DWD's Reviews

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2013 Read by Robertson Dean Duration: 17 hours, 23 minutes Unabridged Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump , has delivered an impressive triple biography of three of America's aviation pioneers with The Aviators . The book focuses on Eddie Rickenbacker (1890-1973), auto racer turned World War I flying ace, Jimmy Doolittle (1896-1993), test pilot and the first person to perform a landing using only instruments (this sounds sort of mundane but it meant that planes could take fly in all sorts of weather - not just on clear days), and the world famous Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) - the first man to fly solo over the Atlantic in an airplane and a truly international celebrity. Charles Lindbergh (right) with a P-38 on an island in the South Pacific during World War II in 1944. Each of these men had very different personalities but each shared a passion for being in the air. Charles Lindbergh is by far the most famous of the three, even...

Published in 2011 by Random House Audio Read by Dennis Boutsikaris Duration: 11 hours, 33 minutes John Grisham returns to familiar ground in this novel - the world of mass tort litigation, a topic covered thoroughly in The King of Torts in 2003. Despite the similar legal theme, The Litigators is a much different novel and, I think, the better of the two. The book focuses on a tiny law firm with just two partners and a self-trained legal secretary with attitude. The firm calls itself a "boutique" firm, implying that they do specialty work and stay small out of choice. In reality, if they have a specialty it is car crashes, slip-and-fall cases and divorces. They are barely making it and sometimes they are literally ambulance chasers. They cruise funeral homes looking for wrongful death cases. Into this sad firm comes another lawyer. He's drunk, he's obnoxious and he's read the name of the firm on an ad looking for work. He's a Harvard-educated attorn...

Audiobook published in 2003 by Skyboat Productions. Read by Stefan Rudnicki. Duration: 11 hours, 7 minutes. Unabridged. David Morrell excels at the thriller but he really excels at a subset of the thriller - what I call a "chase novel." His first novel, First Blood, was this type of book. The protagonist is being chased by someone or a group of people and the reader gets taking along for the ride. The Protector is like that as well. A research scientist named Prescott hires a private security team to guard his life from drug dealers and perhaps a compromised government agency. Either way, Cavanaugh is sent to meet the client and assess his needs. In the middle of that meeting highly trained men storm the building and Cavanaugh and Prescott barely escape. But, once Cavanaugh and Prescott can take a breather, Cavanaugh realizes that Prescott may be a lot more than he imagined and Cavanaugh may have to protect himself from his own client... This was an enjoyable, if not ...

Published by Random House Audio in 2013 Narrated by Paul Michael Duration: 22 hours, 5 minutes Unabridged. Just to establish where I am coming from - I am a huge Civil War buff. I have over 100 books on my shelf. Although I live in Indiana, I have managed to make it to three Civil War battlefields in the last two years (Murfreesboro, Fort Donelson and Chickamauga) and I just bought my father the original Shaara Civil War trilogy (the one based around The Killer Angels ) for Christmas. I own Shaara's World War I and World War II series as well as his original Civil War series and his Mexican War book. I am a fan. Confederate Lt. General John C. Pemberton (1814-1881) But, I am not a fan of A Chain of Thunder . I have no problem with the authenticity of the book and there are parts that are amazing, intense and just about perfect. But, the first half of this book feels like it is trying to be "The Great American Novel" and failing at the attempt. There is so much r...

Published by Tantor Audio in May of 2015 Read by Tom Perkins Duration: 8 hours, 16 minutes If you are a person that likes to debate on the internet than you have undoubtedly experienced Godwin's Law . Godwin's Law states that if you debate long enough on the internet, someone will inevitably make a comparison to Nazism, Hitler, the Holocaust ("You don't like Donald Trump's hair? What are you? The hairdo Nazi?!?").  A similar rule exists when discussing American politics - eventually someone will refer back to the Founding Fathers. It is especially easy to quote Thomas Jefferson - he was so prolific and well-written that it is easy to break out a quote to support your point of view. In the case of Jefferson, it is often too easy because he was extremely inconsistent in his political views. To start easy, he did write " We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienabl...

Published in 2012 by HighBridge Multicast performance Duration: 1 hour, 7 minutes NPR has searched its archives for stories about America's National Park System for this enjoyable collection. These stories don't just tell us about the park but tell us an interesting story in the park. The stories vary from the humorous (the story about the smallest National Park - Thaddeus Kosciuszco National Memorial in Philadelphia which consists of a single room and covers .02 acre to honor this figure from the Revolutionary War) to the wondrous (Death Valley in full bloom after a once-in-a-lifetime rainstorm). The listener learns about the small city of employees that run Grand Canyon National Park, spooky tales of love at White Sands, an effort to preserve the music of New Orleans and a park employee who charts and maps the roadkill that he finds as he goes about his work.  The audio quality is, of course, excellent since these stories were originally produced for broadcast on NPR....

