DWD's Reviews

Published in 2009 by Hachette Audio. Read by Peter Giles. Duration: 11 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged. The Scarecrow is a sequel to one of Michael Connelly's earliest books - 1996's The Poet.  In The Poet, newspaper reporter and FBI agent Rachel Walling solve a murder mystery and defeat a serial killer. Since that time, McEvoy wrote a book about his experiences, moved from Colorado and took a job with the LA Times . Now, 12 years later, he is being let go as the Times is going through a round of lay-offs. He has been given two weeks notice and told to train his younger replacement on the crime beat. Meanwhile, a parent calls to complain to McEvoy about an article he wrote saying that her teenaged child had killed a woman and stuffed her body in the trunk of a car. McEvoy decides to look into the case and he and his reporter-in-training uncover some interesting facts that make it clear that the boy didn't do it. Instead, McEvoy is on the trail of another serial killer... G...

Published in 2013 by the History Press. If you were a kid in central Indiana in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's you knew the local kid's TV show stars of Channel 4: Janie, Cowboy Bob, and Peggy. If your parents let you stay up late to watch scary movies, you also know Sammy Terry and his evil laugh. Famous Faces of Indy's WTTV-4 tells the story of how these characters came to be, why the television landscape favored these types of shows at the time and why they are no longer around nowadays. Getting to know a little about each of the actual people behind the TV characters was a lot of fun. Sammy Terry - an all-around TV guy and the owner of a music store. Janie - an elementary school teacher. Cowboy Bob - a musician and a TV cameraman who got a big break. Besides the big names, the book also tells about Brian (Jerry) Reynolds who started at WTTV while he was still in high school and soon enough was writing and producing for the various live action shows on WTTV. ...

Published in January of 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Tristan Morris. Duration: 10 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged. Stephen Prothero takes a look at American history in Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars . Culture wars, for Prothero, are more than the typical left-right discussion  - they are a left-right discussion with serious religious overtones. Prothero's thesis is that the major debates in American history have been those types of debates. He looks at 5 areas: 1) The fight over who would run the country after George Washington - the John Adams (1735-1826) inheritors of the Calvinistic Puritans (John Adams) or those with a vaguely defined faith (Thomas Jefferson); 2) Catholics vs. Protestants; 3) Everyone vs. Mormons; 4) Fundamentalism vs. Modernism as commonly typified by the Scopes Monkey Trial (which only gets a passing mention in this book); 5) Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority types vs. abortion, gay marriage, the Equal Rights Amendment and more. While his discus...

Originally published in 1984 by The Free Press . Note: This is a review of the original version of this book, published in 1984 and ending with the first Reagan administration. It has been expanded and updated to include events up to 2012. Way back in my undergrad days at Indiana University I took a class called American Military History . It was taught by a visiting professor from West Point and FOR the COMMON DEFENSE: A MILITARY HISTORY of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA  was an excellent choice for the text for the class. For 30+ years I have carried this book around with me - through 5 different moves and who knows how many book shelves this book was the anchor of my history section because it is quite beefy. But, I decided it was time to clear out some books. Technically, this book was a re-read but I didn't really remember anything from all of those years ago so... The book starts with colonial defense and moves along with the same format up through the early 1980's. The...

Published in 2014 by Hachette Audio. Read by Len Cariou. Duration: 50 minutes. Unabridged. This short story was the closest thing to a straight out police procedural that I have read from Michael Connelly. By that, I mean that although Harry Bosch is the main character in this story, it really is just the story of how a police officer reviews a cold case and figures out who the bad guy is based on one new clue. Any police officer could have been the main character because Harry Bosch was just sort of along for the ride. Len Cariou read the book. Cariou used to read a lot of Connelly's books. Now The narrator, Len Cariou, at the dinner table on his TV show. Cariou is best known as the grandfather on the TV show Blue Bloods and I kept imagining that he was reading it to me at the dinner table from the TV show, which kind of ruined the mood of the story (not that it was much of a story). I rate this short story 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Switchblade ...

