DWD's Reviews

Published in 2021 by Hourly History. Hourly History has a series of short histories and biographies. As the name implies, they are designed to be read in about an hour. Some of the best offerings in this series are the biographies and this biography of Saint Peter was no exception. Saint Peter, of course, is one of the main figures in the New Testament, probably tied with Saint Paul for the second most important after Jesus himself. But, he's kind of a mystery in many ways because the references to Peter are scattered. This biography gathers together all of those scattered references and puts them in a narrative format so that it reads like a traditional biography. It takes care to note when stories are from the Bible and when they come from tradition (the description of how Peter was executed comes to mind.) The general outlines of Peter's life are laid out with only a token discussion of the implications of his theology, such as the decision to not require converts to Christ...

Published in 2023 by Hourly History. Aretha Franklin (1942-2018) was a true music legend. Nicknamed the Queen of Soul, she dominated the charts in the late 1960s and early 1970s and popped in and out of the charts for the rest of her life. She appeared on television, in movies, and, of course, in concert. Hourly History specializes in short biographies and histories that most readers can complete in about an hour. The reader is not going to get a super-detailed biography, but the reader will get a decent overview. Some of these biographies are quite good, some read like a well-written Wikipedia page. This book was much more like the latter than the former. It went through the Franklin's life and told all of the details, but you never get a sense of what she was like as a person.  I was pleased to see that they mentioned her small but outstanding role in The Blues Brothers . I think it is one of the major highlights in a movie full of highlights. I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5...

Published by Amazon Original Stories in 2023. Synopsis: There has been a murder in one of the newest and most exclusive high rise apartments in London. The night security guard in the lobby was found dead by his girlfriend (she used to sneak in for a little romancing in the middle of the night.) His head was smashed into the corner of the counter and a fancy electronic door key is missing from the collection of spare keys in the office. When detectives start asking around it looks like just about everyone in the apartment building could have killed the guard, including the girlfriend. My review: The first half of this story was pretty tedious. The way the crime was finally solved was kind of obvious - and I missed it! I rate this short story 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: T he Rise: A Short Story by Ian Rankin .

Published by Hourly History in 2021. I think this is the third book I've read in the last few years that is at least partially about the Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa (1878-1923). I read two that were basically about American responses to Villa's cross-border excursions  (and near misses) into the United States for money and supplies. Each entry in the Hourly History series is, by definition, a short book. Each entry is supposed to be read in about an hour. This biography was neither bad nor good. It did tell the basically outlines of his life without giving the reader much a sense of the man. Even worse, Villa will forever be associated with the Mexican Revolution but this book did a pretty poor job of explaining the complicated politics that Villa tried to navigate. It seemed that he was an insider one week, on the outs the next week, and running for his life the week after that and I had no understanding as to why that was. A good basic intro, but nothing more. I rate t...

Published in 2014 by WordFire Press My Synopsis: Veteran (and prolific) author Kevin J. Anderson delivers a compelling short story/novella in the tradition of the golden age of sci-fi with Comrades in Arms .  Humanity is at war with an insectoid race that uses psychic energy to create weapons and even peer into the future.  The story is set in an asteroid belt way out in the middle of nowhere. Some of the asteroids have breathable atmospheres, but they're not comfortable for either race to live on for long.  Even though the asteroids have limited value, there is no way either side will give them up so the war has ground itself into a stalemate of sorts.  However, humanity has developed a new weapon that is starting to turn the tide. Mortally wounded humans are brought back to the base and given the Robocop treatment. Their bodies are refitted with armored limbs, organs are replaced, and a "werewolf trigger" is installed deep in the brain. The werewolf trigger sets th...

  Published by Hourly History in March of 2024. Hourly History publishes an extensive line of histories and biographies that are intended to be read in about an hour. With that limit, none of these are the definitive biographies, but most of them  give the average reader a good sense of who the person was and why they were important.  Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) was the 36th President of the United States. One thing I particularly like about this biography is that it tells about his formative experiences in Texas as a young man, especially his short stint as a public school teacher in a very poor area of rural Texas. Getting to know those students really gave him the desire to want to create government programs to help alleviate poverty.  This biography is a little skewed towards Johnson's early life, but it's not particularly hard to find information about LBJ's time as President and the series offers books on the big events of his administration like the Vietnam W...

