DWD's Reviews

Multicast performance Published by Galaxy Audio Duration: 2 hours, 6 minutes First published in the magazine Five-Novels Monthly in 1939, Trouble on His Wings is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. This audiobook features Johnny Brice and Irish Donnegan, two news cameramen who work for a company that makes those newsreels that used to run at the movie theaters. Brice and Donnegan will go anywhere and do just about anything for the big news story, including jumping out of airplanes, get shot at, braving forest fires and flying into a war zone. While on a big story, they pick up a beautiful gir...

Lots of fun in a small package. Duration: 2 hours, 22 minutes. Multicast Performance Published by Galaxy Press. Unabridged, First published in Western Story Magazine in 1938, Death Waits at Sundown is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. This audiobook is actually three short stories. The first story is the title story of the collection. It features a wrongly accused man named Frank Taylor. He has been convicted of murder and robbery so that the new town sheriff can confiscate his land. But, the new sheriff never counted on Frank's brother, a famed gunslinger from Texas, comes to town to save his...

Well-researched but ultimately fails in its goal Published by William Morrow in 2010 John Kendrick was a well-respected sailor from the Boston area during the Revolutionary War era. He was rumored to have participated in the Boston Tea Party. He captained a privateer, captured prizes and was highly regarded by political and business leaders and the men who sailed on his ships. As America struggled to revive its foreign trade after the Revolutionary War (The United States was officially cut off from English trade) tales came to Boston about the beautiful furs available along the Northern Pacific coast of North America. Investors hired Kendrick to lead an expedition of two ships to explore the trading opportunities in the Pacific. Kendrick set off in 1787 to find new markets for American goods. He ended up visiting what is now Alaska, Washington State and British Columbia, Hawaii, China and Japan. He nearly sparked a war between Spain and England, got involved in a brutal war in Haw...

Continuing with the "prequels" of the Mitch Rapp story Published in 2012 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by George Guidall Duration: 10 hours, 49 minutes. Vince Flynn's long-running character Mitch Rapp was introduced and developed as a successful and established CIA Counter-terrorism agent - sort of an American James Bond, if you will. He is dangerous, effective, and willing to break the rules in order to get the job done. After ten books featuring Rapp, author Vince Flynn decided to explore Rapp's early years. This is the second book in that exploration of his early years. Rapp's bosses have developed a list of terrorists that Rapp is supposed to terminate. These assassinations have all been quick, clean affairs - there is no collateral damage, no clues are left behind and terrorists around the globe are left to wonder who is next on the list. The book starts with Rapp on a mission to assassinate a Libyan terrorist who is visiting Paris and staying at...

Published in 2008 by Penguin Audio Read by the author, Denis Leary Duration: 5 hours (abridged) Denis Leary. If you have never seen his act before, catch a bit of him on the internet and see if he suits your tastes. If he does, this book is just a lot more of the same - Leary's acid commentary on stupid parents, the Catholic Church, why there won't be many female race car drivers, obese people, helicopter parents, George W. Bush, his family and just about everything else are designed to outrage as much as entertain. Do not listen to this book if foul language or rude comments are a deal-breaker. Leary's tales of his childhood are actually quite endearing and they make up the best part of the book. His anger at the Catholic Church is only partially tempered by respect for the Catholic school that he attended as a child (in reality, the Catholic Church becomes the whipping boy for all organized religion) and his politics clearly run to the Democrat side of the spectru...

Published in 2011 by Spoken Word, Inc. Read by Barbara Whitesides Duration: 12 hours, 40 minutes. Unabridged. If I told you that I had just listened to a thriller set in China during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 involving secret plots among the top levels of the hardline Chinese leadership, the underground protest movement, an adventurous young Chinese-American doctor who is just beginning to learn about her Chinese roots, an intricate plot to keep her trapped in China by an evil man, a budding romance, Chinese gangsters, a corrupt Korean businessman, a motorcycle chase, gunfights, daring escapes, an introduction to Taoist philosophy and a possible cure to aging you would think that this would be a real whiz-bang listen. The book revolves around Dr. Lili Quan, a Chinese-American doctor who is offered the chance to study in China. It turns out that certain members of China's corrupt leadership have brought her to China to use her as a tool to get at her grandfather...

Another winning book by Russell Freedman Published in June of 2012 by Clarion Books (DWD's Reviews received an advance copy for review purposes) Russell Freedman received the Newbery Medal for his 1989 book Lincoln: A Photobiography and he returns to familiar ground with this dual biography. He begins with Douglass and then alternates back and forth between the two men, highlighting important aspects of their lives and the areas that they had in common (such as being self-educated, self-made men). The almost square shape of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship lends itself to pictures and Freedmen fills the book with drawings, etchings and photographs of the era, including the image I have included here of a "Watch Meeting." Thousands of people gathered together to await word of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation (he had promised to do so several months earlier unless the Confederate States returned to the Uni...

