DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2020 by Hourly History. Despite me having talked extensively about Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in my recent review of an e-book about Francisco Franco , I am not an expert on Picasso, but I know way more than the average person. He has some paintings that I really like, but I am mostly not a fan.  This short biography hit the spot in that it covered the details of his life without focusing too much on one particular part. This covered his 70+ year career in an even manner and included his personal life well. Pablo Picasso in 1962 The real weakness of this e-book was the fact that they couldn't license his paintings and insert them into the book. But, since I read this on my cell phone it was pretty easy to switch to the browser and search the piece of art that was being discussed and take a look at it. I wasn't much of a fan of Picasso as a person before I read this book and my impression was not changed one bit. I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found

  Published in 2017 by Hourly History. I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time in. Francisco Franco  was one of those people for me.  I came into this biography knowing only the barest of facts about the long-time dictator of Spain. Franco ruled from 1939 until his death in 1975. This biography spends little time on his early life and could have expanded on the Spanish Civil War that brought him to power. For example, the most famous image of the war is the painting Guernica .  Guernica by Pablo Picasso (1937) Guernica is one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century. It depicts the chaos of an attack by the German air force on the city of Guernica. Guernica was holding out against Franco's forces and Franco enlisted German help to deal with the city. German and Italian bomber planes tried out the relatively new technology in real life. Pablo Picasso painted Gue

  Published in 2017 by Hourly History I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The Russian Revolution one of those areas for me. I know a lot more than most people, but I can clearly see the that there is a lot that I don't know. Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916) Rasputin is, of course, an iconic, almost mythical personality of the Russian Revolution. This series specializes in short biographies and histories that will take the average reader about an hour to read. There are plenty of people and historic events that I would like to know a little more about, but not necessarily commit to reading a 500 page biography or history.  Rasputin is one of those people for me - interesting but not really worth that much of an investment of my time. I've read a few biographies from Hourly History and, without a doubt, this was the be

Published by  Hourly History  in 2020. I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The history of the Spanish conquest of the New World is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of my own ignorance. Cortés is, of course, the Spanish conquistador that pretty much invented the idea of being a Spanish conquistador. Conquistador means "conqueror" in Spanish and  Cortés pretty much perfected the concept when he conquered the Aztec Empire from 1519-1521. I am not going to attempt a defense of  Cortés' motives or techniques, but it was literally one of the most amazing conquests in history.  What this history does well is give a brief synopsis of the conquests in a straight narrative history. There's not a lot of analysis and certainly not much information

Published by Mount Shasta Publishing (2nd edition) in 2021. Blake Justice is a detective in the Avon Police Department. Avon is a suburb on the west side of Indianapolis.  Blake is a massive physical specimen of muscle and no-nonsense serious intentions. He always wears his bullet-proof vest (even in church) and never goes anywhere without two pistols (once again, even in church).  Detective Justice is hunting down a group of thieves that are robbing local businesses. He is also on the lookout for a big-time drug dealer who is said to be moving operations into Avon. Meanwhile, Detective Justice has a new partner... ********* I bought this book because I saw an ad on Facebook. I live very close to Avon and am in Avon quite often and I am very familiar with the town and when I saw that the book was set in Avon I spent 99 cents and bought it. You can't go wrong at that price, can you? Turns out that you can go wrong with this book no matter the price. Some of the problems: 1) I was mo

  Published by Hourly History in 2017. Mussolini and Hitler in 1937. Nowadays, Benito Mussolini is best known as Hitler's far lesser partner in the Pact of Steel (signed in 1939), the formal treaty of the Axis Powers. He is often seen as the weaker partner that may very well have drug the entire alliance down due to incompetence.  But, back when Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922, he was seen, by some, as the vanguard of the future of political organization in Europe - a movement called fascism . He was at least begrudgingly admired by people all around the world.  This is, perhaps, the most balanced of all of the Hourly History biographies. I was mostly interested in a brief look at how Mussolini came to power and what he did once in power. The biography was a little skimpy on Mussolini's years in power before World War II and it won't please students of the war to see how little they discuss of his wartime policies and decisions. That being said, I thought this was a p

  Published in 2019 by Hourly History Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) is the founder of the controversial Christian sect knows as Christian Science or The Church of Christ, Scientist in the late 1800s. I picked this short biography because I know something of the teachings of Christian Science, I knew next to nothing about its founder. Mary Baker Eddy grew up in small town New Hampshire and was often sickly as a child and young adult. It is unclear whether her illnesses were due to physical or nervous problems. As was typical for the time, life was hard and there were many tragic deaths in the early part of her life, including an older brother who served as a mentor, her husband while she was pregnant, a fiance and her mother. Her family took over raising her son and did not let her see him for years. Her son's caretakers moved away and let him believe that Mary Baker Eddy was dead. They did not speak to one another again until he was 34 years old. None of this, of course, make Mary Ba

