DWD's Reviews

  Published by Macmillan Audio in 2021. Read by Mark Williams. Duration: 24 hours, 2 minutes. Unabridged . In my professional life I am a high school history teacher. I don't teach it now (I teach another subject), but in the past when I taught world history I taught that the origins of civilization in the traditional way and it always goes something like this: -At first there were wandering groups of people, probably based around 1 or 2 families. Things were fairly democratic because these groups had to talk things out to make decisions. -Somebody along the way figured out how to domesticate a few animals. -Somebody along the way figured out how to domesticate plants. Some small fields were started and left mostly on their own while the wandering continued with scheduled returns to the fields. -Eventually, the fields were so productive that it made no sense to leave them. -Populations grew, towns were developed and simple authoritarian government led by almost always by a man who ...

Published in 2009 by Blackstone Audio. Read by the author, Tamim Ansary Duration: 17 hours, 28 minutes. Unabridged. Tamim Ansary has done something that is very hard to do - he has written a long history of a complicated topic without making it boring and after more than 17 hours of discussion, he left me wishing that it was even longer. Ansary makes the observation that most histories that people in the West (Western Europe and the Americas) read are written from a Western perspective. That makes sense. But, the history of the world is not just the history of Western Civilization. There are multiple civilizations on the planet. Mesoamerica (the Mayas, Aztecs, Toltecs, etc.) is a separate civilization. China is the historic center of another civilization. So is India. And between the West and India and China is another one. Westerners usually refer to it as the Middle East. This book is a history of that civilization from the beginning of recorded history (empires like Bablyon) to ...

Published by Scholastic in 2018 What Would She Do? is collection of very readable short biographies of women - which, after being factually correct, is the most important thing. As David McCullough said,  " No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read."  Woodward writes in an informal, approachable style that I enjoyed quite a bit. Each biography is accompanied by a full page illustration of the woman and a little chart with basic biographical information. There is also a large pullout quote from or about her. For example, for Emma Watson there is this quote: "The saddest thing for a girl to do is to dumb herself down for a guy." Generally, I did not like the "What Would _____ Do?" section that was included at the end of each biography. The author was clearly trying to make a connection between the women in the book and the typical American student with typical American student problems. But, trying to connect Cleopatra...

Published in October of 2016 by Mark Mooney Read by the author, Mark Mooney Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes Unabridged CNN Money editor Mark Mooney's Three Cents a Mile tells the story of his 2 year trek across the world as a vagabond traveler more than 35 years ago. He left New York City and headed east, visiting Ireland, England, France, North Africa, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand and even more destinations with nothing more than a few dollars in his pocket and a typewriter and a notebook to compose travelogue articles that he sold to newspapers back in America. Along the way he met playwrights, authors, poets, star-crossed lovers, thieves, hippies, drug burnouts, farmers, beggars, mystics, and he turned down the chance to meet Mother Theresa. He slept on beaches, in flophouses, on buses, above a bookstore with other aspiring writers, in an apartment building filled with strippers/prostitutes and in a barn. He traveled by plane, by ferry, by bicycle, by b...

Published in August of 2014 by Danny bent, Ltd. It took me a long time to read You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir . I read it over the course of several months on my Kindle and on my phone's Kindle app.  The book details the trip of a teacher from the UK who rides his bike from the UK to India in an effort to raise money for charity and to teach his kids something. I really struggled with the first part of the book because the author seemed so self-absorbed and I never really understood how he was going to raise money for a charity by riding and as a fellow teacher I seriously did not get how this trip was going to do anything for his students besides show them that he could do this outrageous thing.  So, I struggled through the first half of the book because I kept on coming back to the premise behind his trip and wondering about it (how is he raising this money? Is it by the kilometer? Is it a lump sum and will be donated so long as he makes a solid effort? These are ...

Published in October of 2014 by Simon and Schuster Read by the author, Gillian Anderson Duration: 9 hours, 34 minutes Unabridged A Vision of Fire is a mix of political thriller with sci-fi and a heavy dose of the occult thrown in as well. The book starts out with top-level negotiations taking place at the United Nations between India and Pakistan over the disputed region of Kashmir. Both countries are nuclear powers and both countries are sending troops to the border. An Indian ambassador is trusted by both sides and he is trying to broker a peace between them before a nuclear war starts. But, after dropping off his daughter Maanik at her school mysterious assassins make an unsuccessful attempt on his life. He reassures his daughter that he is fine and proceeds to the negotiating table. But, his daughter starts to have some sort of break down and starts clawing at her arms.  She is rushed home and heavily sedated because she is hurting herself. The translator...

Published in 2013 by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Raymond Ibrahim's Crucified Again is at once alarming, shocking and tedious. The book documents attacks by Muslims on Christians, Christian churches and Christian organizations throughout the world, especially in predominately Muslim countries. Ibrahim uses newspaper articles and TV news programs that are printed and broadcast in Arabic and, thus, largely ignored by Western media as a source. He also uses regional Christian newspapers and  magazines and newspapers from organizations that document human rights abuses. He then proceeds to methodically list instance after instance of anti-Christian attacks from Nigeria, to Egypt to Indonesia. Ibrahim starts with a short overview of the history of Muslim/Christian relations in majority Muslim countries.  He lists the Koranic verses that are used to justify persecution of Christians (and all other faiths) and then demonstrates how it is done again and again and again. This is ...

A thinking person's action adventure novel Set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, The Warlord's Son features Skelly, a middle-aged foreign correspondent who has decided to come out or retirement to find one last big story. It also concerns his "fixer", or translator, Najeeb - the outcast son of a border area warlord and Najeeb's girlfriend Daliya. The story passes from one to the other and the reader gets quite a bit of insight into the culture of this border area. The action is quick and good when it happens and the reader experiences the intrigue of all of the overlapping political, financial and cultural interests of the area. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Warlord's Son by Dan Fesperman . Reviewed on November 6, 2009.

Published in 2009 by Beacon Press. The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul is the story of a Malcolm Garcia, an on-again, off-again international correspondent that makes several trips to Afghanistan (and one to Pakistan that is not really a part of the story but is interesting nonetheless). Readers get to see a refugee camp up close, the physical degradation of Kabul, the sense of hope when American soldiers threw out the Taliban, the confusion of Afghanistan's government, the Afghan people's unfailing politeness to guests and, ultimately, the despair of Afghanistan - what one Afghan refugee calls "a tired country." While other reviewers have had complaints about Garcia's behaviors (couldn't remember names, etc.) I found this book exactly fit the bill for what I wanted: an eyewitness perspective of what it is like in Afghanistan. I was reminded of Rory Stewart's magnificent book The Places In Between . It is a series of snapshots ove...

Rules of Betrayal  is the third installment of the "Rules" series starring Jonathon and Emma Ransom. Jonathon is a doctor who has worked with Doctors Without Borders in the past but is now freelancing in Afghanistan. His wife is a former double agent who was assigned to marry Dr. Ransom and his world-hopping assignments as a member of Doctors Without Borders as a cover to do her spy work in the past. All of this is quite complicated, but deftly explained by Reich in the first few pages of his new book. I had never even heard of Reich before I read this book, let alone read the other books in the series and I was not lost (although I will not be going back to the other books to catch up either - Reich has already caught me up). The premise of the book is that Dr. Ransom and his estranged wife Emma are both caught up in an international arms deal that involves the Taliban attempting to get hold of a WMD that the U.S. Air Force lost in 1984 in the mountains of Pakistan n...