Published in 2006 by Tantor Media. Read by Grover Gardner. Duration: 10 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. Winston Groom, best known as the author of Forrest Gump , is also a historian of sorts. He has written 14 non-fiction books, using his research skills he honed as a journalist to investigate a historical topic. In this case, the topic Patriotic Fire is the Battle of New Orleans. Most people know everything they know about the battle from the catchy Johnny Horton song: I n 1814 we took a little trip,  Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip We took a little bacon and we took a little beans And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans. I knew a little bit more, having read a little about the battle. I didn't know much, however, not really being a fan of the War of 1812 or Andrew Jackson. But, I am a fan of Winston Groom so I decided to give it a try. Groom is skilled at telling a narrative history and at the end, I had a much better idea of how the Ba...

This book was originally published on paper in 1998. Re-mastered audiobook version published in 2015 by Pottermore Publishing. Read by Jim Dale. Duration: 9 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Harry Potter returns for his second year at Hogwarts. Volume 2 follows a similar pattern as the first one in that we begin with Harry enduring a summer with his horrible muggle (non-magical) family, going off to Diagon Alley to shop for back-to-school shopping and then having an eventful trip to school with his supplies. We hear about his classes, quidditch, his teachers, his friends and some foul goings on at the school that threaten everything. But, there are plenty of differences and that make this book much more enjoyable than the first book. There is much less macro "world building" going on because the general parameters have already been set. Instead, interesting details are fleshed out. For me, as an adult first-time reader, the relationship between those who can do magic and the ...

Published by Hachette Audio in 2018. Read by Dion Graham. Duration: 7 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. Edgar Award-Winning author. Down the River unto the Sea features Joe King Oliver, a private detective in New York City. He used to be one of the best detectives in the NYPD, but he was set up for a crime he did not commit. He had a consensual sexual encounter with a woman he was supposed to arrest, but it was videotaped and made to look like a rape - a sexual favor in exchange for not being arrested. He lost his job, he lost his wife and he lost his daughter. He spent a 90 days in the lock up at Rikers Island and it broke him. Oliver gets his life together with the help of a friend on the force and builds a respectable business. His daughter is in high school now and works as his receptionist in the afternoons. One day a case comes in his door that changes everything and might offer a chance at redemption... This is my first Walter Mosley book. You can't be a fan of detective boo...

Originally published in 2004. Winston Groom is best known as the author of  Forrest Gump . He is also the author of 14 different non-fiction books and shows a real talent for writing narrative history. 1942: The Year that Tried Men's Souls focuses on the year that Groom considers to be the crisis year for the Allies and America in particular in World War II - 1942.  He starts his story just before World War II with the attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and ends it in February of 1943 with the ending of the fighting on Guadalcanal. This was a bad time, especially early in 1942 when Japan conquered one territory after another and American forces were seemingly caught off guard or under-prepared everywhere. Groom focuses primarily on the Pacific Theater in this book (75 % or more), although he does offer a decent look at the North African campaign. His look at the fall of the Philippines and the Bataan Death March was very compelling. Groom has no problem pointing out ...

Published in 2018 by Delacorte Press. In this 26 page short story, Reacher is near Barstow, California. He always heads south for the winter and he assumed that Barstow would be south enough to avoid the winter cold. But, a once-in-a-lifetime blizzard hits the area, the power is cut off, the phones are down and Reacher is walking through three feet of snow along an impassable highway (to cars, at least). He stumbles upon a bar and inside finds a bartender an older couple and two British soldiers... The Christmas Scorpion is exclusively published as an e-book. Lee Child was a prolific author (he has since retired) and it is not uncommon for him to generate additional short stories featuring Jack Reacher. These short stories are a mixed bag, at best. I don't know Lee Child's writing process. Some authors plan out every detail meticulously before they start writing, others claim to make up the entire story as they go along - they are finding out what happens as they write. I...

