DWD's Reviews

A "Must" for All Students of the Civil War Published in 2009 by Oxford University Press. This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War is a collection of 16 essays by well-known historian James McPherson on a number of Civil War-related topics. Some of the essays are brand new, but most have been published before but have been re-worked for this book. The essays fall into five broad categories: 1) Slavery and the Coming of War;  2) The Lost Cause Revisited;  3)  Architects of Victory;  4) Home Front and Battle Front;  5) Lincoln. McPherson discusses the causes of the war in the first essay - a brilliant essay entitled "And The War Came." McPherson directly confronts those that insist that slavery had no part in causing the war. Please, read this essay if you are one of those people before you make that argument again (if you don't want to buy the book for fear of supporting someone who skewers your particular point of view, get it at your library, ...

I have found a new hero from history Published in 2008. I've known about John Quincy Adams's post-Presidential career ever since I read Profiles In Courage  by JFK many, many years ago. However, what I most remember about that description of him was that that he argued against slavery in the Congress when he could have just coasted along in a comfortable political semi-retirement. In the well-written Mr. Adams's Last Crusade , Joseph Wheelan does us all a favor by elaborating on John Quincy Adams's amazing career. Wheelan briefly covers John Quincy Adams's early career in the first 65 pages. As a teenager, John Quincy Adams was an assistant to his father while he was an ambassador to Europe during the Revolutionary War. He served as ambassador to several European countries after the War and also as Secretary of State (the Monroe Doctrine is as much his as Monroe's) and finally President. Oddly enough, that amazing career was only a prelude to his post-Presi...

Interesting perspective, merely an okay read I've been teaching for 20 years so I've ran into a few students with Asperger's Syndrome over the years. I am familiar with the condition and studied it in some depth in a class in my master's program. I was hoping Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant would offer a little more insight and be as interesting as the video documentaries and news programs that have covered Mr. Tammet over the years. Alas, this read is not nearly as interesting as those presentations. I found myself skimming sections such as the three pages about his self-made game of solitaire and his detailed descriptions about number puzzles. What's left is okay, but in reality, how much can a twenty-something really say about himself that is that interesting? He's just started his life so there's not much to include in a memoir. Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind is his current...

Up and down - the ups are solid, the downs are low, so low I nearly quit listening Published in 2008 by Audible Studios. Performed by  Michael Hogan, Scott Brick, Kandyse McClure, Alessandro Juliani, Stefan Rudnicki, John Scalzi Duration: 9 hours, 7 minutes. Unabridged METAtropolis: The Dawn of Uncivilization  is a collection of short stories about a fictional future world in which the United States government is much weaker and local governments have had to shoulder most of the responsibility for governing. We get to see 4 future settings in this anthology - Cascadia in the American Northwest, Detroit, New St. Louis and Scandinavia. While the U.S. government is much weaker, the role of technology has grown much stronger. There are virtual on-line worlds and cellphones are everywhere and even more plugged in than they are now. The five authors sat down and mapped out the ground rules of this future world and than separated to write their stories. John Scalzi edited the colle...

It was not only a joy to read but also well worth the effort Published in 2007 by Salem Books I read D'Souza's What's So Great about America last year and I enjoyed it. To use a food analogy, What's So Great About America is like a 4th of July dinner of hamburgers, chips and a soft drink - filling but also fun and easy to consume.  What's So Great About Christianity is a much more complicated work. If it were a meal it would be like a 3 course porterhouse steak meal - more challenging to consume, more work to prepare and, in the end, more filling. But there's a lot more chewing. This is a work that requires a lot more thought and more time to read and properly understand.  D'Souza systematically delves into all aspects of Christianity - from the areas of the world to where it is growing today to science to miracles to the "problem" of evil to the charges that more have been killed in the name of Christianity (and other religions)...

Published in 2007. Read by Alfred Molina. Duration: 7 hours, 30 minutes. Unabridged. The Chopin Manuscript is not really a great story but an interesting premise and veteran actor Alfred Molina does a fantastic job performing this audiobook. This book was given an "Audie Award" (2008 Audiobook of the Year) and that is entirely due to the masterful ability of Molina to mimic accents and create voices for literally dozens of characters. His performance was much better than the material he was given to perform. The idea behind the story is pretty simple - Jeffery Deaver ( The Lesson of Her Death ), a well-known writer of action thrillers started out an international thriller by writing the first chapter. Then the story was handed off to another author and a chapter was added (15 authors in total) until it got back Deaver who wrote the concluding chapter. The story is a thrill-a-minute ride that has a herky-jerky nature. Every author seemed to be out to move the story alon...

