DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2018 by Penguin Audio. Read by Stephen Mendel Duration: 10 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged Synopsis: The third entry in the Peter Ash series begins with Peter Ash working on a team rebuilding hiking trails in Oregon and writing long heartfelt letters back to his love interest from the second book. He makes friends with an older man named Henry (a Vietnam vet, as opposed to Ash being a vet of Iran and Afghanistan.) Henry gets a call from his daughter in Colorado and asks for Henry's help with her business that provides security for some of the legal marijuana businesses. Turns out that these businesses have to operate completely in cash because marijuana is still illegal so far as the federal government is concerned so banks cannot take credit cards, debit cards or even deposits because it would be considered helping to traffic drugs. This means that there are shipments of pot and shipments of cash coming and going and that can attract bad guys. An entire security crew ...

  Book published in 2018. Audiobook published in 2023 by S.D. Falchetti. Read by Shamaan Casey. Duration: 7 hours, 59 minutes. Unabridged. Hayden's World: Volume 1 is a collection of 5 short stories in a single "universe" centering around a corporation that is in the forefront in the exploration of our solar system.  Roughly the first half of the book is about top executives of the company and their new drive system that will push a ship to nearly light speed. There are a lot of high-minded speeches about mankind and the need to keep pushing boundaries. When I say speeches, I mean literal speeches lifted from testimony to some sort of U.N. body.  Speeches are not the best way to introduce a book, in my opinion. The first part is just slow. I nearly quit listening to the audiobook multiple times in the first hour or so. The first story has an exciting, game-changing twist at the end that is simply dropped. The last two stories are great examples of hard science fiction in...

  Published by Blackstone Publishing in September of 2022. Read by Nicole Zanzerella. Duration: 12 hours, 6 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: An Enigma Machine from World War II. Patton Harcourt is a very small town librarian in North Carolina. One morning, while cooking in the kitchen, a sniper round comes through her window and nearly hits her. She reacts well (thanks to her previous career in the military) and finds a stranger at her door.  He is not the sniper, but he is an assassin that was hired to kill another person in town. Against her better judgment, she joins with the assassin to elude the sniper team. All of that happens in the first 10 minutes or so of this audiobook. From there, they discover a handmade copy of World War II Enigma machine (the British machine that broke the German secret codes) and are off to confront modern-day Neo-Nazis... My Review: This book was certainly action-packed, extremely fast-paced ,and had some good moments. But, it also had some prac...

  Originally published in 1925. This audiobook version was published by HarperAudio in 2004. Read by Tim Robbins. Duration: 5 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged.   Way back in the 1980s, I read The Great Gatsby . I remembered very little about it except that a rich guy was pining over a woman throughout the book. I also misremembered a few plot points. For example, I remembered Gatsby's car being dumped in a swimming pool or maybe in the bay. I have been reminded of the book on a regular basis because I teach in a high school and the book is read yearly by some English class or another. I usually ask a student if they like the book and tell them that I read it in high school. If they ask them if I liked it, I usually respond that I barely remember the plot except for "rich man - sad." When my daughter read it in her high school English class, I decided that it was time to re-visit the book.  Synopsis: Nick Carraway is newly arrived in New York City. He is a World War I veteran ...

  Published by Imbrifex Books in March of 2023. Read by Mark Sanderlin. Duration: 8 hours, 49 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Dan Renfrew is a self-described homeschooled nerd and his life has been turned upside down. He watched his father get stabbed by a stranger who invaded their house and he has no idea if he is even alive.  Now, thanks to a magical device, Dan is in Medieval England and caught up in an army on the move. He learns that his father is a "time jumper" - men tasked to fix glitches in time and make sure the timeline plays out the way it is supposed to. The year is 1066 - just a few days before King Harold Godwinson meets and defeats one of the last Viking invasions of England at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Even more importantly, King Harold will be forced to meet the forces of William, the Duke of Normandy in just a few days and will be defeated at the Battle of Hastings. But, something is wrong and even though Dan has almost no idea what to do, he has to ma...

  Published by Recorded Books in February of 2023. Read by David Chandler. Duration: 9 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Game Warden Joe Pickett is out in a snowstorm chasing down an elk with a broken leg. An out of state driver plowed into an elk herd while consulting the GPS app on his phone and an injured elk somehow limped away.  Joe and his dog Daisy are on a big ranch owned by an out of state multi-millionaire trying to track down the elk to put it out of its misery. Joe finds the elk, an SUV from a different part of the state, a metal building that is very out of place in this out of the way valley, and a dead man.  Joe starts to nose around and gets shot at twice by snowmobilers at the top of the valley and that's just the beginning of his troubles... My review: For the past 13 years I have been happily reviewing C.J. Box's novels. I went back and looked at those reviews and bit-time politics has been a part of them since almost the beginning. His early book...