  Published in 2020 by Hourly History King Philip II (1527-1598) ruled Spain at its most powerful. This is the Spain that took over Portugal, consolidated its New World holdings, conquered the Philippines, stopped Ottoman naval expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean, stopped Protestant expansion in several areas yet lost the Spanish Armada to the English and suffered a series of losses in the Netherlands. It was the first that could reasonably claim that the sun never set on its empire.  Philip II. Painting by Antonio Moro Philip's personal life takes up a lot of this book. For such a powerful man, his personal life had to humble him. He had multiple wives who died from a variety of ways, but usually related to giving birth.  He also lost several children. His oldest son suffered from physical and mental illnesses that were so pronounced that the Philip II stepped in and barred his son from being next in line for the throne. That son died in custody, possibly by making himself ill

  Published by Hourly History in 2020. I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time in. The long history of India is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of ignorance. Subhas Chandra Bose was one of those people for me. I had heard of him, but only described as sort of an "anti-Ghandi". He wanted independence as much as Ghandi did, but thought the non-violent protests were a waste of time. Subhas Chandra Bose was not only willing to fight - he thought it was the only way India would be free of English rule. Bose was born in India but formally educated in England. He was poised to take his place in the bureaucracy of colonial India. But, he rejected that offer and became active in the independence movement.  As World War II loomed, Bose saw it as an opportunity to free India. He approached the Fascist powe

  Published in 2005. Winner of the 2006 Alex Award from the American Library Association. Winner of the 2006 New Visions Nonfiction Book Award from the Quality Paperback Book Club. Note: I read because it is on a list of books that Republicans have asked to be banned in one way or another. I call it the  GOP Censorship List . More about that down below.  Julia Scheeres grew up in around Lafayette, Indiana. She grew up in a fundamentalist household. When she begins this memoir, she has older brothers and sisters who have moved out of the house and lives with her parents and two adopted brothers out in the country outside of Lafayette. Her family is unique in that her two adopted brothers are black and the rest of the family is white. The first part of the book deals with her horrible home and school life. At home, her father is mostly a distant figure. He returns home from work and dispenses discipline - often with great physical violence. These are not spankings - these are beatings wi

  Winner of 2012 RT Reviewers Choice Award. Winner of the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Winner of the 2013 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Published in 2012 by Tor Books. This book is considered a modern classic and I absolutely jumped at the chance to download it for free thanks to Tor Publishing's e-mail newsletter  and their monthly free e-book offer. I don't take every e-book they offer, but this is a book I've been considering for a while and you can't beat the price of free. The title of the books tells you that there is a Star Trek tie-in with this novel. As every Star Trek fan knows, on the original series the joke is that the character wearing red shirts (except for Scotty and Uhura) are expendable characters that die in a number of weird and sometimes horrible ways.  This book features a universe similar to that of Star Trek . The characters are based on the flagship of the Universal Union fleet - the Intrepid . The fate of the redshirts on the

  Published in 2016. This little biography is part of an extensive series of short histories produced by Hourly History. The idea is to be a history or a biography that you can read in an hour. Amazon says that his particular biography is the equivalent to 48 pages long.  Some historians have asserted that there are more biographies written about Lincoln than anyone else in history, with the exception of Jesus. This is the 73rd book that I've reviewed that with the #tag of "Abraham Lincoln." What does this book have to offer that literally thousands of biographies and histories haven't already covered? To be honest - nothing. But, it is exactly the sort of biography that someone who hates history might pick to read because it is not an intimidating length and it is not written in highfalutin language.  There is nothing in this biography that is inaccurate, just a matter of what the Hourly History people decided to highlight and emphasize. I rate this kindle book 3 sta

  Published in April of 2021 by WordFire Press. Gunslinger: The Dragon of Yellowstone is part of a series of books set in post-Civil War years, but with a major twist - the giants from Norse mythology crossed through a thin spot between their reality and Earth in an attempt to conquer Earth.  The fighting began in Andersonville, Georgia. It interrupted the Civil War but everything East of the Mississippi was basically lost. As the army of the giants pushed west, they were finally stopped in an epic battle featuring a number of names that were big names in the normal timeline of the Old West and an uneasy truce is in place, mostly because both sides have exhausted themselves. This book features a threat to end that uneasy truce that is investigated by a minor character from other books in the series, a teenaged gunslinger named Beth who was trained by none other than Wild Bill Hickock himself.  I really appreciate the world building that went into this series. This reminds me of the ki

  Originally published in 2011. Set in a future America where the world has been invaded by inter-dimensional space aliens that are a living bio/tech hybrid, this dystopian series is full of action and does not offer much in the way of subtlety. The world has been overrun by strangelets - the cutesy nickname for creatures that can rip apart a human being in seconds. This was accidentally caused by a supercollider that opened up a rift that released an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that destroyed electronic systems across the world. I received this book for free way back in 2011 and it was quickly buried under hundreds of free Kindle book offers that I've found over the years. I was flipping through the list of books that I have not read and the title caught my attention. I have no idea how Spam is involved. I found this book to be intriguing, even if it was simplistic. The only real problem I have is this: 49% of the book is the story I picked and 51% of it is a sample of another nov

