DWD's Reviews

Published by Dreamscape Media, LLC in 2021. Read by Natalie Naudus. Duration: 9 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Felicity Harland is a former FBI agent just turned investigator for the Investigative Services Branch (ISB.) ISB is the criminal investigation unit for the National Park Services. They investigate serious crimes that happen in National Parks.  Harland has been called to Sequoia National Park because 2 customers of an ultra-glamping camping service has disappeared in a remote mountainous location called Emerald Lake. No one knows if they are dead, have intentionally gone missing, or have simply wandered off into the wilderness. No one will say anything about who the supposed victims are because this service is ultra-exclusive and treats the names of its customers like its a national secret. Harland, along with an old crusty park ranger, and an ex-Navy SEAL who has just joined the park service search for the missing pair. What they discover next leads them to one sus

Published in 2019 by The Great Courses. Lectures by Dorsey Armstrong. Duration: 12 hours, 29 minutes. Unabridged. The Great Courses offers a lecture series by college professors that the average person can listen to on their own time.  In this case, Purdue University history professor Dorsey Armstrong is focusing on the year 1215 as a pivotal year.  1215 is well-known to Americans as the year of the Magna Carta, but it is also the year of the Fourth Lateran Council of the Catholic Church. The rest of the lecture series is about general things that were going on around 1215. These include the crusades, a brief look at the Americas, a look at the Islamic world, Japan, and an extended look at Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. This is a lecture series that could have used a bit of editing. If two hours were removed, that would have been good. Three hours would have been great. This was especially true in the section about Genghis Khan. Armstrong admitted that she was excited about this

Published by Penguin Audio in 2023. Read by the author, Steve Inskeep. Duration: 8 hours, 57 minutes. Unabridged. It's been said that no American has been the subject of more biographies than Abraham Lincoln. I don't know if that it is true, but I do know that it is pretty tough to come up with a new angle on the 16th President. In Differ We Must , NPR reporter/host Steve Inskeep has managed to do just that. Inskeep follows through Lincoln's life and sees how he dealt with people that he had disagreements with. Some of them were major, some were minor. Sometimes, Lincoln responded to these disagreements by befriending the people he disagreed with, sometimes by patiently arguing his point of view, sometimes by appearing to accommodate them only to slowly change their minds, and sometimes by arguing fiercely against his opponent. And, sometimes, as in the case of Frederick Douglass, Lincoln realized he was wrong and changed his mind as  was the case with Frederick Douglass (a

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 so F

  Originally published in 1953. I listened to the Tantor Media audio version published in 2010. Read by Stephen Hoye Duration: Approximately 5.5 hours Unabridged Synopsis:  Guy Montag is a fireman in a future United States. Firemen in the future do not fight fires. Instead, they burn books, newspapers, magazines that people have hidden away. If you hide forbidden media in your home your home will be burned to make sure all of the books are gone and to serve as a warning to rest of the neighborhood.  Montag is great at his job, but he has his doubts. Every once in a while he takes a book home. He hides them in the ventilation system of the house. No one knows, not even his wife. Those doubts are accelerated when his team witness a woman die in the fire with her books rather than live without them... My review:  This book has an interesting history. Bradbury started building the world that this book is set in with some short stories of a dystopian future where everyone is absorbed by per

Published in 2013 by Top Shelf Productions. Written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin. Illustrated by Nate Powell. Winner: National Book Award Winner: Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Winner: Coretta Scott King Book Award Winner: ALA Notable Books Winner: Reader's Digest Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) tells his life story in this graphic novel, focusing on his struggles in the Civil Rights Movement. This is the first book in a trilogy, covering the first 20 years of his life. Lewis is interested in three things as a young man - education, preaching, and the Civil Rights movement. Lewis listens to the traditional African American leaders and he hears talk of moderation (or, even worse, nothing at all about Civil Rights.) He doesn't know what to do, but he knows this is not the way forward.  Lewis's growing frustration and the moment when Lewis hears MLK . One day, he hears Martin Luther King, Jr. speak over the radio and he knows t

  Published by Penguin Audio in 2007. Read by Eric Conger. Duration: 6 hours, 5 minutes. Abridged. Synopsis: Virgil Flowers works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and has been brought in to the small town of Bluestem, Minnesota to investigate a double murder. Flowers was picked for this job because he is a great investigator and he grew up in Bluestem. On his way into town, he comes across a gigantic house fire. He recognizes it as the mansion of the richest man in town. The next morning, they discover that it is also the scene of a homicide. As Flowers starts his investigation there is yet another murder and the list of suspects keeps getting longer and longer... My Review: This series was highly recommended to me. It's a spinoff from the much larger (30+ books) "Prey" series featuring Lucas Davenport. Davenport appears in this series as Flowers' supervisor.  The author, John Sandford This book is abridged and I do believe that the abridgment h