Originally published in 1884 (U.K.) and 1885 (U.S.) This audiobook version published in 2008 by Tantor Audio. Read by William Dufris. Duration: 9 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. I would feel silly writing a synopsis of this book. This is the book that Ernest Hemingway said is the source of all modern American literature. It is almost universally recognized as not only "a" Great American Novel, but is oftentimes acclaimed as "THE" Great American Novel. So, I will skip all of that discussion and just move on to a review of the audiobook presentation and what I thought of the book. The audiobook reader was William Dufris (1958-2020),  a celebrated voice over actor and the reader of dozens and dozens of audiobooks. He did a fantastic job of creating voice after voice after voice. It was quite impressive. An original illustration by E.W. Kemble from the 1884 printing of this book As for the novel, well that was less impressive than I remembered. I read this book in eleme...

Published in September of 2022 by Blackstone Publishing. Read by the author, Richard V. Reeves. Duration: 6 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Men, as a group, are struggling in today's economy. The average male's income has falling in inflation-adjusted terms, especially so when you factor out upper class and upper middle class men. Men are more likely to be arrested, be addicts, be homeless, and more likely to succeed at killing themselves. Boys are struggling in today's educational system. They are far more likely to be suspended, expelled or placed in a special education program. They are far less likely to graduate from high school. They far less likely to attempt any sort of post-secondary education (a majority of all college students are female) or training and far less likely to complete that training or degree - even in the rare situations where the post-secondary training and/or education are essentially free. Reeves, an economist with the Brookings Institutions, sees...

  Published in 2022 by Recorded Books. Read by David Chandler. Duration: 9 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Game Warden Joe Pickett investigates a report of a dead elk. Fearing that it is the victim of a botched attempt at poaching, he investigates. Instead, he finds a burned corpse and falls headlong into another murder investigation. Meanwhile, Joe's wife Marybeth, the director of the local library discovers an odd package left at the library with connections to a prominent Nazi from World War II. And...Nate Romanowski is in Denver hunting down an old enemy during the midst of an Antifa/BLM riot. My review: This is a book series about a game warden. Oftentimes, he is joined by a former special forces guy who is so into nature that he used to stand naked in a stream of water for hours at a time to get the feel of a river and its entire ecosystem - from the slime at the bottom to the fish to the birds that swoop down to the beavers that dam it up. Antifa protest in Denver Th...

  Published by Penguin Audio in 2017. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 11 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Peter Ash is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has had trouble settling in to civilian life. Specifically, he has a fear of enclosed places. He is good with his hands and restored an old pickup truck. He drives the truck all over the place and explores America by hiking and camping. The author, Nick Petrie As Burning Bright starts, Ash is hiking in a forest of giant redwoods and stumbles upon a bear, climbs a tree, meets a girl in the trees, finds out she is being hunted by a professional hit team and that's when everything starts to really get interesting... My Review: I like this series, even though it suffers a bit of a sophomore slump in my opinion. This is not to say that it is a bad book - it's not. I am rating this book 4 stars out of 5. I flew through the first half of the book, but the second half of the book was just a bit too ridiculous...

  Published by Blackstone Publishing in 2022. Read by Jack de Golia. Duration: 8 hours, 58 minutes. Unabridged. The cover of the book and the short description offered by my library app gives the impression that this book is pretty much about the "Silent Sam" Confederate memorial that stood at the University of North Carolina from 1913-2018. This book is much more than that, though. It uses Silent Sam as an entry point into a larger discussion of how North Carolina chose to remember how it performed in the Civil War (more than 10% of Civil War soldiers from North Carolina actually fought for the Union.) He also discusses how White men lied about their service to get Confederate pensions and the government turned a blind eye in the name affirming White unity and White Supremacy. Whites that fought for the Union (but couldn't qualify for a Union pension) or actively fought the Confederate draft with violence or by simply going AWOL at every point possible were given pension...

  Published by HighBridge in 2016. Read by Sean Crisden. Duration: 4 hours, 19 minutes. Unabridged. At the beginning of the Civil War, the Confederacy authorized ships to be privateers. Privateers are basically pirates with the explicit backing of a government. The idea was to authorize as many ships as possible to attack Union shipping as part of the Confederate war effort.  William Tillman (c. 1834-?) One of the early victims of these attacks was the S.J. Waring , a ship out of New York City bound for South America. On July 4, 1861 the ship was attacked, captured, and most of the crew was taken off the Waring to the privateer ship but they did leave a few people behind, including the ship's cook - a free black man named William Tillman.  The privateers made it very clear that they were going to sell Tillman in the slave market in Charleston and Tillman was not going to let that happen... Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of information about William Tillman - eithe...