  Published in 2019. Lenny Duncan, as noted in the title, is a black pastor in a very white church body - the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). I belong to a different Lutheran denomination, but I recognize the congregations and the issues he is talking about. I found out about this book from an interview on the morning news on NPR. Duncan took a unique route to becoming a pastor. He was a homeless teen, he was a prostitute, he served time in jail and he was seeking something spiritual when he attended an ELCA church and heard the Lutheran teachings on God's grace and his life was changed. Now, he is a pastor telling this church that he loves that it must do better. To be fair to the ELCA, this letter is not just applicable to that denomination, it is applicable to most of the mostly white mainline protestant denominations. But, comments like this one are more than fair for all Lutheran churches: " People are deciding not to come to our churches because we have al

Originally published in 2004. Winston Groom is best known as the author of  Forrest Gump . He is also the author of 14 different non-fiction books and shows a real talent for writing narrative history. This book focuses on the year that Groom considers to be the crisis year for the Allies and America in particular in World War II - 1942.  He starts his story just before World War II with the attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and ends it in February of 1943 with the ending of the fighting on Guadalcanal. This was a bad time, especially early in 1942 when Japan conquered one territory after another and American forces were seemingly caught off guard or under-prepared everywhere. Groom focuses primarily on the Pacific Theater in this book (75 % or more), although he does offer a decent look at the North African campaign. His look at the fall of the Philippines and the Bataan Death March was very compelling. Groom has no problem pointing out incompetent leadership when he sees i

Published in August of 2019 by The University of North Carolina Press. Confederate Sergeant Andrew Silas and his slave Silas Chandler pose for a photograph in a studio. Silas Chandler was his body servant until his death. He returned to the front as the body servant of his brother.  Silas Chandler received a pension at at the age of 78 - but not for being a soldier. Instead, it was a pension for "Indigent Servants of Soldiers or Sailors of the Late Confederacy". As the title states, one of the most common myths of "the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery" crowd is that thousands and thousands of African-Americans served in organized units in the Confederate Army. To be fair to the mistaken people that advocate for this position, there were African-American people traveling with the Confederate Army. They were not there as volunteers - they were there as body servants to their masters. There were also a great number of slaves that were commandeered by

Illustrations by the author. Translated from French to English by Richard Howard. The Little Prince  is a classic novel, voted the best French book of the 20th Century. It is written in deceptively simple language - so simple that a French teacher colleague of mine has her advanced French students read it in the original French every year. But, don't let the simple style fool you - this book packs a lot of big ideas about the foibles of modern living and adulthood into this small book about a space traveler who lands in the Sahara desert. The space traveler (the Little Prince) meets a crash-landed pilot and shares the story of his travels. I read the book easily over a weekend while on a camping trip. I read it on my Kindle phone app. Because the author's illustrations are just as iconic as the book itself, the folks at Kindle decided to scan the pages in the way they are published. I have no problem with that, but my phone app did not let me enlarge the pages in any way

Published in October of 2018 by Liveright. 2016 was a moment of reckoning for political writer Max Boot. Boot wrote for all of the well-known Conservative publications - The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, etc. He appeared on TV shows and radio shows and describes himself as a "movement conservative". But, the rise of Donald Trump and his subsequent election made him change his registration from Republican to Independent in protest. Why? In his own words: "In March 2016, I had written that Trump was a 'character test' for the GOP: 'Do you believe in the open and inclusive party of Ronald Reagan? Or do you want a bigoted and extremist party in the image of Donald Trump?' To my growing horror, most Republicans were failing the test." I picked up this book because I felt the same way. There is no point in laying out all of arguments against Trump - everyone has heard them. Like Boot, I was dismayed that "...most Republican leaders showe

Published in April of 2019 Royal, Nebraska is a town of 81 people and an abandoned zoo. In 1987, Dick Haskin brought a chimpanzee named Reuben to his hometown in Nebraska in hopes of starting the Midwest Primate Center to continue the research of his slain hero, Dian Fossey. But, the funds for the primate center never materialized. He wasn't interested in starting a zoo but, over time, he ended up with an odd collection of animals - tigers, wolves, llamas and more. Eventually, he accepted the fact that he had a zoo and changed the name to Zoo Nebraska. In absolute terms, it wasn't much of a zoo, but it was a heck of a thing for rural Nebraska. Even famed TV talk show host (and Nebraska native) Johnny Carson got in the act and donated a lot of money to upgrade the chimpanzee habitat (he felt that kids in rural Nebraska needed this kind of opportunity, even if it was a limited one). But, it was not ever financially viable. Taking care of exotic animals in expensive and labo