent in to ensure her safety and to ensure that the desegregation order was enforced. ********** This book was written by Ruby Bridges and is published by Scholastic as a Level 2 early reader. That is pretty early for a student to read about this topic - Ruby Bridges was the same age as the children who would be reading this book. I normally don't review books for little children, but I decided to review this one when I saw that a group called Moms for Liberty called for it to be removed from a a school system in Te...

  Published by Little, Brown and Company. Read by the author, Clint Smith. Duration: 10 hours, 6 minutes. Unabridged. Clint Smith decided to explore several key historical sites that have ties to American slavery and how the consequences of American slavery has echoed down throughout American history. He is looking for constant threads in American history from the perspective of African Americans. He visits Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, New Orleans, Angola Prison, a plantation in Louisiana that emphasizes the lives of the majority of the people that lived and worked there (the slaves and the Jim Crow era labor that was trapped there), a Confederate grave yard, the place were Juneteenth happened in Texas, New York City (a slave stronghold in the North for a surprisingly long time) and finally a fortress used as a slave market in Africa. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Sally Hemings (c. 1773-1835) This is a difficult book in many ways. Smith intentionally digs into difficult questi...

Published in 2006 by Tantor Media. Read by Grover Gardner. Duration: 10 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. Winston Groom, best known as the author of Forrest Gump , is also a historian of sorts. He has written 14 non-fiction books, using his research skills he honed as a journalist to investigate a historical topic. In this case, the topic is the Battle of New Orleans. Most people know everything they know about the battle from the catchy Johnny Horton song: I n 1814 we took a little trip,  Along with Colonel Jackson down the might Mississip We took a little bacon and we took a little beans And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans. I knew a little bit more, having read a little about the battle. I didn't know much, however, not really being a fan of the War of 1812 or Andrew Jackson. But, I am a fan of Winston Groom so I decided to give it a try. Groom is skilled at telling a narrative history and at the end, I had a much better idea of how the Battle of New Orl...

Published in 2015 by YWAM Publishing . Read by Tim Gregory. Duration: 4 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. YWAM Publishing offers a series of biographies of Christian "heroes of history" aimed at home school students. The fact that this was part of series about "Christian" heroes was a surprise to me since this book didn't mention Hershey's faith at all. Nevertheless, this is an interesting and enjoyable biography of one of America's most successful businessmen, Milton Hershey (1857-1945). Milton Hershey: More than Chocolate is a book showcasing the value of persistence. Starting with a failed attempt by his father in the oilfields of Pennsylvania in the late 1850's, the first half of this book is a series of business failures from Milton Hershey and his father, Henry. Henry Hershey was more of a dreamer sort of entrepreneur - prone to rash decisions, excited by new technology and not very good on doing the follow up work to make sure that the ventur...

A Review of the Audiobook Published in 2013 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by the authors, Willie and Korie Robertson. Duration: 5 hours, 50 minutes Unabridged Part of a flock of books from the Robertson family (excuse the pun), The Duck Commander Family by the CEO of the family businesses (Duck Commander and Buck Commander), Willie Robertson, and his wife, Korie, looks at how they both got to where they are now and what life is like among the Robertsons. The book focuses on the much more interesting story of Willie's family, which is appropriate considering their prominence in the hit reality TV show Duck Dynasty .  If you have never seen the show, this book will be of little interest to you. I have seen a few episodes, but my carpool partner, my high school-aged daughter, is a fan of the show and has watched multiple seasons. She picked this audiobook for us to hear in the car during our morning commute. Willie Robertson in 2015. Photo by Gage Skidmore. Willie Rob...

Solid history for grade 5 and above. Published in 1991 by Silver Burdett Press 119 pages of text. 9 pages of timelines, sources and and index at the end. David Farragut and the Great Naval Blockade is part of a larger series (The History of the Civil War Series). It is very readable with a good balance of national history versus the biography of David Farragut. Farragut joined the United States Navy at age 9 in 1810, fought against the Barbary Pirates and in the War of 1812. Until the Civil War, Farragut was known as an great officer, the kind of officer that sailors were glad to work under, but also the kind of officer that just missed doing something great. He was not sent to "open" Japan with Matthew Perry. He tried to get involved in the Mexican War but the fighting in Veracruz was over by the time his ship arrived. When the Civil War began, it was assumed that Farragut would go with the Confederacy. After all, he was born in Tennessee, he lived in Norfolk, Virgi...

History in a more approachable format (for some) Originally published in 2011. Re-published in 2016 with additions. This is a review of the 2011 publication. All forms of media have their fans and detractors. History teachers (like me) often have mixed opinions about different formats. Movies show the viewer but often skip details or over-emphasize items in order to make the stories work better. Textbooks cover the basics but do it in a dry, boring manner. History books can tell the story with more detail, but give the topic to a bad writer and it is an impossible challenge to the reluctant reader. Audiobooks may help, but how many students will listen to a 13 hour history book? Historical fiction - it is a mixed bag, but has potential to keep the interest up and teach something along the way. The internet - it's literally all there - the good, the bad, the delusional. As a teacher, I have always espoused the theory that I have borrowed from Malcolm X - teach it "by any me...

A profound book. Well-written and tugs at the heart. In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is a memoir of a magazine and newspaper publisher who was sentenced to a minimum security prison for band fraud (he was "kiting" checks to make payroll, grow the business and buy fancy digs for the corporate offices). The prison he was sent to, however, is not your typical prison. Carville serves as both a minimum security prison and the last federal leper colony in the United States. In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is a title with a double-entendre. At one level it is a sanctuary where the outcasts are kept away from the outside. A sanctuary in which the victims of leprosy can receive treatment and not be "different" from everyone else. The author is literally staying in their physical sanctuary. But, in the case of the author, being in In t he Sanctuary of Outcasts is more than this. He is under the care of the lepers. He learns from them. They teach him humility and taking lif...