Published by McFori Ink Ltd in 2018. Read by Morgan C. Jones. Duration: 11 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: This comic romp features Paul Mulchrone - an unmotivated ne'er do well who is forced to volunteer 6 hours per week (and stay out of trouble) to maintain the weekly payments he receives as an inheritance from a hated aunt. He works those hours at a local hospital for older people in the memory care wing. He visits the patients and pretends to be relatives or friends that they want to talk to. Between failing eyesight, confusion and wishful thinking it works. The author, Caimh McDonnell It also works because Mulchrone is pretty good at improv and because he has "one of those faces" and looks a whole lot like just about everybody. One day, he is asked to visit an old man in the hospice who is clearly dying. The old man gets confused, thinks he is the son of an old partner in crime and stabs Mulchrone with a knife he had stashed away. Mulchrone gets treated and ...

Published by Recorded Books in 2012. Read by L.J. Ganser. Duration: 16 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. In 1783, at the end of the Revolutionary War, Loyalists (Americans who opposed the American Revolution and stayed loyal to Britain) had a choice to make - stay and ride out the anti-Loyalist bias in the United States or move somewhere else. In the two years between the last major engagement (Yorktown) and the official end of the war and withdrawal of British troops the British decided to evacuate any Loyalists that wanted to go to other parts of the British Empire. One of the biggest advocates of this position was Guy Carleton, the British commander in America after Yorktown who later went on to become the Governor-in-Chief of Canada. He had more to do with what happened in this history than any other single person. Guy Carleton (1724-1808) The British government made an effort to make things right for these Loyalists. Not many Loyalists were completely reimbursed, but the fact that an...

  Published in 2016 by Penguin Audio. Read by Stephen Mendel. Duration: 9 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Peter Ash is a veteran that has seen multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan serving as a Lieutenant in the Marines. He is struggling with what he has seen and what he has done and is having a hard time integrating himself into the civilian world. It doesn't help that he has claustrophobia so intense that he has a hard time even walking into a building. Peter gets word that his best friend, the sergeant that served with him every step of the way, has killed himself. Ash is torn up over his death and sees his failure to keep up with his best friend as a betrayal on his part. He decides to try to make amends by approaching his friend's widow and his two young sons by offering his services as a carpenter to try to fix things up a bit. He knows that she won't take any charity so he tells her he is from a (fake) government program that sends out retired Marin...

  Published in 2019 by HighBridge. Read by the author, John McWhorter. Duration: 4 hours, 19 minutes. Unabridged. John McWhorter is, perhaps, the best known linguist in America (after Noam Chomsky). He has written about general rules of how languages over long periods of time, the evolution of English, the history behind English's biggest and baddest curse words, and more. Although he speaks in a formal tone, he has a knack for explaining fairly complicated things with everyday English and with lots of easy to follow examples. The author and reader, John McWhorter In this book, the topic is what is commonly known as Black English.  Many people think of Black English as simply "bad" or "slang" English - English with less verb conjugations, double negatives and the endings left off of lots of words. McWhorter demonstrates that Black English isn't just random mispronunciations and made up words. Instead, it is a coherent system that has its own distinct grammar...

Published in 2021 by Tantor Audio. Read by David Sadzin. Duration: 6 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. At it's core, this book is a history of Confederate monuments and what they mean(t) to all of the people who live and work around them. These monuments are tied in with the "Lost Cause" view of history that teaches that the Confederate cause was a just one, that the war had nothing to do with slavery and that the Confederate cause is only suppressed, but not dead. These monuments are a vivid reminder about the "not dead" part. When the first big waves of monuments were out up (late 1800's) the Jim Crow laws were becoming standardized. During this time period, the Supreme Court decided in favor of racial segregation in the case Plessy v Ferguson (1896) and that project continued in earnest throughout the South.  The monuments did honor the Confederate veterans, but they were also placed in symbolic areas like courthouses and town squares told African-Americans ...

  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...

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2008. Read by Lorna Raver. Duration: 10 hours, 54 minutes. Unabridged. This unique Civil War history isn't driven by the timeline of the Civil War, the strategies, or the personalities. Instead, it is a look at how the soldiers, the government, the families on the home front and post-war politics were affected by the massive amount of death that the war created as it ground on. In all previous wars, the U.S. government did not worry too much about how to bury the dead because there just weren't that many when compared to the Civil War. Soldiers were properly buried, but there wasn't much thought given to keeping records about where they were buried, marking their graves or even keeping track of who had died. The sheer quantity of death in the Civil War made the government change its approach.  The book starts with a look at how dying a glorious death was all everyone wrote about. But, once the reality of the war was apparent, the talk shifte...