Published in 2017 by Listening Library. Read by Mozhan Marno. Duration: 11 hours, 56 minutes. Unabridged. D.C. Comics' DC ICONS series creates a new YA version of their flagships character's origin stories. DC went out and found established YA authors and let them do their thing in books like Wonder Woman: Warbringer. Leigh Bardugo is an established YA fantasy author and she brings that vibe to the story of Princess Diana of Themyscira, the character who will eventually be better known as Wonder Woman. Diana is a teen that lives on the island of the Amazons - female warriors who died in battle but were reborn on Themyscira, where they can no longer intervene in the lives of mortals. Her mother is the queen of the island. Diana witnesses an explosion of a ship off the coast of Themyscira and breaks the rule of non-intervention by rescuing the sole survivor, a teenage girl and brings her back to the island. And then everything started to fall apart... This book borrows a...

Published in 2019 by HarperAudio. Read by Eric Jason Martin and Jeff Harding. Duration: 2 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. The title says this is a short story, but the print version of Cleaning the Gold is 129 pages and I would call that a novella. Karin Slaughter's Will Trent character works with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He is working on a cold case murder based on the activities of the very first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor . Trent is looking for Jack Reacher based on a 20 year old DNA sample. Reacher is working in Fort Knox and Trent assumes an undercover identity to Pallets of gold in Fort Knox - they are featured in the audiobook. find him... The book is all written in third person with Slaughter writing the Will Trent sections and Child writing the Reacher sections. Lee Child is one of my favorites, but Karin Slaughter is certainly not. In fact, she's one of the few authors I refuse to read any longer. Just to compare, including this review I have...

Published in 1999 by Wiley and Sons. Roger Mudd, formerly of CBS and NBC news, interviewed five historians about their special topics of expertise. They are all solid interviews that allow the historians to tell why their topics are important. Mudd does a great job of letting the interviews flow along a natural conversational path, but he does interrupt with questions that ask for clarification or challenge a point. The historians are: Gordon Wood discussing the American Revolution; James McPherson discussing the Civil War; Richard White discussing Westward Expansion; David McCullough discussing the Industrial Era; and Stephen Ambrose discussing World War II/Eisenhower/Nixon. This was a lot like sitting down with a talented professor in a coffee shop and letting him/her go on about their favorite topic. They weren't lectures, but more like a conversation. I know the work of four of these five historians and have read quite a bit of McCullough, Ambrose and McPherson. McPherson is my...

Published in 2010 by Virago Press. Natasha Walter is an English feminist who is looking at how modern culture treats women. She has two main points in Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism . I will reverse the order of their presentation in my review. Her second main point is the new belief in biological determinism, meaning men and women have areas that they are naturally better at - and that fact overrides everything. She notes that the scientific studies that this belief is based on have never really The author, Natasha Walter been scientifically proven, meaning that they were limited and not replicated on a regular basis. Some have never been replicated even once. The danger is that people just assume things like "girls aren't good at math" and "men can't take care of babies or children" and they become reality. I see it in the classroom all the time - parents tell their kid they struggled with a certain class and they understand if the kid struggles ...

Originally published in 1961. According to the price tag on this book, I picked it up at a souvenir store in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I couldn't tell you when for sure, but my best guess is that it was about 45 years ago. This is a small book, almost like a large children's book, so it just moved along with me wherever I went and I never read it until now. The cover of the book is deceiving. The cover looks like it was written for small children (that is most certainly how I acquired it) but the pictures in the book are much more detailed and complicated, much more like those found in an old-fashioned encyclopedia or an old-style museum. The text is certainly not written for small children, although it does have a slightly paternalistic tone. It feels dated. The one really strong feature to this book is a seven page testimony about the Trail of Tears from Private John Burnett. Burnett was ordered to accompany the Cherokee because he could speak their language....