Duration: Approximately 2 hours Multicast Performance Published by Galaxy Press in 2011. First published in 1935, The Phantom Patrol is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. The Phantom Patrol is the story of Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Johnny Trescott who commands a patrol boat looking for drug smugglers off of the coast of Louisiana. He and his small crew have been working for months to catch one smuggler in particular and are close to catching him. While closing in on this smuggler, they are called away by a distress call from a plane that has made an emergency landing in the water. The smuggler turns the...

Lessons on how to grow and then kill a restaurant chain Published in 2011 by CreateSpace I n Flameout , John P. McDonald tells the story of Burger Chef, the one burger company that outpaced McDonald's and could have taken its place at the top of the fast food heap. In 1971 there were 1,200 Burger Chef restaurants and less than 1,300 McDonald's restaurants. By 1982, what was left of Burger Chef was folded into the Hardee's chain and was no more. I was particularly interested in this book because when I was a kid, the Burger Chef Fun Meal with Burger Chef and Jeff and all of the punch out things you could make with the tray/box were just about the best restaurant experience a little boy could have. This could have been a very boring tale, but McDonald makes it interesting. He tells about the innovations that took Burger Chef from being just a demonstration restaurant (it was designed to showcase the restaurant equipment manufactured by General Equipment) to the fast...

A story of a man whose world has fallen apart Published in 2010 by Penguin Audio Read by: G. Valmont Thomas Duration: 9 hours, 40 minutes. Unabridged Way back in 1981 Stephen King released Roadwork under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Bachman was the name King used to sell pulp fiction type stories so that he could afford to pay his bills and not hurt his reputation as he waited for his work he submitted under his name to take off. King opens this book with an interesting introduction that explains his rather complex relationship with his pseudonym. Roadwork , on the surface, is simple enough. A man in this forties is losing his house, his job and the memories that he holds dearest to the expansion of a highway through his neighborhood. Due to imminent domain , Barton George Dawes will lose his last connections to his son who has died three years earlier due to a brain tumor. He will lose the house that he and his wife scraped and scrimped to buy. He will lose his career at t...

To be published in June of 2012 (DWD's Reviews received an uncorrected proof advance copy) by Harper. Dan Ariely's The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty is a fun look at a serious topic - lying. Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, describes his simple experiments and details his results in a light, easy to understand way. His results are often surprising and counter-intuitive. For example, it is often considered that people are dishonest because they have calculated the risk of being caught and the reward if they get away with the dishonesty and act accordingly. Ariely demonstrates that this is incorrect and spends the rest of the book showing what conditions are more likely to cause dishonest behavior and what conditions decrease dishonesty. This could have been a stupefyingly dull book, but Ariely has a deft touch and makes it a very fun and very quick read. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: T...

Entertaining Sports Autobiography Published by Ballantine Books in April of 2012 Jim Abbott will always be known as "that one-handed pitcher" and in Imperfect he discusses the fact that his life has always been defined by his birth defect. Or, has it? As I read this book I found myself wondering if his missing hand limited him, propelled him or if he would have gone just as far if he had had both hands? Abbott and Brown work together to create a very readable, entertaining book. I found the descriptions of 1970s and 1980s era Flint, Michigan and his life growing up just as compelling as his stories of how he overcame the difficulties he encountered by having just one hand. I was aware of Jim Abbott as he played but as his career waned I lost track of him. Also, I had no memory of his playing in the 1987 Pan-American games in Indianapolis even though I have always lived in Indiana and those games were a very big deal when Indianapolis hosted them. Abbott tells the ...

Published in 2002 by Crown Publishers (Random House) This book is aimed at students from grades 5-12, although I found it interesting and learned a lot. World War II histories abound. Histories of the complete war, various theaters, biographies of units and single officers fill the bookshelves. I have seen books that look at the role of women in the war - the home front, as pilots, intelligence officers and so on. But, I have never seen anything about female war correspondents. I did not even know that there were female war correspondents in World War II - I simply assumed that the sexist attitudes of the day would have not allowed them to work. Happily, I have been enlightened by Penny Colman and her book Where the Action Was . She tells the story of the war through the eyes of several female war correspondents - sometimes through direct quotes, sometimes through reproductions of the headlines of their articles that are placed throughout like in a scrapbook. The history of the w...