Published by GraphicAudio in August of 2013 Multi-cast performance Duration: Approximately 5 hours Marvel Comic's Spider-Man swings into action in Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder . He is up against a robot attack against New York's Diamond District in a scene that was very reminiscent of the classic Superman cartoon " The Mechanical Monsters ." But, Spider-Man always has a different take on things than the Man of Steel. Spidey's comments and tendency to not quite have everything under control give this caper a unique twist. Of course, J. Jonah Jameson continues his media barrage against the webslinger, Peter Parker and M.J. are working through relationship issues and Spider-Man continues to struggle with his work/superhero/home life balance. But, in this story he faces other issues, including robot attacks from an undetermined source, a messed up Spidey Sense and a non-stop rainy weather pattern that make his webs a lot less effective and make it hard to swi...

Published by HighBridge in April of 2015. Multicast Performance. Duration: Approximately 3.5 hours After 35 years on the air, there are no more Car Talk episodes being made.Tom has passed on and Ray Magliozzi is retired. But, they still are broadcast on NPR stations across the country. NPR is also going back and searching for great episodes to sell. This is a four episode collection that probably dates from the late 1990s, based on the cars that they were discussing.  In these episodes Tom and Ray weigh in on the following: -The lady in Alaska whose truck only goes up hills in reverse (and how she ended up in Alaska in the first place). -The woman whose husband bought a car to rebuild and restore that only worked in reverse. -The woman who had 33 different cars in the last 15 years. -The astronaut who called from the space shuttle and knew Tom and Ray when he used to go to their shop back when he was in college. -The freshman student who was suffering from in...

Audio edition published by Tantor Audio in September of 2014 Read by Tom Perkins Duration: 13 hours, 29 minutes Unabridged Years ago, when I reviewed Doris Kearns Goodwin's monumental history of the Lincoln Administration, Team of Rivals , I noted that it was way too long and that I wished she had made it even longer by continuing to write about this team as they transitioned into the Andrew Johnson Administration. This book is similar to Team of Rivals in that it looks at individuals in the Lincoln Administration (and thus covers a lot of territory covered more thoroughly by Doris Kearns Goodwin) but it does continue on. Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) The book is mostly told through a series of biographies, ranging from Lincoln to Charles Sumner to the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination to O.O. Howard and even to Nathan Bedford Forrest. After Lincoln covers a lot of ground without really coming up with anything new, at least not for this serious student of t...

Published in January of 2008 by Macmillan Audio Read by John Bedford LLoyd Duration: 11 hours, 58 minutes Unabridged The first C.J. Box book to make it to publication that did not feature Joe Pickett, Blue Heaven is set in north Idaho. The story can easily be classified as a modern version of a classic western story.  The story starts with a highly respected local rancher, a lifelong resident of the area, who is in danger of losing his beloved ranch to the bank. Newcomers, including an especially large number of retired police officers from Los Angeles, are moving in and local realtors want to take advantage of his financial troubles and turn his ranch into a series of McMansions with mini ranches so that the new residents can play at being cowboy.        Meanwhile, two kids get mad at their mom and decide to take her boyfriend's expensive fishing equipment out for a fishing trip that he promised to take him on but "forgot" about. Before they even get t...

  Just About as Perfect as It Could Be Published by GraphicAudio in 2013 Multicast Performance Duration: about 6 hours Adapted from the original book. As D.C. Comics gears up for their big Batman vs. Superman release next year it is interesting to look at how these two iconic characters ever ended up meeting, working together and then become trusted allies. I grew up in the era when Superfriends and the Justice League were Saturday morning mainstays. Unfortunately, these were horrible days for the Batman franchise. Batman was reduced to being a sidekick of Superman with his only saving grace being that he was the only sidekick with a sidekick (Robin). The first Michael Keaton Batman movie brought a dark side to the character that had probably never been seen on screen.  Batman has trust issues. He is secretive and he is often the only force for justice in a city that perverts the law to do the work of evil men. He must work in secrecy and hide in the shadows. T...