Originally published in 2003. Note: Lee Child wrote his books out of chronological order. In chronological order, this would be book #10. This book starts out with a very different sort of introduction. I don't want to spoil it so I will skip ahead a bit. Reacher is out to get a man who he thought he killed years before. He has some sort of business arrangement with a family with underworld connections in Maine that lives in a castle-like mansion on the coast. Reacher works his way inside the organization and waits for his opportunity. Also, he is on the lookout for a missing DEA agent who is thought to have been kidnapped by the organization and is being held somewhere. Reacher is not sure who he can trust as he tries to figure out what is really going on... This story is more complicated than most Reacher stories. The action is ridiculous, as always - but that's one of the reasons you read a Jack Reacher book. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.co...

Published by Kobo Originals in 2018. Read by Meegwun Fairweather. Duration: 7 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged. In The Marrow Thieves , it is the latter half of the 21st century and the world has had a series of literal upheavals. Earthquakes sheared off California, global warming has changed the weather. Droughts occur in former wet spaces and dry places have become swamps. Sea levels have risen and drowned out many cities. Many animal species have died off and others are in severe decline. On top of that, the nations of the world have gone to war and most cities were destroyed, people have fled to the remaining cities. The entire world map has been re-drawn. In the future there is also another problem. Almost everyone in the world has The author, Cherie Dimaline. lost the ability to dream. Everybody except the indigenous population of the Americas - Native Americans. However, their bone marrow can be harvested for a substance that lets other people dream. The government and the Ca...

Published by Listening Library in 2019. Read by Andrew Elden. Duration: 7 hours, 28 minutes. Unabridged. Set in modern America, Matt de la Peña's Superman: Dawnbreaker: DC Icons delivers a traditional Superman origin story with a little bit of a twist. This book follows along the line of the Smallville TV show, with Metropolis being within driving distance of Superman's Kansas hometown instead of basically being a stand-in for New York City. Big things are going on in Smallville. A tech firm has moved in, bringing in lots of jobs and a new corporate headquarters. They also are buying up farm land. And, a new smaller company has come in as well. Also, LexCorp is sniffing around. Smallville is considering passing a law requiring people suspected of being illegal immigrants (there is a burgeoning Hispanic population who serve as farm workers and work in a meat processing plant) to produce papers on sight and Hispanic men are disappearing. Clark Kent has always been amazingl...

Originally published on paper in 1997 by Scholastic. Originally published as an audiobook in 1999. Published in 2015 by Pottermore. Read by Jim Dale. Duration: 8 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. Truth time. This was my first time with the book form of Harry Potter. I'd seen the first movie and maybe the second, but never actually read or listened to any of them. This is a big deal for me because I am generally a fan of the wonderful world of nerd stuff.  I will dispense with the plot stuff since just about everybody, even me, knew the bare outline - orphaned wizard boy with no friends and hated by his relatives that took him in, special magic school, Quidditch, and a creepy bad guy that killed the boy's parents. So, what did I think? This book is so adored and so talked up that it couldn't possibly live up to the hype. But, I liked it. I am looking forward to the other books. It is my understanding that they get more complicated and I certainly don't know the plots of...

Published by HarperAudio in 2016. Read by Charlie Anson. Duration: 9 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged. Ed Yong takes his readers (or, in my case, listener) into the tiny world of microbes in I Contain Multitudes . Traditionally, we think of microbes as tiny invaders that make us sick and, as I sit at home after yet another day of social distancing, it is easy to see it that way. But, Yong takes us into a more complicated world. A world where microbes actually benefit their larger hosts - where microbes can help produce scents or colors for attracting a mate, help guts break down leaves or nuts and even help their hosts survive poisons. In many cases, these microbes and their hosts co-evolved and have become dependent on one another. They have created their own microbiome. But, it's not that simple, either. Sometimes the microbes affect their host's behavior - and not in a good way. They can turn insects into virtual zombies, they can make mice hyperactive or depressed. They can ev...