Published in 2006 by HighBridge Duration: 1 hour Usually Ray and Tom Magliozzi's "Car Talk" show on NPR is a mixture of humor, stories and lots of advice on car repair and maintenance. This collection, though, is all funny stories (only the barest amount of car advice is given).  There are sixteen stories in all, with topics ranging from the dangers of carrying plywood on the roof of your car to what to do if a customer brings in a really smelly car to how one of the brother's did during his stint in the army as a young man (hint: not well). Some are really funny, some are merely amusing but if you are a fan of the show you will enjoy this collection. Get this audiobook from Amazon.com here: Car Talk: The Greatest Stories Ever Told: Once Upon a Car Fire . I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. Reviewed on April 1, 2012. <br /> <img src="http://wms.assoc-amazon.com/20070822/US/img/noscript.gif?tag=dwsre-20" alt="...

Published in 1986 by Simon and Schuster Read by Leonard Nimoy and George Takei Duration: 90 minutes Abridged. I picked up this audiobook of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home on cassette at a clearance book sale in the "who's going to want this stuff?" section. Mostly, it was serious junk. Educational software that only operates on Apple IIe,  VHS copies of movies that I've never heard of starring some guy that was on some TV show that I barely remember and DVDs of some pastor's sermons on any number of topics (still in the plastic!). And, suddenly, I find a memory from my high school and college years - a genuine Star Trek audiobook from 1986!...on audiocassette! And...narrated by George Takei and Leonard Nimoy! So, I scuttle out of there like I've found a gold bar and pop it in car's cassette player - one of the advantages of having an old car is that it has a multimedia (CD and cassette) stereo system. Back in the day, audiobooks were almost always ab...

Great book for school age kids Published in 2001 by Atheneum Books for Young Readers Stephen E. Ambrose is perhaps best known as the author of Band of Brothers , the book that inspired the HBO mini-series of the same name. His passion for World War II continues in this book aimed at upper elementary through high school students. A Kamikaze plane about to hit an American ship (In the book on page 78) While there is nothing new in The Good Fight , it is a fantastic introduction to the war. All of the major theaters are covered and, perhaps best of all, there is a full page 10" x 10"  picture from the war that show everything from the home front to kamikaze planes to Hitler in a elaborate Nazi rally to Holocaust victims and even more. Those pictures and the little ones scattered on the other pages make the book much more vivid. There are also plenty of pictures of the young men and women that were involved - pictures that make the war seem more real. Th...

Okay story, great production Published in 2009 by GraphicAudio Multicast performance featuring 26 actors Duration: Approximately 7 hours . Batman is called to duty to fight Enfer, a new villain whose name means "Hell" in French. Enfer is skilled with fire and explosives and suffered a transformation similar to that of Joker but his change involved a massive explosion. Enfer is hired to free the inmates of Arkham Asylum by its director, Dr. Crane. His arson burns the asylum and lets dozens of inmates free, including the Joker. While escaping through Gotham City's sewer system, the Joker accidentally stumbles into a back entrance into the Bat Cave. The Joker assaults Alfred, steals a Bat Suit and the BatMobile and starts a crime wave while pretending to be Batman, turning public opinion against Batman. Enfer continues to burn the city. He wishes to attract the attention of The Joker in hopes of joining forces. Can Batman stop Enfer and The Joker before his ...

Published in 1983 by Recorded Books Narrated by Aaron Lustig and Henry Strozier. Duration: approximately 6.5 hours Unabridged I just stumbled upon Berserker , not realizing that there is an entire series of these books. I'm not terribly surprised, the structure of the first book lends itself to sequel after sequel. The premise of the book is that giant intelligent killing space machines are out to destroy all of the life they discover. Why? We are never told, but we assume that they are by-products of a long-ended war by a long-forgotten people. Fred Saberhagen (1930-2007) Photo by Beth Gwinn This first volume was written in the late 1960s. The only reason I point this out is that I believe that the 1960s was an especially fertile time for science fiction, especially sci-fi that wanted to discuss big issues and themes. For example, TV's "Star Trek" and "Twilight Zone" are often more than a creepy story or a space alien story - t...

An entertaining read and a great way to rate the presidents Published in 2012 by Regnery Publishing, Inc. First and foremost, the latest entry in the P.I.G. series is a great read. Steven Hayward is to be commended for making what could have been a very stale read into an entertaining read - he has a light touch. Secondly, how sad is it that grading presidents by how well they "preserve, protect, and defend" the constitution is a unique idea? Hayward begins The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents with a look at what the founders wrote about the office of the president and compares that to the modern presidency. He then looks at the presidency in the 19th century and how most presidents took the restrictions of the Constitution very seriously. As Hayward proceeds to grade the 17 presidents we have had from 1913 until the 2012 (from Wilson to Obama) on an A to F scale (just like in school) he gives a thumbnail sketch of each president with the major issu...