DWD's Reviews

Published in November of 2015 by Hachette Audio Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 9 hours, 24 minutes Unabridged In The Crossing Harry Bosch is newly retired from LAPD - a forced retirement due to a suspension due to a rules infraction. Harry's past caught up to him - too many people in too many important places are tired of Harry's "screw protocol - I'm going to solve this case" attitude. So, Harry is now unemployed. He's suing the department. He's restoring an old motorcycle - a project that he's been looking forward to for a long time. And, he is miserable.  Titus Welliver, the narrator of this audiobook,  portraying Harry Bosch in Amazon Video's  series  Bosch . His goal has always been to solve murders. It's practically his reason for his existence. Now, he has no more murders to solve because he is off the force. Along comes his half brother, Mickey, the defense attorney, also known as "the Lincoln Lawyer" with a

Published by Hachette Audio in October of 2013. Read by the author, Malcolm Gladwell. Duration: 7 hours Unabridged Malcolm Gladwell has made his reputation by writing insightful articles in which you thoroughly learn about one thing but also how it applies to a larger concept.  Usually, there's a little light science involved and, if nothing else, the reader (or in my case, the listener) feels like he or she learned a little bit and heard an interesting story. In this case, the premise is that in the David vs. Goliath stories, the underdog is not always as much of an underdog as it seems. He starts with the original David vs. Goliath story - the one in the Old Testament of the Bible and explains that Goliath clearly had size and strength going for him but those weren't all-pervading advantages. Goliath was strong and large but his strength made him reliant on the sword and close-in fighting. If an enemy got close to him and if Goliath got hold of him, Goliath would win.

Published in 2014 by Penguin Press Famed Civil War historian James M. McPherson aims to fill in an historical gap by providing a biography of Jefferson Davis's Civil War years. He notes in his opening that it is natural to make comparisons between Lincoln and Davis but those comparisons are often lopsided due to a lack of information. There are enough different Lincoln biographies to easily fill a truck. But, Davis is often a caricature - a difficult man who thought he could be general and commander-in-chief due to previous military experience - a man who refused to remove his friends from important military posts and also a man who carried a grudge. That thumbnail sketch is largely true, but also incomplete. Thanks to the mass of information on Lincoln we are able to detect a sense of nuance.  A lot of source material on Davis never survived the Fall of Richmond. Even worse, many people who worked with him were unwilling to talk about it after the war - they just wanted to get

Published in 2011 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Tom Brokaw Duration: 7 hours, 8 minutes Unabridged I picked up this audiobook in the hopes that former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw would be offering some in-depth analysis on a wide range of issues. After all, the cover promises to look at "Who we are, where we've been and where we need to go now to recapture the American Dream." Instead, we get a lot of amiable reminiscing about Brokaw's family, his early career, and a bit of of a slanted history lesson with every chapter with some half-hearted advice that is based on discussion with industry leaders. That is the essence of the problem Brokaw is a top-level journalist. He is a journalist emeritus - respected and admired for what he used to do but he is not doing the gritty stuff any more. He hobnobs and socializes with elites. If he wants to talk about some new trend in computers he can literally call Bill Gates and get his take. But, here's

Published by Eugene Penny in May of 2016. Duration: 5 hours, 58 minutes. Unabridged. Read by Rebecca Roberts. This audiobook features FBI Special Agent Christie Lovelace, a plucky, sarcastic, foul-mouthed who investigates offbeat cases. Think X-Files, but with a much more gross, much more weird take. Lovelace has been sent to Danbury, Texas to investigate a charge of corruption. It seems that the whole town is being controlled by one man and a person may have died. But, once Lovelace arrives, after a frustrating series of humorous personal disasters, she discovers that the body has disappeared from the morgue. When she goes to the jail to follow a lead the stench of feces is overpowering... Plus, people keep hinting about the dead coming back to life. It's going to be a strange Monday. My thoughts: For me, this book was a little too gross and a little too interested in being weird for the sake of weirdness for my taste. Too many oddball characters in one place. I like

Published in August of 2005 by HMH Books for Young Readers. Written and illustrated by Don Brown The story of Hurricane Katrina has been told many ways in many different formats but this graphic novel by Don Brown is undoubtedly one of the more powerful re-tellings. The powerful combination of the simple text combined with the simple, sad drawings of this tragedy work together to move the reader. There is no main character to the book, just a simple re-telling of the story, starting with the birth of the storm, continuing on with the multiple mistakes leading up to the flood, the horror that followed and finally following on to the re-building of the city.  From time-to-time an unknown person will speak directly to the reader, such as when a FEMA employee says, "When I have a nightmare, it's a hurricane in New Orleans." At another point, a train conductor stands on any empty train platform next to his train and says, "We offered...to take evacuees out of h

Originally published in 2012. This book introduces Will Robie, a professional hit man who works for the United States government. His hits are usually drug cartel leaders, leaders of terrorist organizations and the like. The White House. Photo by Zach Rudisin Robie gets an assignment close to home, which is a weird thing in and of itself. The first two hits described in the book are out of country hits. The fact that they are out of country hits gives the U.S. government a bit of plausible deniability. This new assignment is in Washington, D.C. and, as far as Robie can ascertain, the target is a fellow member of the intelligence community - but not an important one. He's willing to follow through with it until he sees that the target is actually a mom with a young son and a baby. He hesitates, tries to figure out what is going on and that's when everything goes topsy-turvy in Robie's already convoluted world... This book was not a particularly great book for a c