DWD's Reviews

Published in 2023 by Hourly History. I chose to read this short history about Chechnya in order to be a bit more informed about Putin's wars in Chechnya and then apply that knowledge to the war in Ukraine. What I read does not inspire confidence. Chechnya is an unfortunate victim of geography - it lies in a buffer zone between traditional great powers - the Russians, the Ottoman Turks, and the Persians. Even worse, they are on a natural land bridge between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Throw in a religious difference between Russia and the Chechens and you have even more trouble. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechnya made a serious effort at independence that ended up in multiple military incursions by the Russians and decades of on and off irregular warfare (think guerrilla warfare plus outright terrorism). For their part, the Russians responded with their own forms of irregular warfare - assassinations, possible false flag operations, and more. As I read this, th...

To be published by Amazon Original Stories in February of 2025. If you have Amazon Prime, you get to choose from a limited selection of soon-to-be-published e-books every month. I am a big fan of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books, so I jumped at the chance to get this short story by Lee Child. I believe I have read every book and every short story that Lee Child has written about Jack Reacher, but I don't think I've read anything he's written that didn't feature Reacher. In fact, I didn't know he wrote about any character but Reacher. This is the story of a mathematician - a college professor. He's kind of a nobody, except that he has a specialty, some would say a gift, in an obscure little corner of mathematics. Not many people have even heard of it, let alone know anything about it.  Then, one day, he gets a call from the White House... My review: This was a quick story. It is well-written and takes several twists and turns that I did not see coming.  It'...

Published in September of 2024 by Hourly History. I consider myself pretty well-versed in modern history, but I literally knew almost nothing about the wars that ran rampant through the Balkans just prior to World War I. I knew the area was all in an uproar, but I had no idea that the region had seen multiple all out wars rage throughout in just a few years. Those wars set up the scenario that directly led to World War I. Hourly History specializes in writing histories and biographies that can be read in about an hour. That was enough time for this little history. The reader learns of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and how that created a power vacuum in the Balkans. Then, the reader learns how various ethnic groups in the region fought for their independence and earned it only to fight among themselves over the borders of disputed regions.  Finally, the reader sees how the intervention of the great powers led more fighting and eventually to World War I. This is a very readable ...

  E-book published by Hourly History in 2020. Hourly History specializes in histories and biographies that take about an hour to read. In the case of the Crimean War (1853-1856), I think that's about right. The war was the result of European alliance politics. Russia was looking to push into Ottoman territory. The Ottomans were considered to be pretty weak and certainly on the decline after centuries of being a major power. The Austrian Empire was a traditional ally to the Russians, but decided to stay neutral. The Prussians were just starting out so no one really cared what they did. Even though they had been traditional rivals for centuries, England and France decided that they had to intervene on behalf of the Ottoman Empire in order to stop Russia from becoming too powerful.  The French and the English sent troops all of the way to the Ottoman Empire and then up into the Black Sea and landed troops on the Crimean Peninsula and the war was on. The war itself is worthy of n...

Published in 2017 by Hourly History. 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. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The Russian Revolution one of those areas for me. I know a lot more than most people, but I can clearly see the that there is a lot that I don't know. Rasputin is, of course, an iconic, almost mythical personality of the Russian Revolution. This series specializes in short biographies and histories that will take the average reader about an hour to read. There are plenty of people and historic events that I would like to know a little more about, but not necessarily commit to reading a 500 page biography or history.  Rasputin is one of those people for me - interesting but not really worth that much of an investment of my time. I've read a few biographies from Hourly History and, without a doubt, this was the best of the lot so far. Rasputin ...

  Published in 2016 by Macmillan Audio. Read by the author, Giles Milton. Duration: 4 hours, 53 minutes. Unabridged. Giles Milton is a prolific British writer of histories and historical fiction. This is a collection of odd stories of history that he has run across doing his research. Lenin, preserved in his tomb.  He has gone from being an  object of reverence to a tourist attraction. There are the two stories mentioned in the title - Hitler using stimulants and Lenin's odd burial, but there are a lot more from several different time periods. The problem is that there were a lot of similar stories and some weren't really from "unknown" chapters. Lots of Nazi-related stories and three separate stories of cannibalism (a plane crash, a sailing ship caught in the duldrums and a prison escape in an isolated area). That's a lot of Nazis and cannibals for a 5 hour audiobook. I found this stories to be neither great nor bad and often repetitive. I rate it 3 stars out of...