Much like the last one in the series, the experiment in making the story is better than the story. 7 discs 9 hours + 1 interview disc lasting about 45 minutes. The Copper Bracelet is the second installment in the Harry Middleton story. Harry is former military officer, former music teacher, current hunter of war criminals. Along with his compatriots, the Volunteers, Harry Middleton is after war criminals from Kashmir. The story behind the book is pretty simple - Jeffery Deaver ( Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936 ), a well-known writer of action thrillers started out an international thriller by writing the first chapter. Then the story was handed off to another author and a chapter was added (16 authors in total) until it got back Deaver who wrote the concluding chapter. This is a slightly different group of writers than in the first novel, The Chopin Manuscript: A Serial Thriller . The Copper Bracelet is a bit smoother than the first book, but it still has its herk...

Fascinating, entertaining and important Published in 2009 by Stockade Books. For those of you who are not aware, Mark Steyn was brought before three courts of Canada's Human Rights Commission for violating the human rights of some Muslim students and the Canadian Islamic Congress. You see, in Canada, your right not to be offended is more important than your right to speak your mind (except in the hypocritical cases Steyn has fun with throughout the book). What was Steyn's crime? Maclean's magazine printed excerpts from his book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It . This was a bestseller in America and Canada but if he was found guilty the books would be pulled from all Canadian bookstores and Maclean's would have to be minded by politically correct nanny censors. Steyn is continually amazed that "large numbers of Canadians apparently think there's nothing wrong in subjecting the contents of political magazines to the approval of agents of the...

A Classic Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation is a classic. This is not sophisticated writing and the format is basic but Brokaw's interviews with dozens and dozens of veterans of World War II, their wives, their children and their comments on how the war affected them and the way they lived the rest of their lives is a loving tribute to his father's generation. Brokaw has sections on regular footsoldiers and sailors, soldiers who went on to become famous such as Casper Weinberger, Bob Dole, Andy Rooney and Julia Child. He also addresses the racism and sexism of the time (and incorrectly asserts that only the Japanese were forcibly removed - several East Coast Italians were removed to western states and their fishing boast were confiscated, although clearly the Japanese were treated much worse as a group). He also talks to soldiers who were wounded during the war and how that affected them. Tom Brokaw Interesting comment from former pacifist Andy Rooney about ...

This may be the end of this series Originally published in 2010.   Bennie Rosato and her law firm full of female lawyers is back for what may very well be the last installment of this long-running series. This will seem like a series of spoilers, but you can find all of these items on the back cover of the book: Bennie Rosato's long-lost twin (introduced in the book Mistaken Identity ) turns out to be an evil twin who kidnaps Bennie, buries her alive and takes over her life. So, ignoring the fact that seems that the premise was stolen straight from the "Plot Ideas That Ought To Have Been Retired" Hall of Fame, this book just does not have the zing of the others in the series. I love these characters and have been reading about them ever since I read Everywhere That Mary Went back in the 1990s. I worked at a book store at the time and whenever a fan of legal thrillers would come in and ask if we had anything new that was a little different I'd hand them that boo...

Published in 2007 by Zondervan Read by the author, Lee Strobel Duration: 10 hours, 45 minutes Unabridged Lee Strobel has written several "The Case for..." books. The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ explicitly counters the arguments from many different sources that question Jesus, the teachings about him and the integrity of the New Testament. Critics argue that Strobel is not an expert on the things he writes about. I believe he would agree with that - at most he is a well-informed layman. But, Strobel did the best thing that one can do to create a rebuttal these arguments - he went out to the experts and questioned them (because, really, who is a qualified expert in all of these fields?). Strobel asks them the questions that the "anti-" crowd would ask (really a wide range, from Muslim teachers to Hollywood directors to college professors to former Christian clergy to internet bloggers). Lee S...

Disappointed. Sorely disappointed. I was perusing my local bookshop and I found Terry Jones' Barbarians: An Alternative Roman History . I was excited by the endorsement on the back cover from a historian that said, "I wish all historical books written by non-historians were so informed and all books by historians so well written." Good enough for me - I grabbed it up and eagerly started reading, looking forward to reading this work by the creator/host of one of my favorite history-based documentaries, The Story of 1 . Boy, was I disappointed. First of all, neither Jones nor his co-author Alan Ereira are trained historians (neither am I, but I have an appreciation for expertise in an area and how that makes the commentary more accurate) and it clearly shows. Right off the bat (p. 13) they attack Julius Caesar and belittle Romans in general for falsely describing the true nature of the elk (Romans were told of exotic animals by natives and they duly recorded the de...

Villi the Clown A fascinating look at the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the late 1970s William Campbell was the stepson of John Ross Campbell, a noted international communist from Scotland. William Campbell decided to move to the Soviet Union in 1932 since he could not find work in London. Villi the Clown is the story of his time in the USSR, from 1932 until his defection in 1977 and it is a fascinating ground-level look at the USSR during the Stalinist years, the Purges, World War II and the Cold War years of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Campbell's first job in the USSR is at an airplane factory. He has no qualification except that he is familiar with how a car is put together, which makes him a relative expert in the mechanical engineering when compared to most of his colleagues at the factory. His musical and acting skills are noticed and soon enough he leaves the factory and joins a number of touring musical acts. This gives the reader a chance to see behind the Iron C...

