DWD's Reviews

Pretty good small budget movie Released in 2003. While not the best movie I've ever seen, this movie does what it sets out to do - draw the viewer in for some thriller action. Two friends and a little brother have travelled to Wisconsin for an evening of booze and girls at a backwoods bar in the winter. After a barroom brawl a 1950s Cadillac menaces them and eventually pursues them - but our 3 protagonists have no idea why. Randy Quaid as the local yokel good ol' boy sheriff is the only actor you're likely to recognize but, in my mind, young, pez-consuming Josh Hammond steals the show I am unwilling to be a spoilsport, so I won't go into great details, but you can imagine the tension that develops with car chases in the winter on twisty country roads, a hitchhiking sheriff in the backseat spouting off platitudes and asking pointed questions and a general feeling that things are spinning out of control make the movie work. The DVD commentary is interesting, espec...

Good information but told in a repetitious manner that wore this reader down A witch burning Cawthorne's Witch Hunt: A History of Persecution is a recounting of the witch hunt craze that infected not only Salem, Massachussets, a topic with which most Americans have a least a passing familiarity, but throughout Europe to a much, much larger degree. The back of the back says that this book "...examines this persecution and the religious hysteria which inspired it." To me the use of the word examination implies that the author will interpret this hysteria and make observations and insights throughout the reading . Cawthorne does not do anything close to this, with the exception of a brief, four page introduction. Rather, he recounts witch trial after witch trial, often going into great detail about the tortures used and the indictments brought against the accused witches. While this is an impressive bit of research, the book felt half-done. It was as ...

A piece of history, yet still accessible Originally published in 1530. I should note that I am a lifelong Lutheran and Martin Luther is one of my personal heroes, despite his numerous flaws. An Open Letter on Translating is a September, 1530 letter to Luther's critics concerning his translation of the Bible from Latin into German. This was very controversial at the time and it led to a lot of disagreement (even wars) over who should be allowed to read the Bible and who should interpret its meaning. Luther defends his translation in his very best combative style. He correctly notes that not all turns of phrases translate literally from one language to another. He notes, along with a liberal dose of insulting names for his opponents, that he and his team of translators did a lot of research and took great care to make his translation accessible and accurate. Martin Luther (1483-1546) What is perhaps most amazing is that this document is immensely readable for anyone conver...

"It is a tale ... full of sound and fury; signifying nothing." -Shakespeare Published in 2007 by Algonquin Books The above quote tells quite a bit about Olmstead's Coal Black Horse . It is garnish and flair, it is pretty words and gruesome descriptions of the horrors of war, but it is a story without a point, except to say that life is without value and, eventually, someone will end yours and it will all be over. Olmstead borrows heavily from the styles of Howard Bahr and Stephen Crane to create this book. From  The Red Badge of Courage he borrows the stylistic device of never quite letting the reader what battlefields or locations the book is set in - that is until he suddenly tells you that it's in Gettysburg. How Robey avoids tens of thousands Confederate soldiers stacked up along the Potomac River (they massed there for days waiting for flood waters to go down) is a mystery to me. Why Olmstead decides to tell the reader the battlefield at that mome...

Not Twain's best work. Twain (1835-1910) says that On the Decay of the Art of Lying was an essay written in 1885 for a $30 prize for the "Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford". Twain notes that he did not win a prize for this essay. The essay focuses on the lost art of lying. Twain discusses different kinds of lies, situations in which people lie and why all lies are not bad. The essay is sometimes funny but mostly sounds like an old stand up routine about good lies and bad lies. The Kindle version is very short - only 86 locations which equals about 12 regular pages. I rate this essay 3 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: On the Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain. Reviewed on May 28, 2009.

Sometimes interesting, mostly tedious Originally Published in 1913   M.R. James has collected additional stories from the Old Testament era. None of these is included in the canon books. These are not stories from the Apocrypha but even more stories. In times past, some churches actually treated some of these stories as scripture. According to M.R. James, some of these are quite ancient and some are newer. The stories are arranged chronologically and feature Adam, Eve, Cain, Abraham, Job, Joseph ,Jeremiah and Solomon. A new, non-Biblical character is Ahiker, advisor to the King of the Chaldeans. The stories about Adam and Eve mostly concern how they deal with being sent from the Garden of Eden. The story of Job is a re-telling of his book in the Bible, but it is more satisfying than the original. M.R. James (1862-1936) The story of Solomon is very bizarre. Solomon uses a ring to control demons in order to build the Temple. Abraham gets a lot of attention in these s...

Story of a trip by Mark Twain to Bermuda - starts fairly weak and ends strong First published in 1877 by The Atlantic. The title of this essay has it right - these are just a series of stories about a trip that Twain (1835-1910) and some friends took to Bermuda from New York City. Twain wrote this for "The Atlantic" in 1877 and his wry style makes him an excellent travel companion. In reality, Twain's story of the trip is the story of the people he meets along the way. Most of the stories are humorous, some are duds and about an equal number are quite funny. I won't forget the story about the town with the cat situation for quite a while. Twain on Bermuda: " We never met a man, or woman, or child anywhere in this sunny island who seemed to be unprosperous, or discontented, or sorry about anything. This sort of monotony became very tiresome presently, and even something worse. The spectacle of an entire nation groveling in contentment is an in...