Published in 2018 by Ted Halstead. Read by Cody Banning. Duration: 15 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged Ted Halstead's The Second Korean War is a multi-country thriller in which North Korea tries a desperate gamble to force South Korea to submit to North Korean rule. The book starts out on an military base on the far eastern part of Russia. North Korea has found out that Russia has a small nuclear "backpack" weapon (a battlefield nuke) dating from the early days of nuclear weapons that has been lost from the inventory over the years. North Korea acquires the weapon so that they can start a two-pronged effort to force South Korea to surrender and force the United States to withdraw from South Korea without fighting. But, things don't go as smoothly as they hoped, people die and a Russian police detective starts putting things together. The question is, will he put things together fast enough? The last thing I want to do is write out a bunch of spoilers, so I won'...

Published by Tantor Audio in 2016. Read by Guy Bethell. Duration: 7 hours, 20 minutes. Unabridged. The entire history of the world is less than 7 and 1/2 hours? Yep, that's what Christopher Lascelles purports to offer in his A Short History of the World . He acknowledges that this is not a complete history - he never intended it to be. Instead, his aim is to connect some of the dots that the average reader may have picked up in history class, movies and History Channel documentaries (and hopefully spark a bit more interest). Lascelles does succeed in hitting many of the high points and certainly does a better job at not being as Eurocentric as other short world histories have been, such as A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. Lascelles spends quite a bit of time discussing China, Japan, India and Mongolia. All that being said, there are entire civilizations that are ignored or get nothing more than a passing nod. That is always the problem when writing a history o...

Published by Scholastic in 2018 What Would She Do? is collection of very readable short biographies of women - which, after being factually correct, is the most important thing. As David McCullough said,  " No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read."  Woodward writes in an informal, approachable style that I enjoyed quite a bit. Each biography is accompanied by a full page illustration of the woman and a little chart with basic biographical information. There is also a large pullout quote from or about her. For example, for Emma Watson there is this quote: "The saddest thing for a girl to do is to dumb herself down for a guy." Generally, I did not like the "What Would _____ Do?" section that was included at the end of each biography. The author was clearly trying to make a connection between the women in the book and the typical American student with typical American student problems. But, trying to connect Cleopatra...

Published in 2015 by Marble Arch Press Going into this book, I knew that I would have a bone to pick with almost every one of the author's choices. After all, there are 5,000 years of recorded history and every last one of them is filled with tragedy. How can you pick and choose the actual worst 10 years? Wilson, a British historian, focuses in this book on a Western point of view and the earliest date is 541 A.D. So, if you are making a pitch for the 10 worst years in the West in the last 1500 years, his choices are pretty solid. The years he picks are: 541-542: The first outbreak of the Bubonic Plague weakens the nascent Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, killing millions. 1241-1242: The Mongols invade Eastern Europe. 1572: The Spanish Inquisition and everything that came with it. 1631-1632: The worst year of the Thirty Years War. 1709: The Great Freeze 1848: The "Year of Revolutions" in Europe 1865-1866: The assassination of Abraham Lincoln and th...

Published in 2008 by Crown Publishing Matt Freed is summoned on very short notice to Bucharest to interview a member of Iran's intelligence community. He was unrecruited, meaning that he is a "walk-in" - literally someone who walked into the embassy and offered information that the American government would want. Freed has been asked to talk to this man because he is an expert on Iranian politics and he speaks the language. He is also an extremely capable intelligence operative. The interview yields valuable and very scary information. Freed starts to act on it and soon discovers that there may be more to this situation than he has been led to believe. He starts his own investigation and becomes convinced that this may be a double cross. His superiors disagree and it becomes a race against time with Freed working against foreign governments and his own... This is a middle-of-the-road spy novel. The action was good but sometimes the narration needed to be made more clear...

An Exceedingly Well-Written History Published in April of 2017 by Random House Audio Read by Arthur Morey Duration: 18 hours, 46 minutes Unabridged As Europe collapsed before the Nazi onslaught several governments-in-exile retreated to the United Kingdom in an effort to support their struggling underground resistance movements and to remind the world of their plight. Some brought a lot of soldiers (Poland), some brought money, some brought civilian ships and some brought not much more than a loud voice and the will to use it. This was not an easy alliance. The UK was xenophobic and stunned at the rapid fall of France and many of the governments in exile were being ripped apart from their own internal politics. Misunderstandings, patronizing attitudes and differing agendas make everything more difficult. When America and the Soviets joined the war the UK shifted its attention away from the governments-in-exile to its new, much more potent allies and those new allies had different...