G.K. Chesterton's The Barbarism of Berlin is a lengthy essay (442 kindle "locations" or about 33 pages) defending the decision by the U.K. to join World War I and fight the Central Powers, Germany in particular. It is a testament to Chesterton's powerful skills as a writer that I found myself agreeing with him so much because I've typically found World War I to have been one of the most extraordinary wastes of lives in the long history of a world that regularly wastes lives.  Note that I do not agree with Chesterton's final conclusion (the war was a worthwhile investment of time, energy and lives) but he does make compelling arguments and the essay is worth reading just to have them so well laid out in front of you. G.K. Chesterton Chesterton makes a compelling argument that Germany's outlook on the world is different than France's and England's and that these competing worldviews are bound to confront. Eventually, one will win out - th...

Nicely done Published in 2003 by Tyndale House Publishing. Walking With Frodo: A Devotional Journey Through the Lord of the Rings is aimed at middle school through college students. It takes the LOTR trilogy (movie or books) and demonstrates that the struggles in the books are often our own struggles, although perhaps not as dramatic as a battle with the Balrog... Sarah Arthur uses LOTR "to drive home timeless truths about life."(p. xii) Tolkein's Christian worldview does come out from time to time in the books (who cannot help but to make an analogy between Gandalf sacrificing himself to defeat the Balrog and the despair of his companions afterwards with Jesus dying on the cross and the behavior of the disciples immediately afterwards?) The book has 9 pairs of devotionals based on decisions or situations in LOTR (bondage vs. freedom and choosing despair vs. choosing hope, for example). There are a few relevant bible verses thrown in for good measure. A strong group...

Published in 2009. Indiana Avenue: Black Entertainment Boulevard is an important study into a mostly ignored part of Indianapolis history - the African-American cultural heart of Indianapolis in the first half of the 20th century. It was originally a Master's thesis for a community planning degree, but was re-worked a bit for this self-published effort. There are two kinds of history books. There are the narrative histories, made famous by authors such as David McCollough. A second type of book is the ones that are more research-intensive, mostly facts and they really don't attempt to tell a cohesive narrative. Both are important. The narratives depend on the research books. The research books depend on the narrative books to tell the story to everyone. That simple (and ugly) description is part of a roundabout way of noting that this book is a research book, not a narrative. Bolden does a pretty thorough job of describing the origins of Indiana Avenue and its growth and e...

A simple series of Bible studies about everyday life Published in 2000 by Concordia Publishing. Lots and lots of Bible studies are concerned with literally studying the stories of the Bible. There is a place for that, but many times problems of everyday life are not addressed, or at least not directly. This Bible study mines the immensely rich vein of Martin Luther's commentaries, sermons and even dinner table discussions in an attempt to create a Bible study that deals with 13 real life issues such as "Dealing With Temptations", "Counterfeit Christians", "Work...But Don't Worry", "Be Patient in Adversity" and "God Really Forgives Our Sins." Luther's practical teachings written in everyday language and cemented in a thorough reading and study of the New Testament, shine throughout. Every short study (8-10 pages) begins with a relevant passage from the New Testament, a short story that frames the problem, Luther's r...

Two incompatible ways of life symbolized by one young man Some books stand the test of time, so do not. The Light in the Forest  was originally published in 1953 and it still rings true - both historically and as a story. Based in Pennsylvania during the years preceding the French and Indian War, the story revolves around True Son, a young man who had been kidnapped from his family by Lenni Lenape Indians at age four. True Son is adopted by an honorable, respected man named Cuyolga to replace a son who died from disease. Over time, True Son forgets his white parents and becomes a full Lenni Lenape. However, a treaty is signed that requires that the white "captives" be returned to their white families. True Son is returned and the bulk of the book concerns itself with True Son's reactions to the white society he was forced to leave more than a decade earlier. Eventually, True Son escapes back to his adopted family and settles back into his comfortable way of life. ...

My first exposure to Vonnegut and I liked it! Originally published in 1985. The premise in Galapagos is that a group of people get stranded on an island in the Galapagos and end up becoming the sole survivors of the human race, due to war and famine. Their gene pool decides the fate of humanity biologically, which is why it is set in the Galapagos Islands (thank you, Charles Darwin). I could tell you the plot, but that would just gloss over all of the intentionally contradictory themes of the book (for instance: the importance of the individual is emphasized vis-a-vis evolution, but the individual is also not important because the individual is also swept away in several instances due to his stupidity and/or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time). There is actually some meat on the bones of this book - a nice change of pace when compared to some others I've read lately. Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) P.S. for those Hoosiers out there - as you may know, Vonnegut is fro...