Published in 2012 by BBC Audiobooks Ltd. Read by Frances Barber Duration: 1 hour, 13 minutes Unabridged Two physicists are working in a secret lab in a massive space station that literally encircles a planet in Doctor Who: Snake Bite . Their secret project is kept hidden from everyone - even the power to run it is taken siphoned away from dozens of other locations on the space station. Down below, a unique planet is being studied. In the lab, a a stable wormhole is being perfected. As the wormhole stabilizes, the TARDIS arrives right in the middle of it all. The Doctor (Matt Smith's Doctor) doesn't know where they are at first and he certainly doesn't know why he is there. Once they start to figure things out they discover that things are weirder than they even imagined... Frances Barber Frances Barber was picked to read this audiobook. The producers tried to tie a little Doctor Who authenticity to the book by picking a Doctor Who alum to read the book. Barber played...

Audiobook Edition Published in 2009 by Tantor Audio Published in hardback in 2006. Read by John Allen Nelson Duration: 11 hours, 13 minutes Unabridged The massacre at Fort Pillow truly stands out in a bloody Civil War in which hundreds of thousands of men and women died. Even though the American Civil War had so many casualties, the war itself was remarkable in that the two sides were often quite civil with one another off of the battlefield. There are numerous stories of local truces to trade coffee for tobacco and the like. My favorite is the story of Confederate and Union pickets (perimeter guards) who co-built a cabin in stages during the winter and agreed to share it in shifts as the day went along. Prisoners of War were generally cared for (there were exceptions, but they stick out as exceptions), the enemy wounded were treated by the doctors (the care was bad, but the best that was available), and so on. Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) The battle at Fort Pillow in...

Published in 2015 by HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books. Multicast performance Duration: 2 hours, 20 minutes Unabridged In a lot of ways the first story in this 30 story collection typifies the entire collection. It is called "Grizzly Encounters" and is an almost 6 minute long recounting of three different encounters with Grizzly Bears. We were on a long family trip and you could almost sense the family settling in for what was sure to be an interesting story. But, after we had listened to each of them sort of peter out to a "that's it?" moment I stopped the CD and asked if I was the only one that was disappointed in that story. Everyone, even the nine year old, thought the story was a disappointment. So, on to the next story - a story about bats in a mine that I remember most for telling me this was the sound of the bats that they had been hunting (and me thinking that this would sound great in the awesome speakers of the rental SUV) only to have it...

Published by Random House in 2009 Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 5 hours, 7 minutes Unabridged In the third book in this series, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch do a lot, but at the same time I felt like this book went nowhere and made a lot of noise doing it. In short, Cole and Hitch begin the story looking for Cole's ex-girlfriend Allie French. You have to have read the first two books to even begin to wonder why Cole wants to find this woman again. They find her in the worst brothel in the worst part of town and rescue her and a fight ensues. They all leave town and eventually find a town that needs two deputies and they take the jobs. In the town there are multiple saloons, including one led by a former army officer who was cashiered from the service because he led his men on an attack on an Indian village and killed old people, women and children but no warriors.  There is also a church in town with a curious brand of Christianity led by a megalomaniac who believ...

Published in October of 2014 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Jim Gaffigan Duration: 7 hours, 17 minutes Unabridged My wife and two kids and I listened to Food: A Love Story as we drove on our family trip this summer. We are fans of Jim Gaffigan (I really appreciate the fact that our children can listen and he rarely uses an inappropriate word, let alone vulgar commentary or topics.) The book is obviously about food and Jim rarely deviates from it. He is not a "foodie". He is not driving out of his way to get something new. He is not traveling with the intent to try exotic twists on old flavors. Nope, he is an every man talking about regular every day food - burgers, fries, hot dogs, ice cream, cupcakes, pancakes, etc. He gets his tips on where to go by tweeting to his followers that he is in a certain city and where should he go. He rarely gets a bad recommendation. He includes an overview of the country with regional specialties, including a long and hil...

Published by Marvel Press and Blackstone Audio on April 10 of 2015. Read by Tom Taylorson Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes. Unabridged. Marvel's Avengers: The Age of Ultron: The Junior Novelization  is my third audiobook of a junior novelization of a movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  They adhere closely to the movies, have all been well-read, easy to listen to and, on the whole, quite enjoyable.  But, this one is troubling because it only covers half of the movie. Literally, this audiobook is about half of the length of the other audiobooks as well. If you have seen the movie, it only goes to the fight scene in the ship that is being harvested for scrap metal and it alludes to the Iron Man/Hulk fight scene. That's it.  Ultron Up to that point, it's an enjoyable audiobook. Reader Tom Taylorson does a very good job with the different voices of the Avengers, especially Thor. He also does an especially good job with the voice of Ultron - sometimes he sou...