The works of a brilliant essayist are a joy to read. Originally published in 1988. I admit, I was attracted to Thank God for the Atom Bomb because of the title. Our library had it featured on its web page with some excerpts and I was intrigued. I was not disappointed. The title essay is simply brilliant. It is also caustic, blunt and nuanced. I'll refer to it before the next time I teach about World War II. There are two more essays on World War II. I found the two essays on George Orwell to be most interesting. His commentary on the differences between tourism and travel reminded me of the Twain essays I've been reading lately. "Taking It All Off in the Balkans" is the account of his visit to a nudist resort in the former Yugoslavia - very funny and (I've got to say it) revealing. Paul Fussell Two essays were just not interesting to me, being mainly about poetry and I find myself unable to muster the interest to read poetry, let alone rea...

Jesse Stone returns to form Published in 2009. After the rather awful Stranger in Paradise I was afraid the whole series was going to just fizzle. I was pleasantly surprised with Night and Day . It is a return to higher standard of reading to which I had grown accustomed. The plot moves along nicely, the witty banter is plentiful. The case is distressing but not super-hero level. I will not go into all of the plot details. Those are outlined by others on the page. All in all, this is a pleasant and quick read. Everything I look for in a Parker novel - detecting, banter, psychobabble and a bit of romance (in a macho sort of way, of course). I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Night and Day (Jesse Stone #8) by Robert B. Parker . Reviewed on May 30, 2009.

WOW! This one starts in a hurry and never slows up! Published in 2009 by Bantam. Normally, I am very skeptical of all of those little blurbs that cover books. This one came with all kinds of blurbs from established authors and professional reviewers, including "Will leave you breathless - Robert Crais", "A one-sit thriller - Michael Connelly" and "The surprises just keep on coming - Charlaine Harris." Well, guess what? Fear the Worst lives up to its praise. I'd never heard of Linwood Barclay before I read this book, but he writes a terrific thriller. The premise of the book is that car salesman Tim Blake's daughter goes to work one day and does not return. No one at her job has seen her before. No one in the area knows anything about her. Her best friends don't know anything. She's just gone. The whole idea comes from the author's daughter who looked at him at breakfast one day and said, "Suppose you came to pick me...

Pretty good thriller Published in 2009 by Multnomah. I feel silly, but it wasn't until I was 85% done with The Night Watchman that I actually read the entire description on the back of this book. In my defense, it is rather wordy.... Anyway, it was not until that point that I realized that this was actually a "Christian" cop book. That doesn't bother me since I'm a Christian. But, my experiences with Christian fiction have been mostly negative. A lot of it is clumsy, to say the least. So, I guess this is a long way to say that this one was not clumsy. Instead, it was different. It is a "Christian" detective story in which the main character is not Christian. Not even searching. Not even close. He carries a big gun and he uses it lots of times. He lies. He cheats. Praying bothers him. He suspects that church-going people are weak and does not believe that God can change a person's life. Mary Mynheir So, on to the book. The main...

Top-notch techno-thriller, with equal emphasis on the "techno" and the "thriller" Published in 2009 by Signet Daemon is part 1 of a series. I do not know if there will be more than one sequel but the next book, Freedom , is coming in 2010. (Note: Click on this link to see the review I wrote about Freedom ) A computer program created by a mad genius has infiltrated the world's computers and is creating a 'new world order'. A revolution is in the mix and it will be led by the world's disaffected and misfits - the tattooed computer geeks, the pierced gamers, crazed psychopaths that treat all life like it is a NPC in a computer game, etc. There have been plenty of books, movies and TV shows about the computer that has taken over a building or a spaceship, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey . but this is the first one I've heard of in which the entire world economic system has been hijacked. I'm no computer expert, but and I am competen...

Published in 2005. I ran across this series at the local library. I'd never heard of it before but I certainly enjoyed You Wouldn't Want to Be in Alexander the Great's Army: Miles You'd Rather Not March . It is aimed at 4th - 8th grade, depending on the reading level. The cartoonish characters are fun, the history is accurate, although limited. That's okay, it is intended to be an introduction to the topic, not a graduate thesis. The nice thing about it is that it shows that history is not "boring." It is full of fascinating stories. My only complaint about the book is the map. There is one, in the front. I think there should be one for every topic to show where Alexander is moving his men to now! I would gladly include this book in any 4th-8th grade classroom library. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Find this book on Amazon.com here:  You Wouldn't Want to Be in Alexander the Great's Army!: Miles You'd Rather Not March. ...