  Published in 2020 by Hourly History. Hourly History specializes in e-book biographies and histories that take most readers about an hour to read. In some cases, an hour to cover a topic seems about right. For example, I really enjoyed their book on the  Cuban Missile Crisis .  Of course there is a massive difference in the time involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Mayan Civilization - one lasted for weeks, the other for centuries. That makes a big difference with what can be dealt with the series' self-imposed one hour time constraint and that difference really hurt this e-book. I have zero problems with the facts presented in this book, but I do have a problem with the way they were presented.  I found this book to be oddly written. My pet theory as I was reading it was that it was an early experiment with an AI author program - but there is an actual name attached to my kindle e-book - Henry Freeman. Oddly, the Amazon website does not list Freeman as th...

Published in 2024 by Amazon Original Stories. The premise of Tiger Chair is that it is a frank letter from a mid-level Chinese officer to a friend back home. World War III has been going on for a while. It started over the invasion of Taiwan and has now spread around the world. Chinese forces are active on many fronts, including India. China has also attacked the United States in the mistaken belief that America's racial diversity and political animosities would cause American resolve to crumble and it would be a short war. This has turned out to be wrong and the invasion has turned into occupation duty and occupation duty has always been terrible.  I think Brooks has an actual agenda with this book and it is a warning. It is not a warning about China. It is a warning about over-dependence on technology and the foolishness of war. On top of that, it is so easy for one country to think that they have a realistic take on another country's internal politics and culture when they ...

  Published in 2022 by Hourly History This was a very odd choice for me to read for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't normally enjoy the gossip magazine type of stories. 2) I don't follow the modern English royal family - I find them to be annoying. 3) I don't really follow the English royal family in the history books, either. Here's how we got here.  Hourly History offers several free e-books every weekend and I picked up the book on Princess Diana for some unknown reason. And, six months later I accidentally picked the Princess Diana book with my fat thumb while using my e-reader app on my phone. I could have removed the download, but I decided to just go with it. Turns out, this was a happy accident. I am not going to go over Diana's life story in this review. I will just say that this rather short biography (the publisher intends that its books take about an hour to read) was interesting and pleasant to read. A lot of it was information I remember just from bei...

E-book Published by Amazon Digital Services in 2010. I have a real soft spot for books about travel - especially travel in odd ways. I have read a book about a guy who backpacked across Europe, a man who hiked across Afghanistan in 2002, a man who biked from England to India, two women who biked from Turkey to China, a man who hiked from Mexico to the Darien Gap in Panama, the same man hiked the length of the Nile River, a man who found a little dog while in a hiking competition in the Gobi Desert, a man who hiked all 48 mountains in New Hampshire with his little schnauzer dog, and more. One of these travel stories was by this author, Keith Foskett. Last year, I read the story of his trip up the Pacific Crest Trail  - from Mexico to Canada and almost all in the mountains. This hike was much more sedate and featured less extremes in the weather. The Camino de Santiago is a well-established route. It has been an pilgrimage route for more than 1,000 years and in the last 30 years or ...

  Published by Amazon Original Stories in August of 2023. The author Actor and comedian and author Kevin Hart delivers a short book on how give yourself and all of those around you a break by giving up that feeling that you have to literally do everything yourself and it all has to be done your way. There was literally nothing wrong with Hart's advice - it's actually excellent advice - but for a 44 page book it was repetitive.  Hart frequently attempts to put a bit of humor in the book, but I found myself wishing that I was watching Hart deliver a TED Talk so that the humor and stories would actually work so much better.  Maybe if this had been an audiobook.... I rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  IT WILL ALL WORK OUT: THE FREEDOM of LETTING GO (kindle) by Kevin Hart

  Published in 2018 by Hourly History. Hourly History is a publisher that specializes in short histories and biographies in e-book form that are designed to be read in about an hour. Sometimes, an hour is not long enough to explain a topic, but in this case an hour is just about right. Since the Cuban Missile Crisis is a pretty well known historical event, just let me say that this short e-book delivers a concise, well-paced history. It also manages to present a balanced history that spreads the blame for the crisis and somehow keep up a sense of tension even though the reader knows for a fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis did not actually cause a worldwide global thermonuclear war in 1962. I rate this e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

  Published in 2019 by Hourly History. Hourly History  publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for larger topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it works out about right for this topic. This history goes all of the way back to the arrival of the  Mayflower in 1620. Turns out the Puritans brought hundreds of gallons of alcoholic beverages with them to the New World and immediately set up the means to produce even more. The book then goes on to show the ups and down of America's relationship with alcohol. When the reader gets to the temperance movement, there is a solid context to understand why the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1919 and why it was eventually abolished by the 21st Amendment a mere 14 years later. For a short read, this book provides a lot of good, basic information.  I rate this e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.c...

