DWD's Reviews

Published in 2014 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Pam Ward. Duration: 5 hours, 12 minutes. Unabridged. Sgt. Stubby wearing his medal vest (left), marching in a parade (upper right) and wearing his special gas mask (lower right). During the quick basic training for American forces heading for France in World War I, a stray dog found its way into a Connecticut National Guard training camp at Yale University. The unit was sprawled all over the campus and this Boston Terrier mix wandered around making friends all over. His friendly nature guaranteed a lot of table scraps. He marched with the men, learned the commands and blended in as well as a dog can. Somewhere along the way, someone taught him how to salute and hold the salute until it was returned. When it came time to board a ship and head to France, the soldier that he spent the most time with, Corporal James Robert Conroy, hid him under his coat as others provided a distraction. Once aboard, Stubby ensured he got to stay with his...

Published by Author's Republic in 2019. Multicast performance. Duration: 1 hour, 11 minutes. Unabridged This audiobook is a mixed bag. 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 stars be...

Published in 2014 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Bryan Stevenson. Duration: 11 hours, 11 minutes Unabridged. "...if he just had the money for a decent lawyer." Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who has spent his entire career working with people who have been wrongfully convicted and unfairly sentenced. He works through the Equal Justice Initiative with a lot of death row inmates in Alabama. He has succeeded in getting over 100 re-trials and/or re-sentencing hearings for people on death row. He has had multiple convictions completely overturned. Stevenson does a lot of work in Alabama because Alabama doesn't do much to subsidize the defense in death row cases. How much does the state spend for the entire case, including appeals? Just $1,000. Some counties help with that amount, but more than 70% of Alabama's death row inmates were represented by $1,000 lawyers. Considering that the average cost of a simple will is $375 , you can see that a $1,000 worth o...

Published by Blackstone Audio in June of 2019. Read by Traber Burns. Duration: 8 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. In February of 1859, Daniel Sickles, a sitting U.S. Congressman, shot and killed a man in Washington, D.C. across the street from the White House. Why is this not just a weird moment in American history? Five reasons. #1) Daniel Sickles went on to become the highest-ranking Union officer in the Civil War that did not graduate from West Point. He performed very well at the disastrous Battle of Chancellorsville and performed bravely, but with great controversy at Gettysburg, where he lost a leg. #2) The victim was Phillip Barton Key, the son of Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner. Phillip Barton Key was also the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. #3) Key and Sickles' wife had been carrying on a long-term adulterous affair and Sickles had just discovered this fact. #4) The new technology of the telegraph spread this story to newspapers across the countr...

Published in October of 2019 by Grand Central Publishing. Read by the author, Joel Stein. Duration: 7 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. Joel Stein's In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm Better Than You and You're Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book is an interesting book. The title suggests that it is a tongue-in-cheek look at politics, but it is much more than that. To be sure, there are plenty of jokes, wisecracks, puns and witty observations of varying quality throughout the book. But, there is also a lot of solid political analysis, especially in the last third of the book. Stein's primary argument is that populism, embodied by both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders for the last 4 years, is a road to nowhere except authoritarianism. Stein, like most elites, is worried more about Trump than Sanders (makes sense - he is President, while Sanders is a Senator). Trump is well-known for his anti-intellectual tenancies. He discounts expertise and people that might have ...

Published by HarperAudio in March of 2019. Read by Will Damron. Duration: 6 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Arthur C. Brooks was the President of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute from 2008 to shortly after the publication of this book in 2019.  Brooks is deeply worried with the present level of political discourse in America. Debates where the candidates just insult one another. Derogatory comments rather than actual proposals. Look at your typical Facebook political argument. Anonymous posters with names like "Trump_2020_Forever" arguing with "Trumpsters_Suck" and using terms like "libtards" and "conservacunts" while they insist that the other side is nothing but a literal bunch of communists and Nazis. This is getting us nowhere. And that is his point in Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt . What we are showing each other is contempt. He quotes a couples' counselor ...