An entertaining, historically solid introduction to the Civil War for 4th graders and over I just discovered this series and I've been reading a few of them for fun this summer. You Wouldn't Want to Be a Civil War Soldier is entertaining and it contains solid, accurate history presented in a visually interesting format. While I've been looking a few of these over for my own personal entertainment, my almost 4th grade daughter has been sneaking them out of the stack and reading them without any encouragement from me. Imagine! Kids surreptitiously reading history! The only complaint I have about the back is the total lack of African American faces in the drawings. The book notes that 179,000 African American soldiers served in the war, which is good but fails to include a single African American in the drawings. While it mostly makes sense due to the strict segregation of the army (the book follows one soldier from Connecticut who joins before the First Bat...

A fun way to get your essential bits of history  As a history teacher, I think just about all of history is fascinating - the cultural tidbits, the technology, the religious beliefs, the wars, the governments. It's all fascinating! But...convincing my students is another matter entirely. This series does an excellent job of looking at history from an interesting point of view and showing why it was tough. The art is accessible and just cartoonish enough to not be one of those boring illustrations that fill history books and plenty realistic enough that to clearly see and understand what is going on (for example, the women who are weaving on pages 16 & 17 are cartoonish but their loom looks pretty realistic). In You Wouldn't Want to Be a Slave in Ancient Greece , you learn a lot about slavery in general that can be applied to any time - the drudgery and humiliation, the loss of freedom and the uncertainty. There is also a lot of Ancient Greece-specific infor...

Historically solid and entertaining . Published in 2008. I just discovered this series and I've been reading a few of them for fun this summer. You Wouldn't Want to Live In A Medieval Castle is entertaining and it contains solid, accurate history presented in a visually interesting format. While I've been looking a few of these over for my own personal entertainment, my almost 4th grade daughter has been sneaking them out of the stack and reading them without any encouragement from me.  The book mostly is about a little girl who is brought into a castle to work as a damsel (lady-in-waiting or a body servant). The book is also about a real historical event - the siege of Rochester Castle in Kent, England in 1215 by King John who is having trouble dealing with the barons after he signed the Magna Carta. There is also quite a bit about a young page who is trying to become a squire so that he might become a knight someday. Everyday life in the castle is ...

This is a great series Published in 2008. I recently stumbled onto the You Wouldn't Want to... series and have found them to be a delightful and painless way to introduce young people to different historical concepts. You Wouldn't Want to Live In Pompeii is a standout in a standout series of books. It teaches about the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 that destroyed Pompeii, but it also teaches about Roman culture. The readers will learn that the Romans used enslaved Greek men as teachers for their sons, that the Romans made sacrifices to their gods, foods they ate, types of art, the gladiatorial games and the rediscovery of Pompeii in the 1700s and, more importantly, the archaeological work of Giuseppe Fiorelli in the late 1800s. This would be great for 3rd grade or higher. Even adults can have a good basic understanding of what happened at Pompeii with this little book. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: You Wouldn't W...

An entertaining, historically solid book - for 4th graders and over Originally published in 2001 by Franklin Watts. Illustrated by David Antram. You Wouldn,t Want to Be a Roman Gladiator!  is entertaining and it contains solid, accurate history presented in a visually interesting format. While I've been looking a few of the books from this series for my own personal entertainment, my almost 4th grade daughter has been sneaking them out of the stack and reading them without any encouragement from me. Imagine! Kids surreptitiously reading history! The book details the life of a gladiator that is captured as a slave in battle in Gaul. We follow him to his sale in the market and what kind of jobs he might have been sent to (in the mines, as a galley slave, on the farm, etc.) The slave is sent to gladiator school and we learn about their training, what they ate, the different types of gladiators and how they were punished. We learn about different types of gladiator fights and how g...

A great introduction to the Civil War by a first-rate historian Published in 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner James McPherson's foray into children's literature, Fields of Fury: The American Civil War is a beautiful, well-written book that fits the bill perfectly. McPherson briefly covers all aspects of the conflict, from "Bleeding Kansas" to the difficulties in Reconstruction. As a Civil War buff (I have over 75 books and have read dozens more) I can think of no main topic he did not touch upon. In fact, I added a few stories to my repertoire for my classes. Most topics are covered with a two page spread - text on the even pages and a full page photo, map or painting spread on the facing page. Also, with every topic there is a "Quick Facts" section. A famous photo of an escaped slave named Gordon. This is one tough images I mention in the review. The picture is entitled "The Scourged Back" McPherson's descriptions of the personaliti...

ALA Notable Children’s Book Award Winner. Winner of the Book Sense Book of the Year Children's Literature Award. Published in 2003. I saw the ads for the Inkheart movie and decided to read the book first because, as everyone knows, the book is almost always better than the movie. Anyway, the Inkheart book in built upon a interesting premise - the people and characters from a fantasy novel come to life.  I do not give the book 5 stars. The book is a dark piece of fiction - relentlessly so. The mood is nearly always somber and I found the book compelling but often depressing. The plot is fairly simple and the bad men in the book do a lot more threatening than real evil, but they do evil things - mutilations, burning people out of their homes, kidnappings, blackmail, and so on. I have no problem with books that depict that evil exists in the world. As C.S. Lewis noted: "Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) ...