  Published in 2023 by Hourly History . In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in an effort to stabilize their neighbor. In theory, Afghanistan had a communist government and the USSR had a policy of not letting any communist government fall.  Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan in 1989 via a bridge that was special built for the purpose of letting the USSR withdraw from Afghanistan even quicker. In 1989, the Soviet Union finished withdrawing its armed forces from Afghanistan. On paper they had negotiated a stable pro-Soviet government to lead Afghanistan after 10 years of frustrating fighting an elusive enemy that specialized in hitting the much better equipped Soviet army within guerilla hit-and-run tactics.  Within 3 years both the government of Afghanistan and the government of the USSR had collapsed and Afghanistan became a haven for international Muslim terrorists like Osama bin Laden . As I read about the difficulties that the Soviets had in fighting against t...

  Published by Hourly History in 2021. Hourly History  publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for larger topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it works out about right for this short war (1763-1766.) The war arose directly from unaddressed issues as a consequence of the French and Indian War (1754-1763.) In the French and Indian War, the American frontier became a battlefield. American settlements were wiped out, Native American villages were destroyed. French and English soldiers participated and ultimately agreed to a settlement that ignored the realities of the vast borderlands between the colonies and the Native Americans. The biggest issue was constant push westward from European (American) settlers into areas that were already inhabited by Native Americans. The colonies were all for this westward push, even if the British government was ambivalent or even against t...

  Published in May of 2023. Winner of a 2024 Webby Award The author of this short book (129 pages) makes it clear that he has no particular grudge against South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham serves as a stand-in for the Republican Party in general. He is a particularly good stand-in because he was there from the very beginning of the Donald Trump phenomenon because he was one of the many candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination.  President Donald J. Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham Graham is also an amazingly frequent guest on the Sunday morning political talk shows, the evening shows on Fox, local TV, and talk radio. Graham loves to talk into microphones and because of that it is very easy to track his gradual moves from being a loudly outspoken opponent of Trump to the most vociferous defender of and apologist for the former president.  Saletan thoroughly documents this transition and backs up each of these subtle changes with hundreds of actual l...

  Published in 2014. I have a real weakness for oddball travel books. I have read a memoir about a man that hitchhiked throughout Europe and North Africa, a book about a man's bicycle trip from the UK to India, a book about a man who walked across Afghanistan, a book about a man who rode a motorcycle around the edges of Afghanistan, a book about two women who biked from Turkey to China, a book about a man who walked the length of the Nile, a man who walked the Appalachian Trail with his deeply irresponsible friend from high school...and more. And more. And more. This book fits in best with my book about the 2,190 mile Appalachian Trail because it is set on the American West's counterpart to that trail: The 2,650 mile Pacific Crest Trail. This trail runs from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington State.  Foskett is an experienced long-distance hiker but this hike is a challenge for any hiker to complete in a single attempt. The threat of snow in the mounta...

Published in 2012 by Amazon Publishing. Amazon collected 6 short stories, 1 essay and 1 unfinished sci-fi story and added yet another collection to the Vonnegut library. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) started writing during the Golden Age of sci-fi, when magazines were filling their pages with short stories. Some of these are sci-fi, some are just little human stories.  Indianapolis native quoting fellow Hoosier author  James Whitcomb Riley's poem "Little Orphan Annie" I particularly enjoyed the first story, called "Between Timid and Timbuktu." It is a "Twilight Zone" type of story that I found satisfying in a gruesome sort of way. I also enjoyed the title story. It actually had a surprise twist that was pretty much out of character for a Vonnegut story.  The seventh entry is an essay from 1992. Vonnegut was a prodigious writer of essays in the latter half of his career. I generally am more of a fan of his caustic and insightful essays than his fiction and ...

  Published in 2022 by Hourly History. The short histories produced by Hourly History are designed to read in about an hour. In some cases the size limit makes for a very incomplete history. In this case, I thought that topic and the size limit matched up pretty well. This e-book details from the beginning (spoiler alert: John Sutter of Sutter's Mill fame was clearly not a good guy) and details the good as well as the bad of the Gold Rush. Turns out there was a lot of bad, such as environmental destruction on an unprecedented level (they used mining techniques that were outlawed just a few years later. How obviously bad were they if people who let children into mines said that these techniques are clearly out of bounds?!??)  The white miners also used genocidal techniques to wipe out the local Native American populations, killed Chinese immigrants that came across the Pacific to find gold and, of course, jumped the claims of other white miners and killed them. All of the gold...

  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...