Published in August of 2014 by Danny bent, Ltd. It took me a long time to read You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir . I read it over the course of several months on my Kindle and on my phone's Kindle app.  The book details the trip of a teacher from the UK who rides his bike from the UK to India in an effort to raise money for charity and to teach his kids something. I really struggled with the first part of the book because the author seemed so self-absorbed and I never really understood how he was going to raise money for a charity by riding and as a fellow teacher I seriously did not get how this trip was going to do anything for his students besides show them that he could do this outrageous thing.  So, I struggled through the first half of the book because I kept on coming back to the premise behind his trip and wondering about it (how is he raising this money? Is it by the kilometer? Is it a lump sum and will be donated so long as he makes a solid effort? These are ...

Published in 2006 by Brilliance Audio, Inc. Read by J. Charles. Duration: 12 hours, 43 minutes. Unabridged audio edition. Jack Du Brul's Havoc is a techno-thriller that races from the Hindenburg disaster to Africa to Washington, D.C to Atlantic City to Niagara Falls to Russia and back to Africa with hardly any time to take a breath.  The book features Philip Mercer, a geologist by training that often troubleshoots for the White House. This is the seventh book featuring Mercer, a fact that was not on the audiobook label. However, Du Brul does a great job of catching the reader up on what has been going on - I assumed it was the first book in the series as I was listening to it.  The Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937. The action starts with a traveler on the infamous Hindenburg as it flies to its fate with destiny in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937. A crazed man is hiding a secret in a safe in his room and he is afraid that the Nazis know he has it and are plot...

Disappointing Published by HarperAudio in 2007 Read by Sam Tsoutsouvas Duration: 12 hours, 56 minutes Abridged. Jay Winik's April 1865 is one of my favorite Civil War histories - it holds a very safe place on a shelf that has to be purged on a regular basis to make room for new books because it is a brilliant history.  Before I go on with this review I must note that I listened to the abridged audiobook version The Great Upheaval . Despite the abridgment, this book still clocks in at nearly 13 hours. Some of my criticisms are undoubtedly due to the abridgment. Winik's thesis in this book is that the time period from 1788 to 1800 was a time of revolutionary ardor and that most of the great European powers were affected. Victor Hugo wrote:   “One can resist the invasion of armies;  one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.” Winik looks at how the ideas of America's Founding Fathers and the French philosophes affected three countries: The United States, France and ...

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 2011 by Vook. Voo k is a publisher of e-books enhanced with video clips ( V ideo + B ook  =  Vook ). This history is short (Amazon estimates it would be about 32 pages on paper) so it is unlikely to satisfy a history purist. It is very lightweight due to its short length but very readable. The result is about the same as if you read the chapter on World War II and the 1940s in a standard high school world history book. The broadest of outlines are there but if this is all you knew about World War II and the beginnings of the Cold War you would be one un-educated person indeed. At best, this is an introduction to the topic. Considering how long of a shadow World War II and the Cold War have cast, this is too short and too shallow to be of much value. Adolf Hitler in strategy session The Chapter titles are: -"The Greatest Generation" -The Cold War -Boom Times -Making Military Technology Civil -Hurray for Hollywood -Breaking the Race Barrier ...

Published by Orbit in March of 2012 I approach this review with some trepidation. This is a hell of a science fiction novel but to call it a sci-fi novel is to undersell it. It is a hell of a war novel, but to call it a war novel is also underselling it. It really is the story of a woman finding out what it is to love, to be loved and to know where one stands with God - in short, to be human, but that seriously undersells this book and makes a violent tale of war, genetic mutation and out-of-controls science sound like some piece of warm and fuzzy chick lit. Exogene is certainly not that. So, what is Exogene ? T.C. McCarthy First things first - Exogene is the second book in a series by T.C. McCarthy . Read the first book, Germline , for the background necessary for this book. Germline (see my review by clicking here ) explores a future war for trace metals in Kazakhstan between the Russians and the Americans. In Germline a group of cloned teenaged female warriors are i...

Three solid adventure stories Multicast Performance with music and sound effects Duration: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Published by Galaxy Press Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. This edition features 3 short stories. The first is Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead , the story of a team of freelance archaeologists that are searching for a lost treasure of Alexander the Great in what is now southern Pakistan. When a down on his luck pilot and a local guide find the map, well, who knows what they will find? The second story, Price of a Hat , is the weakest. It is set in Siberia at ...