Published in 2015 by HarperAudio. Read by Simon Jones. Duration: 3 hours, 22 minutes. Unabridged. The author, Dan Ariely Behavioral economist Dan Ariely has written a lot of books and articles about his various behavioral experiments. I was not aware that he had a regular column in the Wall Street Journal that functions an awful lot like the Dear Abby column has done in newspapers for more than 60 years. People write in questions about relationships or work concerns and Ariely tries to come up with a concise, humorous answer. The fact that Ariely is a famous behavioral economist did little to make this collection feel any different than a collection of Dear Abby columns. It was not a bad listen, but not a great one either. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  IRRATIONALLY YOURS: ON MISSING SOCKS, PICKUP LINES, and OTHER EXISTENTIAL PUZZLES by Dan Ariely .

Published by Oasis Audio in 2013. Read by Dean Gallagher. Duration: 4 hours, 58 minutes. Unabridged. Brian Zahnd is an American pastor of a megachurch in Missouri. I had never heard of him before I ran across this book. I was intrigued by the topic because the election of President Trump has been an interesting experience for this lifelong member of a religiously conservative church. Over time, Zahnd has become convinced that pacifism is the way that Jesus would have us go. It is not a popular opinion, but Zahnd makes a strong argument for it. Zahnd's message is essentially that the church is at its best when it acts like the Old Testament prophet Nathan in 2nd Samuel chapter 12. Nathan comes to David to tell him he had done a great wrong and call him on it. Now, according to Zahnd, t he church went from being the accuser of wrong-doing - the one that holds it to a high standard - to being the defense attorney of the government. Zahnd describes it as  the church is the chapla...

Published by Random House Audio in 2012. Read by Daniel Davis. Duration: 14 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. Star Wars: Darth Plagueis came HIGHLY recommended to me from a massive Star Wars fan that I work with who has told me on multiple occasions that this was an amazing book. If you loved the political intrigue of The Phantom Menace and loved the fact that it was basically the story of a trade dispute that got out of hand, you will LOVE this book. Let's face it, the problem with this book is that it is very similar to  The Phantom Menace  - the book actually overlaps with the movie. The problem with this book is that  Episode I is generally considered to be the worst of the 11 Star Wars movies and doesn't compare well with the TV shows, either. It's probably better than the Star Wars Holiday Special , but I haven't seen that since it first aired so I can't trust my judgment as a ten-year old viewer. This book fills in all of the questions that you probably didn...

Published in 2016 by Tantor Media. Read by Kaipo Schwab. Duration: 3 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. A couple of years ago I requested my library order the audiobook of Navajo Autumn . Honestly, I asked for it because I was looking to find a little bit of that Tony Hillerman magic in a new book series. But, just because a book is set in the same place as another book series and has a similar theme to another book series doesn't mean it is anywhere near the quality of the other book series. I finished this audiobook because the library paid for it because of me and I felt I owed it to them to give it an honest listen. Plus, it was short at just 3 hours and 45 minutes. So, what was wrong with the book. Technically, nothing major. The mystery was okay, but not great - kind of like a real-life mystery. An Bureau of Indiana Affairs investigator from Washington, D.C. comes to the Navajo Reservation to look into some problems with some water rights contracts that Reservation leaders have...

Published in 2015 by Franciscan Media. Read by the author, Richard Rohr. Duration: 7 hours, 34  minutes. Unabridged. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan Friar from Kansas who comes at Christianity with a little bit of a different take than most. He would argue that it is a truly Franciscan take, and it might very well be. I would not know because I am not a Catholic - but I did find this work to be very intriguing. He does not approach the text from a purely Catholic point of view - he praises and criticizes typical interpretations from Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox perspectives. The audiobook In the Footsteps of St. Paul is actually a series of lectures given by Rohr as part of a tourist cruise of Greece. In reality, it should have been called "In the Footsteps of St. Paul and St. John" since they do make a stop at Patmos and see where St. John purportedly spent many years in exile. Nevertheless, Paul's writings and Rohr's take on them dominate the lectures. One of th...

Published by Hachette Audio in October of 2019. Read by Titus Welliver and Christine Lakin. Duration: 10 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Michael Connelly has been publishing Harry Bosch since 1992. Harry Bosch started as a grumpy older detective and Connelly has decided to let him age (unlike, say, James Bond who has been basically the same age for almost 60 years). Bosch is now 70 years old and is long past being a LAPD police detective.  But, he's still on the hunt. The Night Fire brings back Renee Ballard is a police detective who has been relegated to "the late show" - better known as the nighttime Hollywood beat. It's a world of homeless camps, prostitutes, food trucks and party people going to and from the latest clubs. It's a punishment because she turned in a superior officer for sexual harassment and the old boys network believed the man rather than the woman. The author, Michael Connelly This is the second time Ballard and Bosch have worked toget...

