DWD's Reviews

Published in 2018 in the United States by Dey Street Books. Kate Harris and her childhood friend Mel decided to go on a bicycle adventure that approximates Marco Polo's trip along the Silk Road from Turkey to China. This is not a trip taken on a whim. Harris has read about explorers and dreamed about being an explorer all of her life. She's a scientist by training but she can't stand to be in a lab - she has to get out and see the world. Actually, she started out wanting to go to Mars and actually went so far as to participate in a Mars simulation complete with spacesuits out in the Utah desert.  The simulation told her one important thing - being in a space suit denied her the tactile experience of exploration such as the wind in your hair and the smells. So, rather than Mars, she decides to go to one of the most remote areas of the world, for a couple of Canadians - Central Asia. It has vast deserts, literally the tallest mountains in the world and arcane bureaucracies...

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 in May of 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Kaleo Griffith Duration: 5 hours, 44 minutes Unabridged Besides being a Law Professor at Harvard and a former member of the Obama Administration, Cass R. Sunstein is a massive fan of all things Star Wars.  In a wide-ranging and mostly interesting discussion, Sunstein uses Star Wars as a way to explain aspects of the American and world political scene, economics and family dynamics.  He starts with a little history of how Star Wars came to be, including George Lucas's struggles in writing the screenplay, the way the actors all thought they were acting in an interesting movie that was certain to be a big flop and the reluctance by the studios to really push the movie. But, despite the odds, Star Wars became a massive phenomenon - the series is the all-time leader in multiple categories and the hits just keep on coming. Sunstein explores why it became a big hit, looking at the timing of its release, what was going on ...

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2006 Translated by Caroline Mustill and E.H. Gombrich Narrated by Ralph Cosham Duration: 9 hours, 14 minutes Unabridged E.H. Gombrich (1909-2001) As the title states A Little History of the World is a small history of, well, everything. Sort of. This history was originally written in 1935. The author was an unemployed art historian and was asked to write a history of the world for children for an Austrian publisher. The first edition was written in six weeks and it sold well and has sold consistently ever since. Gombrich retained the rights and after World War II set out to keep it updated and translated it into multiple languages. He was working on translating it into English when he died in 2001 at the age of 92. The work was finished by others and no one is quite sure how exactly he was planning on ending it. The chapter on early man is quite memorable in that it gives early men and women a lot of credit for figuring out a lot of importa...

This series returns to its winning ways. Published in 2014 by Hay House Visions Former Buddhist monk and ex-LAPD officer Tenzing "Ten" Norbu returns in the what could be entry #3, #3.5 or #4 following the prequel The Broken Rules of Ten. Ten continues his search for the perfect girl but his professional life has taken off in a big way thanks to the celebrity connections he made in The Second Rule of Ten . Mac Gannon, an aging action hero star who is an ultra-Catholic with a propensity to cheat on his wife and drink too much and the spout racist venom (clearly inspired by Mel Gibson) hires Ten to find a missing illegal alien housekeeper. That's tricky enough with the hazy documentation comes with being an illegal alien, but Ten has to keep it as quiet as possible since Mac is really hiring Ten so that Bets McMurtry, California's answer to Sarah Palin, does not get tied to her (even though she desperately wants her friend found, she is always aware of the poli...

Published by W. W. Norton in 2007 Susan Wise Bauer is well-known in the home school community for her well-written histories. I am not a home school parent but I do recommend this book for history buffs who would like a long-term general overview of history. Bauer mines lots of types of sources to build a view of the earliest cities and their beliefs. Bauer's history focuses on political leaders and religious/philosophical beliefs of different civilizations. One thing that I really like was her ability to take myths and legends (like Gilgamesh) and tie them into actual history and demonstrate why those myths and legends mattered to those ancient peoples and give the modern reader a way to have a better understanding of these ancient peoples.  The book starts with a focus on four major civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus River Valley (India) and the Yellow River Valley (China). As these groups grow, other areas are added (such as Ancient Greece and Rome).   T...

Too Much Plot for Just One Book Published in 2013 by Hay House Visions So, the second book in the Tenzing Norbu series is jam-packed - so jam-packed that it really should have been two books. Tenzing "Ten" Norbu is a welcome addition to the L.A. mystery genre. He is an ex-Tibetan monk and an ex-LAPD officer turned private investigator who is struggling to figure out his place in the world, looking for the right woman and dealing with a poor relationship with his father. In this mystery, Ten is trying to solve the murder of an ex-client, a Hollywood producer with a reputation for making enemies. Along the way, he discovers a much larger plot involving a Latin gang, illegal drugs and a survivor of the Holocaust. I really like the character Ten - he is an active practitioner of meditation but in no way does he have all of his problems solved by meditation - he still gets irritated in traffic jams, can't figure out how to deal with the new lady in his life and he...

A twist on the L.A. detective novel Published in 2012 by  Hay House Visions . For years, Los Angeles has been the home of the detective story. For Raymond Chandler, Dragnet , Robert Crais, Michael Connelly and even videogames like L.A. Noire , Los Angeles has been the seedy, diverse world that has all of the secrets that our intrepid detective heroes must dig up and expose. Tenzing Norbu (he goes by Ten) is a different kind of detective in that he grew up in a monastery and used to be a Buddhist monk but moved to America at the age of 18. His literary hero is Sherlock Holmes and he has just retired from LAPD as a detective because the job was simply getting too bureaucratic - too much paperwork, not enough mystery-solving. Ten may not be a monk any longer but he is still a practicing Buddhist. That's a different twist, and in some ways a refreshing twist on the stereotype of the alcohol-abusing chain smoking detective. Not that Ten is a prude, but he is mindful of wh...

             Oh! The dangers of reviewing a classic . Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) Siddhartha has been on my "should read" list for a long time, nearly 20 years. With all of that build up and anticipation you'd think I'd have more thoughts about it than I do. My one word review of the book is 'lukewarm.' It is neither a strong book nor a weak book. Siddhartha's spiritual quest is told in such a detached manner that, in the end, I feel detached from the whole exercise. I am uncommited to the character and I really didn't particularly care where his quest ended up. Perhaps that was the point of it all - it's his quest, you can do nothing but care about your own. I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon here:  Siddhartha Reviewed  on December 6, 2005.