Jack Reacher vs. The Patriot Act Published by Random House Audio in 2009. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 14 hours, 47 minutes. Unabridged. In Gone Tomorrow , Jack Reacher is in New York City, riding the subway after taking in a late night show in a bar. He notices a woman who is exhibiting all of the signs of being a suicide bomber that he learned years ago while being trained in Israel. When Reacher intervenes, he gets way more than he bargained for and gets sucked into a complicated mess and discovers that the powers granted to the federal government by the Patriot Act are not to be trifled with. The audiobook was read by multiple award-winning reader Dick Hill. He is my favorite reader of the Jack Reacher novels. But, even Dick Hill couldn't save some of the convoluted dialogue that comes from the villain's mouth as the book progresses. I was reminded of the famous line from Harrison Ford as he was filming Star Wars. He told George Lucas, " George! You can type this s***...

Original edition published in 2000. Updated edition published by Hachette Audio in 2006. Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell. Duration: 8 hours, 34 minutes. Unabridged.  Malcolm Gladwell's first book is about "tipping points" - that moment where an idea, a fad, a political candidate, a disease (or whatever) catches on and spreads like wildfire. Gladwell looks into the human factors that contributes to spread of all of the things I mentioned in the first paragraph boils it down to three types of people that are needed. He details those personality types, describes why they are important and provides real world examples of those personality types. For example, he goes into a lot of detail into why Paul Revere was absolutely necessary for the success of his midnight ride. There was another rider, but he achieved little. Paul Revere, on the other hand, was wildly successful for a number of reasons related to how well-connected he was. His ride resulted in the Minutemen com...

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...

Published in 2006 by Random House Audio. Read by the author, Bill Bryson. Duration: 7 hours, 39 minutes. Unabridged. Bill Bryson's memoir of life in 1950's Des Moines, Iowa is a wonderful trip into another time and another place with a gifted storyteller. There is nothing particularly amazing about this story. It's not a coming-of-age story with a profound climax - it is just a heartwarming reminiscence of the way things used to be - the good and the bad. It is often laugh-out-loud funny and reminds me a lot of the works of Jean Shepherd , even though they are set 20 years later.  You know Jean Shepherd if you are a fan of the movie A Christmas Story . Downtown Des Moines in the 1950s.  The author, Bill Bryson read the story. His incongruous English accent is a bit weird for a boy from Des Moines. My understanding is that Bryson spent so many years in the United Kingdom that he lost his American accent. Nevertheless, he did a great job. Highly recommended. I rate t...

Published in September of 2019 by Hachette Audio Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell Duration: 8 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged Malcolm Gladwell always writes an interesting book. When you listen to him as an audiobook, it can be frustrating as well because he throws so many ideas at you that you can't possibly write them all down (I couldn't if I wanted to anyway, I do a lot of my listening as I drive). The general premise behind Talking to Strangers is that it is very hard for people to "read" other people - even people that we see every day. It is even harder for us to read strangers and even harder to read people from different cultures. The more different the culture, the harder to read. Gladwell starts with the story of the death of  Sandra Bland , an African American woman from Chicago who killed herself after a questionable arrest after a questionable traffic stop in Texas. From there we wander far and wide - cold war espionage cases, policing strategies ...

Originally published in 1985 as part of the short story collection Skeleton Crew .  Published in 2017 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by Will Patton. Duration: 5 hours, 19 minutes. Unabridged. This is technically a re-read for me - I read The Mist when it was originally published 30+ years ago. It is such a vivid, tightly written story that it has always stuck with me. In my mind, this is one of Stephen King's better works, even if it is one of his shorter ones. The story focuses on David Drayton, his wife and his son. Drayton has made a pretty good living as a commercial artist and is able to afford a home on a lake in Maine. A particularly nasty summer storm has come through Maine in the middle of the night. Trees are down everywhere and, as a consequence, power lines and phone lines are down everywhere. It is important to note that this was written a long time before cell phones. The radio stations are also down - especially those that broadcast from the direction of a...